Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

it isn't as if counseling is fixing a fucking transmission on a car

Neanderthal otm here. "Get therapy" can be fine advice but not all therapy is equally helpful, not all therapists are equally good, and not all people go into therapy with an open mind and willingess to change.

Also frogbs bringing truth:

I think about Lauren Boebert (whose own district had a mass shooting not that long ago) filming herself doing cartwheels down the hall of the Capitol 2 days ago. at least during the Dubya era they tried to put on a caring face. now they're just straight up saying "can't do anything about it, sorry, stop bothering me". Not just saying they don't care but straight up rubbing it in your face. Yes they are uniquely evil but also - millions and millions of Americans are voting for these people. They put TRUMP signs on their lawns year round.

Can we bookmark that for the next time somebody says both parties are the same, Democrats are no better, etc. etc.?

xp O wait, here comes tabes to say something pretty much like that, never mind

i know i'm being a woodpecker here, but i don't think both parties are the same. i think both parties are making things worse rather than making them better.

Ok but why vote for the lesser of two evils?

Because it's... LESS. EVIL. Duh.

Yeah, both school shootings and turmpism seem like "outward projection of intense internal negativity" and self-loathing...

Every time I see Steve Bannon I just think that guy really hates himself and wants to see the world burn... he may have more ambition and resources, and be thinking on a grander scale, but at root it's the same motivation as any school shooter...

Ok but why vote for the lesser of two evils?

Because it's... LESS. EVIL. Duh.

― she loves me like a rock lobster (Ye Mad Puffin)

it's really not worth my trouble to engage with you on this topic any further. you do you boo.

love to have words put in my mouth

regardless of the broader q, I don't know if gun control is the best issue to get excited about what a difference a D makes

a D doesn't make nearly as much as a difference as people tend to think, i got rid of mine and honestly it was nbd

XD

the endless loop continues

https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/active-shooter-louisville/?id=98470141

this is literally fucking insane... kill the citizens, spare the AR-15:

The mayor of Louisville has said Kentucky law would make him a criminal if he destroys the assault-style rifle used by a gunman in Monday’s killing of five bank employees in his city... The killer’s rifle was confiscated after police shot him dead, and Kentucky law requires officers to send it to state police officials to sell at auction.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/11/louisville-shooting-assault-style-rifle

I mean, is it really all that insane? This country has demonstrated time and time and time again that guns are worth more than human lives, so it was perhaps inevitable it would be codified into law.

I am not aware of any other culture that fetishizes guns in the way that U.S. culture does.

I mean, is it really all that insane?

IDK, here in California they mostly do gun buybacks - not auctions of weapons that have been used in a massacre
What kind of psycho would want to own something like that? (eh, that's a rhetorical question)

the fact that several Congressmen were proudly wearing AR-15 pins and lobbying to make it "the official gun of the United States" felt particularly psychotic. that would feel insane even in a country whose citizens weren't routinely being slaughtered by it.

Any gun that's confiscated by police (whether or not it's been used in a crime) should be melted down. Period.

xpost - Fwiw, Andy, I wasn't pushing back at you, it most definitely is insane and the thought that someone out there would be willing to bid on that gun makes me physically sick, I just am so fucking exasperated at this country's total willingness to sacrifice itself at the altar of gun ownership.

stuff like the pins & official gun status feels like we're in an on-the-nose ep of Star Trek, where they visit a planet with a laughably hyperfocused and allegorical culture

Jon, I totally got your point and I agree - there are legions of kooks who prefer the status quo of near-weekly gun massacres to anything like sensible regulations

"Here Bobby, hold this one! It was used to mow down five innocent people just last year, so you know it's a real killin' machine! Ain't that somethin else?"

xxp "Bones, did you leave your phaser on that planet?"

the important thing to remember about conservatives is that they are perpetually terrified, they honestly believe crime is up every single year and they think every authority figure wants to harvest the blood of their children. their entire belief system revolves around half the country being under the spell of Satan. I dunno, maybe right wing media does have a small little role in all this

I assume that when drugs are confiscated they are similarly put back on the streets? I mean, waste not want not, right?

I mean I'm sure we're headed to a moment when a gun confiscated after one massacre is then sold at auction and used in another massacre. Anyone know where St*ph*n P*dd*ck's stash is these days?

I’m sure republicans bid on these guns to remind themselves of the evil they cause.

I assume that when drugs are confiscated they are similarly put back on the streets?

https://i.redd.it/a6atn1h0nbwz.jpg

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/16/us/dadeville-alabama-mass-shooting/index.html

Sweet 16 birthday party, 4 dead, 20+ injured

We're at the point where people may be afraid to hold celebrations in public because "it puts everyone I love in one place at the same time, what if there's a shooting?"

