Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

Until people, let alone kids, toting around assault weapons is not seen as a red flag in and of itself, yeah, we're fucked.

nra really is a helluva drug - like how can millions of people believe that the answer to gun violence is moar guns guns for everyone guns guns guns, it's absolute madness

TBF the answer to my craving for heroin is more heroin.

This is all besides the fact that the kid had enough history to not be let near a fork let alone a knife let alone assault rifles

https://media1.tenor.com/images/a451e58b31bd6e315fa07f4515f6a48f/tenor.gif?itemid=5689634

nra pushing the 'more cowbell' approach to gun laws because, after all, we shouldn't fear the reaper

"You thought it was fine for a 19-year-old to have an AR-15?" Blackstone asked.

"It's his right to have it," James said.

"Do you feel any differently about that now?" Blackstone asked.

"No. Nope," James said.

i mean come on

No, nope, no sirree, hell naw, more guns, guns for everyone

this may seem obvious to all here but I've spent the weekend disturbed that what the NRA and its allies have done is encourage an arms race among private citizens. the parallels between militarized police, budget priorities increasing military spending, and all of this have been swirling in my mind in ways that I cannot articulate but it's all left me very shaken.

yeah, its like the atomistic vision of american public life gets extended to personal safety, that only appropriately matching lethal firepower as hypercriminals and deranged mass killers can keep you safe. instead of, you know, looking at the multiple factors that can contribute to public safety like fewer guns and expanded public health care and a guaranteed baseline of economic security. but nah lets just do austerity and private security and let god sort it out.

"the only way to protect ourselves from being mowed down by these lethal machines is having more of these lethal machines"

yea okay i was bullied too but he shot me so like whats ur point https://t.co/ZhOfiwaDdS

— isa (@isabelchequer) February 18, 2018

I think the other thing that's so dispiriting is how many people have internalized this extremely cynical, completely dystopic worldview that these corporate entities and advocacy groups have created and egged on. Like during the development of ACA and you had people screaming about how citizens SHOULDN'T have healthcare... it's not too much of a stretch to end up with people who just shrug off all of this bloodshed as the inevitable price of freedom. They've been gotten to. I could only imagine that LaPierre & associates must be proud of their accomplishments.

Trying to understand these people's minds is like studying cannibalism as an anthropologist.

In my lifetime smoking was legal not just in bars and restaurants, but *airplanes* and *hospitals.* And now it's not. The smoking industry I'm going to guess had or has more money than the gun industry. Smoking, in terms of deaths, was and probably still is more lethal than guns. And yet, this huge, major shift happened. So ... I guess nothing is impossible.

none of that actually limited people's access to cigarettes though, just redirected where they could smoke. there was a little consternation for a bit, but smokers didn't make as big of a stink for long because they found ways to adapt.

"You thought it was fine for a 19-year-old to have an AR-15?" Blackstone asked.

"It's his right to have it," James said.

"Do you feel any differently about that now?" Blackstone asked.

"No. Nope," James said.

imagine this conversation about any other terrible product that kills people, all of this fetishizing over "rights" and all that bullshit. people love their precious stupid "never-should-have-been-invented" doom sticks that go bang.

none of that actually limited people's access to cigarettes though,

But it did/has. There are no more cigarette machines and the age to buy (and taxes) keeps creeping up.

even after all this time i'm still amazed by the genuine stupidity/insanity/psychopathy of people who actively question the truthfulness of mass shootings. even if they were caught up in the middle of one i would be willing to bet a few of them would call it a false flag.

I don't know anybody who smokes cigarettes anymore.

we went over to a house for a playdate the other day and the parents stepped outside for a smoke. i was completely taken aback, i haven't seen anyone smoking socially in what feels like years. small sample size, probably. if they were smoking w33d i'd have been completely unruffled.

