Today's Eternal Sadness

15-year-old Saylor Slone Martine died this weekend after an accidental shooting in her home. 5NewsOnline reports that the Leflore County, Oklahoma teen and her 12-year-old sister, Savannah, had been “handling a .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun,” and then “put it down on the counter.” When Martine reached for her cell phone, which had also been placed on the counter, the gun fired. LeFlore County Sheriff Rob Seale told reporters that the girl had “sustained life-threatening injuries” and was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Tulsa, where she died. He added that the girls’ mother was outside when the shooting occurred and that it “looks pretty clear-cut accidental.” Neither sister was holding the gun when it unexpectedly fired. Seale suspects that the gun had a “manufacturing defect.”

hat tip = Addicting Info


And let's not forget - we need Tort Reform to make sure the family of this teenager can't possibly go suckin' around for a big fat payday at the expense of that poor defenseless Gun Maker.

3,820 Americans killed with guns - so far this year - and just according to Slate's DIY database.  The official number is likely to be higher.

This is a partial screen capture from Slate - which doesn't even show all of May:

Today's Dead Americans

I haven't posted much lately on how stoopid we are about guns, so I'm playing a little catch-up here:

Lexington KY: 

Police in Cumberland County are investigating after a five-year-old boy playing with a rifle accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister.

The incident happened at about 1 p.m. CST at a home on Lawson's Bottom Road. Police say the five-year-old was playing with a .22 caliber rifle when it went off an hit his sister. The child was transported to the Cumberland County Hospital where she was later pronounced dead by the Cumberland County coroner.

 --and--

Nashville TN:

A 4-year-old boy grabbed a loaded gun at a family cookout and accidentally shot and killed the wife of a sheriff's deputy, authorities said on Monday.

The shooting Saturday evening was inside the Lebanon home of Wilson County Deputy Daniel Fanning.

Fanning was showing his weapons to a relative in a bedroom when the toddler came in and picked up a loaded gun on the bed, officials said. The weapon discharged as soon as the child picked it up, hitting 48-year-old Josephine Fanning, said Wilson County Sheriff Robert Bryan.

Josephine Fanning was pronounced dead at the scene. The child was not related to her or her husband.

--and--

Oregon City OR:

A 9-year-old girl who was shot in the head around 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon in Oregon City died shortly after, according to Oregon City Police.

Police say the initial report was that the mother's boyfriend was cleaning a handgun inside the house when it accidentally discharged. The bullet shot through the wall of the house, located near 12th and Division streets.

Police found the girl in the backyard upon their arrival where she had been playing, reports said.

A LifeFlight helicopter transported the child to Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, where she was pronounced dead shortly after her arrival.

Fun With Numbers:
Per CDC, in 2011 there were 14,675 reported accidental shootings in the USA.

40 every day - and that's just the shit that happens by accident, and that's just the ones that require a visit to the hospital, and it's just the accidents that get reported as accidents.

Total Non-Fatal gunshot wounds of all kinds per year = 200,000 (more than 500 every day)

The Univ of Penn study from a few years back found that while the cost of Medical Care was around $17,000 per gunshot injury, the total lifetime cost beyond the medical expense (business productivity, personal income and earnings, etc) jumps up into the Billions - over $100 Billion every year, with about half of the tab being picked by taxpayers.

So here's the thing for you "conservatives":  if you just can't get with any kind of Gun Control because Freedom!!! - you get to shut the fuck up about what a clear-eyed-capitalist, taxation-is-theft, libertarian-super-genius you are.  You ain't shit.

Credulity Kills

From a friend's facebook post:

Seriously. This is the kinda shit way too many people believe.

There's been a lot said about Deliberate Ignorance in the Age Of Information, so I'll put it a slightly different way:  When you can learn almost anything you wanna know; at almost any time of day or night; just by having a smart phone and a decent cell signal; when it's that easy to look something up - you have to make a special effort to stay stoopid.

