The Continuing American Tragedy

This story perfectly illustrates the fallacy of "A Good Guy With A Gun".

Oh, you acted on impulse and did a little vigilante shit for us? Great - here's a fatal bullet wound in the back, courtesy of the cops you were "helping". Thanks. Anything you want us to tell your family?

A gun fight is ridiculously fluid and chaotic. The last thing the actual good guys need is for some random asshole with a gun and a Wyatt Earp complex to make it worse.

The Denver Post: (pay wall)

2 minutes, 20 gunshots, 3 dead: How the Olde Town Arvada shootings unfolded minute by minute

Law enforcement released some details over five months, but new documents paint fullest picture yet

Twenty gunshots exploded in Olde Town Arvada one Monday afternoon last June, shattering windows, killing three and undermining the sense of safety previously held by those who live and work nearby.

In less than two minutes, the scene turned from a pleasant summer day in suburbia to a cacophony of screams and sirens. Diners sitting outside restaurants in the Colorado sunshine heard shotgun pellets whiz by their ears. People in the busy commercial district hid behind dumpsters and in restaurant attics.

In the end, three men lay bleeding outside the library: a beloved police officer, a gunman intent on killing as many law enforcement officers as possible, and a nearby shopper with a legally concealed handgun who stepped in and prevented further bloodshed.

In the five months since the June 21 shootings, police and prosecutors have released information in fits and starts. But records obtained by The Denver Post after First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King announced on Nov. 8 that she would not prosecute the Arvada police officer who shot and killed “good Samaritan” Johnny Hurley offer the most complete picture of the chaos that day and how law enforcement responded.

The 1,090-page report includes interviews and accounts from dozens of law enforcement officers who responded to the scene as well as descriptions of radio traffic and witness interviews. Though Arvada police officers did not wear body cameras at the time of the shooting, The Post used the documents, surveillance videos and body camera footage from other responding agencies to piece together the following account of the chaotic scene.

“It was the absolute scariest thing I’ve been a part of in 15 years at this police department,” said one of the first officers on scene, whose name was redacted from the report. “I thought that I was going to have to either have to use lethal force or I was going to be murdered.”

One witness, a guitar teacher, told investigators he heard gunshots and saw Beesley fall. He fled as the sound of more gunfire echoed in the square.

“I was visualizing that Olde Town Square was a bloodbath,” the witness, whose name also was redacted, told police. “I was freaking out.”

- more -

The piece goes on to detail the kind of cluster fuck we all knew was coming. And what we all know this is bound to happen again and again until we figure out how to sit down and hash out a few sensible rules to govern the sick shit growing from the worship of guns and violence here in USAmerica Inc.

The Verdict In Kenosha

Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on all 5 counts, and he'll now embark on the celebrity tour part of his "career" here in USAmerica Inc.

And he'll probably be fairly well compensated, though it won't be a bump-free ride. And after the first blush, he'll have to get used to toiling away in relative obscurity, as even most of the staunchest ammosexuals don't like to be reminded too accurately of their fervent embrace of bloodlust.

Let's check in with George Zimmerman to get a hint as to what may be in store for young Kyle.

NY Daily News:

George Zimmerman event canceled by Idaho hotel after learning the man who fatally shot Trayvon Martin was speaking there

A weekend event featuring a speech by George Zimmerman was nixed by an Idaho hotel group after the company learned the man who killed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was slated to be a headlining attraction at their venue.

The gathering, billed as the Lethal Force Gun Laws 2021 Tactics & Strategies Conference, was to have begun Friday and ended Monday at The Riverside Hotel in Boise.

The Idaho Statesman reports that the hotelier pulled the plug on the conference after learning about its “incendiary details” on social media. That report said the hotel owners cited for its reason the “immense pain” Zimmerman caused its “guests, team-members and community” when he gunned down the unarmed Black teen in February of 2012.

A few thoughts:

1. That whole scene last summer was a full-on coast-to-coast cluster fuck in the first place, which was very much what the Daddy Staters wanted to see
2. I think the skateboarder (Anthony Huber) acted in response to what he thought was a bad guy with a gun, which reinforced Rittenhouse's fucked up hero fantasies
3. Mistaken identity and false conclusions were (and remain) the order of the day
4. Rittenhouse was acquitted on the phony basis of "defending himself" against a threat that he created.

