Dave Weigel at Slate reports that “Arizona Citizens Defense League Wants Firearms Training for Members of Congress, Staff“:
Charles Heller, one of the co-founders of the pro gun-rights Arizona Citizens Defense League, tells me that the group has put together model legislation that would require the state to help train members of Congress and their staff in the use of firearms.
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“Our model legislation is called the Giffords-Zimmerman Act,” said Heller. (Giffords staffer Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was killed on Saturday.) “It would require the Arizona Department of Public Safety to provide firearms training, using firearms confiscated by the state, to members of Congress and people who work for them. Facilities would be made available to them in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the training of police and other safety employees.”
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Heller speculated that a response like this could prevent future attacks on members of Congress. “I don’t think having a firearm on her would do Congresswoman Giffords any good,” said Heller. “However, if it was known that members of her staff were well armed, that very well could have dissuaded [the shooter].”
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The AzCDL, founded in 2005, has successfully lobbied for more lax gun laws in the state.
The list of “accomplishments” at that last link is… either dispiriting or infuriating, depending on your mood.
If you prefer something more positive, Weigel also posted Giffords’ husband Mark Kelly’s press release from this morning.
Restrung
yuck.
Benjamin Cisco
Wow. That is a very special kind of stupid.
__
Still, it fits with their playbook: When in doubt, double down.
JBerardi
Too soon? That kind of suggests there would or could be some point in time when this moronic endeavor would be appropriate… I submit that there is not.
handy
Great so now our congress critters can fire back into the crowd when they feel the heat? Cuz you know, when the good guys shoot back, the bullets will just automagically hit the intended target.
KG
over at LGF, Johnson has a clip of Tweety pwning a Teatard about bringing guns to town(hall meetings). it’s quite interesting.
linkage
Benjamin Cisco
Just witnessed the following exchange between Anderson Cooper and Bill Maher:
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No, I am not making that up.
Violet
Maybe we should all be required to carry guns. That way when a fight erupts at a bar or a team gets a bad call at a sporting event, nothing bad could possibly happen because everyone would be armed.
These people don’t think, do they?
MikeJ
How hurt are the righties about the words of Gifford’s brother in law (currently up in space)?
“These days, we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another, not just with our actions, but also with our irresponsible words.”
Note that he didn’t call Sarah Palin Satan, did not call for accessory to murder charges for Sharon Angle. Just a very calm, apolitical statement. I’m sure that this will not be allowed to stand.
Villago Delenda Est
Ah, I get it.
The solution is a veritable hail of bullets.
These people are really, really sick.
Martin
Hmm. Shot point-blank range in the forehead. Can anyone envision a scenario in which being armed and trained would have prevented that?
Mark S.
Yeah, right.
And go fuck yourself, Charles Heller.
Joseph Nobles
Yes, what Saturday morning needed was a few more people with 9mm Glocks and three 31-bullet magazines ready to fire back. What could have gone wrong?
In other news, Gandhi was a doormat.
ETA: The gun enthusiasts here are reminding me of a cat bringing a dead bird to the family. They do seem to be trying to help in the only way they know how.
KG
@Benjamin Cisco:
W. O. W.
Ross Hershberger
The gun rights lobby is like the GOP on taxes. There is no conceivable scenario where less taxes/more guns is not the answer.
Violet
@Martin:
Oh yeah, sure. Because if we’re all trained in how to use firearms, then if something like this happens, guns will appear from our eyebrows or the back of our heads to take out the bad guys.
Villago Delenda Est
@handy:
Of course, the bad guys all learned to shoot at The Imperial Stormtrooper School of Marksmanship so this will work out great!
Shade Tail
You know, you’d think pro-gun people would be less fucking stupid when it comes to guns. Some nut case like fucking Loughner walks up to a gathering, pulls a concealed gun, and starts shooting. Other people having guns, concealed or otherwise, doesn’t help in the slightest, because:
1) History shows that nuts are not dissuaded from shit like this even if they know the opposition is armed.
2) By the time the opposition reacts and pulls their guns, it is way too late; the violence has already started.
3) Crossfire only makes for more dead bodies.
I’m not a gun lover or owner, and even I know this.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est:
Is that affiliated with the Bad Guy School of Martial Arts? You know, the one where they learn to wait their turn while the hero takes them out one by one?
hildebrand
How about making it at least as difficult to get a gun and ammunition as it is to get a permit to drive a damn car?
As someone mentioned earlier today (I believe it was a wise soul on this blog) – why is it that the second Amendment is the only absolute?
ogliberal
@Benjamin Cisco: But Booth was a liberal. You know, because he was a wusbag actor. And I heard he smoked weed!
Chyron HR
He was a crazed gunman who had no political motivation besides being a pot-smoking nazi (IE, a liberal)!
And also he made a logical assessment of his chances of success before carrying out his plan, too.
Bnut
Yeah, because owning a pistol and having a weekend of shooting at a paper target prepares you for what it’s like to have someone shooting at you and trying to kill you. Methinks these “Arizona Citizen” are a bunch of arm-chair Green Berets.
handy
@Mark S.:
I’m…wow. No words.
WyldPirate
@KG:
Had to laugh at old Tweety. He was abusing the Teabagger and just made him look stupid.
sherifffruitfly
Gawd bless gun shitheads and their “clearly what we need is more guns” crap.
Just like republicans with their universal answer “clearly we need more tax cuts for the rich” bullshit.
David Fud
Giffords was shot in the back of the head.
I really don’t know how someone who is shot execution style in the back of the head could protect themselves, even if they were armed with the best gun available.
Funny how having a hole in your head impedes some people from shooting a gun.
