Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

People on the left definitely need to own more guns. Specifically, sniper's rifles.

America's gun culture - in seven charts
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081

Lol mind ay how thrilled ppl were by the georgia runoff giving the democrats a senate majority

I remember that sense of optimism.

americans bought 40 million guns in the calendar year 2020

40 million

actually that doesn't include guns bought in states without a background check, or guns bought illegally

when you google stuff like that pretty much every result is a pro-gun SEO farm

Republicans are afraid of their base and give them what they want. When are we going to make Democrats afraid of their base?


Even darker thought: the right wing is deliberately murdering us. We need to fight back with their tactics.

I think a big part of the problem is that the actual "left" in the U.S. is small, prone to infighting, disorganized and demoralized, and is certainly not represented by the Democrats in the way that the right wing is represented by the Republicans.

i'll spare the newsmax video, but Texas AG Ken Paxton, asked in a newsmax "interview" what kinds of things should be done, said something about the buildings being built in a way so there is only one point of entry before switching to his thought that the teachers should have had guns

His repeated appearances on The Circus somehow almost managed to make me relieved it was Abbott in charge instead of him. (Emphasis on almost obv.)

now 18 children, 3 adults. fuck

how have mass-shootings not occurred at these nra conventions/meetings yet? or have they?

I am so fucking tired of the “just vote, we all have to vote, voting is all we can do to change this” Twitter brigade. Bullshit, I’ve been voting for gun control and politicians in favor of gun control for two fucking decades now and absolutely fuck all has been done. It’s clear that isn’t enough and it isn’t working.

even the politicians have stopped pretending that voting does anything

I’ve had it with this crap.

people (reportedly 4channers) have apparently just been grabbing random photos of trans women they think look remotely like the photos of the shooter they've apparently been able to find (or think they've found, who knows), and using them to claim the shooter was trans.

— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) May 25, 2022

Really weird thing to say after this tragedy.

For all its very real problems, one shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the contemporary United States of America is one of the best places to live in all of human history and there’s a reason tons of people of all kinds from all around the world clamor to move here.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 24, 2022

Not a weird thing when you've transitioned into being a full-time troll whose media career subsists primarily on hate clicks.

Looks like the cops were useless.

Oh my fucking god pic.twitter.com/ybWMsZWbyP

— Jordan (@SLCLunk) May 25, 2022

What they don’t tell you is teachers are told in training that they have to lock out any of their students who are out of the classroom, *out of the classroom*. Even if they beg and bang on the door. Because there could be a shooter using them to access your classroom.

— Erin Hahn is writing another romance (@erinhahn_author) May 24, 2022

can’t wait for dem leadership to celebrate the bravery of the crybabies in blue for keeping the death toll just under two dozen

"Voting, on its own, will not be enough to change that. We have to decide: what will be?"

https://annehelen.substack.com/p/this-is-what-happens-when-you-live?s=r

lol

I’ve often urged others to be more mindful and considered in what they say on here, and often acknowledged that I don’t always live up to that standard — my widely criticized remarks yesterday evening were an example of that and I’m sorry.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 25, 2022

"Voting, on its own, will not be enough to change that. We have to decide: what will be?"

https://annehelen.substack.com/p/this-is-what-happens-when-you-live?s=r🕸

A tiny minority is about to impose its will on abortion on a vast majority. What will it take for the majority to assert itself?

And the Democratic Party as currently constituted wont do anything. They exist to thwart the will of the majority too.

If anything, the second amendment is how you should overthrow these motherfuckers.

What is tyranny if not keeping an entire nation hostage to the NRA and people like Ken Paxton?

you and all of your families would suffer and likely perish in a civil war

oh word

Yeah, that’s likely. And one of many reasons why it won’t happen.

Yeah, there are liberal gun owners, but conservatives have decades of amassing weaponry on their side.

I don't know what needs doing. Passing the universal background check and assault weapon ban bills? Amending the Second Amendment out of existence? Saying fuck you to this fucking country?

