The NRA takes its role as the gun industry's marketing arm to its logical extreme:
http://t.co/k3HyVf9zwI pic.twitter.com/KROwGZlkiZ
— billmon (@billmon1) July 23, 2014
From Timothy Johnson at Media Matters:
A new commentary video from the National Rifle Association suggests we can live up to the Founding Fathers’ ideals by creating “gun-required zones,” and making gun training for children “necessary to advance to the next grade.”
In a July 21 NRA News video titled “Everyone Gets A Gun,” NRA News commentator Billy Johnson said, “We don’t have a U.S. gun policy. We have a U.S. anti-gun policy” that is based on “the assumption that we need to protect people from guns” and “that guns are bad or dangerous.”
Instead Johnson wondered what gun policies the United States would have “if we designed gun policy from the assumption that people need guns — that guns make people’s lives better.” Johnson then made the following recommendations that would “encourage” and might “reward” people “to keep and bear arms at all times.”…
Media Matters has the video, if you’re having trouble wrapping your head around this.
And even before we get into the weeds of who’d be paying for all this new mandatory training (not the NRA, of course, unless they get a Michelle Rhea-level markup on their proprietary materials), let’s consider how well the Red States already handle their Sex Ed education. (I’ll leave the ‘this is my weapon, this is my gun’ jokes to the ex-military commentors.):
* According to abstinence-only gun ed, handling your weapon for anything other than essential maintenance will sap your vital essence, expose you to contact-borne diseases like herpes and MRSA, and quite probably increase your chances of developing cancer.
* Lest we encourage shooting promiscuity, bullets will only be sold to those over 18 who show a proficiency license, and the people staffing the locked bullet cabinets should ideally be Quakers or Buddhists.
* In Tennessee, anybody who risks the safety of their innocent weapon by handling it improperly shall be incarcerated.
Add your own suggestions in the comments.
KG
that girl wearing polka dots was just asking for it… and really, those boys were just sowing some wild oats.
Suffern ACE
The Philadelphia public school,system has a budget that allows $30 per year per student for textbooks. Next year, that allowance goes to $0. I would be so thrilled to have a budget for gun training. It would make sense.
srv
They’re on your radar
Mayflies, they are.
Trollhattan
They’ve managed to make the tobacco companies seem humanitarian, so should take a page from their old playbook and hire models to walk around American downtowns passing out free samples, say, some cute little .22s.
“Once you’re hooked, you’ll keep coming back for more. Never you mind the second-hand ‘smoke’.” (2nd Amendment smoke?)
Walker
I was in Virgin UT a few weeks ago. It is a small town that feeds into Zion National Park. It is also one of these “mandatory gun ownership towns.”
The tour guide told me that the purpose of these laws was actually a surreptitious form of background check. It keeps anyone with a criminal record (since they cannot own guns) out of town.
Cacti
Maybe this would persuade Arizona to increase our 49th in the nation, state-level contribution to public education.
Jerzy Russian
I like how the NRA wants to live up the “Founding Fathers’ ideals …” regarding guns. I read an article some time ago (in the Economist I think) that showed quite convincingly that gun ownership was relatively rare until the Civil War. Guns were expensive, and one guy estimated the rate of ownership by looking at probate records and the like. Simply put, not many people had guns when this country was founded.
Violet
Women should be required to have guns shoved up their vaginas on a monthly basis just to make sure they’re gun-compliant and not being gun sluts.
Baud
@Violet:
It’s what the Framers would have wanted.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Violet: Girls should pledge their guns to their dads.
gnomedad
Lock all these clowns into a guns-required room and throw in some firecrackers.
srv
@Walker: That would make a great Star Trek episode.
TooManyJens
In other words, if we were fucking crazy people.
I know there are perfectly legitimate uses for guns, and in fact I wouldn’t mind learning some target shooting myself. But need? As in, there’s something wrong with people who don’t have guns and they should be “encouraged” or “rewarded” to change their ways? Go fuck yourself.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I’m afraid to ask what that refers to.
tybee
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
shouldn’t it be the dads that pledge their guns….never mind.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Baud: An example.
Violet
@Baud: Refers to purity pledges by Christianist girls–they pledge to their dads that they’ll stay “pure” until marriage. There are even purity balls/dances and rings the girls wear. Creepy as hell.
