Ed at Gin and Tacos:
Imagine yourself one of the small number of Americans who have political power – real power. Say you wanted to browbeat Americans into accepting some truly awful aspect of their lives without complaint. It would be in your interest to have this awful thing happen so regularly that people would become resigned to it, aided by saturation news coverage emphasizing that it is inevitable and nothing can be done about it. After a sufficient amount of time you would most likely achieve your goal; people will just shrug their shoulders, accept it as part of life, and go about their miserable days.
With our latest public spree killing at the Navy Yards in Washington, the NRA appears to have accomplished its goal at long last. They have achieved their dream of an America in which an armed gunman can murder 12 people in public and no one will give it a second thought. It isn’t shocking, it isn’t a cause for outrage. It’s just a thing that is going to happen a couple of times per year indefinitely because really, what can be done about it? Lacking an especially gruesome angle – in Newtown, for instance, the victims were all tiny children – we hardly even pay attention…
NYMag, early Wednesday:
On Wednesday and Thursday, just days after the shooting that killed twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard, supporters of the Newtown Action Alliance and Mayors Against Illegal Guns will hold rallies on Capitol Hill to continue their push for stricter gun control. If it seems like the events were organized unbelievably fast, that’s because they weren’t; the rallies were planned weeks in advance to mark the nine-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre. The mass shooting in D.C. is just a terrible coincidence, but Connecticut’s Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who will attend Wednesday’s event, predicted the tragedy might push Congress to reconsider new gun laws. “These kinds of mass shootings provide an impetus and momentum,” he explained. The muted reaction from his fellow lawmakers suggests that’s no longer the case…
A day after Senate buildings were locked down out of fear that the gunman was still on the loose, members of Congress said, essentially, that they don’t plan to even debate the issue this time around…
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader?
The new normal of tree fiddy gas should help to deter the poorer shooters.
kindness
Yea but not really. My feeling is those in Congress who support additional regulations understand they are powerless to get anything done in this Congress. I think that drives the lack of proposals more than apathy. And that is not the same as apathy.
We gotta elect better folks. How that is possible at the gerrymandered level we have in the various states now, I don’t know.
MattF
There’s also the recall votes in Colorado. If any politician was on the fence about guns, he/she/it has jumped.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
In other words, NRA has essentially won the debate, however fallaciously they managed it.
jl
There is a reason that the Constitution specified the right to bear arms as necessary for a completely unregulated and uncontrollable citizenry to shoot the place up at will to guard a free state. It’s right there in black and white, silly liberals:
” A completely unregulated mob of armed loons, being necessary for the false but comforting impression of security in a free State (if you don’t think about it too much) and resolution of random ‘issues’ that pop into anybody’s head with poor self control and random grievances of any kind, the right of the people to carry around any ordinance they please anyplace anywhere anytime, shall not be even questioned in any way, which would be treason.”
It says it right there in the Constitution.
CaseyL
If 20 little kids being gunned down didn’t change anything, then nothing will.
We knew that when the Newtown Sandy Hook shootings happened. So did the NRA, which is why it pulled out all the stops to defeat any Congressional action on gun control.
The NRA won; everyone else lost. And it will stay that way for the forseeable future.
feebog
Not really. The NRA initially wanted to recall every politician who voted for gun control in Colorado. They ended up with only two. Flipping those two seats did not change the leadership in the Colorado Senate. It did not repeal any of those laws. And I will predict right now that both of those seats will be back in Democratic hands after the 2014 elections.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@feebog:
It doesn’t matter how many they managed to recall if it still sends the same message of “SUPPORT FOR GUN CONTROL MEANS AMERICA HATES YOU AND WANTS YOU DEAD!”
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
Maybe 20 Republican Congresscritters being gunned down might make a difference. I also tend to think that 2 or 3 conservative Supreme Court justices being gunned down could make a really drastic difference, especially if it’s Obama appointing their replacements.
scav
Looks there are a few more cost savings to be wrung out of Michigan government using bootstrap policing and traffic-court measures: Two Men Dead In Michigan Road Rage Shootout, Police Say. Pair this with the waterway policing in Missouri earlier.
Haydnseek
@CaseyL: Yep, and don’t forget that these weren’t just any little kids. These were the little kids of rich white people. In present day America, you would think that might move the needle quite a bit, but no. Nothing changed. Oh, wait. I take that back. For weeks, every NRA shill and insane wingnut gun fetishist was given an open forum on every national media outlet to spew the worst kind of sick, twisted propaganda imaginable. They were rarely called on any of their bullshit, because after all, there are two sides to every story, blah blah blah. You win NRA. Game, set, and motherfucking match.
jl
At last, the Founders’ vision is beginning to be fulfilled, thanks to efforts of the NRA. The horrific veil of tyranny is slowly being lifted from our blessed land. An armed society is a polite society.
