So Let's Talk, Dammit

Every few days, there's a mass shooting here in USAmerica Inc, and every time there's a big one (ie: more than 6 or 7 dead) we get the same bullshit arguments.

• It's the guns
• It's not the guns, it's the mental health
• It's guns in the hands of people who aren't mentally healthy
• Think of the families - they need our thoughts and prayers
• Fuck your thoughts and prayers - we need sensible laws
• It's too soon - don't politicize it
• and on and on and on

But then the next one comes along, and we forget about the last one and start the Never-Ending Cycle Of Bullshit all over again.

Every day, 327 people are shot in the United States. Among those:

• 117 people are shot and killed
• 210 survive gunshot injuries
• 90 are intentionally shot by someone else and survive
• 46 are murdered
• 67 die from gun suicide
• 10 survive an attempted gun suicide
• 1 is killed unintentionally
• 90 are shot unintentionally and survive
• 2 are killed by legal intervention*
• 4 are shot by legal intervention and survive
• 1 died but the intent was unknown
• 12 are shot and survive but the intent was unknown

327 x 365 = 119,355 gunshot casualties per year.

Every

Fucking

   Year

I think I get the need to be sympathetic to people who don't want pictures of their dead babies splashed all over the media.

And I think it's important to consider the numbing effect that repeated exposure to horrifically graphic images can have on us. But I can't stop thinking that we have to have some Emmett Till moments (mentioned in the WaPo piece below).

Changing the law is an OK start, but the one thing the ammosexuals are right about is that we have to make changes in a culture that propagates gun violence. We're in the middle of this mess because too many people don't think new laws are necessary, and so new laws will be discounted, or ignored altogether.

The relatives of the slaughtered need to start insisting that the world actually bear witness to what happens as a result of venal politicians and their stupidly gullible voters refusing to do one goddamned thing to stop the madness.

Cuz this is 9 kinds of fucked up right here.

As mass shootings multiplied, the horrific human cost was concealed

States reeling from gun violence made graphic imagery confidential — part of a charged debate over privacy and public awareness

What does an AR-15 do to a human body? A visual examination of the deadly damage.

After a burst of gun violence claimed 13 lives at Columbine High School in 1999, a difficult question confronted a Colorado judge: whether to order the release of autopsies sought by local media under the state’s public records law.

The judge, Jose D.L. Márquez, decided to keep the graphic reports hidden, ruling that the rampage was an “extraordinary event” that lawmakers could not have anticipated when they wrote the law. As evidence, he cited the “unique factor” of the community’s trauma, illustrated by an outpouring of grief and a presidential visit.

A quarter-century after Columbine, then the deadliest mass shooting ever visited on a high school, the reactions highlighted by the judge — including public memorials and visits from politicians — are no longer signs of an extraordinary event. They’re routine grief rites.

But as gun violence has grown more common, state lawmakers have increasingly restricted access to government records documenting its destructive impact, such as photos and videos showing mutilated bodies and audio recordings capturing children’s cries.

Some states have crafted new exemptions to public records laws specifically shielding depictions of victims. In Connecticut and Florida, bipartisan majorities curtailed access to government records after school shootings in Newtown in 2012 and Parkland in 2018, respectively. Other states, including Colorado, have wielded existing exemptions, for privacy or law enforcement activity, to withhold similar records.

Lawmakers behind the restrictions point to myriad reasons for cloaking crime scene evidence, above all sensitivity to survivors and the families of victims. There’s also concern about interfering with law enforcement investigations or court proceedings and inspiring copycat killers. In the balancing act between privacy and public access, the rise of social media has weighed heavily against access, say people involved in the debates, because of the permanence of digital platforms and their possible manipulation by bad actors.

Even when gruesome images may be available, news organizations have often declined to seek or publish them out of deference to families and fear of public backlash. That approach differs from the media’s handling of casualties overseas — a contrast on display in recent weeks, as explicit footage of violence in Israel and Gaza has appeared in news broadcasts and other media.

In the United States, some family members of victims of mass shootings have become outspoken opponents of publishing images that include bodies.

“I wish her pictures alive moved people as much as people think her picture dead would.”

Nelba Márquez-Greene, whose 6-year-old daughter, Ana Grace, was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, said asking families to disclose pictures of slain children puts an unfair burden on people who are already carrying the enormous weight of grief — particularly, she added, when she sees little evidence that such pictures change people’s minds.

“Why is that my job? We don’t ask rape victims to do this,” said Márquez-Greene, who recently took on a new position as activist in residence at the Yale School of Public Health focused on designing programs to help survivors of gun violence. “I wish her pictures alive moved people as much as people think her picture dead would.”

But the recurring nightmare of mass shootings has prompted others to advocate for releasing and publicizing photographs and autopsy information. They argue that withholding such material has deprived the public of an accurate understanding of the destructive force of weapons including the AR-15, a firearm originally designed for combat that’s now the weapon of choice for many mass killers. Concealing records that depict victims also makes off-limits a whole range of other visuals, including scenes of chaos and unrest left by the gunfire.

Patricia Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin Oliver, was killed outside his creative writing class at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said mere descriptions of that terror have failed to mobilize enough people or focus the public debate on the astonishing power of the gun used to kill her son. She said more graphic material could help.

“Sometimes human beings don’t understand with words,” she said. “If what’s necessary is to show people pieces of Joaquin’s skull everywhere, I’m willing to do that.”

The dilemmas of depicting mass shootings

For media outlets making sense of the spate of mass shootings since Columbine, impassioned appeals for privacy by some families have carried weight.