KG
@Walker: Long Beach has been doing that with parks… any open space gets declared a park which prevents sex offenders from being able to live near by. seriously, the turned an alley downtown into an “art park”.
sharculese
In Alabama they’ll have to teach that engaging in target practice with a gun of the same sex can lead to criminal prosecution, despite that not having been true for ten years now.
Seriously, Alabama sex ed still requires the teacher to tell students that gay sex is a crime.
Violet
Can people own two of the same kind of guns or would those guns be gay?
Luthe
@Walker:
Ahahahahaha. This is America, land of the no-background-check required sales at gun shows, not to mention all those straw purchasers. I would bet there are a lot of “patriotic” gun nuts out there with rap sheets.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Secondary virgins. Hahahahaha. Love it.
@Violet:
It is creepy. But not as creepy as I originally thought when I read Omnes’s initial comment.
dmsilev
Where exactly in the original language of the 2nd Amendment does it state that bearing arms is required? Or is this one of them there penumbra-type arguments?
Davis X. Machina
@Luthe: They’re probably patriotic gun nuts because they have rap sheets. They need to be strapped, because the State has already Done Them Wrong at least once.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): From that website–they want people to come to their ball:
Seriously?
Edit: Ah, it’s a show. Nevermind.
Betty Cracker
The NRA lunatic quoted above questions the idea that guns are dangerous. Why, they’re just misunderstood marshmallows!
Kee-rist. If these nuts lived in their own walled compound surrounded by an alligator-filled moat, I’d be happy to allow them to shoot their own dicks off as often as they please. Unfortunately, the deference they demand for their fetish objects occasionally ends up in a roomful of first graders shot to pieces or movie goers gunned down en masse.
KG
@TooManyJens: honestly, i think it’s part of a general cultural disconnect. if you live in rural areas where there are farms/ranches and people hunt regularly, guns are a tool. but when you live in the suburbs or a city, guns are weapons. ammosexuals, shockingly, tend to be from the suburbs – they don’t really need them, unless they’re hunters, but they really, really like them.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Violet: I report; you decide.
dmsilev
@Baud: Some of the ‘Purity Balls’ involve girls in the ~6 year old bracket. Creepy enough yet?
Baud
You know, in Finland, every new mother gets a care package from the government.
In the U.S., however, new mothers do not get any guns from the government.
I think that’s just wrong.
dmsilev
@Violet: Purity, brought to you by Pringles!
dmsilev
@Baud: Are you advocating gunfare? Let the moochers buy their own guns.
Violet
@dmsilev: I thought it was Orville Redenbacher.
Trollhattan
@Violet:
Guns are de facto gay so that would be double-gay. Please, somebody tell the NRgAy.
Baud
@dmsilev:
If the federal government can pay for Rick Perry to send guardsmen to the border, it can pay for my guns. It’s only fair!
muddy
@dmsilev: I was raised Catholic, and they laid both the First Communion and Confirmation on me at the age of 6. I had no idea what it was I was promising to do. Gotta get ’em locked down before they learn enough to question!
Trollhattan
@dmsilev:
Rhymes with “tingles.”
KG
@dmsilev: whoa, whoa, whoa… who said anything about giving guns to poor people? that’s how revolutions start, and not the good kind of revolutions where lily-ass-white-crackers “take” “back” “their” “country” but where rich people end up dead and the flag ends up red with a hammer and sickle on it.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Baud: Perry is a good guy who just needed a little help. You are a moocher. Duh.
muddy
@Violet: They ought not need a gun poked up in their vagina every month because there ought be one residing in there in the first place.
Baud
@Trollhattan:
It’s Smith and Wesson, not Steve and Wesson.
KG
@muddy: confirmation at 6? wow, for me it was 16 and i was doing mostly because my mom said i should.
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
My sole stipulation for allowing them build the Citadel in Idaho is that the main gates lock…from the outside.
Please proceed, lunatics.
Violet
@muddy: I wonder how many of those girls in the purity balls are not virgins. A friend of mine who went to a Baptist school said most of the girls she knew re-virginized after every relationship ended.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@muddy: How would you know if a gun is there without sticking in a gun to check? Come on, think these things through.
