Richard Martinez, whose only child, 20-year-old Chris Michael-Martinez, died Friday when a deranged misogynist went on a shooting spree at UCSB, is angry as hell:
In addition to the lunatic who shot his son, Mr. Martinez blames the NRA and “gutless bastards” who knuckled under to the gun lobby after Sandy Hook when they rejected sensible gun control measures like expanded background checks that are supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans. Mr. Martinez is mad at the right people.
Martinez is reportedly meeting with the shooter’s father to ask him to join the effort to toughen gun safety laws. I wish him success, but sadly, I don’t see this latest atrocity changing anything.
Nor will the news today that another young man in Isla Vista was found in possession of an arsenal after he accidentally fired a round through a shared wall of his apartment building. Maybe he was planning his own copycat mass killing spree.
After personally experiencing a mass shooting in the workplace many years ago — pre-Columbine — I got somewhat involved in the gun control movement and have followed the issue closely ever since. Not only has zero progress been made, a lot of ground has been lost, even in the face of the increasingly frequent and horrific school shootings that followed. To paraphrase Steve M once again, this is the NRA’s country; we’re just sheltering in place in it.
Where does that leave us? We know that even the wholesale slaughter of 20 lovely elementary school children and six dedicated teachers won’t result in any action on the part of (mostly) GOP politicians. The gutless bastards aren’t going to spontaneously grow intestines any more than Wayne LaPierre will suddenly develop a conscience.
So how do we stop the next Rodger, Lanza, Holmes, Cho, Klebold, Harris, etc.? Every time a mass shooting happens, an op-ed writer somewhere publishes a piece urging the media to focus on the victims, downplay or omit the shooter’s name and stop publishing their bug-fuck crazy manifestos or videos. That’s unlikely too.
For one thing, atrocities like Sandy Hook and the UCSB shootings are news stories, and people are avid for details for reasons both prurient and legit. If CNN or MSNBC declined to discuss the latest killer’s manifesto or play video clips of his hate-filled rant, Fox certainly would. If even Fox declined to air the footage, Internet sites would.
But still, those op-ed writers are onto something because it seems like the prospect of gaining fame or notoriety is a major draw for the madmen who commit these crimes. The latest killer, Rodger, seemed to envision himself the star of a Tarantino-style revenge flick, wreaking havoc on “uppity bitches” who withheld sexual favors to which he believed he was entitled.
Virginia Tech shooter Cho posed for selfies with his weapons, ranted about retribution and sent video packets to media outlets before embarking on his murderous rampage. Even odd, isolated Lanza, who left behind no manifesto, curated killers’ profiles on Wikipedia and eagerly consumed information about notorious predecessors, apparently craving their version of fame.
We laugh about the open-carry “ammosexuals,” gun nuts who are anxious to stroke their shiny muzzles in public. It’s not enough for these people to fondle their guns in the privacy of their own homes. They want to exhibit them at Costco and parade around city hall with them. They want YOU to see how big and hard their guns are. There really does seem to be a twisted sexual element to it.
For that group, I think it’s helpful to give them the opposite of what they crave. Heap derision on the wannabe tough-guy gun displayers for their cowardly insistence that they need to be armed to face a trip to the grocery store and bizarrely sexual firearm fetish. Call them “ammosexuals” or “muzzle-strokers” or whatever other mocking descriptions you can think of.
If enough people jeer at them and show that, quite the opposite of generating fear and respect, they’re beclowning themselves, maybe there’s a chance they’ll stop insisting that they have the right to wave their prosthetic organs in our faces.
As for the mass murderers and copycats, maybe it would be useful to create a special title that precedes all mentions of their names in media accounts of their exploits and even everyday conversations. Something humiliating that doesn’t have the twisted macho panache of “shooter” or “mad-dog killer.” Perhaps something like “Tiny-Dick-Coward.”
Here’s how such a title could transform a news account of a shooting [LA Times excerpt – with proposed language inserted]:
In this video transcript, Tiny-Dick-Coward Elliot Rodger lays out his grievances against women and men. He also vows to “annihilate” as many people as he can, including plans to target a UC Santa Barbara sorority house and people on the streets of Isla Vista.
“Hi, [Tiny-Dick-Coward] Elliot Rodger here. Well, this is my last video. It all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you.
Is this a stupid idea? Absolutely. But would some budding school shooter read that account and think, “I want to be like Tiny-Dick-Coward Elliot Rodger! He sure showed them, and now he’s famous!”
I realize we’re dealing with deeply deranged people, of course, so it’s impossible to predict how they would respond to such a tactic. But they sure seem susceptible to the allure of notoriety, and they certainly seem convinced that wanton violence is an affirmation of their stunted manhood. Maybe removing that motivation in some way would break the cycle?
Yeah, it’s a dumb idea. But none of the good ideas will work because they’re all perceived as undermining the sacredness of guns in some way, and I’m sick and fucking tired of sheltering in place. If you’ve got a better idea, I’d sure like to hear it.
Kropadope
Treat people with respect and accept that sometimes bad shit happens?
JPL
I think you are on to something. Now that GA has a guns everywhere law, I don’t plan on shopping where there are tiny dicks.
Eric U.
the guys (always cowardly males) that harass the families of victims of these atrocities should have their guns taken away.
“big gun, tiny dick” would be a good bumper sticker. I think I might get a magnetic one because these cowards would definitely vandalize a car with that on it.
Nutella
Yes, and whenever the press quotes a government or company spokesman who insists on anonymity the name in the story should be Anonymous Coward, e.g., “Anonymous Coward, who claims to work for the XYZ Department, said …”
That won’t happen either. Preventing gun violence and preventing consequence-free posturing are not things the press/entertainment business wants to encourage.
Pointing and laughing (citizen action) might help eventually but it will be slow.
Betty Cracker
@Kropadope: Bad shit like mudslides, hurricanes and earthquakes happen, in addition to heart disease, cancer, etc. Mass shootings are in a different category. They are preventable atrocities, but the usual suspects are blocking all sensible means of prevention.
Drunken hausfrau
Not crazy… Isn’t this sort of like what Savage did to Santorum, turning his name into a disgusting sex goo on google searches?