Apparently, that isn’t the case for everyone, because, you know, Charles Heller clearly could have been shot in the head and then leapt around, grabbed his 2nd amendment weapon, and killed the punk before anyone else was blown away.
Heller needs to chill on the Rambo/Dirty Harry genres for a while.
J. Michael Neal
Can you imagine the shit storm if a Democratic congressman followed this idiotic advice, and then one of his staffers shot an innocent person?
Or is that exactly what these fuckheads are trying to instigate?
stuckinred
Ask the folks in Atlanta how much having people armed all over the place mattered when the dude shot up the courtroom a few years back. Nada, zip, he got away and then killed a highly trained federal agent he happened on.
“Brian Gene Nichols (born December 10, 1971) is known for his escape and killing spree in the Fulton County courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia on March 11, 2005. Nichols was on trial for rape when he escaped from custody and murdered the judge presiding over his trial, a court reporter, a Sheriff’s Deputy, and later a Federal agent. A large-scale manhunt was launched in metro-Atlanta and Nichols was taken into custody 26 hours later. The prosecution charged him with committing 54 crimes during the escape and he was found guilty on all counts on November 7, 2008.”
ogliberal
Wasn’t one of the guys who tackled Loughner – retired military dude – packing heat? He didn’t pull out his piece. And that’s probably because a) as a former military officer, he’s a responsible gun owner, b) he probably reckoned – correctly – that if he start firing off rounds rather than waiting for the opportunity to take this guy down physically that there would have been a lot more dead bodies, and c) that shit happened so fast that even a former military officer didn’t have the time to take out his gun and take out Loughner. Probably a combination of all three.
These assholes seriously want us all to be living in Tombstone (Pima Country, AZ), don’t they? And Ke-rist, even the Earp brothers knew it was nuts to let a bunch of regular citizens walk around with sidearms. (well, at least that’s what the movies told me)
Martin
@David Fud: Oh, back of the head? Forehead was exit wound?
Yeah, even more likely that being armed and trained would have helped.
Shit, AZ is an unlicensed open-carry state. I thought that alone was supposed to discourage these events because you should assume that everyone has a gun on them? This *is* the deterrent condition. Didn’t deter, did it?
ogliberal
@ogliberal: Actually, I know why the dude didn’t take out his weapon and blow Loughner away. He was at a Democratic congresswoman’s meet and greet. That means he was probably a pussy liberal.
Cain
@Shade Tail:
Imagine this scenario, one of hte open carry guy is a black man, and he’s shooting at the original shooter… how many people will shoot the black man?
cain
beltane
I’d like to find a way to get the NRA to stop robocalling my house. They have been doing it every day for the past couple of months. It does not stop and there is no live person to scream at. I am really starting to hate this organization.
stuckinred
@ogliberal: Nope, he is 74 and his wife made him give up his 38 21 years ago. He just choked the motherfucker.
Mike in NC
As a gun owner, I think these clowns are knuckle-dragging scum.
Ross Hershberger
@Martin:
Not good enough for them. It’s not good enough until every man woman and child is required by law to be armed to the teeth at all times. Then the gun lobby will get to work on getting everyone a howitzer.
Left Coast Tom
I had a snarky reply in mind, thought it through for a few seconds, and realized it wouldn’t work within the present context (it had to do with moving the border fence to I-40…the quick realization was the good Rep. Giffords was doing well south of that line on a map).
One wonders what prevents those “damn that’s stupid” synapses from firing for folks such as this.
wazmo
When AZCDL’s idea that “Requiring gun owners to verify a buyer’s citizenship when selling a gun privately” is bad, yet when many of the same political sphere decry about the government seal the borders makes me wonder just what their thought processes are.
They problably subscribe to the Zardoz philospophy: “The gun is good, the penis is evil.”
Cain
@ogliberal:
Too much fantasy tv. In any tragedy you hear a lot of people who say that things just happened really fast. It isn’t like a TV where there is some kind of built up. You’re at an event where nobody knows there will be a shooter. Packing heat would only create more confusion. Especially if you don’t know who shot only the fact that people are running out screaming after a large series of POP POP POP..
morons.
cain
The Dangerman
I have a better idea; how about we tax the living shit out of bullets and 9mm’s…
…and take the revenue to give trained Secret Service protection to every Congressperson.
Edit: If everyone is packing, how do you separate the Good Guys from the Bad Guys; apparently, Colonel Badger tackled the Bad Guy Saturday, knocking the weapon out of the shooter’s hand, where it was picked up by an innocent. Badger told the innocent to drop the weapon before he got his innocent ass shot off by an unknowing Authority.
Elisabeth
@Martin:
Fwiw, Dr. Rhee, at one of the pressers, said he was of the opinion she was shot back to front.
jwb
@Ross Hershberger: And it won’t end until everyone has a personal nuclear arsenal. I hear taking out moose with a thermonuclear device makes good sport.
Martin
@The Dangerman: Chris Rock: Bullets should cost a 5000 dollars each.
TR
@The Dangerman:
Chris Rock had pretty much the same suggestion.
KG
@ogliberal: Those damn Earp boys were nothing but liberal, nanny-statist, gun control nuts who were bound and determined to destroy Arizona, the West, and America!
/snark (if not blatantly obvious)
Villago Delenda Est
Probably. These guys know as much about artillery gunnery as they do actual small arms firefights.
David Fud
@Martin: It has been widely reported that way. I’m going to assume it is correct, though I guess there could still be some lack of clarity on that point.
Either way, I don’t really want to live in a place where you have to literally have eyes in the back of your head to keep from being shot. Deterrence is crap.
MikeJ
@Cain: Exactly. When the first person pulls a gun to fire at the shooter, how does the second person to draw know who to shoot at?
