Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

probably too busy enjoying the fruits of socialism to look askance at the states

america, the only nation on earth with a perpetual 320-million-person mexican standoff

― albondigas con gas (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 16 February 2018 14:16 (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Did u have to

i don't have to do anything on ilx tbf

i don't think i'll ever know true satisfaction until i'm using my trophy skull of Wayne LaPierre as a urinal

i started tearing up at this

Scariest part of it all was knowing my little brother was right above me and not knowing if I would ever see him again. I’ve never really treated him the way he deserved. Not anymore. Seeing his face outside of school was the most relief I had ever felt. My prayers to all. pic.twitter.com/Iq8CHVNXd0

— Uncle Sam Zeif (@SzZeif) February 15, 2018

'are the cops here
my teacher died'

;_;

aw god that's horrible

'my teacher died' is like a punch in the gut

https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t34.0-12/27867253_10103208451436598_2478885300314606738_n.jpg?oh=cfd20921511a9cd13f21e4b6eb232717&oe=5A89FF77

omg

There was an angry dad I heard interviewed who had been texting with his daughter, who was hiding in the closet. And then the phone connection went dead and he did not see her again until he discovered her outside the school, safe and sound. Per protocol, I guess the teachers told everybody to turn off their phones, so that noises and light won't attract attention.

One of the many sad outcomes of this happening again and again is that even my kids, who are 10 and 13, know this now happens all the time, that it is just a part of life. My older one, who is about to enter high school, was reading about it on the news, and was aware enough to know that this shooting was worse than usual. The bery idea that there even is a "usual" ...

I honestly don't know how anyone is meant to instill in kids today a sense of safety or meaning or purpose or...Christ, empathy? Honesty? It's utterly heartbreaking.

It feels like kids increasingly have little opportunity to just be kids, to not have to worry about the shit they're going to have to spend the rest of their lives worrying about. Who even knows what kind of long-term mental health toll that's going to take.

Yeah, I tried asking my 13-year-old about, hoping to have a discussion about it or something. He was just impassive about it: "Oh that thing in Florida? Yeah, you think it could never happen to you, but it could happen to you. *shrugs*"

xps

yea I said to my wife yesterday "good thing our kids are in day care, no one's going to shoot up a day care" and then realized someone's totally going to shoot up a day care in the next few years

After Newtown my kids' elementary school sent out an email announcing that there would be an assembly the next morning to discuss the shooting w/ kids. My younger daughter was in kindergarten at the time and we pushed back hard on that. Obv if they came to us w/ questions we wouldn't hide the truth from them, but there's nothing to be gained from spending time on it at that age. No way to explain it, no way to make sense of it. Fortunately the school thought better of it and cancelled the assembly.

They are 11 and 15 now, this is the first one I've really spend time talking w/ them about it at any length, watching the reports on tv etc.

Shitty times.

fuck those brother texts upthread are just devastating

here's a list of massacres in the UK. there are about thirty. going back to 61 AD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Great_Britain

the first massacre i heard about growing up was the one in San Ysidro, and it seemed surreal and completely out of left field, like a one-off. A guy walking into a place and killing 20+ people he didn't know for no reason? It didn't even register as a possibility to me as a kid. and then there wasn't really another one until the Luby's massacre, and i had a similar reaction. it didn't feel like a trend it felt like lightning striking twice.

i'll never understand it. every single one of these stories has a timeline on wikipedia and i get PTSD just reading about them, so i don't anymore. Port Arthur gave me a nightmare the night after I read the wiki.

"gun control doesn't work because criminals don't care about the law by definition - they will find a way to get guns if they want them"

vs

"our current laws are more than adequate, we just need to enforce them"

both of these things can't be true simultaneously, but you hear them trotted out by gun nuts every time, sometimes within the same conversation

Oh okay cool, we just got an interoffice email that there was a shooting at the building next door and that we're to stay indoors until further notice. I'm ten floors up so unconcerned about my personal safety, but still.

I just cannot fucking deal with this country anymore.

i'll never understand it. every single one of these stories has a timeline on wikipedia and i get PTSD just reading about them, so i don't anymore. Port Arthur gave me a nightmare the night after I read the wiki.

― omar little, Friday, February 16, 2018 10:35 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i pretty studiously avoid the details of stuff like this now -- i used to think that "bearing witness" to it would strengthen my resolve/make me a better person or w/e, but i hear enough horrible stuff at work that i don't need to seek it out in my spare time

xp and on top of that, there have been two different guys with guns reported on campus here in the last few weeks (no shootings though)

is there a route to gun control / gun amnesty through state legislatures? (theoretically?)

False-ish alarm, I guess? Someone dropped a gun and it went off and injured two bystanders. So, y'know, just a glimpse into the future casual, everyday collateral damage we'll deal with once everyone is armed to the teeth.

it's cool, just little personal death-dealers in everyone's pockets, very edgy

it's casual, everyday collateral damage which is here already in the present tbf

whoa how could an inanimate object harm people????

https://i.imgur.com/IRMCyJt.gif

large parts of america just wholesale embracing nihilism in the face of the climate-related disaster coming down the pipe

i have had a student recently voice - apparently w/ sincerity/conviction - refusal to do anything about climate change w/ attendant disasters on the grounds that as a believing christian they accept that the world is going to end anyhow and this is a matter out of human hands

naturally this is matched by a corresponding nihilism about the norms of argumentative discourse

only way to stop a bad guy from accidentally dropping a gun and injuring two people is a good guy accidentally dropping a gun and ah fuck it i'll take it to the "posts you decided not to post" thread

lord almighty xp

literally i guess

Oh wait now, the shooting was an accident but apparently the dude who dropped the gun then fled, presumably with the gun, and is now at large...somewhere. Rad!

both of these things can't be true simultaneously, but you hear them trotted out by gun nuts every time, sometimes within the same conversation

They don't care about this because they aren't arguing in good faith. Like I said before, when you have already decided that guns cannot be the problem, you make dumb arguments, conflicting arguments, etc. Which makes it friggin maddening when you get people who take the detached "hey stop responding to this problem out of emotion. We need to stick to logic and facts and pragmatism here" yet clearly have a strong emotional attachment to guns.