I spent maybe 3 minutes just browsing thru the first 20 or so articles (out of the 746 Million hits) that came up on a google search before settling on this one at USA Today:

Most victims of gun violence in 2010 were not on a battlefield or remote hillside in the Middle East fighting in a war. They were, like 6-year-old Brandon Holt, children and teenagers in America, according to the Children's Defense Fund.

Brandon was shot in the head by his friend and neighbor, an unidentified 4-year-old boy, on Monday night. He is now also a statistic of gun violence.

In 2010, 15,576 children and teenagers were injured by firearms — three times more than the number of U.S. soldiers injured in the war in Afghanistan, according to the defense fund.

Nationally, guns still kill twice as many children and young people than cancer, five times as many than heart disease and 15 times more than infection, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

John Fugelsang

Fugelsang recaps the gun nuts' filibuster win:



Some great points.

Dire Threat To The 2nd Amendment

What Obama originally proposed in January 2013:

Proposed Congressional Actions

• Requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, including those by private sellers that currently are exempt.
• Reinstating and strengthening the ban on assault weapons that was in place from 1994 to 2004.
• Limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds.
• Banning the possession of armor-piercing bullets by anyone other than members of the military and law enforcement.
• Increasing criminal penalties for "straw purchasers," people who pass the required background check to buy a gun on behalf of someone else.
• Acting on a $4 billion administration proposal to help keep 15,000 police officers on the street.
• Confirming President Obama's nominee for director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
• Eliminating a restriction that requires the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to allow the importation of weapons that are more than 50 years old.
• Financing programs to train more police officers, first responders and school officials on how to respond to active armed attacks.
• Provide additional $20 million to help expand the a system that tracks violent deaths across the nation from 18 states to 50 states.
• Providing $30 million in grants to states to help schools develop emergency response plans.
• Providing financing to expand mental health programs for young people.

Executive actions

• Issuing a presidential memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
• Addressing unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
• Improving incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
• Directing the attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
• Proposing a rule making to give law enforcement authorities the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
• Publishing a letter from the A.T.F. to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
• Starting a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
• Reviewing safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
• Issuing a presidential memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
• Releasing a report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and making it widely available to law enforcement authorities.
• Nominating an A.T.F. director.
• Providing law enforcement authorities, first responders and school officials with proper training for armed attacks situations.
• Maximizing enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
• Issuing a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence.
• Directing the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenging the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
• Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
• Releasing a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
• Providing incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
• Developing model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
• Releasing a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
• Finalizing regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within insurance exchanges.
• Committing to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
• Starting a national dialogue on mental health led by Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, and Arne Duncan, the secretary of education.

And this is what the US Senate couldn't bring itself to vote on this past week:

1) Expanding background checks
2) Cracking down on gun trafficking and straw purchasing
3) Reauthorizing and expanding a Justice Department grant program for school safety

That's it - that's what Wayne LaPierre lied about, and couldn't allow his bitches in congress to bring up for a vote.

Today's Quote

From Charlie Pierce in his post about what a dope Campbell Brown is.

...Wayne LaPierre is a blood-soaked sociopath who should be shunned by listeria and the mange.

Today's Gun Nut

This is just too sweet not to copy-n-paste the whole thing - from digby at Hullabaloo:

I'd think twice about taking an NRA course in gun safety ...
by digby

It just doesn't get any better than this:

NRA instructor Eugene Kenny would have joined his fellow gun-rights supporters at the state Capitol Wednesday—if he hadn’t accidentally shot himself in the foot.

He was there in spirit. And on the internet.

“I’ve been watching this like a hawk,” Kenny said about the debate in Hartford over what may be the toughest proposed state gun-control laws in the country, including expanded background checks on buyers as well as a ban on the sale of most assault weapons and all high-capacity magazines. (The legislation passed Wednesday evening; the governor was expected to sign it mid-day Thursday.) Kenny was rooting for the package of laws to fail; he said they would cut into gun-owners’ rights without protecting the public any more than current laws already do. “You can count on one hand the number of assaults with an automatic weapon” that take place in New Haven, he said. “When you have sick minds out there—it’ll be a bullet, a gun, a bomb—they’re going to do evil” no matter what laws are on the books.