I wonder how many of these people have ever actually been some place where people were being shot at? Everybody thinks they know how they would react. I’d be shocked if 10% of them knew what the fuck was happening before it was over.
beltane
@Ross Hershberger: Ugh. It sounds like these people want to create a police state where every citizen/prisoner is required to be a member of the secret police. I’m just not seeing the freedom in that.
Bubblegum Tate
@KG:
When you have been pwned by Tweety, you have indeed been uber-pwned.
JCT
@Martin: Yup — she was shot from behind, exit wound was above her left eye. So I guess if she was armed and wearing her super-keeno behind-her-head video glasses she could have drawn her gun and blown the guy away.
As I commented earlier today — these Rambo guys are completely ridiculous. The guy walked up behind her, pulled out a gun and shot her, the judge, her aide and several other people in close proximity in the blink of an eye — these are most of the folks who died. One of these super-studs could have been sitting there playing with their big guns in their fucking laps and wouldn’t have had time to do anything (except probably wet themselves). This is not like a video game.
Oh, and hey — let me get this straight. The wingnuts are running around saying the guy is a total crazy whacko. Fine. So said whacko is supposed to have enough connection to reality to be *deterred* by the fact that someone would be packing? If one isn’t “deterred” in a state that sells guns to virtually anyone and lets them conceal them without a permit — then this is all nuts.
Speaking of nuts, why am I looking for consistency of thought from far-right nutjobs?
sukabi
@Cain: in arizona, or any other southern state, all of them… rest of the states he’d stand a 10% chance of coming out only wounded.
alwhite
Yes! It would have been soooooooooooo much better to have 20-30 untrained/semi-trained panicked ‘Dirty Harrys’ laying down suppressive fire. The list of victims could have been so much more impressive & there is a better than 50/50 chance one or more of the additional dead would have been the original shooter.
Peter
That is disgusting on at least eight different levels. Not least of which is that Giffords isn’t actually dead, at least not yet. More than a little too soon to be naming bills in her memory!
Ross Hershberger
Where do they get the idea that arming everyone will make us all safer? Not from the cops. Find me a cop who thinks things would be better with more concealable weapons floating around.
KG
@jwb: no way the energy companies would allow us to build our own nuclear reactors to enrich uranium with… we might decide not to pay them too much for electricity.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cain:
Well, if Jack Bauer is in the neighborhood, you know something’s up. Because 24 is a documentary, you know.
One of things I noticed early on in my military career is that the actual sound of rounds being discharged is NOTHING like what you see in movies and on TV. In fact, there is perhaps no greater putdown of a soldier than to call him out for acting like John Wayne.
Lesley
Apparently there were people in the crowd “carrying” but their guns were not used, and the people who came to the aid of the fallen were all unarmed. So go figure.
KG
@Ross Hershberger: there’s been some studies, don’t know how reliable they are, that have shown declines in crime when concealed carry laws are passed. Not sure about causation/correlation issues either. But I’ve seen them, mostly in the 90s.
MikeJ
@jwb: I’ve mentioned personal nukes to gun fans and they invariably say, “don’t be stupid.” None of them have been able to come up with a coherent line to draw.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: They are in the same conference. Neither wins many games. Of course, playing against the Bond Villain School of Engineer and Death Trap Design gives them that one easy win a year.
TR
@Villago Delenda Est:
According to his comments on torture, Antonin Scalia thinks so.
Leadpipe
There was a citizen carrying a sidearm in the Walgreens next door. When he hurried to help he said he took his gun off safety and was ready to shoot until he saw it was under control. My thought was if he’d come out shooting who would know whose side he was on?
gwangung
@MikeJ:
Special Forces, maybe.
Typical civilians? Boy, you’re wayyyyyyy optimistic….
danimal
Remember, behind all the pro-gun propaganda is the money of a gun and ammo manufacturer looking to increase market share. It’s not always ideology.
JPL
@MikeJ: His statement should be highlighted on all blogs. ABC carried his statement but for some reason I don’t see this getting a lot of attention.
Could it be that it’s more difficult for the right to attack an astronaut who is on assignment at the Intl. Space Station.
asiangrrlMN
I’ve been posting the Chris Rock video like mad. Funny, but it also makes sense. And, shit like this just makes me shake my head and think that there’s no way to turn back the gun tide.
lacp
Christ. He’s talking about “deterring” a guy who thinks the government is controlling his mind through fucking grammar. You’d be better off throwing down with Strunk and White than Smith and Wesson.
beltane
@Ross Hershberger: The next most heavily armed country in the world after the US is Yemen, not known to be a hotbed of safety or freedom.
azlib
@handy:
Exactly. These people are so stupid. How do you separate the good guys from the bad guys? Anyone who has ever been in a real firefight knows it is extremely difficult to tell your side from the other side in the confusion of the moment. That is why the military has strict engagement rules. When you have a bunch of people armed with lethal weapons, it is very important they are all on the same training and discipline page.
KG
@danimal: follow the money. It’s usually about profit more than ideology. Like 99.9999999999% of the time.
Omnes Omnibus
@lacp:
One of the first truly funny lines to come from this atrocity.
handy
@lacp:
Subjunctive mood, bitchez! Puh-pow!
gwangung
@azlib:
Same page, period. They should be coordinated and in communication with each other. It’s just common sense. (And it’s not going to happen with a random assortment of citizens).
stuckinred
@Leadpipe: That was also the case with the people that subdued the fucker. The Col grabbed his left hand and when he got tackled he lost the gun on the deck. A guy picked it up and the Col told him to put it on the ground NOW lest he get drilled.