Ash Can
In a nation where the courts are forcing state governments to allow concealed carry whether they want to or not, nothing will change unless enough American citizens really want things to change. And that means repealing the wreck that the Second Amendment has become and passing laws regulating guns similar to those in civilized countries.
Brian R.
Not exactly what you’re calling for, but both the NY Post and the NY Daily News ran giant headlines with the word “VIRGIN” in them.
I’d have to think that would make any teenage boy copycats think twice.
ETA: Image here: http://24.media.tumblr.com/c5ad02d3f5738bd4a0cdbe8119d1dda5/tumblr_n64r4wjYbe1qf5yp8o1_1280.jpg
Kay
I agree that it looks pretty hopeless, but I have never been able to figure out the interplay between big events that move people and the slow, gradual work that Mr. Martinez now finds himself engaged in.
I don’t know what the cause and effect is there. Maybe the only reason change seems to occur in response to a big event is because there was already that critical mass in place to respond.
I TEND to think that if an “activist” manages to persuade people, they were open to that – halfway there already. They just needed a little push and that can be a big event or a persuasive advocate.
Violet
I really like the dad, Richard Martinez. His rallying cry of “Not One More” is easy to remember, say and a great hashtag. He and his ex-wife, the mother of his slain son, are both tough lawyers. They will not give up. Add in the Hollywood connections of the father of the shooter and I think they may come up with something that works better than what we’ve seen before. I’m feeling more optimistic about their potential impact than any before.
Love the idea of belittling these kinds of people. It’s what I’ve been saying all along. I get some really odd looks from people when I say it but I get them to think about it. If the larger culture would look at gun nuts as weak and afraid rather than big and tough and strong it would change some things. Why would any man want to advertise their lack of a large pen1s by waving their guns around? He wouldn’t so it might stop being a useful tool in that regard.
Kropadope
@Betty Cracker: My libertarian BF thinks the only “sensible” or, at least, constitutional way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and killers is passing out life sentences for any crime, any crime. Now ask me how pointing out that this would be a massive abuse of government power went.
@Drunken hausfrau:
And is Santorum now less crazy?
hoodie
Saw that “ammosexual” has appeared in the comments in the local newspaper website. That may be an angle that works, gun fetishists as perverts or deviants. Another thought, given that the vast majority of mass shooters are male and gun rights advocates are always saying stuff like “what about the petite woman who gets threatened with rape by gun or knife wielding buck?”, why not limit unrestricted gun ownership to females? Males could be allowed to have legitimate hunting weapons, could maintain weapons in their homes and could use weapons as duly trained police officers and members of the national guard, but no open or concealed carry of hand guns or assault rifles, because there is ample evidence that males are more prone to violent instability and thus cannot be entrusted with such weapons in uncontrolled circumstances. Call it male profiling. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good girl with a gun, because she is less likely to be acting out a male fantasy.
Forked Tongue
@Eric U.: Good idea, but get a bunch of them and don’t put them on your own car, put ’em on cars that have NRA stickers. Er…stealthily, I should add.
Brian R.
@Kropadope:
You might want to explain to your boyfriend what “libertarian” means.
Kay
@hoodie:
They’re also really defensive about the corporate lobbyist angle I have noticed in comments. That seems to sting. IMO, it goes against the rugged individualist ethos.
It’s like how people insist that there’s some kind of equal comparison between the motives and relative power of BP and “environmental groups”. It’s a deliberate effort to ignore the profit motive. “Both sides!”
Incitatus for Senate
Everyone keeps talking about repealing the 2nd amendment, and how impossible that seems. There is a much easier way. All you need is a majority of the supreme court to decide that “a well regulated militia” actually means something. Not easy, of course, but more likely than a constitutional amendment.
Ash Can
@hoodie: And when she stops a bad guy with a gun she’s tried, sentenced, and jailed. And executed, if she’s really unlucky.
Kropadope
@Brian R.: Oh, oops, best friend. Here’s the thing government power is not illegitimate when used against criminals, you know, those people over there. But asking him to prove he is who he says he is or allowing time to show he’s not a criminal “dictatorship!”
I think his fear of the government stems from the fact that if he were in charge of the government, he would want to do all sorts of crazy things. Some things I sympathize with, he seems to want single-payer health care or to have all cars banned, no luck explaining that people would have to be taxed to provide for that care “they should just be taken care of.” I don’t know by whom, in his mind, pixies?
The worst is that he says he would drone whomever he wants, “Obama put everything in place someone just has to do it.” No use explaining that isn’t true either.
NonyNony
@Kropadope:
Oooh oooh – how did pointing out that that would be a massive abuse of government power go?
(I’m “surprised” that as a libertarian he didn’t come up with the free market solution to this – which is to make the gun owner responsible for civil penalties for any injury or death that occurs for a weapon that is registered to them whether they’re holding it or not and whether it’s intentional or accidental. And make it debt that is harder to discharge than a student loan. Mix that in with a requirement to carry liability insurance for each weapon you purchase and the free market will price the insane people right out of the market. It’s still a pretty terrible half-measure, but it’s a market based solution that “libertarians” never seem to come up with. Funny how that works.)
beergoggles
I have a two step program that is guarenteed to work. Arm Occupy, environmental groups, the blahs and poor people. Grab popcorn and watch the collective rightwing freakout and them doing all the legwork necessary to pass gun control.
The whole point of militias when they were originally established was to keep the slaves in line, return escaped slaves, and serve property owners. Despite the change in times, the mentality hasn’t changed. Look up Saturday Night Specials to see how quickly gun control was passed when it was poor people getting easy access to firearms. Gun control is a losing battle because it is still a racial and class issue.
c u n d gulag
“Nice AK you got there, man!
Shame about your dick, though…”
Kropadope
@NonyNony: Civil penalties are tyranny, citizen justice all the way baby.
Gator90
@Ash Can: “nothing will change unless enough American citizens really want things to change”
Quite so. And one can only wonder how numerous and horrific the atrocities must become before enough Americans are sufficiently outraged by the slaughter of other people’s children to confront and defeat the death merchants, sexual obsessives and religious cultists comprising the opposition to change.