Kenny, a 49-year-old licensed National Rifle Association instructor who leads training classes in pistol and rifle use, delivered his arguments in the front foyer of the two-family Edgewood Avenue house where he rents an upstairs apartment in the Edgewood neighborhood.

Wearing an NRA hooded sweatshirt, he had his left foot in a cast because he accidentally shot a bullet last week while cleaning his Glock handgun.

This is why I'm in favor of gun regulation: way too many of the people who own them are meatheads. It's just not safe for anyone when yahoos like this are waving around deadly weapons, especially in public. He's lucky he didn't kill someone --- or himself.

Keep in mind: this guy's an NRA instructor.

I usually always cock it back and it usually ejects a shell that’s in the chamber,” he recalled. “You pull the trigger to release the slide ... This time there was a cartridge in there. And BANG! Hit my ankle.”

A self-described “stickler about safety,” Kenny said he has never had a student injured over 10 years of leading firearms classes. He said he’ll draw two lessons for his students about this recent accident: How he did the wrong thing by not checking the chamber. And how he did the right thing—saving his life—by pointing the gun toward the ground, not at his head or chest, as he cleaned it.

Kenny went to the hospital for treatment. The police interviewed him there about the incident.

They’re still investigating the incident, according to Sgt. Al Vazquez, head of the major crimes unit. They have the Glock in custody as part of the investigation. The gun was legally registered.

Vazquez said his detectives are also still investigating the theft of a safe last November from Kenny’s apartment. It contained around 10 guns—mostly handguns, plus a Saiga 12 rifle. “I took a hit, $8,000 worth of firearms” in that theft, Kenny said.

Gosh, I wonder what the thieves did with them? 

Wait - That Means They Lied?

From Center For American Progress:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) and its allies in Congress frequently claim that gun violence is highest in places with the toughest crime laws. But a new study from the Center for American Progress (CAP) suggests something closer to the opposite is true — the states with laxer gun laws tend to be the ones contributing the highest shares of national gun deaths and injuries.

While many factors contribute to the rates of gun violence in any state, our research clearly demonstrates a significant correlation between the strength of a state’s gun laws and the prevalence of gun violence in the state. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104 percent higher—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.

Color me un-fucking-surprised.

hat tip = Democratic Underground 

Today's WTF

Sometimes, politicians and their PR guys and the PACs and the Lobbyists just make shit up, say it on TV, and it passes into what the Press Poodles are selling us as "the truth".

"There's a growing number of scientists who dispute AGW."

"Brand new fresh lava from certain active volcanoes tests out at 3.5 billion years old, so we have to throw out all forms of Radiographic Dating."

"The American people are with us on this."  (Whatever "this" happens to be at the time - and also happens to be conveniently unverifiable)

Some of the greatest bullshit ever spewed at us has come from the NRA, which has enjoyed a truly amazing 40-year run as the best of the best of the best - all in service of imposing a minority view on society.  There has been no marketing idea more brilliant than using the 2nd Amendment to bring the entire weight of the federal government to bear on all of us just to ensure the continued wellbeing of a narrow commercial interest.

Don't ever forget that the NRA does not represent your rights as a citizen.  The NRA is in the business of keeping Gun Manufacturers profitable.  And btw - your "rights" are whatever the fuck they feel like telling you they are.

But anyway, just saying something over and over is a tried-and-true method for making your shit stick, but if you really wanna do it right, you'll also need to take steps to keep "the other side of the story" from popping up at inopportune moments.

From McClatchey:

Each year, lawmakers quietly tuck language into spending bills that restricts the ability of the federal government to regulate the firearms industry and combat gun crime.

It’s the reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can’t research gun violence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can’t use data to detect firearms traffickers and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can’t require background checks on older guns.