Glidwrith
@srv: There was actually a Trek story that described a Star Fleet training exercise. A group of cadets were all locked into a large building with phasers. They were told some among them were spies or bad guys for the purposes of the exercise. Invariably, they would end up shooting everybody. I don’t remember exactly what moral the trainees were supposed to learn, but it turned out only one cadet ever actually ‘won’ the exercise: James T. Kirk.
How did he win?
He convinced everyone to come to the cafeteria and disarm themselves. Everyone came out ‘alive’.
Baud
@muddy:
You’ve just described the ultimate ammosexual fantasy.
raven
UPDATE: Wood was pronounced dead at 3:49 pm, one hour and 57 minutes after the execution began.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
Lawyers filed emergency papers to stop the execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona on Wednesday, saying prison officials botched the lethal injection.
“He has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour,” according to the motion filed in federal district court in Arizona. “He is still alive.”
Wood, 55, was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her father in 1989.
Baud
@Violet:
All of them, Katie.
Trollhattan
@Baud:
Bwa-ha-ha!
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I wouldn’t mind pledging my gun to my dad. If you mean by “pledging”, you mean, uhhhhh.
My father is a d-bag.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Violet: Are you counting the girls who do anal in order to retain their virginity?
Karen in GA
@muddy: We did confession and communion at 7, and confirmation at 12. In my 7-year-old mind, I thought confession and communion were weird; confirmation was something my parents wanted and I had no choice, so fine, I did it. Chucked it all right after that.
scav
Gun management mandatory education, with no parental or religious opt-outs, unlike science, evolution, sex-ed, vaccination, . . . . RealMerkanFreedom Reigns!
Trollhattan
@raven:
What, again with this shit? Unbelievable.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
The ultimate loop hole.
Roger Moore
Just remember: forcing people to buy health insurance is totally unconstitutional, but forcing them to buy guns is fine.
And I damn well want religious exemptions for Quakers, Amish, Jains, and anyone else who thinks being forced to carry a gun would violate their beliefs.
Baud
@Karen in GA:
If you don’t mind me asking, what does a 7-year-old confess to?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Baud: The musical version.
Karen in GA
@raven: WTF?!
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Is there any topic you can’t find a video for?
fatcow
I’m glad my father took the time to have me properly educated on firearm safety and handling when I was around 12 years old. It helped me realize how dangerous of a tool it can be if not handled responsibly, and to appreciate and respect my right as a citizen. Unfortunately, most people don’t take the time to educate themselves, and often confuse privileges and rights.
Thankfully, in this country, one man doesn’t have the privilege of revoking another man’s rights, unless the person has forfeitted their rights under the court of law.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Baud: I was introduced to Garfunkel and Oates by this blog. Just sayin’.
Brian R.
We should probably start with a pilot program in a few carefully selected states.
Let’s make everyone in Mississippi and Alabama own guns and see how it works out. Might need to seal the states off from the outside to keep the tests pure. Run it for 20-30 years, and then we can see how the next generation turned out. Or if they did.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Me too!
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Figures.
Origuy
@Baud: Garfunkel & Oates, The Loophole
ETA Sigh. not quick enough
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Origuy: Ahem.
Baud
@Origuy:
So you’re the culprit.
muddy
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): There ought be a gun in there too.
Karen in GA
@Baud: That was my problem with it. I think I said I bothered my mother and my older sister. I was just saying it because I had to say something.
I later realized that the reason my 7-year-old brain was having a hard time with it was that I didn’t quite know how to say, “Before I go listing my sins, can we agree upon a definition of what sin actually is? Is there some objective definition of ‘bad,’ or am I just bad if my mother says I am? What if she’s wrong?”
Started a lifetime of overthinking everything.
Baud
@muddy:
A big ass gun.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I’m not familiar enough with those folks to know, so I’m not counting anything. But yeah, the anal-to-retain-virginity thing seems to be common. Aren’t sexually transmitted diseases more common among that group because of the unprotected anal sex? Can’t get pregnant so why use protection, right?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Violet: Don’t ask me.
muddy
@Karen in GA: I think the communion was fairly standard age for the time. Actually the confirmation was because the parish priest was going on to be a Cardinal in Rome. So getting him for the ceremony was obvs more meaningful to God, and would make it count for more. Or something.