This looked for all the world just like the stories I grew up hearing about the old west - particularly the ones about some asshole drifter with a gun and a shitty attitude who feels the need to prove himself, so he goads one of the locals into a fight in order to get a little thrill and boost his bad ass reputation, and then claims self defense, and blah blah blah.

It's nine kinds of fucked up, and we have to figure out how to get ourselves past this shit.

"It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street."

--just one of the victim's mother...

— Heal the Planet ✌✌🎸🎸 (@fwtoney) November 19, 2021

- and -

Will "self-defense" become an ever-expanding justification for political violence within a society of soaring gun ownership, mounting political extremism, increasingly violent political threats, and growing vigilantism?

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 20, 2021

Today's Eternal Sadness

We're getting some details on the killing of a Pentagon cop last Tuesday.

The murderer had a history of violence, apparently due to mental health problems, and yet nobody could quite figure out that he might be a danger to himself and others, and that maybe he shouldn't be walking around waiting for something to set him off?

That in itself is worth looking into, but the thing that chaps my ass is the fact that the cop was killed with his own gun.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Phillip Brent said he was awoken early one April morning by word someone had broken into his home in an upscale Atlanta suburb. He was away, so he quickly dialed up video from the home’s surveillance cameras on his phone.

Brent said the video showed a masked man smashing through a back door with a sledgehammer. The intruder, who appeared armed with a crowbar, eventually left and pulled off his mask. Brent said he instantly recognized the face on the video.

He said it was a neighbor, Austin Lanz, 27; the same man the FBI said killed a Pentagon police officer without warning or provocation Tuesday on a Metro bus platform outside the military headquarters. Lanz also was killed.

Brent said the April break-in, which resulted in Lanz’s arrest, was the culmination of a long campaign of harassment by Lanz against him and his former fiancee, Eliza Wells. The couple didn’t know Lanz personally and still don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind his fixation on them.

Brent and Wells, both 23, said the encounters were by turns menacing and bizarre, offering a glimpse of the man who carried out such a confounding attack at the Pentagon. The two said they were fearful of Lanz, but also deeply concerned about him and his mental health.

What triggered his attack outside the Pentagon also remains unknown. In a statement released by Lanz’s family, his relatives offered condolences to the family of George Gonzalez, the slain Pentagon police officer, saying they were “sorry and heartbroken.” In an interview, the family’s attorney, Jimmy Berry, said the family knows of no motive for the attack.

It goes on - and gets creepier - but the point for me is that we're told over and over that having a gun is how you keep yourself safe. That officer had a gun. He was trained in how not to get shot with it. And he's unavailable for comment because he's fucking dead now.

Which brings me to this: Fuck the shooter - I don't wanna remember that prick. I don't wanna hear his name.

Officer George Gonzales

Today's Eternal Sadness

Reuters:

Boyfriend kills 6 people and himself at Colorado birthday party; children not shot

A man fatally shot six people including his girlfriend before turning the gun on himself early on Sunday at a birthday party in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but did not fire on traumatized children who were present inside a trailer at a mobile home park.

Police arrived to find six people dead plus a seventh who was seriously wounded and died after being taken to a hospital, a police statement said.

"The suspect, a boyfriend of one of the female victims, drove to the residence, walked inside and began shooting people at the party before taking his own life," said the statement released by the Colorado Springs Police Department.

"Friends, family, and children were gathered inside the trailer to celebrate when the shooting occurred," the statement said.

It goes on to describe the scene, and to list the victims, and to ignore completely the fact that we can't figure out what the fuck is wrong with this fucked up fuckin' country that we walk around thinking two basic things:

1. I can kill my way out of my problems
2. I can get killed at any moment by some asshole who thinks he can kill his way out of his problems.

I'm so tired of you, America.

Today's Eternal Sadness

We don't know the details on this one of course, but I think it's safe to say it seems we're not making a lot of progress on the "Cops Need To To Stop Killing People" issue.

Axios;

Unarmed Virginia Black man shot by sheriff's deputy while on 911 call

Virginia state police are investigating reports that an unarmed Black man was shot by a sheriff's deputy who mistook his cordless house phone for a gun. The deputy had earlier given him a ride home, authorities said.

