Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

*sigh*

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/philadelphia-police-shooting-today-multiple-officers-shot-in-active-and-ongoing-situation-live-updates-2019-08-14/?fbclid=IwAR0kuYRuipSR7iz1rDznO1zKyILJHh3NNpmiEOP8h1razpCScFTXzVaDc_A

The only good cop etc

Nah

the only good fbclid=IwAR0kuYRuipSR7iz1rDznO1zKyILJHh3NNpmiEOP8h1razpCScFTXzVaDc_A

Police in Midland, Texas said on Saturday two gunmen were at large after a reported shooting at a branch of the Home Depot hardware store in Odessa.

Local and national media reported the Texas Department of Public Safety said several people including an officer had been shot. The University of Texas of the Permian Basin was on lockdown.

In a first post on its Facebook page on Saturday afternoon, the Midland police department noted reports of “an active shooter” at the Home Depot in Odessa and said: “For the safety of the public and law enforcement please stay away from the area and stay in your homes. We will update will more information as soon as possible.”

In an update, the department posted: “We believe there are two shooters in two separate vehicles. One suspect is believed to be at the Cinergy in Midland and the other is believed to be driving on Loop 250 in Midland.”

The Cinergy in Midland is a multiplex cinema.

The police statement added: “The two vehicles in question are: gold/white small Toyota truck and a USPS Postal Van. Please stay away from these areas and stay indoors.”

The White House said Donald Trump had been briefed. The president, who was monitoring the approach of Hurricane Dorian on Saturday, flew to his golf club in Virginia earlier, from the Maryland retreat at Camp David.

20-30 shot, according to various twitter sources, but who knows right now

one at mobile, alabama last night too

NYT:

Five people were killed and more than 20 others were injured in a brazen daylight drive-by mass shooting near the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa on Saturday, as a gunman drove on the highways and streets opening fire on residents, motorists and shoppers, the authorities said.

Seems this one was unplanned, just a gun-nut that cracked during a traffic stop. Odessa/Midland is among the most pro-NRA metropolitan areas in the nation, and honestly, if one's seeking to bring home just how harmful the NRA interpretation of the 2A is, this event just may.

http://rmcguirephoto.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/DSC33771.jpg

I don't know what that's supposed to convey about the culture of a place that a picture of the landscape in El Paso, Dayton, Gilroy, Virginia Beach, Poway, Thousand Oaks, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Santa Fe, Parkland, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Bernardino, Roseburg, Waco, Isla Vista, Fort Hood, Washington DC, Newtown, Aurora, Blacksburg, Santee, Columbine, or any of the hundreds of other sites of American mass shootings in the last 20 years wouldn't.

otm

"metropolitan area" is a bit of an oversell

Random folks on twitter are saying the Texas police scrubbed the 36-year old white boy killer's social media profile off the internet before releasing his name. They suggest this will allow white supremacists to keep sites hidden.

and you believe this?

Every time this happens gun sales and gun manufacturer stocks go up. Every Single mass shooting is like Christmas for them (and the NRA and the GOP). It’s fucking gross.

Why doesn’t one or several of those dopey ‘liberal’ billionaires running or threatening to run a quixotic presidential campaign spend their money papering the media landscape with that message?

Their rightwing counterparts certainly wouldn’t have any qualms about doing similar.

yes

what did we even talk about before we had random folks on twitter to stimulate and enrich our national conversations.

mods, can we put the "fucking" in the thread title in all caps, so it says another FUCKING spree shooting? I think the bigger, bolder, more enhanced vulgarity and aggression would be helpful for our totally not at all useless discussions about these FUCKING relentless incidents of insane violence and the FUCKING pervasive culture of defensiveness in this country.

for more than 12 years the thread title has been bothering me that it's not as FUCKING AGGRESSIVE and FUCKING EMOTIONAL as it could be. surely the discourse would be substantially improved were only the tone properly set.

We're entering a time where random deaths of strangers is a statistic. Simply to penetrate to the front page for a second day a mass killing has to have infants shot in the face, and struggling for life.

I won't in the least be surprised if in a decade, there will be a media shorthand for young white male gun nuts going on killing sprees; something like "Kevin Smith of Sherwood, AL went killhappy before being subdued by law enforcement". It'll just be a normal hazard of living in a "free" society.