Quiddity
@Mark S.: Heller is engaging in “at-the-movies thinking”, which is totally unrelated to reality.
jwb
@MikeJ: Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried the radioactive meat.
beltane
@gwangung: Perhaps this is why the 2nd Amendment speaks of “well-regulated militias” and not “random lunatics running amok with high-power weapons”.
TR
@lacp:
Heh, that made me laugh. Thanks. I needed that.
asiangrrlMN
@lacp: Grammar nerds represent! Thanks for the laugh.
jwb
@MikeJ: In the movies, the good guys always know who to shoot. And in the video games, what’s a dead innocent bystander except maybe 5 points off your score.
Elisabeth
@lacp:
lmao
Ross Hershberger
I’m reading Weigel’s Slate piece on this and it’s pretty good. The gun rights advocate says
Ignoring the fact that MANY PEOPLE ARE JUST THAT STUPID.
General Stuck
I don’t know exactly what could have prevented this tragedy, because we live in a violent society, and have always, though at times it certainly ratchets up. Like recently.
Congresswoman Giffords was known to be at higher risk from previous incidents, and while US Marshal protection may not be practical given the large number of reps, there should have always been at least one local cop present with her at all of her public events, imo. And, I don’t think it is too early to extend the same kind of violent threat legal protections afforded the president, to members of congress. And for someone to keep track of such individuals, at the very least. And someone be able to recognize them, hopefully, when they show up at pol events.
And I agree with Ezra in his Double Down on Democracy post today. We shouldn’t pull back in fear from interactive democracy.
These measures might have prevented this terrible thing, though maybe not. But at least there would be the possibility of it being stopped, or mitigated. I am just glad I don’t live in AZ, though it’s only a few miles away. A completely different world regarding politics in NM, and about every other way as well.
handy
@stuckinred:
Pretty much the only scenario I can imagine if we agreed everyone needed to be armed and ready at largish gatherings where people generally don’t know each other is, once things start jumping off, everyone not pissing all over themselves would start shooting, and everyone would be a target.
hamletta
And let’s not forget that Loughner apparently intended to die, whether by cop or his own hand.
The first thing that jumped out at me from his YouTube page was that his little bio blurbs were written in the past tense.
Knowing that others were packing heat wouldn’t have been an issue for him.
Uriel
But Anne, as any good member of the NRA can tell you:
It can never be to soon for second amendment solutions- only too late.
(/snark, btw. As I re-read it, it sounds far too close to something you’d actually read on a series hand-painted signs while driving through the hinterlands to just assume that’s obvious. All it lacks is the prerequisite poor rhyming scheme and a clumsy sing song meter .)
Leadpipe
@stuckinred: Pretty clear thinking.
El Cid
I’m thinking Republicans and 2nd Amendmentists would start to think a bit longer about this idea when they realize that it would mean that black & Latino Congressional representatives and their staff would carry guns & ammo too.
jwb
@KG: Yes, I fear the only line that will stop the NRA is when the interests of the gun manufacturers come into serious conflict with the interests of another major industry. How about a fully armed fighter jet with smart bombs? That would be pretty cool and also make a most excellent weapon for hunting moose.
Jager V. Wilfork
These silly bastards think a couple of hours a month on a firing range somehow equips them to handle a gun in a fire fight. Special Ops guys fire thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds at all kinds of targets in all kinds of situations during training and constantly practice with hand and long guns. They will tell you they are not always on target, they will also tell you it ain’t anything like the movies.
I was in Phoenix last week and noticed a guy at lunch in Scottsdale carrying a Glock in a holster, nicely dressed, mild looking guy, Arpaio must have him scared to death.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uriel: I’ve seen those on I-74 in downstate Illinois. Makes me glad I have a reliable car and a full tank of gas as I drive by.
jl
That is one bad idea. But then, I am a liberal.
I cannot find the link at TPM now, but Heath Shuler has announced that he will be packing heat when he goes to community meetings. A GOP House member has said he will too.
Martin
@Ross Hershberger: And that most banks have armed guards in them, so…
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Heads will asplode! And, hey, why not have Obama carry, too? That would really rile things up. (That was a sarcastic suggestion to anyone who isn’t sure.)
hamletta
@General Stuck: IIRC, local law enforcement was aware of the previous threats, and had been notified of the event.
And in this particular case, I don’t think it would have mattered.
Calouste
There were four (4) trained, armed police officers shot near Seattle last year. One of them managed to get a shot back in, but all the police officers died.
You’d think that would have put an end to the idea that more guns would prevent deaths or would be a deterent. The killer came up to 4 people he knew were carrying guns and killed them all.
Would-be killers are not deterred by guns because they think they will win anyway, and in the typical mass shooting, they don’t care whether they survive or not.
AxelFoley
@stuckinred:
I wonder if folks were concerned about his mental facilities…
Oh, that’s right, Brian Nichols was a black dude in custody for rape, then escaped killing a judge, deputy and fed. I bet no one wondered if he was mentally ill.
Martin
@jl: Huzzah! So if Rep Giffords had a sidearm the assailant could have walked up and grabbed hers from behind and then shot everyone with her gun!
beltane
@jl: Great. Now the display of wounded, insecure American masculinity will be in full force.
jl
This is cute:
Tea Party Express Fundraises Off Giffords Shooting: ‘Tea Party Won’t Be Silenced’
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/tea-party-express-fundraises-off-giffords-shooting-tea-party-wont-be-silenced.php?ref=fpb
At first I thought it might be a fundraiser for the victims, but it turns out it is fundraiser for themselves, to ward off evil liberal slurs.
Funny, I do not remember Sheriff Dupnik, or anyone else in the initial aftermath of the shootings mention the words ‘tea party’.
