Another day, yet another mass shooting, this time in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Three people were killed and nine wounded when a lone gunman opened fire in a Lafayette movie house Thursday evening.
Lafayette police confirmed shortly before 8 p.m. law enforcement officers responded to a call about an active shooter at the Grand 16 Lafayette at 3141 Johnston St.
Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft confirmed at least three people were killed, including the gunman, who died from a self-inflicted wound.
Two victims were pronounced dead at the scene. Nine were transported to area hospitals, eight by ambulance and one by private party. One victim died at a hospital.
The suspect was described by several witnesses as a white, middle-aged male. State Police said the shooter, whose identity was not released late Thursday, was 58 years old.
Bobby Jindal is praying a lot. Easier than gun control legislation, you know. But there’s been an absolute and clear winner in the OBAMA’S COMIN’ FOR OUR SHOOTIN’ IRONS battle, and that’s been firearms manufacturers.
Gun production has more than doubled over the course of the Obama administration, according to a new report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The manufacturing boom has come in the face of the president’s push to expand background checks and place new restrictions on guns in the wake of high-profile shootings like the recent mass-killing in Charleston, S.C., and the 2012 massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.
The numbers paint a picture of gun owners who are concerned about new restrictions on their Second Amendment rights, activists say.
“The ATF report confirms what we already know, that Barack Obama deserves the ‘Gun Salesman of the Decade’ award,” said Erich Pratt, spokesman for the Gun Owners of America. “People have been rushing to buy firearms because they’re afraid that Obama will take away their Second Amendment rights.”
The ATF’s annual firearms commerce report tracks the number of guns manufactured in the United States, which provides an indication of gun sales around the country.
The number of guns manufactured increased by 18 percent during the George W. Bush administration, while the Clinton administration actually saw a 9 percent reduction.
But under President Obama, gun production has spiked 140 percent to 10.8 million firearms in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available.
So here’s the question: since the solution to any issue involving guns is always moar gunz pew pew pew, we actually have them now, a record number of them, and these mass shootings are happening every 10-14 days.
At what point do we actually say “Hey, moar gunz is not working”?
kc
I guess we should just leave our flags at half mast on a permanent basis.
RSA
Fixed.
jayboat
I’ll take ‘NEVER’ for a thousand, Alec.
Geeno
How about never? Does never work for you?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
In spite of the depressing news about this and other topics over the past 6-30 years, we need to remember that things could change rapidly with one SCOTUS justice leaving and 5-10 Senators being replaced. There are only a tiny number of people standing in the way of sensible progress. We need to do what we can to make sure those people start their retirements sooner rather than later.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
Bobby Jindal on CNN now. Going with the theme of shootings bring out the best in people. They “pull together.” Friends show up at the hospital to inquire on other friends, and they do not leave.
boatboy_srq
@RSA: It’s hitting all sides. I’m hardly ammosexual, and I’m thinking of getting one – not because I’m scared of losing my rights, but because I’m scared of the idiots who think that. Is there a Pink Pistols chapter in NoVA?
F
Guns cannot fail, they can only be failed.
Elizabelle
Jindal: what we need to do now is love these families. Right now we’ve got a grieving community. …
Enough time to ask some questions later, but now it is time to love these families.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: Shootings bring out the DEAD in people, more like.
Sherparick
Well, a guy carrying a gun stopped this mass shooting. Of course, it was the same guy doing the mass shooting deciding to blow his own head off as the cops arrive. Guns can’t fail, they can only be failed. By the way, another white, male, Christian southerner is behind this shooting. Who will protect us for the Christianist menance?
dogwood
@Elizabelle:
Poor Bobby Jindal, if this would have happened a few weeks earlier, he might have made the debate stage.
Elizabelle
@boatboy_srq: Yup.
How about a day without a target? A day without a customer? Money is the only thing that talks.
Elizabelle
13 rounds fired in a theatre.
21 year old white female, Maisie something, dead at the theatre. Another white female, aged 33, died at the hospital.
Lone wolf shooter might be a transient. 40 caliber handgun.
beth
When will Obama say the words “radical Caucasian terrorism”???
Thunderbird
I was watching Maddow last night and this story broke towards the end of her show, and I literally said out loud, “Oh for fuck’s sake, not again.”
I’m having a hard time accepting that this bullshit is the new normal, but it sure seems like it, doesn’t it?