Two Men Dead In Michigan Road Rage Shootout, Police Say
CATHERINE THOMPSON, TPM Livewire
” Police said two men died Wednesday after a shootout allegedly motivated by road rage…
The initial police investigation showed [that two] Ionia, Mich. residents… pulled into a car wash parking lot after a confrontation on the road. They then exited their vehicles, drew handguns and exchanged fire, authorities said.
Police found both men at the scene with gunshot wounds, and the two were pronounced dead at an area hospital soon after, according to the newspaper.
Both men held concealed carry permits, according to police. ”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/two-men-dead-in-michigan-road-rage-shootout-police-say
CONGRATULATIONS!
You’ll be amazed at what you can get used to.
jl
@scav: Ha, you beat me to it.
Edit: Why did they wait to pull into a parking lot? Real men would have a shoot out driving down the road, like in the movies.
Jay in Oregon
@jl:
Two gun-wielding idiots with anger management issues take each other out without harming a single bystander?
http://watch4free.pl/upload/img/2012/09/watch4free-1346599466.jpg
cleek
Darwin’s having a two-for-one sale!
Frankensteinbeck
The NRA has very little to do with any of this – at least, the modern NRA. Way back when they convinced the GOP base that this was a liberal/conservative divide. We can’t do anything now because the crazy freakout reactionaries see it as denying liberals what they want. This is just one item on the giant teetering pile waiting for the nihilists to calm down or lose a tiny bit more power.
Gian
Wayne Lapierre is a bad guy with a gun
Mike in NC
A couple times per year? More like every other month.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the NY state AG (I think) was on MSNBC earlier giving the spiel about how “rank and file” NRA members support background checks, we can all be reasonable together, blah blah blah, then he actually went to “their legitimate concerns about being marginalized” and “laws being rammed down their throats”, he actually used that phrase, and we progressives need to stop condescending to these fine folks. Drove me nuts, and he’s a guy I’ve always had a high opinion of. But unlike Bloomberg, he needs vote outside of NYC limits and this indeed is central to my point…
Gun nuts vote. In every election. Until “we” learn that lesson, this is how it’s gonna be. I gather the vote in the CO recalls was very low, and I doubt if it would have made much of a difference if that election had happened after this latest shooting. Hell, those districts were practically in spitting distance of the Batman theater shooting..
schrodinger's cat
The sun eventually set on the British Empire, nothing lasts forever. I am in a philosophical mood because raven’s comment about the Ganesha festival prompted my latest blog post on the last day of the Ganesh festival.
johnny aquitard
Love this pic of gun nuts at starbucks in the WSJ.
They look exactly like I knew they would. White. Men. Middle age. Paunchy. Scared cause the world is full of dark boogeymen just waiting to do them some harm. I look at these guys and I think ‘chicken shits, every one of ’em’. And that fucking gadsen cum teabagger flag is the cherry on the gunnut sundae.
They’re so fearful, so resentful of the world around them. And so they demand to have their guns around them everywhere, whenever they want, and fuck you.
Seriously, one of those flags those could have a swastika on it, it would fit in perfectly.
What business would want a gang of unfriendly armed men with an axe to grind and giving off vibes of resentment and territorial behavior hanging out in the spaces one’s patrons will have to use to buy what they’re selling?
What customer wants to go to a place with a bunch of sulking armed losers hanging around with a chip on their shoulder?
I love it.
Please proceed, gun nutz!
MikeJ
@Mike in NC:
Two or three per month.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/mass-shootings-2013_n_3941889.html
scav
@jl: You’ve have identified a new, job-creatin, all-‘mercan rootin-tootin marketing opportunity! The Driving ‘n’ Firing Range! They just needed a place to practice so they could combine the two greatest of patriotic star-spangled hobbies! Throw in a Drive-through Tavern — The Pilot Pit Stop with Big Screen TVs for da Sportz — and it’s got it all.
MikeJ
@MikeJ: Although if you go to the Reddit list they cite as the basis for the map, there are 249 entries for this year.
http://www.reddit.com/r/GunsAreCool/wiki/2013massshootings
Betty Cracker
@CaseyL:
I think you’re right. Several years before the Columbine massacre, I was witness to a workplace shooting (four dead) and became something of a gun control activist and close observer of every fresh horror. The hope that this country would turn away from gun insanity was flogged out of me long before Newtown. But I’ll admit that Newtown was tragic enough to crack my cynicism; it made me wonder, maybe this?