I think I’ve shared this pic on here before, I was mad all day because I had to give the good veil to this blond bitch who everyone said looked like an angel. Of course she did, in the good veil that I had practiced in for ages. Humph!
muddy
@Baud: Hence the term, duh!
Russ
Fighting the man, when the man is themselves. Just that simple.
Baud
@Karen in GA:
If you didn’t overthink, you wouldn’t be here!
muddy
@Karen in GA: I used to make “sins” up, because I’d get in trouble if I was too quick about it. I’d been so bad surely I could not have told it all in such a short time. I’d get punished extra for lying to the priest. She’d be happiest if I really held the line up, and I might get ice cream if I looked like I was crying over it.
Thanks, Jesus!
scav
@muddy: Well, being touched by an about to be cardinal might very well be the make or break incident. I mean, apparently making a cake eaten by happily socially-recognized-by-others paired homosexuals is a sin not to be forgiven by GOD, unlike mere personal adultery for which he hands forgiveness out like gum-balls.
muddy
@scav: I know it made all the difference in my faith.
JPL
@Karen in GA: Actually I can remember my sins at seven. I did not respect my mother and had a bad thought. That’s probably six things because I didn’t listen a lot.
Baud
@scav:
What kind of cake?
scav
@Baud: Well, conventions of Jesuits and Southern Baptists are disputing the point. Some will allow Civil Partnership cakes to be sold with only minor absolution afterward, but hardliners refuse to countenance even Birthday cakes.
Karen in GA
@muddy: We went to a photo studio after my first communion, and I hated every minute of it because I hated having to wear a dress and wanted the damned thing off already. My mother has a picture of me from that shoot — white veil, blonde hair in little curls, smile, and blue eyes that screamed “I WILL KILL YOU ALL.”
Litlebritdifrnt
@srv:
I was staying at a lakeside cabin on Lake Waccamaw one weekend during the Mayfly hatching, I woke up on the Saturday morning and the house was totally enveloped in them, they were everywhere, and I mean everywhere. When you think about it, it is really cool.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
“Once you pop, you can’t stop”?!?!?!?
Holy fuck. (Yeah, that was on purpose.)
These people are beyond sick.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
Rinse and repeat?
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Horrible horrible horrible. Stuff like this makes me despair of the human race. Honestly, are we not better than this? Just makes my heart weep.
muddy
@Karen in GA: Ha! Reminds me of “graduation” photos. I was short one quarter (of 16) gym credit from having snuck out early to smoke. I found out the day of the thing that I couldn’t march, so my mom made me traipse around the back yard and have my photo taken with cap and gown on in various poses. Oh the thunder in that face!
As a joke I made my son parade around in the yard like that when it was his turn. He is all smiles and middle fingers in his pics.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
JPL
@muddy: My younger son refused to participate in h.s. graduation but insisted that I go sit with him in the audience to watch his friend. I refused. I just couldn’t do it.
muddy
@SiubhanDuinne: I was in the hospital last year and they were pushing potassium chloride in the IV. It got infiltrated because an idiot nurse drew blood out from the same vein further up and poked a hole in it. I used to think that childbirth and gout were the worst pains I have ever had.
Neither was a patch on the feeling of the potassium chloride entering the flesh. I’m usually stoic for pain (to a fault perhaps), but I was just screaming. It was like the flesh and my mind were equally on fire, and there was no stopping it until it ran out. I don’t know what drugs they use in Arizona, I hope not that.
Kay
It’s just more grift. They want to sell guns and they want to sell gun training.
It’ll be a whole new business opportunity.
I wish people would stop piling everything in the world on public schools. Every repulsive grift-scheme ends with “let’s sell it to schools!”
Public school children are not supposed to be used as a captive audience for anyone who wants to push product. Sell your commercial crap somewhere else.
Citizen_X
@raven: Christ, why don’t we just bring back burning at the stake at this point?
Don’t repeat that. I don’t want to give them any ideas.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): One of these days I’m gonna have to learn the correct spelling of eeww.
JPL
@raven: Can we assume that we need to appeal the 8th amendment. Maybe it’s time to ask the NRA whether or not that amendment is important.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nice.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I know that one. Disobeying your parents. Telling lies, if you did. Impure thoughts. Yep, at 7 the nuns were already talking about impure thoughts. And of course we were having them – maybe because the nuns got us thinking about it? Or maybe just because.