Gimlet
Guess we need TSA-like security with metal detectors at the entrance to every church, school and movie theater.
gvg
Insulting to call Obama gun salesman of the decade in that article. It’s the fear mongers who are the salesman. I want to scream at them cowards cowards idiots and fools. I do think more of our pushback should involve calling them cowards. Reminds me of how humiliating I found it when Cheney was talking about we had to attack if there was even a 1% chance of danger…..I can’t fathom why some people thought he was so tough. Clearly a coward. Bush too frankly. A lot of what they did seemed to be reacting to unreasoning fear….
They were old enough to remember the cold war which had a lot more real reason for fear and the majority of us had no choice but to just carry on like everything would be alright. The threat of nuclear war was based on real science and actual capabilities not imaginary boogymen under the bed. Nuts, now I am in a bad mood.
I will say the nutty gun culture has been building for some time. I started noticing it during Clintons terms and that may be related to my age and becoming more aware at that period.
The NRA is run by cowards too.
RSA
@boatboy_srq:
I hadn’t thought of that reaction–wait, yes I have, because my state legislature is debating changing the rules to allow students to carry concealed on campus. Sometimes I think the average non-gun owner in the U.S. is between a rock and a hard place.
debbie
Not sure if this has been discussed elsewhere, but USA Today released a report on mass shootings in the US since 2006:
http://www.usatoday.com/topic/f94c42f0-c41d-4b8e-bcc0-8c23f4624884/mass-killings-in-america/
Kind of slick, if you’d rather listen to a summary of the report:
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/24/425834197/mass-shootings-in-america-by-the-numbers
Sickening. One statistic: 94% of the shooters were men. I say we just let women have guns.
Bobby B.
Please proceed, Governer. The slaughter in Louisiana will solve the Southern Question all by itself.
dogwood
@Thunderbird:
It’s definitely the new normal. It was brought up in a thread last night, but very few seemed interested enough to comment.
debbie
Then of course there are the clowns guarding the recruiting centers. After hailing them as heroes on Wednesday, the Lancaster, OH “guardians” were kicked out of the strip mall on Thursday because one guy’s AK-47 accidentally went off.
Kay
@Gimlet:
Yup. Gun owners refuse to allow any regulation of gun owners which means everyone has to be regulated.
That’s fair, right? That the whole country should have to put up with and pay for elaborate security at every entrance to protect this one group of people from any inconvenience when pursuing their hobby?
dogwood
@boatboy_srq:
The gun manufacturers will be happy to have your business.
dogwood
@Kay:
Pretty much. That’s the deal.
MattF
My sweet Lafayette.
dedc79
The people rushing to buy guns before tighter background checks are enacted. Yeah, those are the folks you want to be armed…..
Elizabelle
@dogwood: It is the new normal.
And I am goddamned sick of it. Our right to gather in public for peaceful activities is much more important than gun radicials’ rights to own another precious.
@debbie: A psychologist wrote a book “Men are Not Cost Effective: Male Crime in America” that was not particularly well reviewed.
Elizabelle
@MattF: KBON country, right?
Love Lucinda. Thanks!
GregB
This shooting doesn’t count. The shooter was an older white guy, so he was obviously simply mentally disturbed.
Move along.
WereBear
We have panic because we have a black President. Sure, it gets stoked by the gun-sellers, but that’s the root of it.
Elizabelle
I am sick of hearing TV people talk about “time to heal.” TV’s off.
patrick II
I don’t know how much of the increase in sales is due to police forces upgrading their weaponry in self-defense, but after Sandy Hook a local community here spent a quarter of a million dollars on new AR15’s to replace the old shotguns their police carried in their cars. They didn’t want to be outgunned by the civilians they are supposed to be protecting.
NorthLeft12
There can never be enough guns. It’s sort of the same philosophy as tax cuts. If you have not achieved the result that right wing/conservative dogma predicts, that only means that you have not done “it” enough.
In the case of guns, you have not got enough of them in public hands and the guns are not being carried enough to eradicate crime.
Kay
@patrick II:
Great! An arms race! And the gun lobby benefits there too! Is there anything else we can do for them? Any other ways we can make their lives easier and more profitable? We live to serve.
Betty Cracker
I witnessed a workplace massacre many years ago — a man was pissed off about being fired months before and decided to settle the score by returning to the site and gunning down several former colleagues in the office building cafeteria. Not only did he murder and maim several people, he terrorized thousands more (including me), who had to hide in the building for hours as the cops searched for the shooter, wondering all the while if the maniac who had just blown people away in front of us might be hunting us down one by one. It was a terrifying experience, and we were the lucky ones because we weren’t physically injured.