Well, no, not even that, as it turns out. To paraphrase Steve M, it’s Wayne LaPierre’s world; we’re just sheltering in place in it.
schrodinger's cat
@johnny aquitard: I fail to understand the point they are making. Is it, I am a crazy person stay away from me?
johnny aquitard
@johnny aquitard: Man, white people of a certain age sure are shitting their pants these days. Got lots of fear. And it’s all in their heads. Woke up out of their white rural and suburban cocoons sometime in the last presidential election or two and thought, holy shit there’s more of Those People than there are of us! It’s supposed to be a White world, dammit. That’s the natural order of things. But now Those protein-fed urban-americans are everywhere! Arm yourselves!! Must carry a gun! Because they could be anywhere! Hell, there’s one in the White House, what more proof do you need?
johnny aquitard
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s what I’m reading from it, loud and clear.
jl
@scav: Throw in shoot outs at drive in movies, it could save the industry. People could argue about whether the shoot out on the screen or in the audience was better. If one of the shooters decides to pull away from the microphone stand, you have a destruction derby.
An American Renaissance!
Why do they hate America? I weep.
gogol's wife
@jl:
Brilliantly done — sad but true.
The Ancient Randonneur
@jl: Maybe the Darwin Awards will start a Second Amendment absolutist category?
Amir Khalid
Off-topic, but I wonder if this face-palm worthy move by John McCain has been front-paged here yet.
piratedan
perhaps when it’s a charity fundraiser at the yacht club, or at a Republican Party fundraiser maybe that will change things, but it’s never the 1%ers who get gunned down at these things, they’re out in the public and we know that the 1%ers avoid those locales as if they could be infected by the middle class or the poors. When it’s a corporate boardroom being taken down with automatic gunfire, then maybe we can have this conversation but as for now, it’s never anybody that THEY know, so THEY don’t care.
J
@Roger Moore: I don’t really mean this, but the situation is so terrible, the Republicans so loathsome, that I am tempted to reply to your comment “Maybe 20 Republican Congresscritters being gunned down might make a difference” with a bitter joke: “in that case I’d begin to look askance at gun control”.
Roger Moore
@The Ancient Randonneur:
I think they’re going to have to, if only to make sure somebody else has a chance of winning.
roc
@Frankensteinbeck: It has nothing to do with the *membership* of the NRA. The overwhelming majority of them also support the safety regulations proposed after Sandy Hook. It has everything to do with the NRA as a lobbying power and the congress critters who will do whatever the money says and then do whatever mental/philosophical/rhetorical dance is necessary to justify it.
Ksmiami
@piratedan: not true… My friend was a lead counsel when the Pettit Martin shootings happened so it does affect the 1 percenters too… I think we have to repeal the second amendment forget any gun control measures
scav
@roc: “nothing” is going a bit far. There are enough pauncy true-believers to sit at Starbucks and wander around farmers markets and stores draped in their loaded blankies to make it look superficially like a grass-roots operation.
Citizen_X
Oh, for fuck’s sake, let’s all just give up then, right?
Who thought this would be easy?
John O
You win some (gay marriage, women’s right to vote, national elections), you lose some (gun debate). This one is lost, lost, so lost.
Nothing will happen on this until there’s a gathering of Congressional children someplace and a bunch of them get mowed down by a poster child for the NRA.
piratedan
@Ksmiami: really? how many Congressmen did he own? sorry, that was crass and my statement a gross oversimplification of the real issue about who the gun manufacturers own and how they manipulate our elected officials.
Mikeyes
@feebog: And I will predict right now that both of those seats will be back in Democratic hands after the 2014 elections.
feebog,
The CO Springs seat will most likely remain in Republican hands. Sen Morse lost by 343 votes in a poor turnout of about 16,000 voters in the recall. But he also won his seat in a three way race that included a Libertarian candidate and that margin was also very small. CO Springs is in the heart of the religious right in Colorado and even though his district was minority Republican when he was voted it, it no longer is according to the Denver Post. (However, Senate District 11 was +19 for Obama in 2012 so you may be right.)
On the other hand, Pueblo is a Democratic city and that seat will return to them even though Sen Giron was voted out by a large majority.
jl
@Amir Khalid:
If only competent VSP white men like Daddy Wargrumps McCain were in charge, things would be different. And “Sen. McCain was goaded into this by Foreign Policy’s John Hudson” another competent VSP would be advising him.