When the Denver Post mobilized to cover the 2012 massacre at a midnight showing of the superhero movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” the newspaper elected not to seek wide-ranging public records from the crime scene in suburban Aurora. Gregory Moore, the editor at the time of the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage, said his staff’s approach was informed by past tragedies: “We were probably overly sensitized to victims and their grief here having gone through Columbine.”

“It’s part of our DNA not to traumatize victims and families in this community,” he said.

But the “landscape has changed” in the decade since Aurora, Moore said, and he now believes news organization must do more to “help people understand how out of control this situation is and what the devastation is from having these weapons of war on the streets.”

As part of The Washington Post’s reporting on the AR-15’s role in American life, Post journalists sought crime scene photographs, autopsy reports and court records in an effort to understand how the weapon transforms ordinary scenes — such as classrooms, concerts, shopping centers — and how it maims the human body.

In some cases, authorities released imagery from crime scenes, such as photos of guns, gloves and a gas mask; in others, they denied requests for such records. Government agencies that refused to provide documents most often cited exemptions to public records laws that allow them to withhold information related to law enforcement investigations. Agencies also invoked exemptions covering personal privacy.

After Texas authorities refused records requests related to the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Post journalists independently obtained a trove of evidence compiled by state and federal police, including extremely graphic photos and videos taken moments after police entered the classrooms where 19 students and two teachers had been killed.

Brett Cross and Nikki Cross, guardians of Uvalde shooting victim Uziyah “Uzi” Garcia, embrace this past July outside the Texas Capitol as they view footage of children lost to gun violence as part of the Parkland High School Bus Tour. (Austin American-Statesman/AP)
The families of some Uvalde victims have pushed for disclosure of such evidence. Brett Cross, the legal guardian of murdered 10-year-old Uziyah “Uzi” Garcia, said the reason is that families like his were left in the dark by law enforcement, whose response to the shooting quickly came under criticism.

Cross said crime scene footage is urgent evidence that belongs to the public. Still, he said, parents are entitled to their qualms. “The world needs to see the terrible things these weapons do, but at the end of the day, these are still our babies,” he said.

Two groups that regularly see gunshot victims up close, law enforcement officers and health-care professionals, aren’t in lockstep about public disclosure. Law enforcement is often against it. But the medical community is of a mixed mind, said Joseph Sakran, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins who serves as board chair and chief medical officer for the nonprofit group Brady, which advocates for gun control.

Some who tend to the bodies of shooting victims see the potential for what Sakran called “an Emmett Till moment,” referring to the way in which the public funeral for the 14-year-old Black boy lynched in 1955 — and his mother’s insistence on an open casket — created moral outrage that helped propel the civil rights movement.

“My personal belief is that images could be profound and could make a difference in swaying public understanding of the crisis we’re facing and perhaps even lead to demonstrable change,” Sakran said. But no doctor, he added, would force that on a family.

Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who has studied the effects of visual imagery on human behavior, said graphic images can change attitudes, but only in particular circumstances. He drew a parallel to the 2015 photo of a Syrian child lying facedown on a Turkish beach, which brought attention to the war in Syria and caused a surge in humanitarian donations.

“An image, if it catches attention, creates a window of opportunity where people are alert to a problem,” Slovic said. “But if images are repeated over and over again, we become numb to them.”

After shootings, lawmakers restrict access to public records

In communities that have experienced some of the nation’s most traumatic mass shootings, governments have responded by adopting new restrictions on access to public records.

Six months after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012, the legislature amended the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act to exempt from disclosure photos and videos “depicting the victim of a homicide” if the records “could reasonably be expected” to infringe on personal privacy.

Momentum for the legislation built after publication of a blog post by Michael Moore, the filmmaker who created the 2002 documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” predicting that someone in Newtown would leak crime scene photos to awaken public outrage. Moore wrote that “when the American people see what bullets from an assault rifle fired at close range do to a little child’s body … every sane American will demand action.”

The prediction set off alarm among families of victims — and an aggressive response by lawmakers “who were shocked and appalled by this suggestion that sensitive images would be disseminated,” said Colleen M. Murphy, executive director of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, a state agency that enforces public records rules.

Murphy, who opposed the changes, was among those tapped for a task force set up by the 2013 legislation to make recommendations about the balance between “victim privacy” and “the public’s right to know.”

At the task force’s request, the General Assembly conducted a 50-state survey of public records laws and found that eight other states had rules specifically restricting the release of crime scene photos: California, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas. A law in Texas, written by a Democrat and passed around the same time as the Connecticut measure, restricted photos of victims “in a state of dismemberment, decapitation, or similar mutilation or that depicts the deceased person’s genitalia.”

The review also found that 26 states specifically limited the release of autopsy reports and 16 limited the release of 911 tapes.

A Post analysis of state records laws found that all 50 states and D.C. allow police departments to withhold materials they consider part of ongoing investigations. Many also have broad carve-outs for personal privacy.

A year after the Newtown shooting, reports released by the Connecticut State Police included about 1,500 photos taken by a crime scene investigator. Most were redacted in accordance with the new law, obscured by large black rectangles. Those that weren’t redacted showed firearms, door handles and caution tape. None showed humans.

Connecticut State Police completely redacted this Sandy Hook Elementary School crime scene photograph before it was released publicly and also redacted a caption that describes its contents. The portion of the caption that is not redacted shows it is a photograph of a bathroom where bodies of children were found huddled together.
The full images have never been publicly released, even as conspiracy theorists seized on the shooting with claims that the murders had been faked, turning Newtown into a grim landmark in America’s break with reality.