I became something of a gun control activist after that experience. I was in the Million Mom March. I lobbied my local, state and federal elected officials. I wrote letters to the editor. I argued with gun nuts in person and online, trying to persuade people. Now I think all that was a waste of time. I have accepted the fact that a small but single-minded group of my fellow citizens, backed by the vast resources of the death merchant lobbying organization known as the NRA, control gun policy in this country.
They have decreed that daily mayhem, frequent tragic accidents and the occasional massacre — even of classrooms of school children — are an acceptable price to pay for their right to pursue their hobby unabated. They don’t give a flying fuck about what the rest of us think about it, even though we are the majority, and until the day we become as single-minded as they are, it’s tough shit for us. It’s Wayne LaPierre’s world; the rest of us are just sheltering in place in it, as Steve M at No More Mr. Nice Blog put it after one massacre.
OzarkHillbilly
@boatboy_srq: You do realize that owning a gun increases your chances of being shot? By a lot?
boatboy_srq
@dogwood: Their marketing is certainly working. We can only be so selective about our vendors: all the popcorn we’re consuming watching the GOTea meltdown is probably coming from ConAgra and Monsanto, after all.
Punchy
The only thing that sets this apart from domestic terrorism is the lack of a few “z’s” and “al-“‘s in his name.
See, it’s just a persecuted Christian this time.
Another Holocene Human
The South has the highest per capita homicide rate in the US, and the Northeast the lowest, and this has been true for years. But Louisiana has had by far and away the highest per capita homicide rate in the nation for over two decades. Between 10.6 and 11.9 (it goes up and down) per 100,000 for the last five years, while the national average is 4.5.
Countries in the Americas region with similar murder rates (the Americas beat the rest of the world for homicides–we’re #1! we’re #1!):
Paraguay
Haiti
Antigua
Nicaragua
Bolivia
The US territory Puerto Rico has double Louisiana’s murder rate but it doesn’t collect enough taxes to have a functioning gov’t and AFAIK doesn’t receive the volume of transfer payments that Louisiana does.
Another Holocene Human
And as I said downthread, law enforcement is so feckless in Louisiana that during the 2000s, GWB’s reign, there were three different serial killers operating in Baton Rouge at the same time.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: We can’t study accidental shootings and suicides because reasons.
aimai
They just found the dead body of a guy who had convinced his moron girlfriend that he was in the CIA. When they searched his home they found literal tons of guns, two truckloads worth. Most had never been fired or even had their price tags taken off. My point here is that although gun sales have gone up its far from clear that it isn’t single, crazy, individuals buying more and more guns rather than an increase in actual gun ownership across the board. I mean–I’m not doubting that gun ownership has become a badge of honor and a kind of identity card for the right wing at this point, and that lots of people do own guns. But although we clearly haven’t reached a saturation point the gun owning crazy group is getting older, whiter, etc.. and will be starting to die off soon. One of my big worries is what happens to the guns they’ve been stockpiling as they become mentally incompetent, or mentally more incompetent.
Punchy
I’m unclear why that’s such a controversial statement. Of course it’s time to heal; there’s 9 injured in the hospital. What else can they do but heal themselves?
low-tech cyclist
@Elizabelle:
I guess Jindal thinks people are at their best when they’ve been turned into spoiled meat.
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear: Nah, guns are like real estate, it’s always a great time to buy (and tomorrow will be too late), just ask the agent. Go ahead.
NorthLeft12
@Thunderbird: My “Oh fer effs sake, not again” stories are the male exes who murder their former wives/girlfriends and children.
During the whole same sex marriage discussion, I would tell defenders of the status quo that the people who I felt degraded the institution of marriage were the men [because lets face it guys it is pretty well always men] who would destroy their families because their fee fees were hurt. Those men who treated their wives like possessions, and generally abused them were the true enemies of the institution of marriage.
Why would churches and governments encourage/allow these sociopaths to remarry but deny that to same sex couples?
Really got no response to that, besides the standard “No one knows what is in someone’s heart and what they could do in the future, and besides the woman wants to marry the guy.”