We wouldn’t be humiliated / destroyed every day this inadequate blah / Super Dr. Evil sinister Muslin mastermind Obama!
I weep for my country.
gypsy howell
@Roger Moore:
You know the response in this case will be:
1) a HUGE increase in the security bubble around our congresscritters, at enormous expense to us taxpayers
2) a huge increase in security theatre aimed at us plain citizens, one that will put the TSA charade at our airports to shame
3) Gigantic super secret increase in the NSA budget to spy on us
4) Doubling down by the NRA
Comrade Dread
@Roger Moore:
No, it wouldn’t. They would eschew gun control in favor of barricades and armed soldiers at the Capitol building and making the public stop to get strip searched and rectal exams at various checkpoints near government buildings.
gypsy howell
@John O:
See my reply to Roger Moore at #45
Citizen_X
@johnny aquitard: What pic? There’s the video there, but it doesn’t show any such picture.
MikeJ
Outlaw metal detectors at the Capitol.
kindness
As with the lawyer joke, I’d say it’d be a good start…..
Gex
The problem with the idea of Congresscritters getting gunned down is it would be the wrong ones. The right wing base isn’t going to go nuts and take out Boehner or Cruz. They would eliminate anyone who would vote for gun restrictions.
John O
I stand on my point. This debate is OVER, for a generation or two at least, and nothing will change the trajectory of it until a bunch of Congresschildren get wiped out by a poster boy for the NRA.
I’m not being partisan at all here.
Jockey Full of Malbec
The Gun Problem is cultural, not political. So (IMO) there is no political solution at all, until the culture changes.
Convince people that gun nuts are right up there with UFO enthusiasts, cat hoarders and people who collect jars of their own urine in the basement. Then you’ll get the votes for proper gun regulation.
srv
It would seem to me that the real great resignation is over doing anything about mental health issues in this country.
I guess it’s OK for people to go crazy as long as they can’t keep a shotgun.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I think Wayne realizes that he’s loosing to many would be members to other, less squishy, gun control groups like the GOA and so has decided to make sure he’s every bit as crazy as the other groups, because otherwise his membership numbers and thus his fat salary would decline.
drc
Rights with no responsibilities. Sounds conservative, right?
gene108
@srv:
Crazy people without shotguns are less likely to kill a dozen people.
Gun control is the easier fight here than actually trying to create a functional mental health care system in this country, as well as reduce the stigma around mental illness needed for such a system to be successful.
Redshift
@roc: The membership is really just a PR stunt for the NRA now. It’s not driven by the membership; it’s a lobbying shop for gun manufacturers.
We need to name and shame the manufacturers, and call them before Senate committees. Big Tobacco wasn’t defeated by fighting the Tobacco Institute, but by fighting the companies that funded it, and it’s the same thing with the NRA. The whole purpose of the NRA is to take flak and let the real culprits remain anonymous.
Redshift
@gene108: And Republicans have proven that their cries mental health was the real issue were phony by cutting funding for mental health, too.
Betty Cracker
@Jockey Full of Malbec: That’s a good point, and studies do show an overall decline in gun ownership but more guns in the hands of a smaller subset of people. In some ways, we’re captured yet again politically by sparsely populated red states that wield out-sized political power. Sensible gun control is popular overall (background checks support topped 90% after Newtown, IIRC), but it’s highly unpopular in the Guns ‘n Jesus states. This has been another edition of “Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”
Amir Khalid
@Jockey Full of Malbec:
It is surely both. The permissive attitude among so many Americans, particularly on the right, towards owning guns and carrying them around in public certainly seems cultural to me, and I agree that it’s not going to be easy to shift. The issues around determining what laws to pass concerning those guns and how to get them passed, are, I reckon, definitely political.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Those two points don’t go together. There’s no way for something to be popular with 90% of the population and still be highly unpopular much of anywhere. The problem is that the people who hate it are much more serious about hating it than the ones who like it, better funded, and willing to lie through their teeth and otherwise play dirty politically to get their way. We aren’t going to win on gun control until we can get politicians as scared of the wrath of the gun control lobby as they are of the guns out of control lobby.
eemom
@Betty Cracker:
Holy shit — that must have been PTSD-level horrific.
Botsplainer
Chuck Todd is still getting beaten up on Twitter.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: Nah. That’s just pest control.