Some argue that photographic evidence of victims would undercut such claims, while others say that gruesome images would only encourage extremists.

Jeff Covello, the Connecticut State Police sergeant who supervised the Newtown crime scene, brought then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to the scene and showed him the unredacted images. He said he believes only some people should see such visuals.

“Who exactly is on that list is not for me to decide,” he said. “Families should have some say — exactly how much I don’t know.”

Deciding what to conceal in the ‘Sunshine State’

Ever since Fred Guttenberg’s 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Parkland shooting in 2018, he has been a gun-control advocate — stumping for political candidates, yelling out in protest during the 2020 State of the Union and petitioning the government to investigate a firearms manufacturer.

He used to think depictions of the damage from powerful rifles could change minds. When he met with Sen. Ted Cruz in the fall of 2019, Guttenberg said, he showed the Texas Republican photos of his daughter’s lifeless body. “It didn’t change a thing,” he said.

Cruz, after the meeting, said it was “productive and respectful.” The senator’s spokesman didn’t respond to a question about Guttenberg’s account.

Now, Guttenberg opposes disseminating such images. “There’s this notion that what we need to do is convince Americans what this looks like, but Americans are already convinced,” he said, citing surveys that show huge majorities favor new gun laws. “In my mind we don’t need to flood television screens and newspapers with images of bodies like my daughter’s.”

The same year as Guttenberg’s meeting with Cruz, the Florida legislature amended the state’s Sunshine Law to shield photographs, videos and audio of the “killing of a victim of mass violence” from public release.

Community members in Parkland, Fla., gather in February 2018 for a candlelight vigil in honor of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, one of multiple rampages that inspired lawmakers to tighten public records rules to prevent release of images and other evidence depicting victims. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Barbara Petersen, the former longtime president of the state’s First Amendment Foundation, fought the bill, arguing that the exemption makes citizens and media trying to understand mass violence “dependent on what law enforcement tells us.”

“We need to see it for ourselves, as awful as it may be,” she said.

Lauren Book, a Democratic state senator in Florida, was among the members of a public safety commission who saw extensive footage of Parkland’s carnage to prepare a 2019 report on the shooting. In 2019, she voted to make confidential the very sort of crime scene evidence that she had viewed.

“It’s horrific to see a child in a classroom look like a piece of hamburger meat,” she said. “I don’t think anyone needs to see that.”

Few have. Most Americans haven’t seen the mangled human remains left by dozens of mass shootings since Parkland. So while images of her son, Joaquin, are awful, said Patricia Oliver, they reflect a reality that the country must face.

“When will people understand the damage these guns cause?” Oliver asked.

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE

GUN NUTS KILL PEOPLE

WITH GUNS

BECAUSE THEY'RE FUNKIN' NUTS

Today's Eternal Sadness

Headed down the slippery slope - pickin' up speed.

Nobody didn't know this was bound to happen. Nobody.

The Death Of Irony, part ∞

School downplayed warnings about 6-year-old before teacher’s shooting, staffers say

The Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student repeatedly asked administrators for help with the boy but officials downplayed educators’ warnings about his behavior, including dismissing his threat to light a teacher on fire and watch her die, according to messages from teachers obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously unreported incidents raise fresh questions about how Richneck Elementary School in Newport News handled the troubled student before police say he shot Abigail Zwerner as she taught her first-grade class earlier this month. Authorities have called the shooting “intentional” but are still investigating the motive.

Many parents are already outraged over Richneck officials’ management of events before the shooting. Newport News Superintendent George Parker III has said school officials got a tip the boy had a gun that day and searched his backpack, but that staffers never found the weapon before authorities say the 6-year-old shot Zwerner. Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said his department was not contacted about the report that the boy had a weapon before the shooting.

Police and school officials have repeatedly declined to answer questions about the boy’s disciplinary issues or worrisome behaviors the 6-year-old may have exhibited and how school officials responded, citing the child’s age and the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The boy’s family said in a statement he has an “acute disability,” but James Ellenson, an attorney for the family, declined to comment on accounts of the boy’s behavior or how it was handled by the school.

School district spokeswoman Michelle Price said in a phone interview late Friday that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting students’ privacy, prohibits her from releasing information related to the 6-year-old.

“I cannot share any information in a child’s educational record,” she said. “A lot of what you’re asking is part of the child’s educational record, and it’s also a matter of an ongoing police investigation and an internal school investigation. Unfortunately, some of these details I’m not even privy to.”

Screenshots of a conversation held online between school employees and Parker shortly after the shooting show educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms about the 6-year-old and sought assistance during the school year.

“she had asked for help,” one staffer wrote in that chat, referring to Zwerner.

“several times,” came another message.

“Yes she did.”

“two hours prior”

“all year.”

The messages, which were provided to The Post by the spouse of a Richneck Elementary schoolteacher, do not detail what specific assistance Zwerner sought, or to whom she directed her requests. Zwerner and her family have not returned repeated messages from The Washington Post.

A separate message written by a Richneck teacher, and obtained by The Washington Post from the local teachers union, alleges that school administrators waved away grave concerns about the 6-year-old’s conduct and that the school was overall unable to care for him properly.

Authorities explained the timeline of events that took place after a six-year-old child shot his teacher on Jan. 6 in Richneck Elementary School in Virginia. (Video: The Washington Post)
The Post obtained the message on the condition the teacher’s identity not be revealed because the union feared she would face retaliation. The teacher declined interview requests through the union, the Newport News Education Association, citing worries of professional consequences and a directive from Newport News schools not to talk to the media about the shooting.