Now I think about how creepy it is to have a 7-year old telling some priest about impure thoughts.
Litlebritdifrnt
@WaterGirl:
I remember my step dad telling me that when he was taking confession as a kid he just used to make stuff up, because he really couldn’t think of anything he had done wrong that week.
David Koch
Meh. Kids already play cops and robbers, as well as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. We might as well just give them the real thing. Moreover, guns don’t break down as quickly as an x-box controller, which would help a family save money.
WaterGirl
@raven: @Baud @Omnes
I had no idea what you were talking about, but by the time the third one of you chimed in I decided I had to google. OMG (which I don’t think I have ever said before) “Fuck me in the ass because I love Jesus?”
Wow. Okay, back to watch the second half. It’s like an accident, I can’t look away.
SiubhanDuinne
@muddy:
Yikes! (Double yikes because I have a lifelong needle phobia — have never had my ears pierced, will never get a tattoo, and have said several times that if I ever end up on death row, I want the chair or firing squad rather than lethal injection.)
Seriously, that sounds just horrible. I think I would have asked to be knocked out first with some kind of gas mask over my nose. Once I’m fully anesthetized, I guess they can do what they want.
Yikes, again I say, yikes.
some guy
IDF shells 8 story downtown Gaza City building it had urged Gazans to seek shelter in. Building collapses, 13 dead. 7/22/14
WaterGirl
@muddy: I’m gonna have to dig out my first communion photo. Sorry about the veil. We all bought our own, so they could be as special as we wanted.
I remember first communion day. I took it all quite seriously and felt very holy. I remember that.
muddy
@SiubhanDuinne: It doesn’t hurt when they do it right! I don’t have needle fears at all. Usually when they put something in your IV it just feels cool, from the room temp liquid, so you’re not even expecting anything bad to happen.
I had a Nurse Ratched one time who wouldn’t believe me that the IV was infiltrated. She kept putting goddamned tubes of saline through it to prove to me that “it is going in”. Going in my flesh, not the vein, idiot. (Salt inside your arm feels pretty shitty too, but it’s nothing on the potassium!) She wouldn’t deal with my IV and I had to wait until someone else came on shift. By that time my forearm looked like a football.
I reported her so then the next day she kept coming in telling me long stories about how hard her life was. I said she might have less problems if she fucking listened to people.
Mnemosyne
@Walker:
Did you tell them that the NRA is successfully pushing to allow ex-felons to own guns? So, yeah, not much of a background check.
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
@Karen in GA:
Weird — for me, they did first communion around age 6, first confession around age 10, and confirmation around age 14. This was in the late 1970s–early 1980s, so maybe it was a Vatican II change?
I knew some kids from places like the Philippines where they did the whole shebang — communion, confession, and confirmation — at age 7. Not sure why — differences in child mortality, maybe?
ETA: I got to wear a wreath of flowers on my hair instead of a veil, so maybe we were at a hippie-ish parish.
muddy
@WaterGirl: We had 2 veils as I had much older sisters, one veil was nice and one wasn’t. It occurs to me now to ask my sisters what the deal was with them and the disparate veils. Probably whoever was “ugly” that week got the crap veil to teach a lesson.
WaterGirl
@muddy: I had two older sisters, too. We should compare notes sometime!
muddy
@Mnemosyne: Maybe it was the overseas thing, I was in the Mideast when I had it in the 60’s.
muddy
@WaterGirl: If you’d like to you can get my email from Anne Laurie!
jl
No time to read all the comments. But didn’t early republic laws that required gun ownership apply to adult men eligible for state militia service, And IIRC, a common problem at militia assembles was that the guns were broken, cruded up and uncleaned and unfit for use? So, the guns were not being carried everywhere, but were, by most usually thrown in closets or cellars?
Maybe the NRA will call for a Child National Guard (not like the That Nice Mr. Hilter Youth at all.)
Monty Python – Mr. Hilter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmGknvr_Pg
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
I was in the Midwest (Chicago suburbs). It’s probably the 1970s thing — we also sang “Godspell” and Beatles songs during Mass in those days.