Driving the news:

• Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Office released video late Friday of the shooting of Isaiah Brown, 32, who's in critical condition in a hospital with 10 bullet wounds following the shooting early Wednesday.

Details:

• Sheriff Roger Harris released body camera footage and a 911 call from Brown at a news conference confirming that the unnamed deputy had been placed on administrative leave.
• During the call, a man identified as Brown can be heard saying he'll kill his brother and "give me the gun" after his brother won't let him in to retrieve his car keys. He tells the dispatcher several times he does not have a gun.
• The deputy who gave Brown a ride home some 45 minutes earlier after his car broke down responded to the call as a "domestic incident."
• The deputy can be heard saying "he's got a gun to his head" before telling him to drop it and to stop walking toward him. Gunshots can be heard ringing out.

What they're saying:

• Brown’s lawyer, David Haynes, said in a statement to news outlets, "The officer mistook a cordless house phone for a gun.
• "There is no indication that Isaiah did anything other than comply with dispatch’s orders and raised his hands with the phone in his hand as instructed."

Can we at least acknowledge one tiny detail that should be obvious to anyone who's not blind, deaf, quadriplegic and lobotomized - the assumption that everybody's got a fucking gun has to be part of the fucking problem!?!

Today's Eternal Sadness

Text message from my brother last night, saying he knew 3 of the murdered victims of the Boulder shooter.

Degrees of separation are getting just a little too thin.

BTW - fuck the NRA, and every politician who's ever taken a dime from them.

Don't Forget The Guns

Everyone being kinda preoccupied with COVID-19 makes it harder to remember some of the other shit we need to deal with - issues we'll have to take up again once we get past the current dual crises of the pandemic and the potential collapse of American democracy.

What was it about "one's impending demise tends to focus the mind"?

Anyway, along those lines, here's a piece talking about how we get all wacky sometimes just because we're walking around with the means to fuck somebody up - it can make us believe (mistakenly) that everybody else is walking around with the some means, which easily translates to our believing they have the intent to fuck us up.

Colorado State University, College Of Natural Sciences:

Accidental shootings of unarmed victims are tragically common, and sometimes they happen because the shooter misperceived the victim as also having a gun.

Nearly a decade ago, cognitive psychologist Jessica Witt wondered if the mere act of wielding a firearm could bias someone to perceive another person as wielding one, too – and more importantly, if such a bias could be scientifically measured. A series of experiments later, Witt and her research team concluded, yes and yes.

The team has recently published a new set of experiments further underscoring what they call the “gun embodiment effect” in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. Their original research was published in 2012 when Witt, now a professor in CSU’s Department of Psychology, was a researcher at Purdue University. For this recent study, they’ve replicated the experiments with larger sample sizes and more confidence in their claims that the gun bias exists; that it can be measured via controlled laboratory experiments; and that it seems universal – that is, not changed by an individual’s prior experiences, general attitudes about firearms, or personality traits.

“To prove something is universal, you have to rule out all possible alternatives,” said Witt, an expert in the intricate links between human vision and cognition. “We have not done that yet, but we have some really good first steps.”

Speed and accuracy

Witt’s team recruited over 200 CSU students to help suss out the original hypothesis. Participants, holding either a fake gun or a spatula, were hooked up to a motion-tracking system. The system recorded both the speed and accuracy of their reactions to images on a screen of people holding either a gun or a neutral object – in this case, a shoe.

The researchers found strong evidence that when holding a gun, participants were a little slower to make their judgment about whether the other person was also holding a gun. The difference was about 8 milliseconds – a small effect, but it was unmistakable. They read this result as the person needing to take the time to inhibit a primed response caused by carrying a gun themselves.

They also found that holding a gun affected participants’ accuracy, with a 1% greater likelihood to misperceive the other person as having a gun too. “It’s as if, when they’re holding a gun, they are prone to see a gun,” Witt said.

The effects they saw in the lab were mercifully small. “But if you have this small effect, and put it on a national scale, and you talk about how many people have guns in this country, even these small effects are important,” Witt said. “For example, if 100 officers wielding guns interact with 10 unarmed people a day for 100 days, in these 100,000 interactions, our data suggest there were will be 1,000 misperceptions of an unarmed person as holding a gun.”