/snark
@Mike in NC: Try nearly every day. At the same time there was all the to-do in Rwanda, Chechnya and Bosnia, I was working in Los Angeles for about a week a month. Any time a bomb went off somewhere else it was plastered all over the front page – but in L.A. at the time, on the morning news, there was a body count by district (and it wasn’t in low numbers) and that information never left metro L.A. We had a casualty rate equivalent to a low-grade civil war, and it didn’t even reach the other big cities in the same state. I think it might take something like a thermonuclear hand-grenade* set off in a high school, or a volley of RPGs or Stingers fired at a cruise ship, to get the 2nd-Amendment-shouters to back off. In the meantime I’m watching for the .50-cal gun mounts to start appearing in the West Marine catalog, and the Kevlar door skins and bulletproof glass on the modder sites.
*my favorite weapon from Paranoia. Great game.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: Also, too, The Pelican Brief.
eemom
@Amir Khalid:
I am sitting here thinking how fortunate you are to not live in this country.
I am so utterly, thoroughly disgusted with us.
Hill Dweller
@Botsplainer:
He deserves far worse.
Patrick
@Botsplainer:
He should be. His idiotic comment is no different than Mark Halperin insinuating that Sen. McCain forgetting how many homes he owned was terrible news for Barack Obama and great news for McCain. Or when the same Halperin called our country’s leader the d-word.
scuffletuffle
I object to Congress being able to go on lockdown…I don’t have that option, neither should they. If they want every looney in the country to have a gun, let them take the same risk the rest of us do.
schrodinger's cat
@Patrick: I haven’t seen his smug mug in years. Thanks to the joys of not having cable and not watching any shows covering politics other than the snooze hour.
chopper
@Botsplainer:
man, that was such great news until it got to “on twitter”.
Tone in DC
@johnny aquitard:
They look exactly like I knew they would. White. Men. Middle age. Paunchy. Scared cause the world is full of dark boogeymen just waiting to do them some harm. I look at these guys and I think ‘chicken shits, every one of ‘em’. And that fucking gadsen cum teabagger flag is the cherry on the gunnut sundae.
They’re so fearful, so resentful of the world around them. And so they demand to have their guns around them everywhere, whenever they want…
_____________________________________________
I know certain things that may not be a big deal to others can really piss me off. So I try not to get carried away. Walk it off.
Those 2nd amendment advocates in that story make me seem positively zen. And the thing is… what is making them so resentful? They can’t fit a big screen plasma in their double-wide? They’re unable to procure copious amounts of c1al1s? Some horrible furriner drove past them in his S class Benz, while the gun nut has to make do with his 1981 Dodge pickup truck with the rusty gate and mismatched tires?
boatboy_srq
@srv: REMINDER: seventy years ago we had (for the time) a better-than-decent mental health system in place. Then along came Saint Ronnie (among others), and mental health became a private outpatient practice and nearly all the facilities got closed. He started in California, but the trend was nationwide by the time he arrived at the WH. So it’s OK for people to go crazy, AND it’s OK for them to get a shotgun or twenty, but FSM forbid the US actually step in and address either issue because it’s just too expensive and we’re broke.
Meanwhile we have character witnesses coming out of the woodwork for Sgt. Bales saying what a doting father, caring husband, reliable friendly neighbor and all-around good guy he is. SO: in addition to all of the above, it’s OK to go crazy, get a shotgun, learn to shoot, join the army, and while on your tour of duty grab an M4 and shoot up a village or two – because that way you’re just shooting ragheads and they don’t matter.
I would throw a /snark tag in here, but something tells me the 2nd-Amendment-shouters would accept all of this as Jeebus’ Own Gospel for the 21st Century.
Hal
@Botsplainer: I missed it, what did he say now? (I feel like a parent receiving a call from school. What did my son do this time?)
WereBear
It’s about the rotten Congress. If the Dems running next year use this as a club to beat on their opponents with, and THEN no one cares, we’ll have a real index of the public apathy, or not.
So we need to start kicking local Democrat behinds to focus on this.
boatboy_srq
@Tone in DC:
There are few things that make me snicker more than a Teahadist license plate… on a Hyundai. They’re so indoctrinated they can’t even buy domestic, because TEH YOONYUNS so Shut Up. Somebody ought to remind them that even the line workers who put together that S class Benz have better hours, healthcare, vacation/sick days, and (probably) better pay than they do.