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes. But I live in the “sane” band between all-guns-all-the-time defense contractors and the Teahadi wingnuts in the hinterlands, and the local LEOs have a hardon for the Other; so my added risk is less high than in some places and the risk I’m countering isn’t the burglars but the insurrectionists. I’m not looking at the purchase as home invasion deterrent but as self-defense when the anti-Washington Teahadi regiment forms up out in Winchester/Charlottesville. And while I may be thinking about the purchase, even if I do get one I’m hardly likely to sleep with it or put it in my laptop bag unless there really is a Teahadi regiment formed.
Amir Khalid
Obama had this to say to the BBC. I think the world is amazed that the political forces arrayed against protecting Americans from guns are so powerful, even when the tragic results happen about every fortnight.
boatboy_srq
@aimai: Elizabelle mentioned that last night. Is it finally getting national coverage?
NickM
@boatboy_srq: I have the same thought. I hate guns, but when I see an Ahole driving around NoVa with their Gadsen Flag custom plates that read “MyCOLT” and “2ND AMEND” I’m seized with the desire to get a gun.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: “Always Look On The Bright Side of Death” *whistles*
boatboy_srq
@Betty Cracker: I had friends at 101 California. [[HUGS]]
MattF
@aimai: Some evidence for your idea: here’s guns per capita by country. We’re number 1! Ahead of Serbia, Yemen, and Switzerland by large margins. A small number of gun owners with lots of guns could do that. Could also be skewed by police departments with lots of guns.
OzarkHillbilly
@boatboy_srq: OK. I own a few guns myself. I’m just not delusional about them.
japa21
The basic problem with doing anything about this problem is simple. Lunatics without guns don’t scare me. Lunatics with guns do scare me.
And the biggest voices against any gun control are speaking to the lunatics with guns, people who believe the crap about the government coming to take all your guns. Many of these people are, quite honestly, mentally unbalanced and quite ready to go after people who are too loud in their calls for gun control.
We have seen the attempts to intimidate gun control advocates, the threats to their safety.
The lunatic gun owners are quite capable of violence in order to protect their gun rights. This is actually part of the reason the NRA and others like to point out that things such as this shooting are done by mentally unbalanced people. In effect, they are saying that one shouldn’t speak against guns too loudly. One of these weirdos may hear you and come after you.
The only solution, therefore, is for you to get a gun yourself to protect yourself.
The song from the 60’s, roiginally speaking about the anti war protests, is applicable today.
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
Another Holocene Human
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I don’t think any of the CONS are going anywhere from SCOTUS in the next four-five years but I’d be happy to be wrong.
I’m more optimistic than most here about the legislature. Sure, maybe not in 2016, but–baby steps.
There are some great people in our state lege’s and the Congress, they’re just stuck in the minority party while the Crazy Party runs our gov’t’s into the ground. The Silent Gen is in the driver’s seat and they are bitter nihilists.
dogwood
Guns are so baked into the culture it’s almost impossible break through. And it’s not just wingnuts who are captivated by guns. I’ve read this blog for at least 11 years. And most threads about gun control always end up being a discussion about the guns. Ya’ll know the drill. Someone misuses the term “magazine” or “clip”, the gun experts come on to correct the error, explaining in great detail the difference between the two, someone else arrives to correct some other error and pretty soon the thread consists of a few guys talking about their guns. Fascination with guns is pervasive in this culture and I don’t know what you can do about it.
OzarkHillbilly
Anyway, the greatest scientific advancement of our time:
Portuguese scientists discover why pendulum clocks swing together
boatboy_srq
@Thunderbird: Interesting that if the same level of violence were observed in another country the Reichwing would be up in arms about “civil war”, “domestic unrest”, “terrorism” and the like. Whereas in the US, it was just Thursday.
Another Holocene Human
@japa21: What you’re talking about should be criminal behavior and punishable by law.
Apparently anything said over the internet box is legal even if it would be illegal through US mail or the phone lines. Unless you threaten a cop, then it’s illegal again.
Don’t believe me? Just ask a cop….
chopper
@Elizabelle:
because as soon as they get up to leave they find out that another friend of theirs has been shot and is in the same hospital.
Another Holocene Human
@dogwood: Well I, for one, don’t give a fuck.
If you start confusing rail transportation terms, though, it’s on.
“Trolleys don’t kill people, mustache-twirling villains who tie maidens to the tracks kill people.”