Addressing the replication problem

The subtlety of the gun embodiment effect challenged Witt’s team to strengthen their original work, in part in response to the replication crisis in psychology experiments that’s plagued so many research teams. “Our study ended up serving as a replication check and revision to our earlier claims,” Witt said.

They hope they can next dive into what circumstances might change the bias for people holding guns. For this recent test, they looked at a host of possibilities, like participants’ attitudes toward guns, personality traits, and measures of their impulsivity. None of these individual circumstances seemed to change the gun bias, but the absence only sparks more questions. For example, does the bias change depending on the situation? If the shooter is scared? Or fatigued?

If she can secure more funding, Witt hopes to answer such questions, and delve into them using a more diverse sample among the general public, with better representation across ages, races, education levels and prior experiences with guns.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation. The Department of Psychology is in the College of Natural Sciences.

Wow - maybe guys like Wyatt Earp knew what they were doing when they decided it would be better for everybody if nobody carried guns while they were hanging out in town.

It's a wonderment.

About Those Gods

Something else that should come as absolutely no fucking surprise.

PsyPost:

Supporters of religious violence are more likely to claim they’re familiar with religious concepts that don’t exist

Individuals who claim knowledge of fake religious concepts are more supportive of religious aggression, while individuals with accurate religious knowledge are less supportive, according to new research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

“Although many quote the Christian Bible, few have read it. Thus, religious books are often incorrectly cited or cited in a way that serves personal prejudices and/or distorted worldviews,” said study author Daniel N. Jones, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada Reno.

“Not only do people ‘pick and choose’ the stories of a religious book to support their worldview, they inaccurately attribute messages and interpretations to that Holy Book. Thus, we wanted to determine the consequences of this tendency towards overconfidence in religious scripture.”

For their study, Jones and his colleagues recruited 409 American participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, 351 students from a university in Iran, and 209 individuals living on the Juarez/El Paso border region between Mexico and the United States.

The two American samples were provided with a list of stories, concepts, and people — and were told that they all appeared in the Christian Bible. The participants were then asked to indicate how familiar they were with each item. But many of the items on the list, such as The Army Seventeen and Soren’s Temple, did not actually appear in the Bible. The Iranian sample completed a similar task regarding concepts from the Quran.

The researchers found that those who claimed to be familiar with concepts that did not exist also tended to report being more supportive of religious aggression. In other words, individuals who claimed to have knowledge of fictitious religious concepts were more likely to agree with statements such as “I would shoot someone if I believed God wanted me to” and “The modern world needs a no mercy attitude toward the wicked.”

“Overconfidence in what you think God supports or what scripture says is toxic. Thus, humility is a critical feature that is needed to bring out the best and most benevolent aspects of religion,” Jones told PsyPost.

“Further, although overclaiming is toxic, actual religious knowledge (or admitting what you did not know) has the reverse effect such that it correlates with a peaceful disposition. In this way, knowing true vs. false stories in one’s Holy Book is associated with peaceful attitudes whereas claiming familiarity with false stories from one’s Holy Book is associated with violent attitudes.”

“It is important to note that all of these findings are similar in Islam (with the Quran) and Christianity (with the Bible). Muslim participants were peaceful when they were accurate in their knowledge of the Quran (or at least honest about what they did not know), and supported violence when they were overconfident in their knowledge of the Quran; identical findings emerged for Christian participants with the Bible,” Jones explained.

But there is still much to learn about the relationship between overclaiming religious knowledge and religious aggression.

“We still need to understand the mechanisms behind why these correlations emerge. In other words, we need to further research what exactly drives religious overclaiming and why religious overclaiming translates into violent attitudes,” Jones said.

“Further, we need to determine if these attitudes are merely supporting a violent agenda in the name of God, or if they actually predict real violent behavior. Finally, we need to know why religious accuracy predicts peaceful attitudes, and if indeed learning one’s Holy Book (accurately) can reduce violence and violent attitudes.”

“The idea for this study was partially inspired by the fantastic work of my PhD mentor, Del Paulhus, who generated the overclaiming technique,” Jones added.