RaflW
@Kropadope:
No. But is he president? Or even a Senator?
NonyNony
@Brian R.:
I actually think this is a terrible idea – it reinforces the idea that there’s something “wrong” with being a virgin if you’re male and is, I think, more likely to cause someone with a bad self-image to get worse rather than rethink his plan to commit a mass murder.
“Coward”, on the other hand, is a good word for describing anyone who would commit a mass shooting.
Or really anyone who carries a gun in public that isn’t a member of law enforcement or in a military hot zone. Like the guys who open carry their weapons into Chili’s – what the hell are those cowards so afraid of at Chili’s? I mean, the food there can be kind of terrible, but the only fear for my life I’ve had at Chili’s is a fear that I might get ptomaine poisoning – and you can’t shoot microorganisms with a gun.
Ash Can
@Incitatus for Senate: Even just doing that would entail overturning a shit-ton of legal precedent. I have to wonder if that wouldn’t turn out to involve even greater legal heavy lifting.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I had little hope that any progress would be made on gun control before Sandy Hook, but when nothing happened after Sandy Hook — even when significant majorities of Republicans were on board for closing loopholes and stricter background checks — I lost all hope.
But maybe like you said, a critical mass has to already be in place. Perhaps a mass murder of school children during an election month would tip the scales. At any rate, I wish Mr. Martinez every success in his efforts.
NonyNony
@Gator90:
Sadly, I know the answer to that one.
Things will continue this way until a sufficient number of well-off suburbanites have had a gun-related death occur that could have been prevented by better regulations. And then at that point enough people will care to do something.
All of my thoughts that we were a nation of decent human beings evaporated after Sandy Hook. We’re not decent at all – for the vast majority it seems that if it doesn’t happen to someone they know it might as well be fictional. So nothing will happen until it gets so bad its happening to everyone. And then I’m sure we’ll come up with the absolute worst way to “fix” the problem. Because that’s what we do – ignore problems until they’re awful and then in our panic when things are awful come up with a terrible way to fix them.
(Wow I’m a bundle of cheer today. Sigh.)
Violet
I know this is not realistic, but I’d love if it every time a woman sees a man carrying a gun openly in public–and especially if he’s in some public place like a Chili’s–she would go up to him and say in her best concerned voice, “I see you’re openly carrying a gun. I’m so sorry about the size of your penis. It must be so difficult to have one so small.”
RaflW
@Kay:
I think this has some merit. One thing I’ve noticed is that folks who are NRA members do get pissed/defensive when the NRA gets criticised.
I know, you’re thinking “duh.” But here’s the deal: I almost always mean NRA leadership when I say NRA. But members feel I/we are attacking them. In a broad sense, I suppose we are. But the point is to get the NRA leadership to change.
I think one approach that got tried just a tiny bit after CT but then seemed to get dropped is to start the hard work of changing how NRA members perceive their own membership. Separate the member from LaPierre and especially from the manufacturer lobby, and to see that the NRA now is nothing like the NRA they might have joined 20 years ago.
I keep hearing that “responsible gun owners” blah blah. They actually feel more tribal after they hear us go after the NRA. It’s a small change, but we have to always say “NRA leadership” and “NRA lobbyists” and just alternate the two.
Never just say “the NRA” because individual members feel attacked by that. (I’ll leave aside whether they indeed should feel attacked. I personally don’t think one can be both a “responsible gun owner” and an NRA member under the current NRA leadership and strategic plan, but…)
Incitatus for Senate
@Ash Can: I can’t pretend to have any expertise in constitutional law, but I thought that up until the 1970s the courts didn’t recognize the individual right to own a gun. The 2nd amendment used to mean state militias.
gene108
If gun control supporters voted with the passion and fury that gun-nuts vote, when any gun control legislation is proposed, we’d see a totally different equation in regards to gun control in this country.
America today has laws being written in favor of very motivated minorities of voters to the detriment of the majority of Americans.
You can see this with how f’in hard it is to raise the minimum wage, which is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, but motivated business interests make it damn hard to do.
Matt McIrvin
@Brian R.:
While reinforcing the whole “manhood = sexual conquest of a woman” notion that helps turn garden-variety geeky kids into the type of lunatic who posts to “incel/PUAhate” forums.
Comrade Dread
How Americans address gun violence:
1. “This is horrible. A terrible atrocity that must be stopped.”
2. Legislator introduces a new gun law that might stop the next atrocity.
3. NRA and their ilk say “Not the Precious’ fault! Don’t takes our Precious!”
4. New gun law dies a slow death.
5. Everyone but the survivors and the next of kin loses interest in the story because look! Shiny thing!
6. Oooo. Shiny Thing!
7 Repeat step 1 for the next ‘isolated incident’
Just another group of victims fed to Moloch. Nothing to see here.
CnyOrange
Um, if the general public did as suggested in this post these “ammosexuals” would probably shoot them.
Violet
Stupid moderation. I forgot about the forbidden word. Reposting edited.
I know this is not realistic, but I’d love if it every time a woman sees a man carrying a gun openly in public–and especially if he’s in some public place like a Chili’s–she would go up to him and say in her best concerned voice, “I see you’re openly carrying a gun. I’m so sorry about the size of your pen1s.. It must be so difficult to have one so small.”
Scott S.
For that group, I think it’s helpful to give them the opposite of what they crave. Heap derision on the wannabe tough-guy gun displayers for their cowardly insistence that they need to be armed to face a trip to the grocery store and bizarrely sexual firearm fetish. Call them “ammosexuals” or “muzzle-strokers” or whatever other mocking descriptions you can think of.
If enough people jeer at them and show that, quite the opposite of generating fear and respect, they’re beclowning themselves, maybe there’s a chance they’ll stop insisting that they have the right to wave their prosthetic organs in our faces.
What would worry me would be the likelihood that the People of the Gun would react by shooting the people laughing at them. After all, these freaks attach religious and sexual significance to their guns, and there are plenty of people who use religion and sex as prime motivators to commit violence.
No, it wouldn’t happen often. I’d still be mighty reluctant about the possibility of being the guy who draws the short straw.