It’s like they want to live in a banana republic.
fuckwit
@Jockey Full of Malbec: It’s really that. It’s like marijuana and gay rights. It’ll take this country growing out of some ugly prejudices and irrational fears first, before this changes. It’ll take education, continued activism, and a media that helps deliver some more positive messages. It’ll take just as long too. In the 1960s the marijuana legalization movement and gay rights movement started. How many years from Stonewall to gays in the military? To gay marriage? How many years from Bobby Dylan getting the Beatles high to two states legalizing pot? It’ll take that many years from Sandy Hook before gun safety laws change in this country.
Our kids today are required to do “duck and cover” drills called “Stranger on Campus” drills which teach them how to climb under a desk and take cover in case a maniac with a semi-automatic weapon starts shooting up the school. It’s sickening, but it’ll take a long time to change. If you’re my age, and we keep working on this, then our grandkids might be able to grow up in a world in which they don’t have to fear being shot up in school.
FlipYrWhig
@Tone in DC: they think the black Democratic president is giving their hard-earned money to black people to curry favor with white bleeding-hearts. They think that’s what all Democrats do, and it’s amplified by the president’s complexion and the creaky economy. But that’s what they believe, and reality will never intrude on it. Only grim death.
raven
@fuckwit: It’ll also take people on the gun control side to have a fucking clue what they are talking about in regard to weapons. The AR 15 shit started before the smoke cleared at the Navy Yard and it turned out there were none. Tweety gets on the box an screams about shit he knows nothing about and it’s easy for the gun nuts to point and say, “see, these idiots don’t know a 5.56 from a .22.”
raven
Hahaha:
“Cruz is the leader of a secret cabal of leftists that are seeking control of the conservative movement,” quipped one senior House Republican leadership source. “Their aim is to force the party to take on suicidal missions to destroy the movement from within.”
Tone in DC
@boatboy_srq:
To me, resentment and envy are rather similar.
Just to be clear: when I see someone who has a nice car, a nice house (and maybe a beautiful wife), I can get that tinge of envy. And, if I do, a few seconds later, I’m over it.
As other comments have mentioned, these guys are steeped in their resentment. Like Eddie said, they keep that shit forever like luggage.
JPL
@raven: Let them eat their own. I for one and tired about hearing their plans to destroy democracy.
Tone in DC
@FlipYrWhig:
The thing is, the government is giving more than a few people my tax money. People who are below the poverty line, or have some nasty disease, or are just unemployed.
Yeah, I am Captain fucking Obvious today, why do you ask?
That’s supposed to happen. To keep these folks from falling through the cracks. I am middle class, as I figure most B-J denizens are. Obama should give those less fortunate some money from my and others’ taxes.
Somehow, these Wayne LaPierre clones just don’t grok that. They’re that thick. And/or just that greedy.
WereBear
That is what happens when you hoard your grudges like a miser does gold.
Criminy! Let GO and LIVE, you jerks!
johnny aquitard
@Citizen_X: There are 2 pics further down in the article, below the vid.
chrome agnomen
@Roger Moore:
i like your thinking.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Jockey Full of Malbec: Shit, when I was a kid in the 1970s, if it was known that somebody in the neighborhood had a gun collection (not talking a deer rifle here), they were shunned. Absolutely. Kids weren’t allowed to play with their kids, the adults didn’t talk to them, and phones would ring from one end of the street to the other if they so much as poked their head outside. The cops knew who they were as well and they got watched. They were considered “psychos”. You didn’t need the laws because being a creep of that magnitude made you an instant pariah.
Now it’s cool. The culture has failed to enforce reasonable behavior. There are reasons for that but they’re not relevant to the discussion. So now, because the culture has failed to keep this sickness in check, the legal system is going to have to take over, and that’s going to be a lot messier, particularly because the political system is too scared to allow the law to take care of the problem.
IowaOldLady
@Botsplainer: I’ve been out of town, mostly drinking wine. Is there a reason for Chuck Todd being scorned more than usual?
Tone in DC
@WereBear:
Not without their 2nd amendment implements. Maybe the government can legislate one day out of the year, kind of like the Great American Smokeout, but just without such weaponry.
On that one day, all US Americans (and such as) would have to settle their differences with other devices. Like hockey sticks, Swiss army knives and dodge balls.
Just an idea.
lamh36
OT: bowling league tonight. ugh!!! I’m already regretting joining it. 1st of all the lady at work now acts like we beasties & won’t shut up about bowling. 2nd I don’t really want to buy a ball or shoes or bags, but damnit that means ill have to find and use a different ball at the alley & have to wear the crappy ass rental shoes! 3rd, I don’t think I’m going to get any good & I just know it will piss off my “team” they are all reasonably good bowlers & I’m just shitty! Finally, I just don’t feel like going every damn Thurs!
but I already paid the dues so I’m in this bitch til May!!!! so, I’m just gonna have to get my anti-social behind up and go once a week until May. But be forewarned, I plan to complain the whole damn time!!!!