On one occasion, the boy wrote a note telling a teacher he hated her and wanted to light her on fire and watch her die, according to the teacher’s account. Alarmed, the teacher brought the note to the attention of Richneck administrators and was told to drop the matter, according to the account. The date of the incident was not mentioned.

The principal and vice principal of the school did not respond to requests for comment on the teacher’s account.

On a second occasion, the boy threw furniture and other items in class, prompting students to hide beneath their desks, according to the account. Another time, the teacher alleges in her account, the boy barricaded the doors to a classroom, preventing a teacher and students from leaving.

The teacher banged on the classroom door until another teacher from across the hall forced it open from the outside, according to the teacher’s account. It was not clear whether the teacher asked for any specific action from administrators after that incident.

The teacher also described strained resources at the school. The lead special education teacher was frustrated because she has a high caseload, according to the account. Some aides regularly missed work, including for as long as a week at a time.

The teacher further alleged in her account that the boy was not receiving the educational services he needed, that it was difficult to get help with him during outbursts and that he was sometimes seen wandering the school unsupervised.

The boy’s family said in a statement Thursday, the first public remarks his relatives have given about the shooting, that the 6-year-old was “under a care plan” that “included his mother or father attending school with him and accompanying him to class every day.” That stopped the week of the shooting, the statement said.

“We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives,” the statement read.

The teacher’s account dovetails with descriptions of the student’s behavior shared by the spouse of a Richneck teacher and a mother whose child is enrolled in a class located across the hallway from Zwerner’s. Both the spouse and the mother, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their families’ privacy, said the student was known campuswide for disruptive and violent behavior, and that school employees struggled to manage him in class.

The Post reached out to dozens of other Richneck teaching staff, administrators and parents to try to corroborate the teachers’ allegations, but most have not responded or declined interviews, citing the ongoing police investigation or fear of reprisals.

Drew, the police chief, has said detectives will look into allegations of the student’s troubling conduct before the incident, though he has not confirmed any specific incidents.

James Graves, president of the Newport News Education Association, said the union is investigating safety concerns raised by teachers in the wake of the shooting.

“We want to know what happened so we can protect our members,” Graves said. “They believe and they know the administration should take their concerns more seriously than they did. This could have been prevented.”

Thomas Britton, whose son was taught by Zwerner, said school officials never formally notified parents in the class about issues with the boy who fired the shot.

He said administrators mishandled the shooting, asserting they should have pulled the boy out of class until they had definitively determined whether he possessed a gun, and conducted a more thorough search.

“That was a shocking revelation that not only did he bring the weapon, but somebody gave a tip he had the weapon,” Britton said. “It seems to me it would be completely avoidable at that point.”

Valerie McCandless, a 52-year-old resident of Newport News who sent six kids to Richneck, said her children had a wonderful experience at the school, but she is troubled that the school’s administrators, some of whom she said are relatively new, failed to take preemptive action.

“I don’t think the teachers there are getting support, they’re not getting compassion, they’re not getting answers, they’re not getting listened to,” she said, adding of the shooting, “this was, I believe, God’s way of saying somebody needs to listen to them.”

Similar concerns emerged this week at a packed Newport News school board meeting, during which dozens of parents recounted their disappointment, anger and frustration with security measures at Richneck and other schools in the district. There have been three shootings on school grounds in Newport News since late 2021.

Several teachers said they received no support when they faced violence in the classroom or attacks from students. Some speakers claimed the district is more interested in keeping discipline statistics low than in taking meaningful action to address students’ problems.

A parent of a child in Zwerner’s class said her daughter had been bullied by classmates. She said she struggled to make the school take her concerns seriously and that the Richneck principal once failed to show for a conference about the bullying, although other officials did come.

She said Zwerner defended her daughter.

“Listen to your teachers when they have concerns,” the woman said raising her voice. “Please!”

Parker, the superintendent, said at a meeting with Richneck students that the district is purchasing 90 metal detectors to install at all Newport News schools and acquiring clear backpacks to hand out to students. He has assigned a new administrator to Richneck and also said officials were taking note of teachers’ concerns.

“We listened and we continue to work to improve current systems and processes to help better manage extreme behaviors that adversely affect the culture and climate in schools,” Parker wrote in a note to staff this week.

Celeste Holliday, a substitute teacher who covered Zwerner’s first-grade class at Richneck Elementary School on one occasion, said Zwerner had difficulty maintaining order in the class of 25 to 30 kids, but Holliday thought she was a conscientious teacher.

“She was great. She was doing the best she could,” Holliday said of Zwerner. “She mentally prepared me. She told me, ‘They’re rambunctious 6-year-olds. It’s going to be a hard day. Do the best you can.’”

Zwerner’s warning proved prescient.

Holliday said the class was rowdier than many others for which she has substituted. Holliday said that, on the day she worked at Richneck, one boy shoved another during recess and the boy scraped his knee. The injured boy had to go to the nurse’s office for treatment.

Afterward, the principal came to the classroom and told the boys to calm down because they were shouting, Holliday said. The principal filed a report about the shoving incident. Holliday said that, after the experience, she decided she would not substitute at Richneck Elementary School again.

Drew said in his online chat that detectives have wrapped up interviews with most students but are still seeking school disciplinary records and other materials related to the boy.