RaflW
@NonyNony:
Thank you.
I just also want to point out that the BJ commentariat obsession with gun nut = small dick is absurd. For fuck’s sake, millions of men who are not Dirk Diggler endowed are normal, rational people.
Can we talk about what’s actually happening, not some bullshit armchair psych crap?
Wag
We need to push for restrictions on the fun ownership of the clinically deranged. Force the NRA to choose between rational control of access by the insane and their current fetish of unfettered access for all. Force the NRA to defend their de facto position that the right of gun access for the James Holmes and Rodger and Lazal trump the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the rest of us.
Sebastian
This will only change once the American public sees PICTURES OF THE DEAD.
Until then it is an abstract concept and the general public is not capable of processing this (see drunk driving campaigns and pictures of car wrecks). If we had shown the toddler corpses in Sandy Hook classrooms, hell, even just blood covered floors or bullet holes in the kindergarden, this all would be over long time ago.
Show the dead. Show the nation what this all really means.
EDIT: Moderation? WTF?
Citizen_X
@Incitatus for Senate:
Ah but then you would have to have Supreme Court justices who actually read the Constitution, instead of mind-reading the founders. It’s completely opposite to the Scalia theory of law.
Comrade Dread
@Incitatus for Senate: What would be more likely with the current Court makeup would be for them to overturn the laws restricting the sale of new fully automatic guns and machine guns in the US.
Kropadope
@RaflW: No, but was he ever going to be president? Unlikely. And he lost his Senate seat well before his gooey redefinition.
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: “Small dick” signifies insecurity about being sufficiently manly and masculine. It don’t think it is intended to be literal. Guns, Lamborghinis, big trucks, etc. can all be talismans by which the insecure try to show their masculinity. OTOH, any of those things could also be owned for completely healthy reasons. I don’t think that people who speculate that gun nuts are insecure about their masculinity are remotely off base.
Trentrunner
I know what might work:
One of the victim’s parents needs to carry the bullet-riddled body of their six-year-old before the press cameras of America, screaming, “Why? Why? Why?” in that horrible way that only the parent of a dead child can.
Given how many children have been slaughtered recently, I’m surprised that one of these bereaved, out-of-their-mind-with-grief parents hasn’t done this yet.
And their bodies are so light, because they were so young. Easy to carry, you know. /horror
RaflW
@Betty Cracker:
Most major cultural shifts like the one we’re pushing for take decades. They take repeated failures of bills, stalled efforts, new rounds of rallies, marches, behind the scenes maneuvering, etc.
Yes, Sandy Hook was a huge tragedy, an organizing moment, and an interim legislative failure. Perceiving the Senate failure as a moment to loose hope is exactly what the NRA wants. Do not give it to them.
JoyceH
What if enough people in favor of sensible gun legislation JOINED the NRA? And forced a change in leadership? Of course, LaPierre would probably just change hats and show up again as a lobbyist for the gun manufacturers, which is what he actually is, but at least it would deprive him of his camouflage as someone speaking for ‘gun owners’.
It becomes a very different matter when what’s being defended isn’t supposed individual rights, but rich corporations’ profits.
Gypsy Howell
Maybe we have to take the anti-abortioninst approach. Don’t outlaw guns, just make it really really really hard to sell them and buy them.
Yeah, I know. That won’t happen either, for the same reason. Christ, what a mentally deranged country we live in.
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus: Shorthanding the many aspects of masculinity and insecurity to “dick” is lazy.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: These mass murders do not fit the standard definition of ‘bad shit’.
Please try again.
the Conster
I hate to say this but I thing we have to see pictures of the bullet riddled victims alongside the pictures of the perpetrators. Isn’t that what helped to end Vietnam – the pictures of so many dead soldiers in caskets? The pictures of the aftermath of Newtown must be beyond description – the pile of bodies in the classroom where they died – it really needs to be seen. We need to see them and be horrified beyond words. We need to see them because otherwise they don’t exist. That crazy motherfucker who harasses the parents of those children doesn’t think they exist, and it’s because they don’t to him and enough nutjobs who get away with denial. Enough with hiding the aftermath, and moving quickly to the faces of the grieving. Let’s get real.
Kay
@RaflW:
I heard an actual proposal from what I think was a law enforcement person playing pundit on the radio.
His proposal was that gun purchasers go thru the same weapon’s qualification and training that new police officers do.
All of it. Background check, psych testing, then training.
I liked it because it was so specific and he (wisely) started at the furthest limits of what he could possibly achieve. He probably won’t get all of it, but they’d have to defend on why they would refuse the same tests a police officer has to take and that’s a good debate. If they’re really concerned about mentally ill people waving guns around, well, let’s narrow the field! It turns the tables from “let’s find all the mentally ill people” (which worries me, the demonization of what are a really vulnerable group of people worries me and we’re talking about involuntary commitment here – that’s no joke as far as “rights”) to “let’s find some of the mentally ill people who are purchasing weapons”. It also bridges the gap between guns and mental illness, so gun folks can’t silo those two issues and do the “look over there!” thing.
We don’t have to talk about “guns” and then “mental illness”. We can combine those two risk factors and address both at the same time. That lets stable gun owners out of the net and it also lets the vast majority of mentally ill people who are not violent out of the net.
currants
@Violet: A friend of mine, a woman I much admire especially but not only for this, once waited 15 for the driver of an enormous yellow Hummer, left running and parked across a handicap spot next to the curb. When he returned (short man, pastel plaid shorts and pale green shirt), she informed him–in a completely calm, normal voice albeit with her midwestern accent–that he was parked illegally and next time he could no doubt find two side-by-side empty spaces in that large parking area. Then added, “And, by the way sir, I’m sorry about your small pen!s.” He sputtered, she walked back into the store where she worked.
ETA there are parts of the country, even parts of MA, where I absolutely would NOT recommend this approach. And I do not know how effective it was. But still….
CONGRATULATIONS!
I say this as a lifelong gun owner: the only way you’ll stop them is to take away all the fucking guns. Every one of them, just like the UK and, later, Australia has. And I wish this country would dig deep, accept the rioting and political upheaval, and just do it. Take them all.