That this was a 16th birthday shows there's no end to the cruelty of the gunpidemic

"Violent crime has no place in our state, and we are staying closely updated by law enforcement as details emerge," the governor added.

The governor is a strong supporter of second amendment rights - the right to keep and bear arms - and last year signed legislation abolishing the requirement in Alabama to get a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public.

And another... one a week now, pretty much

Man arrested in Maine shootings that left four dead and three wounded

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/19/maine-shootings-bowdoin-highway

more like one a day

Checks out, this year is 109 days old:

The Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit watchdog, defines a mass shooting as any shooting in which “four or more [people are] shot or killed, not including the shooter”. It has counted 165 such incidents in the US this year.

more like more than one day

This kind of incident seems to be a growing epidemic:

Texas cheerleaders shot after one says she got in wrong car

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-04-19/texas-cheerleaders-shot-after-one-says-she-got-in-wrong-car

See also: Shoot anything that moves: Hair trigger gun nuts standing their ground.

“Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns”.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-ownership-associated-with-much-higher-suicide-risk.html

How can we get this number up, lads?

I just inherited an old .22 revolver a couple years ago, and I think about these stats all the time... as a (gently) aging GenX dude, the demographic that's probably at the top of this trend

8x sounds low tbh

i mean i guess that's what you'd expect, easier to kill yourself when you already have an instrument of death easily accessible in your house vs having to leave the house and acquire one and likely not get it right away, or go to a shooting range and try doing it there.

I know I talk about this book ALL THE TIME, but it really does an astonishing job of talking about the phenomenon of "gun rights" and increased suicide among poor and middle class white men. It's an incredible book, in many ways.

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jonathan-m-metzl/dying-of-whiteness/9781541644960/?lens=basic-books

How can we get this number up, lads?

― Every post of mine is an expression of eternity (Boring, Maryland)

Gross

If I’d had ready access to a gun at certain times in my life — that is, if I had grown up in the USA — I would be dead now.

same ^^^^^

I just cannot even fathom owning a gun. I've fired one exactly two times, when I was 12 and my dad forced me to go pheasant hunting with an uncle and some work people. It was a terrible experience, I played along enough to shoot in the general direction of the pheasant without getting anywhere near in danger of actually hitting it. All I recall from this remove is a profound discomfort of holding something in my hands that could end a life. Absolutely no desire to touch one again.

I remember finding my dad's gun in a shoebox when I was looking for the power supply for the N64 that he hid. the ammo was in the same box. was pretty freaked out by it, just knowing "hey you can actually kill someone if you want"

on the plus side I found a way to get the power cord back

Yeah I have somehow made it 52 years without shooting a gun or even holding one. This while living in some of the most presumably dangerous urban settings (DC, Chicago, NYC, Richmond, St. Louis) and walking approximately one-third of a continent of semi-wilderness (Appalachian Trail).

Christ, I have even been spotty about locking the house and car doors, and never had even the slightest bit of fear or trouble about my person (much of which is probably six-foot-tall white dude privilege, but still).

One (1) time a guy stole some silverware from my childhood home when we were on vacation. My mother bought a grand piano with the insurance money. They found the dude, and maybe could have retrieved the silverware, but my Mother decided she'd rather have the piano. Another time someone took some CDs from my car. I think one of them was by Suzanne Vega. I bought another copy.

Yikes, eek, what a hellish apocalyptic dystopia, surely I should have been all tacticooled out.

The way I look at it is, in the extraordinarily unlikely event that someone wants to get in my house with the specific intent of killing me, I sure as fuck won't have time to calmly, rationally walk to the safe to unlock the gun and a secondary location to unlock the ammo in time to make one bit of a difference in an intense situation.

(nb I'm fully aware that, clearly given recent events, these 2A chuds don't follow any amount of basic gun safety that I would intend to follow, these dudes and locked and loaded every second of every day)

I remember finding my dad's gun in a shoebox when I was looking for the power supply for the N64 that he hid. the ammo was in the same box. was pretty freaked out by it, just knowing "hey you can actually kill someone if you want"

My father--lifetime NRA member and Guns & Ammo subscriber--did this as well; he's never had a gun safety measure that went beyond "tall closet shelf (next to the porno tapes)". To this day, I'll visit and still find loose bullets in kitchen junk drawers. He kept a revolver in his car's glove compartment, too. He's never hunted, just goes shooting at the range and generally liked firearms, I guess.

Here's the thing: when guns fire, they're loud. That's what you miss watching them go off in the movies.

They're pretty unmistakable. When you're at a shooting range, hearing them go off is startling enough. When you're in the middle of a public place and one starts going off, you won't ever forget it.