When the probe is complete, Drew said the findings will be sent to the Newport News commonwealth’s attorney to decide whether anyone should be charged. Legal experts say it is unlikely the boy will be charged since children under 7 are presumed unable to form the intent to carry out an illegal act under Virginia law. But Drew has said it is possible someone could be charged for failing to secure the gun used in the shooting.

Ellenson, the attorney for the boy’s family, said in an interview that the gun was secured with a trigger lock and kept on the top shelf of the mother’s bedroom closet. Ellenson said it is unclear how the boy got hold of the gun.

Newport News police declined to comment on the family’s characterization that the weapon was stored securely.

The Jan. 6 shooting occurred as school was winding down for the week. Police said the boy pulled out the gun as Zwerner was teaching and shot her.

Zwerner was rushed to the hospital with critical injuries; Drew said she is continuing to recover. Police said the boy brought the gun from home in a backpack.

The boy’s family said in their statement he is in a hospital receiving treatment and expressed sorrow for the shooting.

“We continue to pray for his teacher’s full recovery, and for her loved ones who are undoubtedly upset and concerned,” the statement read. “At the same time, we love our son and are asking that you please include him and our family in your prayers.”

America's Death Cult

Tim Wise at Medium:

America’s Death Cult Must Be Crushed, Not Compromised With

If your “freedom” costs the lives of school children, you’re paying too much. It’s time to defeat gun culture and its defenders.

If those 19 kids gunned down in Uvalde had been in an amniotic sac rather than a classroom, perhaps Texas lawmakers would have done something to keep them safe.

But they were in fourth grade, having long since left their mothers’ wombs, so the rights of an 18-year-old to buy an assault rifle and hundreds of bullets took precedence over their right to life.

Because the right to possess weapons of death always takes precedence over the lives so casually erased by them.

Like those of ten shoppers, nine of them Black, gunned down in a racist terrorist attack in Buffalo last week.

Like the lives of roughly 45,000 people each year taken by gun violence (homicide, accidental death, or suicide).

If this is the price we pay for “freedom,” we’re paying too much.

Because there are plenty of nations every bit as free as ours, if not more so, where the tab is considerably smaller.

With a gun homicide rate 25 times higher than that of other affluent nations, either Americans are the worst, most violent people in the industrialized, high-income world, or we’re just incredibly stupid when it comes to our definition of liberty.

Either way, it’s time to renegotiate the bill.

But to even suggest such a thing will bring out the cries of tyranny from the same people who gladly trample women’s liberties in the name of embryonic and fetal life.

From the same people who care nothing for the equal protection rights of Black and brown folks, the religious liberties of anyone who isn’t Christian, or any rights at all for those who are LGBTQ.

Tyranny to them means having to wear a mask at Trader Joe’s and anything that limits their ability to possess as many weapons as they desire.

These are people more committed to death than life.

They would rather die or potentially kill others than be inconvenienced by public health measures or common-sense gun regulations.

They would rather endanger children in an elementary school and watch 45,000 people a year die from gun violence than rethink their fetish for these weapons, unregulated and unrestrained.

It is one thing to own a gun, after all.

It is quite another to feel entitled to it, and more, to need it — to feel it to be an extension of your identity, something so important you must be able to obtain as many of them as you wish, with no limitations.

But for millions of Americans, that is what guns are.

And to nurture that need for personal meaning, they are willing to watch children be slaughtered in schools.

Or elderly Black people in a supermarket.

Or younger Latinos and Latinas in one.

Or worshippers in a synagogue or church.

They’re willing to countenance upwards of 45,000 deaths annually so that they might be able to defend themselves when the bad guys come.

If they come, which is unlikely — far less likely than the fetishists would have us believe, with their mathematically ridiculous bullshit claims of 2.5 million defensive uses of guns each year.

The 45,000 dead are guaranteed. They are not speculative.

Every year, they will die so that these gun fanatics might, in some incredibly unlikely moment, be able to defend themselves with the same kind of weapon responsible for all those deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries.

And if, in the face of these relative risks, you think to yourself, yeah, but it’s still worth it, you’re lost to reason.

You believe the lie of self-defensive gun use as a common occurrence when it is anything but.

You are so committed to fashioning yourself a hero in your own movie, bravely saving your family from danger, that you can’t help but cling to the very source of your family’s insecurity — theirs and millions of others.

And you can’t even see how the ability to protect yourself — even if such a scenario became necessary — would not be lessened one iota by the kinds of reforms folks are calling for, some of which I’ll mention below.

And yes, I know that the ever-reasonable Nicholas Kristof wants us to stay calm and find common cause with gun people around gun safety, but he misses the point. The policy ideas he supports are all rock-solid, but the notion that we can get any of them passed following some rational sit-down with ammosexuals is absurd.

That isn’t scalable.

This isn’t about persuasion. It’s about mobilization.

It’s about those of us who don’t view weapons as a surrogate dick acting like the majority we are.

There are more of us than them, and I include the many responsible gun owners in that number. But we act otherwise, intimidated by the money and bluster of the NRA and a bunch of would-be insurrectionists.

We’re apparently afraid that if we piss them off, they might try something really crazy.

Like what? Trying to storm the Capitol and overthrow the government?

The gun nuts are never timid. And they don’t try and persuade the rest of us about anything. They steamroll everyone who gets in their way.

No one ever asks them how they plan to appeal to moderates who believe in common-sense gun control because it’s taken for granted that they never have to appeal to the middle.

They never have to compromise.

Enough.

It’s time to stop acting like the kid who got bullied in the playground and continued to insist, after being knocked down twenty times, that he can still “use his words” to shut down the bad guy.

Bullshit.