My former downstairs-beside neighbours smoked and so did their friends and when they'd have their parties until 4 in the morning they'd all be out in the garden below my head while I was trying to sleep.

xp: oh yeah. There've been a couple of "some other kid's parent at the park" things.

gotta say i love that kid's tweet above

the thing about kids who are bullied of course is that generally they're pissed at their tormentors and the tormentors friends, but as w/all these shooters they will kill everyone who comes across their path. they shoot babies and toddlers point blank, if they're unfortunate enough to be in the same place at the same time. that's where i just don't understand it at all. i just don't get it. they want to kill everyone. it goes beyond fantasizing about revenge and into complete blankness and just dropping every single living thing.

"How many guns did he have?" Blackstone asked.

"I'm not sure. Five or six," James said.

It's a mental illness problem, not a (um, how many did he have, I can't quite recall) gun problem.

well we don't know who's crazy or not, let's just give everyone guns and watch them closely and figure it out later

I love this country!

Parents are expressing concern after a church announced it will hold a ceremony next week, and worshipers are encouraged to bring assault weapons with them, and the ceremony will be just down the road from an elementary school.

The ceremony in Wayne County was planned before the mass shooting at a high school in Florida last week.

Church leaders still plan to go ahead with the blessing ceremony, which has some parents of elementary school students on edge.

christ, that's like something Garth Ennis would have come up with that I would have rolled my eyes at

the "arm everyone" bullshit is infuriating. the thing is, you can either be someone who lives their life regularly or be constantly watching everything around you for someone who's about the unzip their duffel bag and pull out an AR-15. the thing is, the latter will never occur except in the cases of insane paranoid types. if you're someone who's committing a mass shooting, that's your sole goal. you don't have other goals because you're probably going to shoot everyone and then yourself. meanwhile everyone else around you--while you're preparing for your final act of psychotic evil moron stupidity and assessing every living thing as a target--is just living their life and even if they have a gun they're unprepared because they're not constantly looking around and everyone and assessing everyone as a threat.

reminds me of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_God_(United_States)

Brass Eye, 1997.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAQy8v0d_qo

mass shooters always have the upper hand because they're ready to do it and they're prepared and they intentionally go after soft targets because they're psychotic cowards who want to kill as many as possible without any danger to themselves. look at this piece of shit trying to blend in and run away at the end, too.

On the one hand, we'll probably reach a point in like a decade when a majority of voters have been adversely affected by gun violence. On the other, a non-negligible percentage will probably be utter choads of the 'I defend my son's right to have murderered all of his siblings and my wife and I wouldn't do anything differently' variety.

the last scream of at least one mass shooting victim will be to yell at the killer, "It's your right to have that!"

"I disapprove of whom you shoot, but I will defend to my death your right to shoot me"

Seriously, if we can get behind Larry Flynt we should be just as supportive of a total rando shooting us in the face.

I mean, I exaggerate because the notion is fucking ridiculous, but I think there are a lot of people who honestly embrace some variation of that fucking ridiculous notion.

something something about the privilege of being american comes with risks that are worth it

Like I keep saying, death cult

I keep going back to the gun rights advocate/lawyer (probably in that order) I heard on the radio who insisted that because the shooter is going to jail he "didn't get away with it." And the interviewer, just shocked, responding that his goal was to walk into that school and kill as many people as he could, which means that, yes, he *did* get away with it.

I for one love the "arm the teachers" movement. That's what I want to see. Police called to the scene...teachers firing at students, students firing at the janitor, janitor trying to take out the lunchlady....let freedom reign

I like the kids refusing to go back to school in protest. If that really caught on it could get something done.

they're talking about walk outs on 3/14 and 4/20

obviously i can't walk out, but i'm down to do a teach-in

xxpost My elementary school principal was fired when it was discovered he kept a gun in his desk. These days he'd be an American hero.

I’d do a teach-in too. Are there resources / suggested content?

and 4/20

this is like the left/liberal versh of the war on christmas.

??? it's because of Columbine

as a guy who actually lived 3 miles from columbine when it HAPPENED, that is not the primary meaning to 4/20 to me but ok.

I grant that the optics may not be the best, but I think the symbolism has value