JPL
@Mnemosyne: The good old days!
raven
So I just donated to Michelle Nunn through Act Blue. At the end of the transaction I get a page with all kind of info including a little Facebook note that says “Richard De Berry” likes this. Richard De Berry was my FDL Nam Vet buddy. He died three years ago but his FB page is still there.
raven
dupe
JPL
ot.. Tomorrow the AJC will have this political cartoon.. http://luckovich.blog.ajc.com/2014/07/23/724-luckovich-cartoon-top-this/
it made me smile
Mike in NC
New NRA advertising slogan: “Guns — they bring good things to life!”
JPL
@Mike in NC: I’m gonna fix that for you
“Guns — they bring good things to death
Anne Laurie
@muddy:
Ah, the joys of being a Late Boomer, when factory-style educational processing had been ‘perfected’!
I was in parochial school — two hundred kids per grade, fifty each per classroom, each including at least one acknowledged special-needs kid, no assistants for the one harried teacher (one reason my 20/60 vision wasn’t noticed for three years). We started first grade when memorizing the infamous Baltimore catechism was still mandatory, barely. Most of what I remember from being prepared for First Communion (second grade) and Confirmation (third grade) was our endless peer-driven theological quibbling about what qualified as a sin, and which naughty deeds were mortal as opposed to venial sins. Also, we all spent a great deal of time trying to come up with the perfect confirmation name — was it better to pick an aspirational name, based on one’s favorite saint (of the week), or a euphonious one?
My First Communion ceremony was scheduled for a really warm May day, and of course the church wasn’t air-conditioned. Between the heat & the excitement, not only did three of the little girls faint, so did one little boy. And another girl threw up all over herself, and the girls on either side of her — but IIRC she was a drama queen, anyways.
My crappy black-and-white snapshot was (also) taken on the steps of the church, standing next to my nana, the Dragon Lady (who made my dress). It is clear, from my expression, that I already understand that white is not my color, nor does a hair-off-the-forehead veil do me any fashion favors.
tsquared2001
@Mnemosyne: The family did a hippy church in the early seventies. Defrocked nuns & priests in the parish, guitar Mass, the whole shebang.
After all three of my older brothers served as altar boys, Mom decided that me and my sister would be home schooled in the Rosary, confession & confirmation. It took for my sister but not for me – maybe I needed a professional.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Phrasing!
@Baud:
Phrasing, damn it!
raven
And I get trashed for meaningless 70’s nostalgia???
raven
@Baud: God’s Loophole, Garfunkel and Oates
I guess I better put a warning on here. Don’t be watchin this and then bitching at me. It’s, by some standards, dirty.
tsquared2001
@Anne Laurie: My older brother was AMAZED, after parochial school, at what public school kids could get away with. Quite a culture shock for him entering the 7th grade.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
Nope, just too many communicants. You had to have a bishop for the confirmation, so in crowded parishes, the temptation was to combine Part A and Part B for the convenience of the hierarchy. Even in the 1960s, some of the nuns (& the teaching brothers in the high school) murmured about whether eight-year-olds could really understand the theology they were being ‘confirmed’ into, but it was much simpler for the monsignor to herd middle schoolers instead of teenagers through the mandatory (minimum) prep!
raven
@tsquared2001: My high school in Villa Park had a damn smoking area for students in the 70’s.
tsquared2001
@raven: Minneapolis Central had a huge front grassy expanse with large oaks and as long as you didn’t stick it in the teacher’s face, nearly everything was fair game.
Karen in GA
@Mnemosyne: Mid-70s for me.
Karen in GA
@JPL: I actually let out a “Ha!”
tsquared2001
This is in my ear now that we have traveled back to the glorious 70s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfbvm52G8fE
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Not by all of us you don’t.
El Cid
Pfft. This is weak tea.
We won’t be truly safe until it is required that we be firing our guns at each other, all the time, in every location.
The only defense is to be on continual, armed offense, and since anyone might be a threat, everyone must shoot at everyone else, all the time.
danielx
Gosh, maybe some training would have helped the two bozos who bumped into each other on the street in one of the local entertainment districts the other week and drew down on each other. They managed to miss each other completely and hit SEVEN OTHER PEOPLE. Perhaps with some training they’d have managed to do each other in and rid the world of a couple of menaces to society.