And Amazon will profit.

another one. not getting a whole lot of MSM play, maybe because no one died

https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-teens-shot-high-school-football-game-alabama/story?id=65309106

it's all about the body count, these days. double-digits is almost a minimum, unless it was a unique mass shooting situation, like the one that happened the other day with the traffic stop turned into a drive-by.

squint and it's a victory

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/03/business/walmart-ends-handgun-ammo-sales/index.html

Oof this is a rough watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5ykNZl9mTQ

fucking hell

ban all guns jesus what will it take

That PSA and the one with the library romance and disaffected kid fomenting rebellion in the background are both very dramatic but they're also driving me crazy by being COMPLETELY WRONG about the problem.

The problem is guns.

what will it take? repeal of the Second Amendment, for a start

yes, exactly. "when you know the signs".... the sign is everyone is free to maintain a private arsenal the size of their choosing.

On the plus side: https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/19/business/colt-ar15/index.html

Colt, the manufacturer of the AR-15 rifle, has announced it's exiting the consumer rifle market as demand for high-powered, semi-automatic guns wanes.

The consumer market for rifles has "experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity" and there's too much supply of AR-15 guns on the market to justify making more, the company said in a statement. Colt will still manufacture other consumer guns, including pistols and revolvers, and it will continue to expand its network of dealers.

It's a move of the needle, however small.

frightening to realize that a country of however many millions of people, where access to guns is pretty easy and people are fucking nutcases, is actually a saturated market for high-powered semiautomatics

100% certain Colt is exiting the AR-15 market not out of social conscience or public pressure, but because they can't make a profit due to competition.

Americans already own at least 15 million AR-15s, so private sales are probably cannibalizing Colt's market for new weapons

of course they'll bring it back when the margins look better

If a Democrat wins in 2020 the panic buying will recommence. Unitary Republican government has been terrible for weapons company bottom lines.

Brad: There are literally dozens of firms marketing cheap AR-15 clones, and more making parts that can be mix/match assembled into complete weapons. Colt just isn't price competitive for the average AR-15 buyer.

MGM Agrees to Pay Las Vegas Shooting Victims Up to $800 Million
"The settlement would resolve claims that MGM was negligent in allowing the killer to stockpile weapons and ammunition at its Mandalay Bay hotel."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/us/mgm-las-vegas-shooting-settlement.html

we can get MGM to pay $800M for the las vegas massacre, but the gun and ammo manufacturers pay nothing

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/los-angeles-county-deputies-respond-report-santa-clarita-school-shooting-n1082231

I have a niece who was at this school until last year.

welp obviously no one fucking cares enough to ever do anything about it . thoughts and prayers for these children.

one dead now two still in critical condition .

fuck this country

White House spokesman Judd Deere told The Associated Press that President Donald Trump is monitoring reports on the incident.

why? why even monitor it?

to make sure they make the right amount of prayers of course

the number of dead children is less than 5, so it's doubtful he'll mention it, and it would take double-digit deaths in order to force the GOP to temporarily pretend to care

😢

fuck this country

Yep. I know pessimism and anger is unhelpful, but I'm so fucking beyond hope at this point. There is a large majority of this country that simply looks at dead children as a completely acceptable price to pay to be able to hold onto their weapons. It's not going to change.

pfftt 20 kids ages 6 and 7 were murdered and they didn't give a fucking shit!!

They're teenagers and it's a blue state and the shooter isn't brown so whatevs (spoiler: it would still be whatevs if they were toddlers and it was a red state).

CaLiForNIA haS ThE ToUghesT gUN LAws . lAws DoNT wORk

SeE aLsO : cHiCaGo

carne otm, why would this make the GOP care, why would this make gun owners decide to stop cradling their idiot fetish objects

a perfectly normalish seeming regular type boring ass middle aged white dude secretly fed his murder fantasies for months if not years and accumulated a high powered arsenal no person in their right mind would need let alone want, and from a secure spot he killed 58 people at a country music festival and it didn't do anything to change shit.

Such is the price of freedom. You wouldn't want to be like Canada or, God forbid, Sweden.