“However, the impetus to further develop the idea emanated from a discussion I had with my mother. In a way, the origin of the idea was partially predicated on a bet with her. Origin notwithstanding, the outstanding team of researchers on this paper made tremendous contributions, and because of them, it became a far better paper.”

The study, “Religious Overclaiming and Support for Religious Aggression“, was authored by Daniel N. Jones, Adon L. Neria, Farzad A. Helm, Reza N. Sahlan, and Jessica R. Carre.

My question: How do I not assume religious freaks are just violence-prone assholes who cynically claim to have a plausible excuse for being violence-prone assholes?

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

"Nobody's this wrong by accident." 

The Cult45 strategy seems to be to provoke the violence they say they're trying to quell.

Classic.

Today's Eternal Sadness

Christina-Taylor Green was born September 11, 2001.

She died January 8, 2011 - shot to death, along with 5 others, at a campaign rally for Gabby Giffords in Tucson.

Fuck the NRA and their coin-operated politicians.

Anniversary

Two years ago yesterday, these assholes came to my hometown. They beat one of my neighbors bloody, killed one other named Heather Heyer, and injured dozens more.

There is no forgiving and no forgetting.

Raw Story:

It’s been two years since neo-Nazis marched with Tiki torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a new report from the Anti-Defamation League has found that many of the marchers have not fared well since that fateful weekend in August 2017.

The ADL this week published a “Where Are They Now?” guide to the 2017 Charlottesville demonstrators and found that a good deal of them suffered from various repercussions for their actions, including “imprisonment, job loss, de-platforming — or banning users who violate their terms of service — on social media platforms, travel bans and rejection by friends and family.”

Among those who saw their lives ruined by their participation in the rally are three former active-duty Marines who were discharged by the Marine Corps after they were discovered marching in Charlottesville.

The report also found that more than a dozen “Unite the Right” marchers have since been imprisoned for various crimes, most notable Ohio resident James Alex Fields, Jr., who was convicted of murdering counter-protester Heather Heyer after he plowed his car into a group of people.

But he’s far from the only neo-Nazi in jail, the ADL reports.

“Also sentenced to substantial time in prison: three of four men found guilty of ‘malicious wounding’ for their roles in the parking deck assault of an African American man during Unite the Right,” the ADL says. “Daniel Patrick Borden of Ohio was sentenced to three years and 10 months, Jacob Scott Goodwin of Arkansas received an eight-year sentence, and Alex Michael Ramos of Georgia received six years. A fourth man, Tyler Watkins Davis, is scheduled for sentencing later this month.”

And even Unite the Right organizers who are not in legal jeopardy have found themselves getting hounded by civil lawsuits at both the state and local level accusing them of conspiring to promote violence.

Refresher

Guns guns guns. Kill tear rip shred.

Fuck that shit.

The Daddy State Speaks

Be sure to watch for "bless the memory of those that perished in Toledo" at about 9:45.

Maybe we can ignore the snuffling and the general demeanor of a guy who doesn't wanna do what he's doing here - but fuck, man - Toledo?

Here comes the Daddy State crackdown.

First, on everything and everyone suspected of not supporting this autocratic regime. 

Typical of how these thugs operate, they'll do exactly the opposite of what they want us to think they're saying they'll be doing. 

(yes, that last bit was complicated and convoluted - have you not but following what these assholes are always trying to do?)

So anyone expressing an opinion contrary to the hateful speech of Cult45 will themselves be condemned as "hateful". And at the very least, they'll be harassed - if not shut down completely.

Second - and I think as important - is the attempt to emphasize "the problems of video games and mental health".

This is the typical dodge so they don't have to confront one of their major benefactors - the folks at NRA who have been so helpful laundering all that Russian mob money that pours into GOP pockets.

But it's the part of that meme that's just too fucking obvious is the American chauvinism.

They can expect a huge number of Americans to ignore the obvious fact that violent video games and unaddressed mental illness do, in fact, exist in other countries. But because we never ever go anywhere - and because we know practically nothing about anything outside the US - we buy right into it.

Hear what they say, but always always always watch what they do.

BTW, I wonder what Ajit Pai is cooking up for us over at the FCC.