It’s time, politically, to sock these venal crapsacks in the mouth.

Stop fighting like liberals and start fighting like people who are tired of watching children die and then being told to make nice with those who were accessories to their murder.

Until and unless we are as angry and passionate in our devotion to breaking gun culture and forcing common-sense reforms as the gun nuts are to their dystopian Wild West hellscape, all this fuckery will continue.

The other side will vote against any candidate who isn’t sufficiently cultish in their gun worship.

We should vote against any candidate who doesn’t make ending this slaughter a top priority. No exceptions.

Calm and reasonable doesn’t work with fanatics.

Only determination and an unwillingness to back down will.

This means fighting for sensible laws and gun regulations like:Red flag laws that would allow family or clinicians to block individuals from purchasing weapons if they exhibit signs of emotional instability likely to correlate with violent behavior.

Annual firearm registration to allow for tracking of weapons. Any gun owned must be officially registered to the owner. If the owner sells the gun, the registration must be shifted to the new owner like a car title would be. Then, as a follow up:

• Requiring all private gun sellers to conduct background checks on purchasers as well. Failure to do so will result in legal liability including prison time if the person to whom you sell a gun goes on to commit a crime with it.
• Suspension of the right to own a gun for all persons found guilty of domestic abuse, regardless of whether the person abused was a spouse or merely a romantic partner or other family member.
• Banning high-capacity magazines. No one needs the capacity to shoot more than ten bullets for self-defense.
• Making the age for all firearm purchases 21 as a matter of federal law.
• Making parents liable for any crime committed by their minor child with a gun obtained from the parents’ home or given to them by the parent. And make gun owners liable for any crime committed with their weapon by someone who steals it from their home, car, or person. Such a law would make people less likely to own a gun, let alone several. At the very least it would incentivize the safe storage of such weapons, reducing accidental deaths and the likelihood of a weapon being stolen in a burglary and used in a later crime.

Additionally, we must push for an all-out shift in the culture. This means:

• Stop giving your children — particularly your boys — guns to play with, whether a toy or real. Stop normalizing the thinking that shooting at people is ever OK, whether make-believe or IRL.
• Stop letting your kids play first-person shooter video games. Although the games are not to blame for real-life violence, their indulgence is part of a larger gun culture that needs to be shifted. By treating such games as unacceptable and unworthy of decent people, parents can send a message that guns and violence are not games, not fun, and not to be taken lightly.
• Companies whose PACs support pro-gun candidates with donations should be boycotted and shamed relentlessly.
• People who love guns, pose for pictures with their guns, or take their kids to gun ranges should be mocked and ridiculed, made to feel as stupid as they look. Make fun of them on social media and anywhere else you deem appropriate.

And please, you can miss me with all the nonsense about how “that will just make ’em dig in harder.”

These are people who already tried to overthrow democracy or support someone who did.

What more are you afraid of at this point?

Make gun nuts the social and political pariahs they deserve to be.

Pick a side: unrestrained and unregulated gun ownership or your children’s safety. Because we obviously cannot have both.

And if you would choose the guns over the kids, you deserve neither.

In a perfect world, we would probably take away your children too.

Continuing Sadness

Dear POTUS -

I appreciate your leadership and calm resolve in the face of deep and difficult problems.

And I think your empathy, and your generous heart, and your faith in our shared humanity are genuine and essential to a proper leader of a world power.

But what I need to see from you right now is a clenched fist. I need to see you stomping some NRA ass - and your hands around the throats of their Republican accomplices.

This shit can't go on.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Gunman was bullied as a child, grew increasingly violent, friends say

Relatives, classmates describe fraught relationship with mother and a troubling pattern of acting out

The gunman in Tuesday’s elementary school massacre was a lonely 18-year-old who was bullied over a childhood speech impediment, suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers recently and over the years, friends and relatives said.

Using weapons purchased this month, days after his 18th birthday, authorities said, Salvador Rolando Ramos shot and critically wounded his grandmother. He then went on a shooting rampage at Robb Elementary School near his home in Uvalde, Tex., killing at least 19 children and two adults and injuring others.

Ramos also was fatally shot, apparently by police. The Texas Department of Public Safety said he was wearing body armor and armed with a rifle.

Santos Valdez Jr., 18, said he has known Ramos since early elementary school. They were friends, he said, until Ramos’s behavior started to deteriorate.

They used to play video games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty. But then Ramos changed. Once, Valdez said, Ramos pulled up to a park where they often played basketball and had cuts all over his face. He first said a cat had scratched his face.

“Then he told me the truth, that he’d cut up his face with knives over and over and over,” Valdez said. “I was like, ‘You’re crazy, bro, why would you do that?’”

Ramos said he did it for fun, Valdez recalled.

In middle school and junior high, Ramos was bullied for having a stutter and a strong lisp, friends and family said.

Stephen Garcia, who considered himself Ramos’s best friend in eighth grade, said Ramos didn’t have it easy in school. “He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,” Garcia said. “Over social media, over gaming, over everything.”

“He was the nicest kid, the most shyest kid. He just needed to break out of his shell.”

One time, he posted a photo of himself wearing black eyeliner, Garcia said, which brought on a slew of comments using a derogatory term for a gay person.

Garcia said he tried to stand up for him. But when Garcia and his mother relocated to another part of Texas for her job, “he just started being a different person,” Garcia said. “He kept getting worse and worse, and I don’t even know.”

When Garcia left, Ramos dropped out of school. He started wearing all black, Garcia said, and large military boots. He grew his hair out long.

He missed long periods of high school, classmates said, and was not on track to graduate with them this year.