But people did mention incitements to violence as a political solution, and extremist rhetoric. I guess the Tea Peoples knew who they are talking about right away without any names being used, and viewed that as a slanderous attack, and an opportunity to raise some dough.
Odd and scary people, IMHO.
ogliberal
@MikeJ: In any war aren’t an insane number of people killed by friendly fire? These people are killed by people on their own side who are highly trained to use weapons. Not because our soldiers don’t know how to use their weapons but because when the shit hits the fan and all hell breaks loose, it’s hard to be a sharpshooter or to even know what the fuck is going on. I don’t know what these folks envision – Dennis Kuncinich getting in a sniper stance and taking out a would-be assassin?
Leadpipe
@General Stuck: Monitoring lunatics can only be done if Muslim lunatics are to be spied upon. It’s right there in the patriot act.
General Stuck
@hamletta:
Probly not, at least with the initial shooting of CW Giffords, but an armed cop nearby may have ended it before so many others were shot. And it may have caused JL to have aborted his plans. As it was, there was nothing to stop him, or possibly stop him.
hamletta
I know two people who have concealed-carry permits: my 70-something dad, and my visually impaired co-worker.
As much as I love them both, I don’t think I want either of them “protecting” me. They’re more likely to get themselves hurt, and that would make me very sad.
lacp
@jl: Did you mean “odd and scary” as “odd and scary,” or were you trying to find a polite way of saying “worthless pieces of shit?”
Ross Hershberger
@Calouste:
Precisely the point I made above. Gun rights advocates talk of deterrence as though it’s absolute. The threat of death only works on someone who’s afraid to die.
General Stuck
@hamletta:
I believe AZ is one of three states that do not require a conceal carry permit so anyone can conceal a firearm. One of the other two is Vermont, of all states.
WarMunchkin
Obviously, the solution is to hold constituent meetings in Second Life.
man, we suck as a society don’t we
beltane
@hamletta: A visually impaired coworker? Dear God, just the thought of a visually impaired person with a concealed carry permit is enough to make one afraid to go out in public.
Omnes Omnibus
@ogliberal: Everyone of them is Bruce Willis in Die Hard in his own mind. Except for the fact the Die Hard is fiction, Willis’s character is a well trained and experienced cop, Willis’s character gets hurt (a lot), and it is fucking fiction.
JimK
Anyone can conceal a firearm.
ogliberal
@Omnes Omnibus: Yippe ki yay, motherfucker!
Also, Wolverines!
jl
@lacp: ‘odd and scary’ was a polite way of saying they are crazy bullies.
Leadpipe
@jl:
On Fox, James Rosen reported that Move-on used Gifford’s name in an e-mail to raise money. I checked my inbox and found two missives from Move-On since this tragedy. One was a link to Facebook the other a petition. Could Rosen be mistaken?
handy
@Leadpipe:
BOTH SIDES DO IT!
asiangrrlMN
@ogliberal: Mmmmm, Alan Rickman. Hey, I have to go to my happy place once in awhile, or this stuff would be overwhelming.
KG
@Leadpipe: mistaken? no, lying… probably.
Omnes Omnibus
@Leadpipe: Could he be mistaken? Yes.
Is it likely that he is mistaken? Yes.
Is he actually mistaken? I don’t know.
PurpleGirl
@JPL: Her husband’s next mission is in April, I believe. The Kelly currently at the ISS is the brother-in-law.
RSA
__
Do you imagine he asked the families of Giffords or Zimmerman for their approval? That would require a modicum of sensitivity, I’d guess, so no.
different church-lady
Clearly if that nine year old child had a gun she’d be alive today.
It’s just like cutting taxes: more guns are the answer to everything. Including too many guns.
Davis X. Machina
@Joseph Nobles:
Been looking for a way to describe this phenomenon…. nicely done. Filleting the First Amendment, as per Rep. Brady’s bill, is a similar response.
hamletta
@beltane: He wasn’t impaired when he got it, obvs. But he’s had retinal surgery since then, as a result of his diabetes, and as far as I know, he still has the permit.
I don’t know how often the permits are renewed, and what, if any, re-certification is involved, but still.
The guy wears flippy magnifiers on his glasses in order to see his already large-type computer monitor, and he’s not supposed to drive after dark, but he still has the permit, AFAIK.
MikeJ
@beltane:
Ever listen to the first few minutes of David Sedaris’ “Six to Eight Black Men”? He talks about gun laws:
jl
@Leadpipe: I don’t know. I have not been a fan of Move On for awhile and do not receive their stuff. If some one can find information on what Move On is doing, post it.
If they are trying to capitalize on the shooting to raise money in the same self righteous and self interested way that the Teabaggers are, I would think that was a crummy and ill advised thing too.
Uriel
@Omnes Omnibus: I disagree. If you read gun boards, forums and such you quickly realize- in their minds, John McCain was a fudd compared to their finely honed skills. He had to resort to hiding and running away and shit.
If he was even just mediocre, he would have boldly walked in to the room with the hostages, used his patented super secret fastdraw technique (.02sec draw-to-fire time) to put bullet through Hans Grubber pupil, (for greater penetration into the central nervous system,) then effortlessly serpentined around the room taking expert advantage of existing cover- through his rigorous habits of 360 situational awareness- killing terrorists on the run. This would have taken 3 minutes, not a hostage would have been wounded, and the rest of the 1hour and 57 minutes of the film would have been dedicated to McCain making love to not only his estranged wife, but every thankful, heaving bosomed woman in the room, as well as any female cops that showed up for the emergency call. The men would watch adoringly while spit-shining his 4×4.
I wish I was kidding.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: In my admittedly cursory glance at moveon.org, I found a petition to end the rhetoric, but no donation-solicitation attempts. Again, I didn’t dig very hard, but no attempts to capitalize on the tragedy is on the front page.