Today's Tweet

Together with Today's Eternal Sadness

Kremlin Don laughs when MAGAt says to shoot immigrants 😡😡😡pic.twitter.com/ebHf2JWAgG

— Hear Me Roar (@Stop_Trump20) August 4, 2019

20 dead and 26 wounded in El Paso yesterday.

9 dead and 24 wounded today in Dayton.

Dayton police tweeted that an active shooter situation began at 1 a.m. Sunday in a historic district that’s a popular nightlife destination, but officers nearby were able to “put an end to it quickly.” Lt. Col. Matt Carper said at a press conference that the suspect was shot to death by responding officers.

- and -

...The shooting took place in the Oregon District, a historic neighborhood that Carper described as “a safe part of downtown,” home to entertainment options, including bars, restaurants and theaters.

Today's Eternal Sadness

Every year, more Americans are killed by grade-school kids with guns than are killed by illegal immigrants and Muslim terrorists combined.

Atlanta Journal Constitution:

A 6-year-old girl has died after being shot by her 4-year-old brother in Paulding County on Monday evening, authorities said.

The girl was identified as Millie Drew Kelly on a GoFundMe page set up to help with the family’s expenses.

The accidental shooting happened about 6 p.m. inside a car parked in the driveway of a home on Laurelcrest Lane in unincorporated Dallas, Paulding County sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ashley Henson previously told AJC.com.

“They were all loaded up to leave the home and the car wouldn’t start,” Henson said. Their mother hopped out to find the source of the problem, and somehow the young boy got hold of a handgun, he said.
- and -

After speaking with the children’s mother, detectives believe the handgun was retrieved from the center console, and the 4-year-old accidentally discharged it. 

“Our hearts break for this family and we hope God puts his healing hands around them during this difficult time,” Sheriff Gary Gulledge said in a statement Thursday morning.

No charges will be filed.

We don't have an immigration problem. And we don't have a Muslim Terrorism problem.

We have a gun-violence problem - fueled by a hyper-macho culture that spouts bullshit rhetoric about killing our way out of our problems, and is happy to cash in on our misery by supplying us with the means of our own destruction.

Blue Jeans

NYT, Eric Curran (3rd year, Temple Univ Med School):

PHILADELPHIA — I remember the first time I saw a teenager die. He came to Temple University Hospital in the back of a police cruiser with three bullet holes in his chest. He was wearing bluejeans that had turned red. 

The nurses cut them off and threw them at the end of the bed. The bluejeans that were no longer blue dangled for a while, eventually falling into the puddle of blood collecting underneath them. After nothing more could be done to save him, the bed that held his thin body was rolled away, leaving streaks of blood across the floor.

As a first-year medical student, this image haunted me. I think it always will.

Over and over, young Americans from Parkland, Fla., to North Philadelphia are carried into ambulances and the back seats of police cars and rushed to a hospital. The emergency room nurses and doctors lift them onto stretchers. If they are awake, they may ask if they’re going to die. The doctor tells them no.

Once inside, the trauma team yells out locations of holes in their body. The medical student tapes paper clips to each bullet wound so that they’re visible on X-ray. If the heart stops, doctors break through the sternum with a mallet and a chisel.

Two gloved hands hold the heart and start to squeeze. More nurses and more doctors help inject medicines. They place paddles on the lifeless heart. If God or luck or physiology allows, it beats again. And then the wheels on the bed spin toward the operating room and leave those horrible red streaks on the floor, red shoe prints all around them.

In the wake of the struggle to save a human life, a silent, splattered room remains. Gauze, tubes, shirts, gloves, pants, tape and sneakers lie scattered. Hospital workers come in and wash away the blood. They bring mops, towels, brushes and trash cans, and work with respect and grace, on hands and knees. The room must be cleaned quickly because another young victim could be wheeled in soon.

I started photographing this room out of the helplessness and despair I felt about these senseless deaths. I wanted the violence to stop. I asked if I could hold a camera. Not to capture the dead and dying. They deserve privacy and respect. But I wondered if capturing and sharing the moments after lives are saved and lost could help Americans understand what is happening.

I place plastic covers over my shoes. Sometimes I hear screams — the loved ones receiving news that their son or daughter, brother or sister, spouse or partner, has been shot to death.