Just kidding, but goddamn, they think more guns would add to the safety of the world’s most heavily armed civilian population? Tell us more, please!
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Glad you donated to Michelle Nunn — every bit helps! — but yeah, I know what you mean about the weirdness of long-dead people continuing to “like” things on FB. I have at least three people, one of whom has been dead for over three years, whose names keep popping up. Very disconcerting to say the least.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Wonderful! I hope Michelle gets a lot of prints of that and frames them and puts them up in every volunteer office she has around the state.
KG
@tsquared2001: heh, in the early 90s, I had the same experience. Went from a tiny catholic school – I’m talking 30 kids per grade, so I had the same core of 25 kids from K through 6 – and then switched to a public jr high.
For me, confession was second grade, communion was third – I think – confirmation waited until sophomore/junior year of high school (which I think I mentioned above). The only thing I remember from communion was, well, nothing. I do have a sweet pic of me in a powder blue suit and the last skinny tie I ever wore.
tsquared2001
@KG: Skinny ties were the shit.
Mnemosyne
@tsquared2001:
Nope, this was a real deal, fully in communion Catholic church. Specifically, this one.
Violet
@efgoldman: That operation is very popular in Muslim countries where girls/women can be inspected by religious figures to make sure they’re “virgins” prior to marriage. NPR or something did a piece on it a year or so ago.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@efgoldman:
Or a Vaginal-American.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
As a non-smoker with asthma, I do not miss those days. At all.
Fred
@Jerzy Russian: Good point.
I read that it is a myth that people in “The Old West” all carried guns for self defense. It seems a Colt Revolver cost more than a large house at the time. The only people who could make that kind of investment in high end hardware were professionals, be it police, military or thugs.
It is rather astounding how casually some people act about the idea of carrying and using a killing machine. They seem to think it is easy to point a gun at a human and pull the trigger. When the shit hits the fan most people will make the wrong split second decision, shoot at the wrong time or person or freeze up after they have escalated a situation.
It comes back to that study of peoples’ own assessment of their competence. The people who believe they are the most competent are the ones who don’t know jack. It is the people who doubt their own judgement and abilities who have the best handle on things. Someone who believes he should be allowed to carry a gun and wants to is probably the very person who should not.
Nutella
@raven:
Mine allowed smoking outside on the football field, but only for boys. So the girl smokers all smoked in the girls bathroom — making it unusable by the rest of us.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I’ve owned guns since I was a young man, but by God I could not tell anyone that they have in any way, shape, or form “made my life better”.
And as for toting one around with me, forget it. I’ve never had an “accidental discharge” – I’m very careful to the point of paranoia about keeping them unloaded unless I’m at a range on the line – but I’ve seen plenty of others that have. People are way too fucking careless with them. It’s not a wallet or a cellphone, something that you’d use every day.
Come to think of it, I’ve never been in a situation where my having one would have improved the outcome of said situation.
@Fred: Yeah, that’s a total bunch of shit. Most towns made you disarm and check your weapons with the local law enforcement official before they’d even let you inside the city limits.
pseudonymous in nc
@fatcow:
And I too I have the right to assume that you’re just a shitty gun owner, like so many shitty gun owners. It’s the safest thing to do.
J R in WV
Just yesterday I saw a guy, I assume he had a concealed carry permit, but he was big (fat) and was wearing an inside the waistband holster with an automatic pistol in it. It looked really uncomfortable, and his tee shirt kept riding up above the handle of the pistol.
He was also wearing shorts, and had a flat-top crew cut.
It wan’t properly concealed if I was seeing it. Of course, open carry has always been legal here in WV, though it used to invite the attention of an officer to be sure you weren’t just a trouble maker thief.
Tom RKBA
This is not some fantasy; schools taught shooting for a long time prior to the 1970’s. Why do so many old high schools have gun ranges beneath them? That’s not a bullet trap–it’s for lead storage! A Virginia Tech alumnus told me he kept and M1 Garand and a shotgun in his dorm room. Contrary to what the anti-rights crowd says, law abiding people are responsible with weapons. But, the idiots commenting on this thread would rather push their agenda rather than acknowledge how guns have been a part of education in the past.