@Uriel: I had to highlight this:
(emphasis mine). Heh.
Oh, and McClane never could have killed Gruber for real. NEVER. Bah.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: I received one email from them since the shootings. I asked that I view and sign a petition. There no mention of donations of fundraising in it. I can copy and paste it if people want, but I am not tech savvy enough to strip out identifying info and post it as a link.
jl
Looks like we liberals are the old fashioned conservatives now.
There is no constitutional ‘second amendment remedy’. I do not understand why none of the oh so very smart bloviators on the TV observe that this is the traditional view from the old dead white guys we call the Framers.
I think Madison summed it up nicely:
“But whilst the Constitutional compact remains undissolved, it must be executed according to the forms and provisions specified in the compact. It must not be forgotten, that compact, express or implied is the vital principle of free Governments as contradistinguished from Governments not free; and that a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism.”
Madison to Daniel Webster, March 15, 1830.
I can’t find the link now, but Madison observed someplace that anybody has the right to revolution if they feel intolerably oppressed. But revolution is a ‘natural right’ not a Constitutional right, and the revolutionaries have to, well, calculate carefully whether a ‘second amendment remedy’ is worth it (as opposed civil disobedience or passive resistance), and take their chances.
I think that is about right.
Looks to me like what these extremists have in mind is anarchy.
Leadpipe
@jl: Thats just it. I’m a member and nobody asked me for money and they are definitely not shy about asking for money.
Ms.B
Hmm, so how long will it take until an armed and anxious congressperson(R) draws and fires at what he “assumes” is a threatening constituent just a heading on up to ask a question?
“Sir….”
Bang!
jl
@Omnes Omnibus:
I hope that is true. I stopped working for Move On because I felt they were becoming too strident and were ineffective. But I would hate to think they stooped as low as the Tea Peoples.
General Stuck
@jl:
Unfortunately, we now have a rather sizable minority of our citizenry that defines intolerably oppressed as losing an election. How can anyone reason with such people?
Cacti
Gabrielle Giffords is a gun owner and enthusiast. And it didn’t do one damn thing to protect her. Nobody can be aware of everything that’s going on around them.
Some pols may decide to get a new six shooter as a knee jerk reaction, but what’s more likely to happen is, the end of meet and greets, townhalls, etc., or any Congressman/woman travelling without a team of menacing bodyguards.
jl
@Ms.B: Unfortunately, I’ve seen quite a few interviews where the Congressperson looks like they would like to do that.
It would make for some dramatic youtubes. No more Congresscritters hiding behind aisles in a convenience store. They would just fire off a few warning shots.
Viva BrisVegas
OT, but just to show that misery knows no borders, my state of Queensland is pretty much underwater. We’ve exceeded our 40 days and 40 nights by a pretty wide margin and more rain is expected.
The town of Toowoomba, about 80 miles west of Brisbane, was hit by flash floods last night, so far 8 dead and more than 70 missing. The Brisbane River has topped its banks and parts of the city is flooding as I write, whether it will reach the record 1974 levels is an open question. The main dam on the Brisbane River has reached 154% capacity and is releasing 170 gigalitres per day.
This is on top of the floods in the north of the state last week, which left an area larger than Texas underwater.
So on the whole things are wet and getting wetter.
ogliberal
@Uriel: And hell, McLane was not only a fudd, he was dealing with idiotic terrorists/common (sorry, exceptional) thieves who didn’t even understand their own mother tongue. For the love of pete, with just a few years of high school German under my belt, even I know what “Schiess den Fenster” means.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uriel: Why am I not surprised? Tiny-dicked ass-munches.*
(*) To be fair, it is not a matter of size per se, rather it is their sense of inadequacy over their perception of it that leads to a lot of the posturing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Viva BrisVegas: Jesus.
jl
@General Stuck: Well, life is life, and it is what it is. If a minority feels intolerably oppressed by an election, and they want to take their chances (after calculating rather poorly and being crushed after getting some people killed), I imagine, that would be a tragic episode in the nation’s history.
But it is dispiriting to see their insane ideas being accepted, it seems, among our ignorant and cowardly elites, through bulling and threats (Edit: and money).
Omnes Omnibus
@ogliberal: Shit the window?
gnomedad
@RSA:
Here’s an idea: the “Teddy Kennedy – Martin Luther King Jr. Repeal the Job-Killing Health-Care Takeover Act”.
Snark aside, the only words that come to mind are “how dare they?”
asiangrrlMN
@Viva BrisVegas: Holy crap. So sorry to hear that. Yikes.
ogliberal
@Ms.B: If Heath Shuler shoots as well as he played QB…
Davis X. Machina
@jl:
That’s Caesar’s Rubicon choice. You put yourself outside the law. You take your chances. The Constitution is the king in this situation, in the sense of “If you come at the king, you’d best not miss.” Jeff. Davis & Co. missed. Caesar didn’t.
Cacti
@Leadpipe:
Well duh.
Everyone would instinctively know that if a second unknown shooter started blasting, it would be a good guy coming to take down the bad guy.
You can always tell who the good guy is, because he wears a white hat. The bad guy wears the black hat.
Have you never seen any westerns?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Um, the US Army wears black berets
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: I like the color black better than the color white, anyway.
gnomedad
Maybe this is what they’re thinking.
Suffern ACE
I am just wondering what took them so long. If I remember right, the gun rights crusader students were holding a press conference the afternoon of the Virginia Tech shooting to makes these kinds of claims against the school’s anti-weapon policies.