Ramos’s cousin Mia said she saw students mock his speech impediment when they attended middle school together. He’d brush it off in the moment, Mia said, then complain later to his grandmother that he didn’t want to go back to school.

“He wasn’t very much of a social person after being bullied for the stutter,” said Mia, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used because her family does not want to be associated with the massacre. “I think he just didn’t feel comfortable anymore at school.”

Valdez said Ramos drove around with another friend at night sometimes and shot at random people with a BB gun. He also egged people’s cars, Valdez said.

About a year ago, Ramos posted on social media photos of automatic rifles that “he would have on his wish list,” Valdez said. Four days ago, he posted images of two rifles he referred to as “my gun pics.”

A person briefed on the investigation’s early findings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said Ramos bought the weapon used in the attack immediately after his 18th birthday, which was in mid-May.

Two months ago, he posted an Instagram story in which he screamed at his mother, who he said was trying to kick him out of their home, said Nadia Reyes, a high school classmate.

“He posted videos on his Instagram where the cops were there and he’d call his mom a b---- and say she wanted to kick him out,” Reyes said. “He’d be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.”

Ruben Flores, 41, said he lived next door to the family on Hood Street and tried to be a kind of father figure to Ramos, who had “a pretty rough life with his mom.”

He and his wife, Becky Flores, would invite Ramos to barbecues at their house and for sleepovers with their son, who was a few years younger. Ramos went by the nickname “pelon,” Spanish for bald, because his hair was often cut so short when he was younger, Flores said.

As he grew older, problems at home became more acute and more apparent to neighbors, Flores said. He described seeing police at the house and witnessing blowups between Ramos and his mother.

Multiple people familiar with the family, including Flores, said Ramos’s mother used drugs, which contributed to the upheaval in the home. Ramos’s mother could not be reached for comment.

Ramos moved from the Hood Street home to his grandmother’s home across town a few months ago, Flores said. He said he last saw the grandmother on Sunday, when she stopped by the Hood Street property, which she also owned. The grandmother told him she was in the process of evicting Ramos’s mother because of her drug problems, Flores said.

Reyes said she could recall about five times that Ramos had fistfights with peers in middle school and junior high. His friendships were short-lived, she said. Once, Ramos commented to a friend while playing basketball that the friend only wanted to join the Marines one day so he could kill people, Reyes said. The other boy, she added, ended the friendship on the spot.

“He would take things too far, say something that shouldn’t be said, and then he would go into defense mode about it,” Reyes said.

She and her Uvalde High School school classmates had visited Robb Elementary School just a day before the massacre, wearing their graduation robes and high-fiving the grade-schoolers, who lined up in the hallways — a community tradition.

“Those kids were so excited to see us in our cap and gown,” Reyes said. “They’re looking at us like, ‘I’m gonna be there one day.’ It’s surreal, like we’re in a movie. It’s horrible.”

Valdez said his last interaction with Ramos was about two hours before the shooting, when they messaged on Instagram’s Stories feature. Valdez had re-shared a meme that said “WHY TF IS SCHOOL STILL OPEN.”

According to a screenshot of their exchange, Ramos responded: “Facts” and “That’s good tho right?” Then Valdez replied: “Idek [I don’t even know] I don’t even go to school lmao.”

Ramos never responded to or opened that text message, Valdez said.

Just a month or two ago, Garcia said, he called Ramos to check in on him.

But Ramos said he was going hunting with his uncle and didn’t have time to talk. He hung up. Garcia later saw the photos of large guns that Ramos had posted online and wondered whether that was what they were for — going hunting, or to the shooting range with his uncle.

On Tuesday, Garcia was in algebra class in San Antonio when he started receiving a slew of texts with the news of what had happened in Uvalde. He didn’t believe it at first. He opened his phone’s browser and Googled the shooting and saw Ramos’s name.

“I couldn’t even think, I couldn’t even talk to anyone. I just walked out of class, really upset, you know, bawling my eyes out,” Garcia said. “Because I never expected him to hurt people.”

“I think he needed mental help. And more closure with his family. And love.”

That Thing About Guns

The Conversation, Jeff Daniels:

While President Donald Trump has not shied away from offering suggestions on how to prevent school shootings – including one controversial idea to arm teachers – what often gets overlooked in the conversation is research on the subject that has already been done.

This research includes one major study of school shootings conducted in part by the very agency charged with protecting the president of the United States himself - the U.S. Secret Service.

Has this research been ignored or just forgotten? I raise the question as one who has studied averted school shootings and the news coverage that followed.

Two months after the Columbine tragedy in 1999, experts from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Secret Service collaborated to study the “school shooter” phenomenon. They published the study on their findings in 2002. The study focused on examining the thinking, planning and other behaviors of students who carried out school attacks. Particular attention was given to identifying pre-attack behaviors and communications that might be detectable – or “knowable” – and could help prevent future attacks.
The Key Findings of that report are nothing new (click on "one major study" in the 2nd graf above). We hear about the efforts aimed at prevention every time. But every time, the debate gets hijacked, and we start arguing about the 2nd amendment, and a Big Brother Database, and good guys with guns, and blah blah blah.

Another thing: the 2nd amendment does not allow for anyone to own any gun.

We hear a lot about "The Heller Decision" - when SCOTUS affirmed "the right to keep and bear arms" applies to individuals and not just a collective (ie: Militia).

But remember one thing - Antonin Scalia (the guy who wrote that majority opinion) said the rights guaranteed by the 2nd amendment are not limitless - there's nothing in the amendment prohibiting congress from imposing some restrictions.