I wanted this to be fun…ugh! instead its gonna be this:
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/380809093327245312
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/380809225758199808
VillageIdiocy
I think we should start referring to those killed by the gun, especially the sort of violence at the Navy Yard, as Second Amendment Martyrs.
boatboy_srq
@Comrade Dread: IOW, they want to be in Colombia, or Lebanon, or anywhere else civil unrest is bad enough that pols get that kind of protection.
JPL
haha.. The local news is showing what states are doing to insure people under the health care plan. One lady from CT said she was interested in exchanges because she wanted a plan with a lower deductible. At the end of the story, the announcer said that GA will not be doing that. haha
ruemara
@Botsplainer: If I was still working or living near an NBC studio, I’d beat him up in public. Damn the consequences. At least prison involves 3 hots and a cot.
boatboy_srq
@Tone in DC: Agreed. I’m just amused/horrified at the lengths they go to maintain that level of resentment, and what those lengths say about who they are and what they care about: in the illustration, they’re happier sending their dollars to Korea than supporting good, hardworking Americans just because they carry a union card, or because GM-got-bailed-out-so-it’s-BHO-territory-and-BLEEP-him, and they insist that’s ‘patriotic’ somehow. Meanwhile, the car that gets them mad is made by workers at the same social stratum, but with better education, working conditions, housing, transport, healthcare, etc etc – and they can’t grasp that. I just think it’s a bit disconnected when somebody stands there and shouts USA USA USA while driving a Korean car and buying Chinese-made appliances. Buy American used to be one of their standards, and now suddenly it’s completely discarded without so much as a shrug.
Jane2
@CaseyL:
And that is the truth. At least there wasn’t the usual period of false mourning or even pretending the Navy Yard shootings were anything other than business as usual. And that’s the saddest thing of all.
PopeRatzo
Exactly how we ended up with the NSA upskirting every aspect of our personal communications, as well as collecting data on our private financial transactions, health care and tracking our movement.
If you believe that a woman’s reproductive health should be a private matter between her and her doctor, I don’t see how you can possibly not be upset about what our government’s been doing in secret.
Gex
@Botsplainer: My favorite one so far
Mike in NC
OT: former congressman and current oxygen thief Tom DeLay has had his conviction overturned due to lack of evidence. How soon will he end up back in DC? Maybe make a run for governor of Texas?
Villago Delenda Est
The purpose of the NRA is, quite simply, to promote the purchase and use of firearms on behalf of the firearm and ammunition manufacturers of America.
They are doing their job, and well.
Joel
@raven: to be fair, those details don’t really fucking matter in the big picture.
so it stands to mention that i do agree that getting stuck on minor details like gun manufacture or caliber is a waste of energy.
WereBear
@Mike in NC: That pisses me off! Did he get off on ALL charges?
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
That does indeed help, because it establishes a certain level of credibility that can’t be casually dismissed.
I got into a huge flame war with Atrios back during the Iraq war when he called a Bradley Fighting Vehicle a “tank”. I told him in no uncertain terms that he set himself up to be dismissed as a know-nothing by military members who might otherwise be sympathetic to discussion of what a massive fuckup the whole thing was.
Having your facts arrayed before you before you enter the argument is always helpful in making your points. While it’s true that the serious fetishists can’t be swayed (the firearm is their religious icon, after all) there are people on the margins who will listen IF you come in armed with facts, and can’t be casually dismissed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joel:
Then what you say is “educate me”, acknowledge that they do know what they’re talking about on the technical details, and then point out why it’s irrelevant to the larger issue.
SiubhanDuinne
@jl: I would love to use that on my Facebook page, with your permission and attribution if you wish. I would certainly not claim it as my own. Brilliant transcription of the Second Amendment into NRA-ese.
Cassidy
This battle is lost. Go buy some guns and keep them on hand to defend your home and family when these piles of shit decide that the fantasies in their head aren’t real enough. Someone else mentioned it, but this is the new normal.
jl
@SiubhanDuinne: Anyone is free to use my revelation of the true second amendment. Attribution is not asked and will be not accepted. God took my hand and wrote it for me. I was the mere instrument. The Buddhanature and all the arhats and boddhisvattsas bless, and minor imps and demons from all the obscure Buddhist hells bless the NRA’s America.
scav
@jl: Does this mean we have to dunk you in a river and give you butter-baths with flower petals every so often? I could add it to my calendar. Salted or sweet, with or without the popcorn?
jl
@scav: If it pleases the attractive commenter lassies of BJ, I will consent. Attendance by the gentlemen of the blog is not required, thank you. The menfolk may email me some beer and nachos, if they would like to help out.