Has Mark Steyn shamlessly questioned the fortitude of the people in the crowd yet, as he questioned the masculinity of the Tech students the day after that shooting? Did the men in the crowd perform to his satisfaction this time? I guess the fact that the shooter is still alive should give Ann Coulter an opportunity to weigh in about the liberal passivity of it all and mock the mourners two days after the shooting.
The right has grown soft if you ask me.
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN: Isn’t white a traditional Chinese color of mourning?
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, it is. In Taiwanese tradition as well. But, I’m just odd (like you didn’t know that). My passion for black is not cultural.
hamletta
@Viva BrisVegas: Oh, I’m so sorry.
I live in Viva Nashvegas, and we went through a 100-year flood back in May. It’s bad and dangerous.
Several of my friends lost their homes, one when her house floated off its foundation and set off a gas leak.
Be prepared for a long recovery. I work near the Opryland Hotel, and their parent corporation has more money than God. It’s still all dark over there. It’s spooky.
Stay safe, and look out for your neighbors.
AxelFoley
@hamletta:
lolwut? Visually impaired and can carry a gun? LOL
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN: Well, white berets would look silly anyway.
Also too: You, odd?
Keith G
@Calouste:
Additionally, aren’t most people who are shot in this country attacked by someone whom they personally know? To be fully protected by a deterrent effect, all members of a family would have to come to the dinner table packing heat.
Leadpipe
@Cacti: The Rifleman comes to mind. But he had a rifle and a white hat.
Omnes Omnibus
@Keith G: Thanksgiving dinners could end up looking like the final scene in the Wild Bunch.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well now they’ve done gone and confused everything.
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, they would. And, I know. I seem so normal, and yet, I’m so not! Shocking!
@Keith G: Yes. Approximately seventy percent of murders are by someone known to the victim.
Ross Hershberger
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, nice going. Another classic spoilered. Guess I’ll take that title out of the queue…
hamletta
@Keith G: That is so true.
When I used to get the paper and read the police blotter, it was all intra-family violence: brothers/cousins get to drinkin’, get into a fight over some call in a UT game; someone whips out a gun.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ross Hershberger:Or you could use it to look forward to T-day. I guess it depends on how you feel about family centered holidays.
mclaren
This, I like. Whenever a citizen approaches, the congressperson should open fire. Preferably with an automatic weapon.
In fact, we should go one better: the congressperson can go around armed with a high-powered sniper rifle, and if s/he sees a citizen anywhere, shoot to kill.
It’s the only way to keep our congresspeople safe.
Chris
Hm, why does that sound familiar? Oh, right, because every fucking time some jerkoff shoots a bunch of people, we hear, “If only they’d been in a state with laws that let everyone carry guns everywhere, maybe someone could have stopped the shooter.” If there was any intellectual integrity on the right, among the gun nuts and wackos, this would shut them up. But, no such luck.
I don’t know if this has been raised up-thread or not. I don’t care. It’s worth repeating: Heller, you stupid fucking sonofabitch, you’re full of shit, your movement is full of sociopaths and morons who don’t understand that democracy and lethal intimidation aren’t two great tastes that taste great together, and the fact that this strikes you as an opportunity to defend guns suggests that your identity as an “American” is exclusively a function of your mother’s choice to birth you here, rather than reflecting any awareness of what it means to live in a civil society and have a system of government with laws and customs instead of democracy-by-firepower-and-shouting.
Ms.B
God, I’m lame. Still don’t know how to do links here, although it’s obvious. Anyway, there’s a diary up on GOS with Joe S, one of the heroes of Saturday, interviewed by Ed Schultz.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/10/935249/-I-almost-shot-the-man-holding-the-gun.-%28update%29
Most relevant part:
If this posts as anything but gobblygook, I’ll be grateful to the Intertube gods.
Ross Hershberger
@Omnes Omnibus:
Worst thing that ever happened at our house on T-day was my little sister turning off the TV when our Dallas fan aunt wouldn’t stop hollering about defense.
World’s longest tense silence, with cutlery being counted by peripheral vision.
handy
@mclaren:
Freedom isn’t free, it costs folks like you and me.
Suffern ACE
@Chris: Yep. Every time. Doesn’t matter if it is a bunch of women in the gym, college students in a classroom, grade school children in classroms, high school students in classrooms, postal workers, bottling plant employees, kids in day care centers, Congressmen in the capitol building, museum guards, people at unitarian churches, presidents in the white house…always the same response. Run a bunch of crap about how liberals are politicizing the event (or have made us weaklings) so that you can run your own culture war salvos and move your own bills (that won’t be called “political” moves.)
Violet
@handy:
Freedom costs a buck ‘o five.
Mnemosyne
@Leadpipe:
Could they have provided the links to the two places where you can make a donation in honor of Gabrielle Giffords? I wouldn’t exactly call that fundraising.
Those links, BTW:
http://communityfoodbank.com/
http://www.redcrossarizona.org/site/PageServer
General Stuck
If this isn’t some kind of miracle, it should be. One indestructable lady.
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck: Very good news.
Leadpipe
@Mnemosyne: I wouldn’t exactly call Fox news. I know I wasn’t solicited, so far, I’ve found no other references besides Fox. Huh? Go figure
suzanne
@General Stuck: Hardcore. I’ve admired her for a long time.
I know she’s not likely to return to public life after this (even if, by some miracle, she completely recovers), and I can’t say I’d do any different. That is a huge loss for us Arizona Dems.
Leadpipe
@Mnemosyne: I wouldn’t exactly call Fox news. I know I wasn’t solicited, so far no one else at this thread has said they were. So perhaps a Fox news commentator made it up. Nah… Impossible.
aliasofwestgate
@Leadpipe:
Have Gun, Will Travel. Paladin wore a white hat to speak with people before he took a job. He wore a black hat while he was out in the field, on business.