Temple University Hospital treated 481 patients with gunshot wounds last year, and 97 died. In this one hospital in one neighborhood in one city. As a country, we lost nearly 40,000 lives to guns in 2017. These images are here to show you what happens. And to inspire change. Because here, in America, shouldn’t bluejeans stay blue?

So far, in 2019: 40 mass shooting incidents (most recent = yesterday, 16 FEB 19), 72 dead, 121 injured - as reported by Gun Violence Archive.

It Is Our Lane

EveryTown:

Bottom Line: When it comes to gun violence against women, the United States is the most dangerous country in the developed world. Domestic violence affects millions of women across the country, and guns in the hands of domestic abusers can turn abuse into murder. Indeed, the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely that the woman will be killed. And the deadly mix of guns and domestic violence is exacerbated by America’s weak gun laws: women in the U.S. are 16 times more likely to be shot and killed than are women in other developed nations.

Common sense laws that keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers–by requiring background checks for all gun sales and ensuring that prohibited abusers relinquish guns in their possession–just make sense. And for victims of domestic abuse, it’s a matter of life and death.

My ex shot my dad and me in front of own son. I’ve seen push back on my tweets from gun extremists. Disturbing. But, SO many amazing ppl have shown love & support. This is me leaving hospital w/ throbbing damaged hand. And my son. #ThisISMyLane pic.twitter.com/jsIyXj2EaN

— Kate Ranta (@ravinranta) November 14, 2018

It Gets Worse

Speaking of the bombs mailed to several of Cult45's favorite enemies, Rush Limbaugh opined, "Conservatives just don't do that sort of thing."

We reached out to Barnett Slepian, George Tiller and several daycare workers in Oklahoma City, but they were all unavailable for comment.

Michelle Goldberg, NYT:

On Wednesday night, after bombs were sent to a number of Donald Trump’s most prominent enemies, he held a rally in Mosinee, Wis. A president with even a pretense to statesmanship would have canceled it — the country was in the middle of what can reasonably be described as a terrorist attack, with someone attempting mass murder against leading Democrats. Trump, needless to say, is not such a president.

At the rally — which featured Trump fans chanting, “Lock her up!” about Hillary Clinton, to whom one of the bombs was addressed — Trump called for the country to come together “in peace and harmony.” Then, in characteristic fashion, he blamed the press for America’s climate of simmering rage. “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories,” he said.

It was an audacious act of misdirection, especially since the attack included a bomb sent to the New York offices of CNN, one of Trump’s favorite punching bags. But while Trump’s words were meant to further derange American political debate, they were, in one sense, clarifying. They demonstrated the rank disingenuousness of conservative complaints about “incivility,” a term that’s increasingly used to conflate expressions of political anger with political violence, equating yelling at politicians with trying to kill them.

- and -

The violent part of the right is integrated into the Republican Party in a way that has no analogue on the left. A few months before the Unite the Right white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that devolved into a deadly riot, Corey Stewart, now the Republican candidate for Senate in that state, appeared at an event sponsored by one of Unite the Right’s organizers, Jason Kessler. (He’s since disavowed both Kessler and Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist he once described as a “personal hero.”) One rallygoer, James Allsup, had been president of the Washington State University College Republicans. He stepped down amid the ensuing controversy, but was later elected a precinct committee officer by his local party organization. (The Republican National Committee has denounced him.)

- and -

The dubious category of “civility” lets people on the right pretend that mailing a politician a bomb is in the same vein as berating a politician in a restaurant. It’s a sort of right-wing political correctness, treating rudeness toward powerful people as akin to assault.

In June, the actor Robert De Niro cursed at Trump during a speech at the Tony Awards. On Thursday, news broke that De Niro was among those who were sent explosive devices. Only one of these things is a problem. We are in a dark place in this country. The blame belongs with Trump, not those shouting their opposition to him.

Christian Picciolini, LA Times (from 10-07-18):

When four members of the white supremacist group Rise Above Movement were arrested last week on federal charges that they traveled to Virginia last year with the intent to incite a riot and commit violence, many news outlets referred to the group as an “alt-right fight club.” Others called it “a racist social club.”

The Rise Above Movement, or R.A.M., is far more dangerous than these euphemistic labels suggest. An extreme hate group that grew out of California’s skinhead subculture, R.A.M. calls for the extermination of Jews and other “anti-white” enemies, not to mention the overthrow of the U.S. government.