RSA
@jl:
Can’t stand your ground in a moving vehicle, I guess.
Felonius Monk
@Cassidy:
This battle was lost when the parents of the Newtown victims allowed the Connecticut legislature to pass legislation making it illegal to release the crime scene photos and videos. I truly understand the pain and anguish the parents probably would have gone through if those had been made public. However, releasing those images and having them displayed on television screens across this country probably would have turned this situation 180 degrees. I believe the impact on politicians and citizens alike would have rapidly brought about change in our firearms laws and set the NRA on its ear.
I am convinced that the NRA knew this and helped convince the parents that releasing these images was not a good idea and probably also lobbied the CT legislature to pass this law.
I’m sure that to release this information would have been gut-wrenching and traumatic, but if they truly wanted to honor their children and assure themselves that these kids did not die in vain then they should have had the will and the backbone to do this.
johnny aquitard
@Tone in DC: Sounds like you’ve talked to some of these kinds of ‘2nd amendment rights’ guys. It can be pretty bracing, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
It’s not overt like the crazy guy on the corner preaching damnation to imaginary people. It’s more like the crazy of a paranoid schizophrenic who’s trying to explain why a perfect stranger would want to follow him. At face value when one assumes the person is telling it as it is, someone really is stalking him, it’s alarming and you see the reason they are agitated. But ask some questions, have them try to logically explain why they believe this despite the evidence to the contrary, and it goes from dubious to unlikely to bizzare.
Gun rights freaks are convinced crime is up, is going up and will always be up. You could be jumped anywhere and you need to be on guard for when you least expect it. They are always on guard, they say. There are only two kinds of people: Victims lost in the la-la lib white zone, and gun owners like them: armed, situational awareness in the yellow zone, exercising their right to self defense (which always means a gun), unlike those willing sheep who want to be victims. So they keep guns handy in multiple places in their house and on their person — they call it their EDC, everyday carry — even while doing activities in their home like lounging on the sofa watching tv or taking the garbage out. Because for these people even their homes aren’t safe. There is no place that is safe. You make your own safety. Hence, you need to carry a gun.
They are very fearful people. And resentful. Lots of anger and contempt toward libs, blacks, illegals and minorities in general. And gays. And gun grabbers. Which is the same as libs but that’s ok, double helpings of fear and loathing are not frowned upon.
Pretty much the teaparty pathology, the same fear and hatred and resentment and contempt that’s crawling around just under the surface, and oft times not so under the surface.
I think for them the fear of crime is an abstraction of their bigotry in the same way Atwaters’ famous examples of forced busing, states rights’ and cutting taxes were abstractions for racist attacks. This is why they believe crime is always going up. It’s gotten worse because Those People have gotten more visible, more prominent places in society. The crime rate has to be going up. Any fool can see that, plain as the dark nose on Obama’s face.
As Atwater noted “a byproduct [of these abstractions] is, blacks get hurt worse than whites”. So it is with this 2nd amendment rights bullshit. Who got hurt worse, Zimmerman or Martin?
And really, it’s not so abstract at all what they’re projecting here. Built right into carrying deadly weapons everywhere is the implied threat of violence, of coercion. It helps that doing so destroys public safety and public confidence in it. Works to the gun rights nuts advantage.
As a couple BJers have pointed out, the gun nuts’ fears exist in their own heads.
They’re having to catch up on 20 years of demographic and social changes in just a few years. Because the world has in fact been changing long before Obama became president. The older rural and suburban white people were just were oblivious, insulated and safe from dealing with reality in their bubble.
They can’t escape noticing anymore how the world has changed. These are people whose brains are not wired for dealing with change very well, especially when the faces that represent change don’t look like theirs.
These are armed protests against the modern world. They are trying to terrorize modernity into a form they are once again in control of. There’s a reason the people trying to stage gun rights putsches are of a predictable demographic. It ain’t so abstract after all.
cvstoner
@Roger Moore: Except that a senator did get gunned down a couple of years ago. Nothing changed.
Howlin Wolfe
@jl: A perfect window into the gun-nutjob’s mind, jl. Bravo.
Howlin Wolfe
@jl: but they were “law ‘bidin’ citizens” jl! At least up until they shot each other.