NickM
@aimai: I read about that too and had similar thoughts. The lunatic in that case had 1,200 guns and literal tons of ammunition. I hope that the local government destroys all of it, rather than trying to auction it off or something, which I had some impression they might do, since one official estimated its value.
WereBear
When I lived on Long Island, we had three in a row of murdered ex-wives and suicided ex-husbands in the space of a couple of weeks.
During Christmas.
SRW1
Fer cryin out loud. The shoota wasn’t take out by a 2nd mendment patriot. So not nuff guns.
Another Holocene Human
@boatboy_srq: Nah, you’re thinking of the level of violence directed at young Black men in our country. Now that’s civil unrest/drug wars/troubles levels of violence.
And nobody gives a FUCK, least of all when it’s time to SPEND FUCKING MONEY ON COPS AND FORENSICS AND SHIT.
Funny, they’ll do witness protection for mafia witnesses but when they were trying to put away Black gang-bangers in the 1990s there were no funds for such a thing — funny not funny. Even when the perp had made credible threats about killing witnesses. And some of them did.
If a white girl gets killed they’ll spend thousands on high tech investigative techniques and put officers on the case to run through persons of interest.
Cities have been defunded. They just don’t have the manpower they once had to aggressively work cases from day one, which means you lose piles of evidence and witness statements.
Meanwhile your exurban assholes screech and whine about urban crime. The first crime was letting them withdraw from the polity and take a paycheck while not paying taxes in, letting other people subsidize their lifestyle, they who already had more than enough.
Chris
@gvg:
I love that they’re using that phrase like it’s a bad thing. An armed society is a polite society, right? The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, right? You only have the freedoms you’re willing to fight for, right? So if Obama’s election has made America more heavily armed, why are they complaining?
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human: No argument.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
They don’t care because it didn’t happen to them. They don’t care about others; they’re selfish, self-centered pricks. In other words, good, compassionate Christians.
boatboy_srq
@Chris: TABMITWH. They’re scared juiceless of the Blah President. Funny that they have no confidence that their White Congresscritters have any say in what Gummint does. I thought the US was a representative democracy: apparently all that Representing and Senating and all is just Kabuki (or for the Teahad, Noh).
Elizabelle
I am angry.
I am really angry. The gun rights absolutists are carving away our ability to feel safe in the public space.
That shooting happened in Lafayette. It could have happened anywhere. Will you be safe, sitting in the dark, attention directed elsewhere as you sit among people you do not know?
Are you safe at a coffee shop? At a child’s school? In a shopping center, going about your business?
It sounded to me like the CNN people this morning are bored with the “after a shooting” regime they follow. And this is not a “mass shooting”, yet, unless more vics die in the hospital. Aren’t mass shootings those with 4 and up?
Another Holocene Human
When the car was the totem of white privilege, the car and asphalt lobby could get away with anything, and any threat to their dominance would be met with screeching and threats of violence.
Today, the gun is the totem of white privilege. They can give up their flag, but they won’t give up their gunzzz.
White privilege is the giant rock in our sunflower field. If we can’t shift that rock we won’t solve any of our other societal problems either.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: As a white person in this country I’m really not at high risk of being randomly shot.
Probably more likely to be run over by a car. I’ve been known to stroll on the sidewalk and even–horrors–cross streets.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
One hates to think what that would take.
But I think we can get progress, perhaps in the next ten years, because the shootings are becoming too frequent. We need to get a better Supreme Court, and revisit the second amendment.
I want Switzerland-style gun laws. They are safe, because guns are closely regulated and not carried around, loaded, like fetish objects.
We are not safe against the guns in our midst.
Gian
@Punchy:
because it’s accompanied by the “it’s too soon” statement when people want to talk about preventing the next one.
it’s always too soon to talk about preventing the next mass shooting. because need space to mourn.
Helmut Monotreme
May offer a suggestion to anyone thinking of buying a gun in case the local militias start getting all whiskey rebellion all over again? Please don’t. Unless, that is, you want to commit to spending at least for or five afternoons a year at a local gun range, getting very proficient at using it, and a further hour or so afterwards taking it apart and cleaning it. Unless you also plan on getting a good gun safe. (seriously, a good safe, some of the cheap ones are not even childproof) Unless no one in your house ever gets despondent or depressed or drunk. Unless no one in your house ever gets mad at you or your spouse or your neighbors or the kids on your lawn. Unless you want to put a lot of effort into making your life gun safe, that gun is not going to make you or your loved ones one bit safer.
ms_canadada
@WereBear: What will be the excuse when you have a female president?