R.A.M. is one of many violent hate groups that espouse such views. Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group that is organized into cells and whose name means “atomic weapons” in German, openly aspires to terroristic violence. Proud Boys, another group in the white-power ecosystem, has demonstrated a propensity for extreme violence.

Despite the dangers posed by such groups, many Americans tend to view their violent acts as either the work of a mentally deranged individual or the collective anger of misguided young men who are merely lashing out. This outlook is dangerously naive and one we can no longer afford to indulge.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. grew from 784 to 917 between 2014 and 2016. There are now 954 hate groups across the country. Some of these groups include “pro-white” militia that are engaged in paramilitary-style training, learning hand-to-hand combat and guerilla warfare techniques and planning strategic attacks on critical infrastructure.

If jihadists were plotting any of the above on American soil — to kill American citizens and take out U.S. power grids, among other things — our collective response would be far less permissive. Put another way, if these extremists had brown skin, we would call them terrorists.

Instead, we wave away their threats and do so despite this glaring fact: White extremists have committed nearly 75% of all terrorist attacks on American soil since September 11.

SPLC Hate Group Map

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Inspired by the writings of Hitler and the idea of “white jihad,” members of groups like R.A.M. and Proud Boys don’t need much provocation to become violent. Indeed, members of Atomwaffen Division have been charged in five killings over the past two years.

Samuel Woodward, the 20-year-old Newport Beach man charged with stabbing a former high school classmate nearly 20 times, is reportedly a member of Atomwaffen.

In Reston, Va., a 17-year-old Atomwaffen member was charged last year with murdering his girlfriend’s parents, reportedly because they had forbidden their daughter from dating him.

In Tampa, Fla., Devon Arthurs, a 19-year-old former Atomwaffen devotee who converted to radical Islam, was charged last year with shooting two of his neo-Nazi roommates after they ridiculed his sudden transformation.
In a separate case, another of Arthurs’ roommates, Brandon Russell, 22, an Atomwaffen leader, was arrested for possessing radioactive material and bomb-making devices. Among his possessions, police found a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

It is true that the leaders of such groups draw in disillusioned young men who believe the world has sidelined them. But just because their members look familiar to many Americans does not make them less dangerous. Their violence is part of a growing pattern of domestic terrorism and should not be excused as an adolescent blip.


And oh BTW -

The Othering Of LatinX

Trying to dispel some of the myths regarding MS-13.

(spoiler alert: 45* gets it wrong)

Jose Miguel Cruz, WaPo:

The Trump administration’s campaign against immigration conflates the flow of undocumented immigrants from Central America with the growth of MS-13 — the brutal transnational street gang. The president and the attorney general frequently say that stopping the former means stopping the latter. Information about the four-decade-old gang, formally named Mara Salvatrucha, is scarce, but we know enough to dispel some of the misconceptions that have grown up around it.

(here are the big 5 lies)

1. MS-13 was created by Salvadoran ex-guerrillas.
2. MS-13 is well-organized and controlled from El Salvador.
3. Illegal immigrants are coming to the U.S. to expand the gang's reach.
4. To combat MS-13, stop immigration from Central America.
5. MS-13 is a threat to communities all over America.

As always, there's nothing that says we should simply ignore the threat of gangs and the violence that gangs always bring with them.

Also always, we should never buy into the bullshit rhetoric of a Daddy State dick like Donald Trump.

Today's Eternal Sadness

A North Texas mother is hospitalized after her ex-husband came to her home early Wednesday and opened fire, injuring her and killing their three children and her boyfriend before turning the gun on himself, sheriff's deputies say.

The identities of the children were confirmed by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office Thursday as Drake Painter, 4, Caydence Painter, 6 and Odin Painter, 8.

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"All of us are letting her know that we're praying for her and I cannot imagine losing three children," said neighbor Katie Garcia.

Fuck that noise, Ms Garcia - thanks, but fuck it. Instead of not imaging the loss of 3 kids, maybe you could start imagining politicians who have the balls to stand up to the NRA, address the public health issue of gun violence, and get something done. 

So yeah - sorry not sorry, but your prayers are less than worthless.