This will be hard. There’s over 300 million of them in the country. But it’s the only way.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: Your Libitarian friend is a dumbass. There are many constitutional ways to keep these weapons out of nut’s hands. Our lawmakers are too craven to pass any of them, but they are all ‘constitutional’ (IMO).
Gator90
@RaflW: “Shorthanding the many aspects of masculinity and insecurity to ‘dick’ is lazy.”
Maybe it is just simplifying matters in a language that gun-worshipping shitheads might possibly understand.
Paul in KY
@beergoggles: That might actually work. problem is, these groups you arm might not be down with the reason you are doing it.
Plus, they have to then make provacative displays (like 1960s Black Panthers) & avoid being shot up by the police while doing this.
Ash Can
@Incitatus for Senate: Hey, if it were to turn out to be the most likely and effective means of solving the problem, that would be great. I’m all in favor of anything that would help even in a small way. With the exception of non-whites arming themselves en masse — too many of them would be shot by gun-clingers seeing it as the excuse they’d been waiting and hoping for all their lives to start shooting at people they don’t like.
Paul in KY
@Gator90: Looking at the terrible massacre that occured in Australia 10 or so years ago (40 something murdered), I think it would take a massacre of 1,400 or so over here to elicite the same response as Australia had when that atrocity occurred.
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: Not only are they cowards, they are stupid cowards. I was in line behind some fat fuck in a convenience store with Glock tee shirt & his glock in a side holster, open carried, no strap across top of holster. I have quick hands & I’m pretty sure that I could have caused some minor commotion of to the side & when he turned towards that, I think I could have got that gun out of his holster. Now, at any time while behind him, I could have pulled out a blackjack, koshed him in back of head & voila I now have a glock ready to go.
Stupid shit like that.
Culture of Truth
I remain mystified why the media insist on calling adults playing dress-up as part of a “militia.”
Such news pieces should read “A dozen grown men wearing Halloween costumes gathered near Mr. Bundy’s house today….”
Paul in KY
Previous comment in moderation. Said a slang name for a weapon that matches a ca$ino game.
nancy darling
@RaflW:
Can we point out that they are lousy lays then?
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: Repostd without bad word:
Not only are they cowards, they are stupid cowards. I was in line behind some fat fuck in a convenience store with Glock tee shirt & his glock in a side holster, open carried, no strap across top of holster. I have quick hands & I’m pretty sure that I could have caused some minor commotion of to the side & when he turned towards that, I think I could have got that gun out of his holster. Now, at any time while behind him, I could have pulled out a lead sap, koshed him in back of head & voila I now have a glock ready to go.
Stupid shit like that.
JPL
@Eric U.: I bet you could make more than a few dollars with that idea.
The Tragically Flip
After having debated gun fetishists online for over a decade, I’d say mockery is a great option. They argue like climate deniers, the same stupid bullshit arguments over and over (guns are just tools, guns don’t kill people, criminals don’t respect laws, why not ban knives too then). They have a very small roster of hugely dishonest academics who publish pro-gun “research” that they reference ad nauseum.
It’s clearly a huge emotional, motivating reasoning exercise. We need to deligitimize it and mockery is a great way to do that. Cowards who feel a need to bear lethal force at all times should be laughed at. People who get off on the power of displaying a weapon in contexts where weapons are neither needed nor appropriate should be laughed at.
I was going to say put them in the same class as Furries or LARPers, but those are harmless, put them below those groups, with the guys who bug chase HIV and people who try to entice others to commit suicide.
Paul in KY
@Sebastian: i think that would help bring it home for alot. News is too sanatized nowadays (IMO).
Betty Cracker
@Gator90: Exactly so. I’m not convinced it would work. Just trying to think outside the box here since none of the many sensible and effective measures are available to us.
@Culture of Truth: That’s a great point. We need to stop accepting their frameworks. “A dozen grown men playing dress-up gathered at Mr. Bundy’s welfare ranch to promote overthrowing a government at whose teat Mr. Bundy and his family have suckled for generations…” That might take the fucking starch outta their Gadsden flags.
Ash Can
@the Conster: The caskets and other television news coverage didn’t hurt, of course, but what really ended the war was the draft. No family with young men of draft age was unaffected. Average working-class families across the nation were equally threatened. When they started acting together, shit got done.
The same thing would have to happen now, but some groups of the people who need to act are too busy being afraid or resentful of the other groups.
And besides, the deniers would just insist the murder photos were faked.
The Tragically Flip
Also, while it is obviously very practically difficult to do, the gun control movement should endorse repealing the 2nd amendment. It’s stupid, at best it’s a useless right for states to have National Guards, which is itself a dangerous stupid idea that some future nullification twit might use to become a warlord. At worst it is truly an individual right to keep arms, which is not only not required for freedom, but actually counterproductive to it, as we see every day.
The founders didn’t mean an individual right, but even what they meant is not required in a bill of rights for a free & democratic society.
Marc
@Kropadope:
Sounds like a libertarian to me!
Seriously, that does sound like a libertarian to me.
He’s a lot less electable. I think you need to let go of the idea that the crazies can be persuaded into sanity.
the Conster
@Ash Can:
The crazies are crazy – it’s the non-crazy we need to have really get it. There’s something about visuals that can’t be unseen, and lodges in the gut. This is a gut issue – it’s emotional, and needs to be connected to the viscera. There has to be a collective disgust – an emotional response that hits you where you don’t think about it, you feel it and can’t deny it, if you’re not a loon.
RaflW
@nancy darling: Absolutely. One is genetic, the other is about technique!
Peter VE
It’s a fact that the average gun owner has a smaller dick. Since about 25% of gun owners are women, the average gun owner’s dick is about 1 1/2″ shorter than the dick of the average man.
Mock on!
Stella B.
The whole gun-totin’ thing is just a Walter Mitty fantasy. There’s no way these numbskulls could protect themselves with guns. They make claims about the number of crimes that have been stopped by civilians with guns which are absolutely laughable.
RaflW
@the Conster:
The naked, napalmed girl running from the village in flames in Vietnam is seared in my mind, and for countless others, no doubt.