So let's focus on the first effect of this widespread misunderstanding of the 2nd amendment: The public's easy (ish) access to the kinds of guns intended for use only in war.

And also too - call me nutty, but I'm set-in-stone sure that gun violence somehow has something to do with guns.

Let's Make It A Trend

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

(COLTONS POINT, Md.) — Police in southern Maryland say a man killed his father in a Christmas Eve shootout in the son’s home.

The St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Wednesday that 66-year-old Roger Allen Bruce of New Market, Virginia, was visiting his son and other relatives in the son’s home in Coltons Point, Maryland.

Deputies say Bruce and the son, 45-year-old Michael Allen Bruce Sr., got into an argument and the elder Bruce began shooting at the younger man.

Police say Michael Bruce returned fire, striking his father. Roger Bruce was pronounced dead at the scene.

Deputies are still investigating the shooting. No charges have been filed.
We can't count on them all just shooting each other - although it does seem possible, given the current state of the rubes' intellectual development, but we might be able to facilitate the process.

Allow me to reiterate my previously proposed plan:

1. Media saturation with PSAs encouraging Open-Carry in all places at all times
2. Amp up the paranoia - make sure they're even more suspicious and distrustful than usual. eg: "There are armed left-wing gangs and crazed lone wolf Libruls everywhere - they're clever too - they could be disguised as your closest gun club buddy, etc etc etc" 
3. Let it build until everybody's giving everybody the stink eye
4. Set it all in motion saying, "They're all out there now, and George Soros has told them to start the shit today, so anybody you see with a gun - shoot 'em!"

I figure if we just stay inside for a while, this is no longer a problem by about next Tuesday.

The Essence Of Stoopid

TPM:

The man allegedly behind the largest mass shooting in American history purchased his weapons from a gun dealer and shooting range whose owner has in the past posted anti-Muslim and anti-President Obama comments on Facebook, the New York Daily News reported.

ATF Agent Sal van Susteren confirmed to the New York Daily News that accused Orlando shooter Omar Mateen purchased the weapons he used in the weekend's massacre at St. Lucie Shooting Center, not far from Mateen's apartment in Fort Pierce, Florida.

The New York Daily News reported that the store's owner, Ed Henson, an ex-NYPD officer, had posted on Facebook in December a meme that said, "F--- Islam, F--- Allah. F--- Muhammad. F--- the Koran. F--- people who support terrorism,” as well as a comment in November calling for Obama to be "handcuffed, removed from Office and charged with Treason and then publicly executed!"

No, Mr Henson, fuck you.

You helped amp up the atmosphere of hatred and paranoia, which you knew would make it that much easier for you to sell guns and ammo to weak-minded individuals who don't quite fully understand the deathly shitty game you're playing.

This is on you and The NRA and all the other smarmy little grub worms in the Ammosexual Community who've created a dank and noxious underworld at the nexus of Religion and Politics and Unfettered Free Market Capitalism.

Sorry not sorry if you feel I'm singling you out unfairly, Mr Henson - there's a group of 50 dead Americans who all probably felt the same way when Mr Mateen was killing them; for reasons you contributed to; with a gun you sold to him.  Maybe you could keep that in mind next time you sell guns to somebody who just might be as big an asshole as you are.  

You wrote, "Fuck people who support terrorism" - so yeah - fuck you, Mr Henson.

Today's National Shame

USAmerica Inc came into the world with some pretty serious baggage - the most prominent of which we've started to address in pretty good shape. We've fixed the mechanical parts of the astounding shittiness of slavery, and of not letting women vote. So two-outa-three ain't bad, but we gotta get right with the guns or we're headed back to the bad old days - and I'm talking about the bad old days before 1790.

Quartz:

America’s gun problem can’t be distilled down to one single issue, of course, but it’s clear that on top of crime and fears of terrorism and insufficient mental health resources and the Second Amendment, America’s gun problem has something to do with America’s masculinity problem.

--and--

As Alankaar Sharma, a social worker and researcher, tells Quartz, “Possessing a gun is considered by many men, if not most, as a straightforward way of subscribing to dominant masculinity.” In his view, the patriarchal system, which privileges a certain set of masculine behaviors, values, and practices, provides men with “a clear and justifiable reason to own guns.” It cements their identity as masculine men.

And for many men today, it’s an identity in particular need of cementing. In this May 2015 op-ed for The Los Angeles Times, sociologist Jennifer Carlson argues that men are clinging to guns as a way to address a broad range of social insecurities. Author of a book on the social practice of gun-carrying in America, Carlson found that gun owners often characterized their fathers’ generation as an era when men had important roles to play as providers and breadwinners.

But men’s participation in the labor force has been declining since the 1970s. As The Economist’s cover story, “The Weaker Sex,” explained earlier in 2015, poorly educated men in rich societies aren’t coping well in the 21st century. Changes in the home and the labor force, especially the loss of manufacturing jobs, have created a class of disgruntled, financially insecure men. Meanwhile, women, who now earn more university degrees than men, are surging into the workforce.

So it isn't simple; it doesn't fit neatly on a bumper sticker; it takes guts and honesty and some real intellectual horsepower to figure out what we can do, but we'll hafta start by insisting the drama pimps like Wayne LaPierre just shut the fuck up long enough to give the adults a chance to think this through.

In the meantime, we can brainstorm on that bumpersticker.

USAmerica Inc

It's about dicks and chicks, dummy

And here's an encore from Jim Jeffries:

Part 1

Part 2