Since the late 1970s, more than a dozen provisions have been added to must-pass spending bills with no hearings, no debate and no vote in a way that’s designed to circumvent the usual legislative process.

Coin-Operated Politicians are the rule, not the exception.  We have to figure out how to break down this system of corruption before it gets so bad that the only thing left to do is to burn it down.

Today's Toon

Today's Toon

The Directory Of Sick Fucks

Via Democratic Underground:

In the increasingly distant past, the National Rifle Association (NRA) largely advocated for policies related to hunting and marksmanship, but today its leaders are defined by unsavory conduct and the advancement of extreme, anti-government ideology. While the NRA innocuously describes itself as the “nation’s oldest civil rights organization,” this portrayal serves only as a smokescreen to mask the fact that the organization is a rogues gallery of the most odious voices in the contemporary Conservative Movement.

One only has to look to the NRA’s leadership to discover that the organization is operated by a group of individuals who promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-immigrant animus, religious bigotry, anti-environmentalism, and insurrectionism. Some active NRA board members have even had close relationships with brutal dictators in outside nations. Put simply, members of the NRA leadership no longer make for polite company.

Moreover, while superficially bipartisan, the NRA is closely aligned with the most extreme elements in the Republican Party and has brought a number of the GOP’s most influential operatives into positions of power within the organization. The GOP and NRA are now locked in a symbiotic relationship where Republican legislators advance the NRA’s extreme agenda while the NRA musters its hardcore supporters to serve as attack dogs for a wide range of conservative causes.

This website shines a light on the background of members of NRA leadership, in large part by allowing them to comment on the issues of the day in their own words. It is intended as a resource for those who cherish moderation, civility and principled advocacy in American politics.

Take a look around at some of the leading lights in the NRA - some of these people are too nutty for granola.

NRA Leader Profiles

Wayne "The Brain" LaPierre

..is a complete dick.

from Addicting Info:

In April of 1999 13 people were killed by two gunmen; students at the school. Could they have been saved by that one guard that the NRA wants us to believe is the solution? Well, there was an armed guard; a 15 year veteran of the Sheriff’s department. He responded, and he returned fire. He called the Sheriff’s office for backup. Yet, with both an armed security guard on site and backup coming in by the minute the two shooters, who started their rampage at 11:19 a.m. and continued until THEY ended it at 12:08 p.m with their own suicides. They left 13 dead and 21 injured in the wake of that 49 minute attack.

In March of 2005 a 16 year old shooter killed his grandfather, a deputy sheriff, took his guns including two handguns and a shotgun and vest and went to Red Lake High School in his grandfather’s police vehicle. The first person he killed was one of the school’s two security guards at the door. He went on to kill five students and a teacher at the school, wounding at least a dozen more before ending his own life.

The NRA solution 100% in place with 100% failure.

In the immortal words of St George (of Carlin): "What're ya, fuckin' stupid?"

With Love And Charity In My Heart

...go fuck yourself, Wayne.  Seriously - take your little 9mm metal dick - or your great big 12 gauge dick - crawl back under the porch and fuck yourself.

Moloch Lives Here

Wayne LaPierre is the Lord High Priest, and he demands sacrifice - because no god survives being ignored and forgotten.

from Garry Wills:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).

(hat tips = Daily KOS, Professional Left Podcast)

It's A Wonderment

Ever stop to think why Repubs are always trying to cut the funding necessary for the CDC to study Gun Violence as a Public Health issue?

...because the NRA is lying - all the fucking time.

Where's The Outrage?

From philly.com:

A 42-year-old Chester County man was arrested at the Philadelphia International Airport Thursday night after a TSA screener found a loaded, .25 caliber handgun tucked inside his carry-on luggage, police said.

Every time there's any kind of problem with anybody anywhere, we can count on the NRA and the gun fetishists to swarm all over it, screaming about their rights and declaring that if only all those poor innocent victims had been armed blah blah blah.

They've put guns in schools and in churches and in bars; and you know fucking well that they're bound to feel most threatened when they get on an airplane - so why don't we hear from them on this?