We have more guns per capita in Canada. Why are so many Americans so violent?
Paranoia runs deep.
My heart goes out to all my Americans friends and family. (Yet again!)
Chris
@Helmut Monotreme:
Yeah. This is basically what I said in the last gun thread; I have no interest in getting a gun because buying a gun wouldn’t give me the training or the composure to actually use it sensibly in these kinds of situations, and I’m self-aware enough to know that.
pluege
that point will never happen:
smart people never said it
idiots will never give up their idiocy – it’s all they have and it’s who they are.
Steve from Antioch
That analysis is as silly as the advanced by gun nuts that the spread of conceal carry across the country has caused the dramatic drop in crime we’ve experienced over the past one or two decades.
dogwood
@Gian:
Here’s how it works. It’s too soon to talk about gun control until ………oops, it’s too late to talk about gun control.
RaflW
The only way I could see broad, national changes in gun control is if we had a sustained spike in US political assassinations. I’m not advocating for that. But, if I ponder your question seriously, I think a significant number of politicians do not care about public safety when it comes to guns. Flat out do not care.
There is no other way to spin it. Afraid of the NRA is not a sufficient answer. A large swathe of Congress does not care about us. At all. Certainly the House and Senate leadership.
They are frightened tittybabies about the NRA, sure. But the pathology is much deeper: we’re expendable. We are only aggregate Dem & GOP bases. We are maybe only a blip on the marginal voter theory. Kill one or 20 of us, it don’t matter at all.
Steve from Antioch
@dogwood:
I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about the fascination with guns.
What can be done is to rigorously enforce the existing gun laws, improve the background check system, support relatively non-controversial laws about gun storage, and require more training and education for purchasers. That would make a huge difference in deaths caused by guns, esp. accidental ones.
But that is not what people care about: some people fetishize guns, other people have a bizarre psychological itch that is scratched by demonizing gun fetishists and demanding inane, impossible solutions like eliminating private ownership of guns.
RaflW
@Another Holocene Human: That is a really interesting insight. I had not thought about it that way, and the connection to the car (and it’s relative totemic decline!) make sense to me.
It also connects to the question a Canadian asked above, ie what is wrong with the US as Canadians have lots of guns but much fewer shootings. White privilege is predicated on the threat (and use) of violent suppression. That violence seeps and permeates and infects our culture and one result is very excessive gun use.
Thanks and I’ll be pondering all this.
[I’m still feeling very cynical/frustrated as I put it above in my pathological-Congress rant]
Elizabelle
@RaflW: It offends me that I can be shot, sitting in a movie theatre or out eating in a restaurant. Randomly. Because I am out in public.
Meanwhile, I have to go through tight security posts to go see my congresscritter. Signs, special entrances, armed guards all over the place, a metal detector, a search of my purse and person.
They make it very, very clear that the halls of Congress is not my house. It only took one white lunatic male, shooting up a congressional building and killing two cops (near Tom Delay’s office) to bring around rapid enhanced security measures there.
And those highly-protected and well-compensated public representatives, in the pay or in fear of the NRA and other gun nuts, see us as expendable. You called that right.
They don’t protect us from the violent, with guns, in our midst. They flood the streets with guns. In the name of freedom, and liberty.
Meanwhile, you do a tiny calculation when you are out in public, and have to be mindful of the alienated and angry, with guns.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Not only have gun sales increaed, but the profitability of each of those sales has gone through the roof. I’ll give you an example.
One of the more popular semi-auto rifles, the Ruger Mini-14, cost about $350 in 2005.
Today the exact same gun sells for just under a thousand dollars. Nothing about it’s manufacture or parts has changed.
More sales and more profits per sale. Your overlords are pleased.
Skippy-san
Since it was not a Mooslim and the victims are not US service members, its hard for the core wingnuts to get very upset and rant and rave about not calling it a “terrorist” act.
This is an crime, a despicable crime. So too was Chattanooga and Charleston and , and , and , ……
Somehow though wingnuts seem to think they are each different.
Steve from Antioch
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I would speculate that there has been increased demand for the Mini-14 precisely because other, very similar firearms have been banned as “assault weapons.” The Mini-14 fires the same round as the evil AR-15 variants and is also compact and easy to handle but it isn’t an “assault weapon” because of cosmetic differences between it and the AR platform. In other words: Oh my god, that gun has a pistol grip, ban it. But that one with a curved stock = record sales.