An AP story about the 40th anniversary says “It communicated the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most divisive wars in American history.”
Granted, that’s a bit reductivist view of the combined efforts to end a terrible, bogged down war. But that image, along with nightly films on the TV news, etc, did have a collective impact to say enough.
I think Richard Martinez’s video press statement adds to the current zeitgeist, slowly turning public outrage into action. It’s the slowly that is so hard to endure. I’m sure it was for the anti-Vietnam folks in those dark years.
Liberty60
@The Tragically Flip:
We need to start here, with forcing people to justify why the 2nd Amendment even exists.
I don’t see any natural right to own a firearm. I can see and intuitively grasp the natural right to speak freely, to pray as I choose, and to not be tortured- but the right to own a weapon? I just don’t accept that.
Not to ban weapons- we just need to do as someone mentioned upthread, to make them difficult to get, a privilege not a right.
Stella B.
A friend of mine had her kids at a play area in a park last week when one of the open-carry muzzle-strokers started strutting around. Seriously? Somebody was dumb enought to think that this was a sensible activity in a children’s playground?
RaflW
I sent handwritten postcards to PBO, my US Rep, both Senators, and Gov/ Dayton. They’re all Dems.
My message, beyond Not One More, was to get a spine and act (in slightly more respectful, but urgent, words). Yes the GOP are the big, visible roadblock. But exploiting waffly, craven Dems are part of the NRA leadership’s tactics.
I think a key step here is to make it no longer acceptable for Democrats to waver on basic, popular things like universal background checks. The NRA leadership gets why it matters: no meaningful gun legislation has passed at the federal level in a very long time. They are using that blockage to demotivate sane gun control advocates.
Unblocking that jam would show that the NRA is losing power. And once they start to lose power, the slide might accelerate.
Jamey
With surname like Martinez, you can pretty well predict what the NRA Right’s response will be: “Show us your birth certificate”; a thorough inspection of countertop materials in Chez Martinez.
Waynski
I think the “Tiny Dick Coward” moniker would have more effect on the Tiny Dick Coward Congresscritters who refuse to address this issue.
The Tragically Flip
@Liberty60: This is exactly how most other first world countries treat guns.
Mr. Twister
@RaflW: Except when a Dem does stick his neck out, say Colorado for instance, he is recalled. Blaming Democrats is not the answer. It is clear what the problem is, it is the same for almost every problem we face in this country, Republicans. If you can guarantee the Dems that a whole lot of motivated voters will have their back you might see more spine, until then I don’t blame them. What good is it for them to sacrifice themselves on this hill, it just means more Republicans in office.
LanceThruster
@Eric U.:
The dick comparison has got to go.
It’s incredibly stupid to equate one’s masculinity (or lack thereof) with the size of one’s genitals just as it would be offensive to equate a woman’s femininity with her breast (or vagina) size or attributes.
Singular
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Spot on, mate.
I’m 40 years old, and AFAIK there have only been 3 mass shootings in the UK in my lifetime – Hungerford, Dunblane and Cumbria. After the first 2, already tight gun-controls were tightened HARD, and it’s still possible that even more legislation will be passed.
Will this ever happen in the states? Probably not, for all the reasons you all know so well. So you’ll just have to keep on burying your children. That breaks my heart. Sandy Hook broke everyone’s heart, just like Dunblane.
RandomMonster
Maybe a good idea, Betty. I heard (read?) about how Ku Klux Klan membership declined after their portrayal as losers. I’m trying to find whatever article or review that was…
The Tragically Flip
@Stella B.:
This kind of crap is how American gun culture will shift. Start pissing off suburban parents who think the “gun” issue is just for inner cities and blah people to worry about. We need more Helen Lovejoys shrieking “won’t somebody please think of the children!”
PurpleGirl
@Kropadope: No, Santorum isn’t less crazy but I think enough people know about the reference and they won’t vote for him because of it.
Calouste
I’ve suggested it before, but I think there should be a requirement that all guns are painted bright pink.
It makes it easier for the “good guys” to see that a bad guy has a gun, right? And it doesn’t affect the actually owning and using of the gun.
And I’m sure the ammosexuals will be happy parading around their big, hard, pink, uh, guns.
Just bring it up with ammosexuals you meet, whether they would carry a gun if it was bright pink. It still works the same you know.
hitchhiker
A couple of years ago my brother went to a gun range, rented a pistol, and shot himself through the heart. Three days later his adult son walked into the room where the family was gathered, collectively sick with the weight of questions and sorrow.
Adult son is employed by the border patrol in TX. He had a gun strapped to his leg and a smirk on his face.
In conversations with/about him since then, I’ve learned that there is simply no way to penetrate the utter smug insanity of someone who (a) enjoys feeling more powerful than anybody in the room and (b) believes that the constitution affords him that right when and wherever he goes.
Seriously. There was my 80-something mom with tears in her eyes, trying not to think about her kid having shot himself, and there was her grandson displaying his weapon in her home, daring anybody to challenge him.
Incitatus for Senate
In mirror universe America, I like to think that we established that there is no constitutional right to a firearm at the supreme court level. Then the federal government restricts gun ownership to people who actually need one.
You’re a rancher who has to shoot some poor coyote now and then?
Fine, you get one (1) bolt action rifle.
You hunt deer/ducks/whatever in season?
Fine, you get one (1) shotgun, the kind you break open to load 1 or 2 shells.
Your job requires you to personally transport money/valuables?
Fine, you get one (1) revolver.
You want to defend your home from burglars?
You get a taser, the good ones the cops use.
Everyone passes a basic psych evaluation and gun safety course.
Incitatus for Senate
Plus it’s the mirror universe, so goatees and sexy outfits for everyone.
Origuy
@JoyceH:
It’s already been thought of. It’s not that easy:
Betty Cracker
@hitchhiker: Oh man. I’m sorry. And you’re probably right: There’s no shaming the kind of person who would smirkingly display a weapon in that situation. They have no shame.
Jamey
@Incitatus for Senate: Or at least apply to gun owners the same strictures the Republican Right want to saddle welfare recipients with: proof of employment–or proof of an active search for same; clear criminal record; regular drug testing; constant harassment by media pundits who have no earthly idea what gun ownership is about.