The latter.

I’m not suggesting generalized violence or civil war. But man are we mote passive than our ancestors.

look, I'm all for meaningful action on gun reform, but god, just look at this:

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

there are 1.2 firearms for every person in this country. no other country comes close. we have 4-5 times more guns per capita than virtually every other major country on the planet. even assuming that we can pass background checks, implement fingerprint scanners, magazine limits, greater waiting periods, etc. etc. there are still so many guns in this country that it will never be an issue finding one within my lifetime. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try, of course we fucking should, but the right-wing line that this is inevitable or "the price of freedom" is...more or less true right now???

yeah, it's like climate change. The things that can be done won't be done, so we focus on mitigation of damage instead.

My wife and I deliberately are not having children (despite our relative privilege as white heterosexual middle class) and one reason is because of the bleak future we see for any children in this stinking corpse of a country under climate change. That’s our protest.

No disrespect at all to those with children, I know it’s a personal decision and I do not judge people for having children.

you and all of your families would suffer and likely perish in a civil war

― imago, Wednesday, 25 May 2022 bookmarkflaglink

What a ludicrous thing to say to people who are living in fear of being gunned down already. Or suffering because they can't get affordable healthcare.

I know that, when someone floats the idea of secession of the rational states from the irrational states of this syphilitic union, the answer back is usually “well it will doom the poor, people of color, and the good people to be trapped in those hell holes”, and I’m not waving that away, I understand it. But the minority of shorty states are dragging the rest of us down to hell with them. They are not going to let blue states have legal abortion, or gun control laws, or universal health care. All states will be dragged down to their level. If you are rescuing a drowning man, and he’s thrashing and trying to pull you down with him, the advice is to let him go and drown lest you be drowned with him.

A new country with a generous refugee policy from the hell hole states may be the way to go.

A fanatic minority in this country is actively dragging down to drown tens of millions of its would be rescuers. When do we let go and save as many as we can?

I can send you my Venmo account number.

I generally give dramatic “threats” to leave this country the side eye, but every month that goes by my partner’s EU citizenship provides us a little more comfort. unfortunately nothing doing until her kids are graduated from hs, so we’ve got at least 7 more years to be murdered by a gun freak while 106 year old Nancy Pelosi sends fundraising e-mails for a pro forced-birth candidate with an A rating from the NRA

the idea of 'good states seceding from bad states' is many years out of date' imho, the cult of white supremacy, gun obsession & fascist death worship is no longer confined to "the bad states" (if it ever truly was.) the divide today is urban vs suburban/rural, in every state.

otm

Hell, even reliable D states like Illinois become near complete R washouts once you get 45 minutes outside of Chicago city limits (minus the two small pockets of downstate college towns). Every few years the rest of Illinois starts making noise about seceding from Chicago. But this isn't a state by state thing anymore.

wonder how many heretofore pro-secessionist conservatives (outside of DC) have figured out that their lopsided electoral power means that in reality they’re not locked in here with us, we’re locked in here with *them*.

I can send you my Venmo account number.

I live in Nassau County, NY and specifically in a very liberal village and still there are are nearly 40% of wingnuts here against masks, taxes, etc. Last year our school budget vote, which until 5 years ago had always been a formality, only passed by 17 votes, because a couple of people are pissed off about the budget and started accusing the school administration, board, union, teachers, etc. of basically being corrupt, suing the district, etc.

This year they whipped up such hysteria there were yard signs everywhere. Turnout and the margin of victory increased to 3-400 hundred votes (out of a couple thousand cast)

The long and the short of it is this fight is everywhere, not just red v. blue states, and will be going on long after we are all gone.

wonder how many heretofore pro-secessionist conservatives (outside of DC) have figured out that their lopsided electoral power means that in reality they’re not locked in here with us, we’re locked in here with *them*.

Oops that wasn’t really a response to Will. I agree with his point.