Points to the idiocy of the current approach to gun-control in this country.
Kathleen
@Sherparick: At least it’s not “terrorism” if it’s a white male shooter. That should make the victims’ families feel better.
//snark
dogwood
@Steve from Antioch:
When it comes to guns there is no such thing as a “relatively non controversial law” and you know that. No wingnut is gonna let the government tell him how to store his guns. That’s at threat to liberty. We give guns to children in this country. How safe and sane is that?
Kathleen
@Kay: Excuse me, Kay. It’s not a “hobby”. It’s their “FREEEEEEEEDUMZ” at stake here.
//snark
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Perhaps when all the fearful gun fetishists have a mass shootout with each other. I got nothing.
Chris
@RaflW:
I’ve heard it pointed out on this blog that many countries (including Canada) have a gun culture and see a place for guns in their society, but in America it simply rises to a nearly pornographic obsession. (See also gun manufacturer commercials with the “Consider Your Man Card Re Issued” text). People aren’t exaggerating when they call them dick compensators.
Having spent quite some time in Switzerland, another country with its own rich gun culture, I’d have to agree.
dogwood
@Steve from Antioch:
“The Mini-14 fires the same round as the evil AR-15 variants. . . ”
I think you’ve proved my earlier point.
Chris
Oh, fuck you, moderation.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
From 14 months ago:
– Tim Krieder; link above
Chris
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of school children.
different-church-lady
I’m sure we’ll soon be hearing the outcry about his evil religion being the cause.
Oh, wait… white guy? Never mind…
NorthLeft12
@ms_canadada: As a fellow Canadian, I must dispute this assertion.
According to the 2007 small arms survey, Canada has just under 31 small arms per 100 citizens for twelfth highest, while the US has just under 89 small arms per 100 citizens for the highest ownership in the world.
These refer to only privately held small arms, and do not include police forces or any other government related arms. The calculation was simply done; estimated number of guns divided by the total population, and does not indicate the per centage of the population that actually own a gun or more.
And since then gun sales in the US have skyrocketed, so the figure for the US is likely a lot higher.
I don’t want to slip into the trap of exceptionalism and try and say Canadians are just inherently less violent than Americans, but statistics don’t lie. By homicide rate Canada is 46th LOWEST and the US is 109th LOWEST. The Americas as a whole is the most murderous region on earth.
Personally, there is a difference in our histories and societies that are reflected in the lower violent crime rate, especially related to guns, between our two countries. Our laws and attitudes reflect that.
And just to clarify, we have a lot of violent, mentally ill people here too.
NorthLeft12
@Skippy-san: Conservative reaction; “Whatchyougoonado? (shrugs shoulders).
RSA
@dogwood:
From earlier this year, in the Washington Post:
Knowing anything about gun violence is apparently controversial.
Berial
I can see where the media and gun manufacturers have a symbiotic relationship. Just THINK of all the wonderful stories the media could regale us with if EVERYONE ACTUALLY WERE ARMED!
I mean, when that mass murderer gets of a couple shots before the crowd opens up on THEMSELVES because how can that guy in the back KNOW who the original shooter was you’ll get some SERIOUS mass casualties then! THINK OF THE ADVERTISING MONEY TO BE MADE!
D58826
More details coming out about the shooter but no motive. He has a long rap sheet of violence, arson, domestic violence. There was a protective order at one point. A real shining example of a Murkin gun owner.
On a slightly different topic we have the patriotic Murkin, protecting the recruiting station who shots a hole in the sidewalk while showing off his weapon. I think I’ll take my chances with the terrorists. ,
Steve from Antioch
@dogwood: Disagree. Key word being “relatively.”
@dogwood:
You know, sometimes it is better to know a bit about a subject before you offer opinions.
Freemark
@aimai: Statistics I have seen is that individual gun ownership is in decline. The increase in total guns is because of people already owning guns buying more guns. I believe it after seeing an AR-15 purchase party some relatives had after Sandy Hook. They were afraid Obama would ban them.
Steve from Antioch
@Freemark: Last poll I saw showed that the percentage of Americans who own guns has dropped from about 50% to about 40%.