I've heard/seen/said the word "guns" so much at this point that the true nature of the thing is somewhat lost. It's a step away from a euphemism. Killing machines. They are killing machines.

guys guns are never going to be banned here, i would love it if they were but in this country people would rather have their shooting toys (to make holes appear super fast in--and hopefully close to the center of--pieces of paper) than they would rather have a drastic decrease in violence.

Obama's "clinging to guns and religion" quote was *politically* a misfire to an extent (pardon the term) but pretty accurate.

Never say never. Societies change. It won't happen in my lifetime, for sure. 500 years? Who knows. Slow, gradual change. Starting with possibly ineffective measures which nevertheless put a symbolic flag down stating a large part of society does not want guns around.

yea I said to my wife yesterday "good thing our kids are in day care, no one's going to shoot up a day care" and then realized someone's totally going to shoot up a day care in the next few years

This goes through my head probably 50% of the time when I'm on my way out after dropping the kid off.

After picking him up the other day I was behind a truck with a sticker of Michigan on the back window; I see tons of these of course because I'm in michigan, we have a distinctive outline, and the lower peninsula looks like a mitten so there's lots of joke mileage to get out of that.

This was the outline of the state with the mitten part holding a handgun. It was roundy and cute and iconic, not scary or threatening - just like "hey I'm from Michigan and I love guns!". The person probably fetishizes the objects the way other people in gear-heavy hobbies do - fishing poles, bikes, instruments, cameras, whatever. They may hunt, but probably don't, as I know a lot of hunters, and to them guns are tools that they use in their hobby, not the hobby itself.

I feel like people like this are the real problem and the key to switching public opinion. They like toys and loud noises and blowing stuff up and maybe, kind of, fantasizing about being a hero someday and are unable or unwilling to accept that their stupid hobby enables mass shootings to keep happening. They aren't apocalyptic hoarders or paramilitary types, just self absorbed and likely to get indignant when anyone dares to tell them that they might not be able to play with their toys. The actual hunters I know would probably grudgingly accept strict limitations that would allow them to have rifles and shotguns with limited capacities and severely restrict or ban handguns, as you don't fire thirty rounds in thirty seconds at deer or partridge. These gun hobbyists though will cry about "self defense" and don't want to have to register them or be limited as to what kind of guns they can own because nobody can tell them what to do.

How does society make this mindset cancerous? How can they get whatever change of opinion that smokers and drunk drivers have been subject to in my lifetime that makes them pariahs?

I mean in 100 years guns as we know they might be obsolete

Obama's "clinging to guns and religion" quote was *politically* a misfire to an extent (pardon the term) but pretty accurate.

― omar little, Friday, February 16, 2018 12:11 PM

Howard Fineman theorized yesterday that Trump, thanks to his appeal to rural white voters, would have more clout to sign sweeping gun control legislation.....

It’s weird that he’s the one New Yorker, of all New Yorkers, that these people actually like.

he's as rich and healthy as they! It's not hard.

i genuinely never thought i would see a smoking ban and it happened bam just like that and nobody blinked because smoking in restaurants etc is basically indefensible. it was like a kid who doesn't want to get into the bath, it happens and suddenly he's like ahh that feels good

Uh.

BREAKING: FBI says Jan. 5 tip about the suspected Florida school shooter was received by FBI's Public Access Line but "protocols were not followed" to escalate the tip for further investigation - https://t.co/kdrUxk2XiK pic.twitter.com/iBnPWKHQGA

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 16, 2018

McDonald's and Luby's were the first ones I remember too. I was about 11 or 12, and really didn't consider how horrible those events were. I remember the paper publishing these little cutaway maps of the restaurants, with these Billy-from-Family-Circus bars showing the path of the shooters.

I heard at the time one of the McDonald's survivors using ketchup to mock blood and playing dead. Sounded like a plan to me.

Howard Fineman theorized yesterday that Trump, thanks to his appeal to rural white voters, would have more clout to sign sweeping gun control legislation.....
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 16, 2018 12:21 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except he's already demonstrated that he's incapable of reaching across the aisle, even for political expediency. More than needing "approval" Trump needs to be adored, he needs to be worshipped. I don't mean emotionally (he obv. does) but politically, because he's cornered himself and he knows that while a more moderate position on guns would win him broader approval, it would turn off the adoring base.

tell Howard! I need no convincing.

vigorous rallies to replace the fbi with the trump security agency, designed and overseen by erik prince in 3, 2, 1

Our building is pretty much on lockdown atm, apparently. Still. Very possibly an overreaction but it is what it is.

Probably as much a reaction to earlier shootings in the week as a proportionate precaution to this morning's incident. On top of the FL massacre, a police officer was shot and killed just a few blocks over a day or so ago. You guys probably didn't even hear about it because, hey, it was just one guy.

so, what's going on today

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DWLNwLHUQAAH5ez.jpg