Now who’s the bad guy again? In that show? it never stayed consistent on the white hat/black hat thing for the antagonists, EVER. Only Paladin’s colors when in the field, or at ‘home base’. I think that would make the current GOP’s heads go asplody. Where it fit in just fine in the 50s when that show was airing. Fictional yes, but slightly less cut and dried. Definitely wasn’t big on the gun play either.
The show is twice my age, and its still damned cool.
Ross Hershberger
@Viva BrisVegas:
This will be getting around. Here’s a video of a stream going over the banks and taking most of the cars in a parking lot with it.
Lysana
There actually is a standard by which the US Supreme Court has judged what qualifies as something an individual citizen (right of the people/unorganized militia via Article I Section 9) may own as arms under the right to bear. The case that so many misinterpret as saying there is no individual RKBA actually determined the man in question wasn’t entitled to carry a sawed-off shotgun under the 2nd Amendment because it doesn’t qualify as what members of the organized militia (Armed Forces) get issued for standard arms. So the “what about tactical nukes” argument is bullshit unless and until they start using ICBMs in basic training.
Lysana
Also, if you want safer gun owners, don’t even begin to talk about overcharging for bullets. Unless you plan to find other ways for hunters to keep the deer and other animal populations down, anyway. Seriously, I HATE when most liberals go off on gun issues. So many of you are proud of being ignorant on this issue because you think knowing anything about guns makes you a redneck. Or that “right of the people” changes meaning between amendments.
If you’ll excuse me, my pagan progressive bisexual gun-owning keister needs to sit somewhere my blood pressure won’t go up any further.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN:
This is the way an armed Obama would be seen by our nation’s conservatives and their constituency.
(This, of course, is Sasha or Malia.)
This is what the same would think if they imagine black & Latino elected leaders and their staff getting ready to receive firearm training.
Here is what it would look like as they return to the Capitol. And here, of course, are the staffers returning to their offices.
Here is how Fox News would show it if their news website had a more retro style.
This would be what Real Americans would see when the Congressional Black Congress made a press announcement about the new train and carry policy for elected leaders and staff.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN:
Forgot the moderation beast for too many links. In pieces, then…
This is the way an armed Obama would be seen by our nation’s conservatives and their constituency.
El Cid
(This, of course, would be Sasha or Malia.)
El Cid
This is what the same would think if they imagine black & Latino elected leaders and their staff getting ready to receive firearm training.
El Cid
Here is what they would see as the newly trained and armed black & Latino officials returned to the Capitol. And here, of course, are their staffers returning to their offices.
piratedan
@AxelFoley: is this where we’re supposed to insert our potential Dick Cheney hunting partners in poor taste joke or is this too soon? Damn that’s insensitive of me sorry everyone
El Cid
Here is how Fox News would show it if their news website had a more retro style.
This would be what Real Americans would see when the Congressional Black Congress made a press announcement about the new train and carry policy for elected leaders and staff.
El Cid
@piratedan:
Depends on whether or not any shooting victim apologizes to the shooter for all the trouble they caused by getting in the way of the shotgun pellets.
eemom
@Lysana:
pssst. You’re an idiot. On all counts of your comment.
I’d tear you a new asshole, but I’m not sure you have enough sense to have a functional asshole in the first place.
How’s that for your progressive pagan blood pressure?
JBerardi
@El Cid:
So you don’t think it would change anything, then?
WarMunchkin
@General Stuck:
Wow. This lady is a gundam.
El Cid
@JBerardi: Well, a lot more agitated, given that this time Obama would actually have a weapon, rather than a scary aura of Kenyo-nesian Stalinism. They don’t like people who can shoot back, much less, you know, those people.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: You pretty much got it in one. Or two. Or five.
FYWP.
@eemom: Thanks for that. You were a lot kinder than I was going to be.
WereBear
Yep.
I feel they are really to melt down or blow up any minute; thus their obsession with external controls.
‘Cause they know they don’t have any.
russell
I gotta admit, there’s a part of me that thinks this is a great idea.
Shoot the fuck back! That’ll settle their nutjob hash.
Which is why it is a good thing that I am not king.
Jay in Oregon
@Cain:
Fixed. This is Arizona we’re talking about, after all…
Perfect Tommy
Someone should remind Heller that a well-trained squad of heavily armed bodyguards was unable to prevent the shootings of Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy. These folks really live in a fantasy world.
jinxtigr
This is why it’s simply not practical to avoid gun control- mechanisms to say ‘you are too crazy, too criminal, too spontaneous with needing this gun to have it CONVENIENTLY.’
So criminals will have guns. Big deal! That’s not a change, apparently. I’d rather criminals had guns than insurgent terrorists, because criminals want specific things, like a bank’s money. I have to count that as ‘less bad’ than wanting to slaughter political enemies or the target of imagined grievances- or the big grey area between those things.
You cannot have a ‘citizens will gun down bad guys’ scenario any more for two reasons: one, black people don’t get to be ‘citizens’ in this scenario. Two, it’s becoming obvious that adult white males with guns are the ones who’ll be out for MASS murder, so exactly what is so damn reassuring about a white male, ANY white male, whipping out a gun in such a situation? So only the ‘right’ people can be trusted with spontaneous deadly force, except those ones can’t be trusted either. Fine. Game over. I’m down with discussing what form of gun control is practical at this point, and removing them from spontaneous use in society.
I understand from a hunter friend here in Vermont that we have very lenient rules about gun control, but if you USE one in anger, you’re really, really fucked and you’re never getting out of jail again…
Jay in Oregon
@Perfect Tommy:
I’d also point out that the Secret Service aren’t trained to draw their weapons and start firing blindly in response, either.