Some, um, gun enthusiasts discount those polls claiming that it simply shows that fewer gun owners will admit to strangers that they own guns. That’s probably true with some, but not enough to explain the total decrease.
dogwood
@RSA:
You said we should support relatively non-controversial laws like storage safety. Of course we should. I simply quibbled with the idea that there is such a thing as even a relatively non controversial gun law. I don’t think I have to be knowledgable about guns to be knowledgeable about gun attitudes in this country. I’ve lived my life in gunnutopia. If there was ever a chance that real gun reform could take place I would expect and hope that people like you would be valuable resources for people like me.
Freemark
@dogwood: The problem with ‘non-controversial’ laws like storage safety may interfere with the delusional fantasy of ‘saving my family from an armed burglar / home invasion / terrorist attack, etc.’ The fact they need to leave a loaded gun where any child, idiot, drunk, or angry person in the house can grab it is well worth the risk. They have done the mental calculations and in their mind the chance of one of the first scenarios is much more likely than the second in ‘their’ house. They are responsible and careful unlike all of the other households where the opposite is true.
Paul in KY
@patrick II: Some of it goes back to those armored nuts out in LA years ago & how outgunned the cops were by them.
Paul in KY
@Steve from Antioch: It’s actually a scaled down version of one of the most lethal assault weapons ever made: The M-14.
Ruckus
Time to say enough?
Depends on who is talking.
You, me, the lamppost? A very long time ago.
Gun nuts, gun mfg, nra? NEVER!
We notice of course that studies show fewer and fewer gun owners, all the while gun sales are up, what is it 140% while crime is way down compared to 30-40 yrs ago. Fear isn’t down though, that’s for sure. That’s been ramped up, it seems to me.
Not a conspiracy minded person but I have to say it sure sounds like it’s possible in the matter of the proliferation of guns.
How long will it be before your degree of separation from a victim of a mass shooting is one? Or less.
tybee
turns out that i knew the shooter when i was in elementary school. weird.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Not only congress, the NRA didn’t allow operable guns at it’s convention. They know the danger of people with guns but they don’t give a fuck. They get paid very well not to.
Paul in KY
@tybee: Wow! What a coincidence. Any remembrances of how he was as a little kid?
chopper
@Paul in KY:
apparently shooter is an older version of dylan roof, according to the online garbage associated with his name.
Brachiator
At this point, possibly some time after the second Hillary Clinton Administration. A great deal of the gun mania is due to racial paranoia, and I expect it to continue if we have Hillary Clinton as our first woman president. Given the current atmosphere, a Republican president might be able to persuade dopes to give up their guns. Maybe. But not a Democrat.
Paul in KY
@chopper: Just saw that on Wonkette. Of course, the vile hate garbage spewed out by the right wing media over the last 20 years will have had NOTHING to do with his ‘lone wolf’ (see he had read The Turner Diaries) attack on those commie pinko Amy Schumer lovers infesting LA.
gian
@Paul in KY:
He was a frequent mysonginst guest on a local show.
Anti choice anti feminist. I’m sure the choice of the Amy Schumer flick was no accident
Paul in KY
@gian: My characterization was unfortunately how I thought he felt about us. I’m also sure it was no coincidence he picked that movie.
RK
“At what point do we actually say “Hey, moar gunz is not working”?”
That’s the not what what they’re asking for; it’s more people with guns.
Bill
There is only one scenario in which I see this happening. People of color pick up guns in huge numbers and start using them to kill white people.
But even then I’m guessing the call for gun control would only be for certain people.
Bill
@Steve from Antioch:
None of these are realistic. The gun lobby that owns our national legislative body regards each one of these and tantamount to repealing the 2nd amendment.
Steve from Antioch
@Bill: I don’t think that is true. Project Childsafe (which I believe was sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Federation) distributed over 30 million free gun locks in partnership with various police agencies and sporting goods/gun stores.
(Yes, some of the locks were crappy and could be pretty easily defeated.)
I think projects like that make sense
I agree with you that there is tremendous suspicion among some/many gun owners about such proposals. But they can work.
Chris
@Bill:
Black people with guns don’t lead to more laws against guns, they lead to more laws against black people.
OmerosPeanut
Not every 10-14 days – daily. If mass shooting means an event in which 4 or more people are shot.
Bitter Scribe
@Betty Cracker: BC, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. How awful.
Bitter Scribe
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Perhaps when all the fearful gun fetishists have a mass shootout with each other.
The late, great Mike Royko wrote that if it could be magically fixed so that the gun nuts could only shoot each other, he’d sell them guns at cigar stands.