Avery Greynold
@Scott S.: Being almost 60, and with little to lose, I have a rehearsed reaction to anyone I will see practicing open carry in a crowd.
Stand up, raise my hands and yell: “You sir, are either crazy or an asshole, and I intend to find out which you are. If you are crazy, I intend to draw your fire while innocent people escape. If you are an asshole, I will explain to you at length” (and continue for as long as they stay for my insults). Wish me luck.
J R in WV
I like the idea of making gun possession permits dependent upon passing tests, both shooting accuracy, understanding of the laws about self-defense and accidental shooting and psychological balance for gun owners. But getting there from where we are today wuold be really hard.
There are lots of people being treated for mental conditions who would never commit a crime, yet who would show up if databases of mental patients were cross-referenced with gun owners. I’m thinking of Bi-Polar people, or people with seizure disorders, who live in rural areas where guns are tools.
I have twice had to shoot disabled deer with my handgun – I don’t hunt, but when a beautiful 8-point buck shows up with his gut torn open by either coyotes or feral dogs, or a fawn breaks a leg, the correct thing is to end the suffering. I have also shot dogs about to kill a milk cow, who couldn’t defend herself because, well because she was a milk cow. And a possum about to grab a chicken in the coop on night.
I don’t like any of that… but I’m glad I had the proper tool for the job.
Betty Cracker
@Avery Greynold: I like your style!
J R in WV
@hitchhiker:
I’m sorry. That’s pretty grim. I can’t imagine the space in which it’s OK to walk into your Grandma’s like that.
I’m sorry.
Sherparick
I believe derision and showing that basically Mr. LaPierre and ALEC are basically trying to give vigilante wannabes the license to kill in a Charles Bronson fantasy a reality. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/29/nevada-man-claims-stand-your-ground-after-shooting-couple-sleeping-at-his-vacant-property/
We are now starting to get a story like this everyweek where some middle age white guy guns down some unharmed person who may or may not be breaking some minor law near his property and who then claims “Stand Your Ground” as defense “because I was afraid. quiver, quiver.”
The Tragically Flip
I really like the pink guns thing. Absolutely no impact on the current expansive view of the 2nd. Do it under the “commerce clause.” You can buy black guns if you buy them in the state they’re manufactured and the gun never leaves that state.
Mike G
Just when you thought people couldn’t get any stupider, last night in Isla Vista someone chose to set off firecrackers that sound exactly like gunfire (facepalm).
Chris
@Brian R.:
“What Republicans call themselves when they’re trying to get laid”?
Chris
@beergoggles:
Arming black people and liberals won’t provoke more laws against guns. It’ll just provoke more laws against liberals and black people.
brantl
@Kropadope: Santorum isn’t less crazy, but my right wing in-laws have stopped considering him good for anything. The ridicule worked.
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyceH:
There was a West Wing episode that proposed exactly this.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
One of the problems we have is the fact that we can no longer talk and chew bubble gum in this country when it comes to shit like this. Everything has to be reduced down to a singular culprit, and how dare you politicize the issue by trying to bring unrelated, tangential issues to distract from the real cause, etc. It’s a neat dodge to ignore the fact that shit like this never happens in a vacuum, never in an impenetrable bubble, neatly contained.
The problem is that the dodge works, because it relies on drastically shortened attention spans and the willingness to brush past all the bad things and simply ‘move on’.
@Sherparick:
Problem there is that, as we’ve seen far too often, people will swallow the Stand Your Ground pablum, especially if the victim is a scary black guy.
@Chris:
And this.
I’m honestly with Betty and her despondence with this issue. I just don’t see how we move forward from here, when all the momentum is with the massive backslide, and even incidents like this provoke shit like ‘YOUR DEAD KIDS DON’T TRUMP MY GUN OWNERSHIP!’, which, for all the mockery here, still gets lauds and plaudits, or at the worst, polite brushing to the side without actually disavowing the sentiment.
We are a country of gun fetishists, and we’re going to get mandatory gun ownership laws before we get any reasonable restrictions at the rate we’re going, and I don’t know how we reverse that trend anymore. We’re just fucked, I fear.
Citizen Alan
@Incitatus for Senate:
This. A lot of the hand-wringing over the state of America in 2014 ignores how much of our problems arise from 5-4 Supreme Court opinions that could be reversed in just a few years if Hillary Clinton (or any other Dem) is the one to replace Scalia or Kennedy.
Citizen Alan
@Trentrunner:
Emmett Till’s mother insisted on an open casket funeral with pictures taken of his mutilated body. It is quite possible that that’s the only reason we remember his name today.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Citizen Alan:
The problem is that we’re just as likely to lose either Breyer or Ginsberg (perhaps moreso in the latter’s case) as we are Scalia or Kennedy, meaning it’s just as possible we’re left with holding court at best.
Banking on the right (pun not intended) Justice to step down is going to be a bad gamble.
richard w crews
I think we should requite that all semi-autos be registered. Give everyone a 2 year time period to get it done withg the ones they already own.
Now, I fully expect about half the people ( with probably 3/4 of the guns ) to NOT register theirs. So now these guys are criminals and their guns contraband. No longer can these guns be displayed anywhere, in fact, they will have to be a deep secret. The guns will be hidden and locked up. One couldn’t even afford for their teenage sons to know of them – talk will bring exposure and criminal penalties. This will go a long way towards removing the “mannish tool”. the idea of guns as solutions, the idea of guns as even OK.
This is almost half a solution. castigate and remove guns from normal society.
EthylEster
@Kropadope: Channeling sex columnist Dan Savage (good with relationship advice, not so good on triggering) here..DTMFA.
EthylEster
@RaflW: do you really believe that savage’s google bomb had a substantive effect on the outcome of that PA senate race? if so, you might be a moron.
EthylEster
@RaflW: Thank you.
OK. Maybe you are not a moron. The “gun lovers have small dicks” meme is extremely stupid, as you note. It’s kinda like the “send this horrible man to prison so he can either get raped or worry about getting raped” meme that gets recycled here periodically. I blame the human tendency toward prurience.
Stella B.
@Calouste: That is one of my ideas too! “My Little Pony” Glocks, assault rifles with sparkly peace signs, flower power Colts, etc. Who doesn’t like pretty decorations?
Betty Cracker
@EthylEster: Y’all are so missing the point. It’s a stupid schoolyard taunt that is explicitly designed to shame the fantasy Rambos who think in those terms. I don’t think anyone is suggesting an actual correlation between gun ownership and willy-length, but it’s plain as day that a subset of gun owners (the open carry freaks) have bizarre, quasi-sexual exhibition needs around their firearms.
lou
Remember this story? This is why the gruesome details of these deaths need to be published. So people can understand just how horrific gun violence is, particularly death by semi-automatics.
Stella B.
A open carry guy wore a gun into our office once. I’ll admit that sometimes things got a little noisy down at the pediatrics end of the suite, but I really can’t see the need for a gun in the average primary care office. Our disabled, Mississippi born, wingnut office manager (married to a wingnut, antique gun dealer) wobbled over to him and ordered him out of the office. He told her it was legal. Happily, it’s also legal to order idiots off private property. She won. Hopefully he decided to choose another doctor.
J R in WV — most of the population doesn’t come in contact with milk cows that need defending. City and suburb dwellers are a huge majority in this country and we shouldn’t be obligated to live by laws that are designed for rural dwellers and the guns of two centuries ago.
Someguy
Speaking of deranged misogynists, anybody see the fratboy founder of Snapchat backpedaling on his woman-hating emails?
Jebediah, RBG
@Avery Greynold:
Please don’t get yourself shot.
johnny aquitard
@Calouste:
This I believe gets at what the gun fetishists really value.
The ammosexuals ( there are no female ammosexuals ) would fight this probably as hard if not harder as outright confiscation. They’d likely prefer to be the oppressed victim of evil gub’mint confiscation than be forced to have pink guns.
Because pink guns are for ladies and fags. Ladies are weak. They are prey. Also, they are female, which is a big problem with them. (They hardly ever refer to women as women. Women either are ‘girls’ or ‘ladies’. That says something too.) Homosexuality is even a bigger problem.
If their arguments for continued private ownership of firearms were really about self-defense, about preventing tyranny, about guns are only just tools, there is no reason why the color should matter.
We both know it does very very much to these kinds of people.
I read what the Santa Barbara shooter wrote about how a carrying a gun made him feel powerful, like an ‘alpha male’. I told my wife about that, she who has worked doing rape crisis counseling. She said that sounds like the kind of power and control issues rapists have with women.
The gun thing for the ammosexuals is about power and control. It’s a way to project a kind of masculinity they want themselves and others to believe they actually have. I think with ammosexuals, like rapists, it ain’t about the sex.
BruinKid
@johnny aquitard: Gawker’s Adam Weinstein made that exact suggestion yesterday. Make the guns pink. There’s also the added benefit of being easier to spot.
As an overall comment to this post, one thing I have noticed is quite a few of my former high school classmates also sharing the #NotOneMore sentiment on Facebook. Now, I grew up in VERY conservative Palos Verdes. Dana (“global warming was caused by dinosaur farts”) Rohrabacher was my Congressman growing up. It’s still much more conservative when compared to the rest of California, though it’s been getting better. So if my classmates that grew up in Republican households are just as disgusted with the NRA and gun nuts over this, there’s hope.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I really thought that 20 dead six year olds would have made the difference. Then again, I thought that the Giffords shooting would change things, once politicians began to understand that they, too might be targets, even Republican politicians. Never happened.
I think we’re going to have too see some nut shoot up a hospital ward full of newborn babies before anything changes. Either that, or when some nut shoots 50 people at a teabag rally or CPAC convention. ‘Specially if it’s one o’ those people that does all the shooting, things could take a turn for the better in a hurry.
sdhays
@Ash Can: Precedent is 100% irrelevant to the Supreme Court. People seem to get confused about that. If you have a majority, you can decide anything you want and set the new precedent. You can even overturn legislation passed with near-unanimous majorities in Congress which the Constitution explicitly and precisely empowers Congress to enact with made up reasoning and not have to worry about any consequences.
Heck, Uncle Tony even disregards his own precedent. They can do anything they want. I don’t even want to think what one of them would have to do to actually get impeached and removed by Congress.
Thursday
When “everyone must have guns” beats “some people shouldn’t have guns” as a preference, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Gretchen
I think there’s something to letting them know that others are pointing and laughing. They imagine themselves as the star of a Rambo fantasy and think we see the scary manly man. If they find that we think they’re such scaredy cats that they’re afraid to go to the grocery store without their guns, something the average granny does without packing, maybe it will burst the fantasy bubble.
debbie
Hard to tell whether you’re referring to the shooters or the ammosexuals. Hopefully, the latter?
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: That’s why it is absolutely vital that a Democrat win in 2016. Any freaking Democrat!
Paul in KY
@richard w crews: How would you know that the gun is unregistered?
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@NonyNony:
This is never, ever going to happen. Which is a very good thing, of course (the first part, with large numbers of well-off suburbanites experiencing gun-related deaths in their circles, that is).
A corollary to that – and also a very good thing – is the fact that the number of gun deaths and non-fatal shootings each year in America has dropped tremendously over the past 20 years. Still not to the low levels of western Europe, but a vast improvement nonetheless, despite the hundreds of millions of well-made, long-lasting, relatively cheap, and easily transported death machines in the hands of millions of Americans.
However, those of us (i.e., liberals, including many of us who are fortunate enough to be well-off suburbanites) who would still very much like our country to be more like western Europe or Canada when it comes to guns have lost this battle, badly, over the past generation. The gun fetishists have won this one so thoroughly that I believe it would take generations before this had even a ghost of a chance of changing for the better.
And with global climate change getting us all over the next 50-100 years our civilization is going to be in a very different (much worse) place long before America moves significantly toward being more sensible about private gun ownership.
I would very much like to be proven dead wrong – most particularly about the dire effects of global climate change – but sadly I don’t think so.
(I’m no bundle of cheer today, either)