Two campus shootings in a single day.
First up, Northern Arizona University, where a gun in the hands of an 18 year old student dispatched bullets into the bodies of four human beings. One is dead.
G. T. Fowler, the chief of campus police, said that Steven Jones, a freshman, had opened fire after two groups of male students were involved in a confrontation. The police were able to take Mr. Jones into custody after he stopped firing the weapon and “everything calmed down for a few minutes,” Chief Fowler said.
This was, as Charles Pierce pointed out earlier today, not some deranged son of satan spinning out of our collective id. Rather…
This is an ordinary Thursday night campus brawl that escalated to homicide only because one of the participants had a gun which, I guarantee you, he did not have to work hard to obtain. Maybe we should look into why these things happen.
Travel now to Texas Southern University where…
A gunman killed one person and wounded another on the campus of Texas Southern University in Houston on Friday, the second shooting at the university this week.
This one is not likely to remain a mystery either, as “The Houston Police Department said a possible suspect in Friday’s shooting was in custody.”
Note, please the lagniappe in the Times write up on the TSU murder, that “second shooting” line:
On Tuesday night, a person was shot and seriously wounded while walking across the Texas Southern campus. There was no indication whether that shooting was linked to the one there on Friday.
Guns do not create the impulse to violence. They merely ensure that the consequences of just about anything can be fatal.
Most of all, guns destroy freedom. They erode the freedom of assembly. They make it scary to walk across a college campus at night. They make you wonder if saying that, say, the GOP field is a bunch of ammosexual nuts might line you up on the wrong side of a nine held by some cultist in the church of the holy firearm who takes a hard line on blasphemy.
Guns fix their owner in a state of permanent fear — how else to describe the claim of a threat so constant that going strapped is the only rational response? — and impose that fear on all the rest of us. Guns slaughter their own, as 20,000 + gun suicides attest.
An armed society is not a civil society. It is one that rewards not our aspirations, but our night terrors.
But we all know this.
Guns. Need. To. Be. Caged. It’s as political — or rather it needs to be — as Social Security, for our side as well as the NRA’s. No politician from here forward gets my support unless they are gun control absolutists.
I don’t pretend anything I want will happen anytime soon. But I do believe that at some point the massacre of the innocents will shock enough consciences to make change possible.
Rant over.
Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Massacre of the Innocents, 1556-7
Baud
Good, but vague. What does that mean?
WereBear
It won’t be any one tragedy. It will be the cumulative weight of them all.
debbie
Again, it’s rage that’s the problem.
schrodinger's cat
Wingnuts want to make the United States, Somalia of the West.
rikyrah
KAY,
did you see this?
…………….
The indictment of Barbara Byrd-Bennett—Mayor Rahm’s front woman at CPS
Posted By Ben Joravsky on 10.08.15 at 05:15 PM
Appropriately, Mayor Emanuel’s name isn’t mentioned in the 43-page indictment on bribery charges handed down today by the feds against Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was hired by the mayor to run the Chicago Public Schools.
It’s appropriate because, as near as I can tell, the main reason Emanuel hired Byrd-Bennett was to be the sympathetic public face—thus shielding him for blame—for the cuts, closings, testing policies, and other bad things he was doing to the schools.
Not the least of which was hiring Byrd-Bennett to run them.
I urge every citizen of Chicago to read the indictment. But in case you’re too busy, I’ll give you a few lovely details.
For almost a year before Mayor Emanuel hired her as CEO—I did mention that she was hired by Rahm, right?—Byrd-Bennett was a “paid consultant” for the Supes Academy.
That’s an educational consulting firm in Wilmette run by two guys named Gary Solomon and Thomas Vranas.
The central accusation is that Byrd-Bennett used her influence at CPS to squeeze about $24 million worth of contracts from a broke-ass public school system whose leaders—Mayor Emanuel chief among them—constantly told the public it didn’t have a dime to spare.
So stop asking for more money for things like toilet paper and janitors and books.
And you wonder why so many Chicagoans don’t believe CPS is really broke.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/10/08/the-indictment-of-barbara-byrd-bennettmayor-rahms-front-woman-at-cps
Tom Levenson
@Baud: I’m still w. you in 2016.
Absolutists — for me it’s a term with some flex in it.
Right now it’s the usual suite of background checks and closed gunshow loopholes and the like.
Going forward, I favor at the least universal registration/licensure, ballistic fingerprinting of all guns sold; bullet fingerprinting; high taxes on ammo; requirements to hold liability insurance. Imposition of real criminal liability for misuse, “accidents” and the like. Gun license renewal requirements, with gun safety testing as part of the process. Raise the costs and burdens of owning a gun to the point where it begins to bite, to make it much, much harder to acquire one or more weapons off the books, and to impose real responsibility on “Responsible Gun Owners™”
I’m open to more/other suggestions. What you got?
Yatsuno
Make that three:
http://www.whas11.com/story/news/2015/10/09/active-shooter-situation-reported-jctc-downtown-louisville/73671502/
Tom Levenson
@Yatsuno: Fortunately, apparently not.
Baud
@Tom Levenson:
Thanks.
I support mandatory militia membership for all gun owners with eight weeks of boot camp each year.
It’s my Well-Regulated Militia Program.
Kylroy
What is true now that wasn’t true after Sandy Hook? (Beyond the fact that Rs now control 2/3 of the federal government.)
JPL
@Tom Levenson: Baud is our last hope!
My biggest fear is that a lot of citizens will become desensitized to the killings. What might happen is that people will become more fearful, of going to movies, restaurants and malls. When it hurts businesses, something might change.
Yes, I’m discouraged.
bs23
very well put. rant on, my man, rant on!!
SiubhanDuinne
And they’re protesting President Obama in Roseburg, Oregon.
EDITED to correct spelling of town, and to add that by “they” I am referring to armed protesters. Armed. Gun-totin’.
Calouste
@Tom Levenson: Prosecuting gun manufacturers under RICO.
And shutting down arms manufacturing plants. There are 300 million guns in the US. There is no need for any more. Smith & Wesson is worth $1 billion. If Warren Buffet or Bill Gates want to do something useful, they could buy it and
appoint Carly Fiorina CEOshut it down.Calouste
@Tom Levenson: The day is still young.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
¡Baud! For President!
MomSense
Tom, thank you for writing this. I can’t tell you how many of us who have dared express our opinions on gun violence prevention have been intimidated and/or harassed by gun fanatics.
Amir Khalid
@Calouste:
It seems to me that the gun industry in America should have had an almighty crash by now. Its customer base is dwindling. Its market is already oversaturated with product. Yet it goes on and on. What gives?
? Martin
@JPL:
Will become?
And in response to this we didn’t fail to act. No, we legalized carrying guns into schools and churches and bars in a bunch of states. In one state we made it illegal for police to even question whether you had a gun license or not.
We became desensitized to this ages ago.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JPL: You’re right that it will hurt buinesses. I don’t want to (won’t) go to places full of fearful people who have guns with them. And people who aren’t fearful don’t take their guns out to dinner. Or to see a movie.
What they do with their guns in private is their own business and I don’t want to know.
Chris
Some countries have suicide bombing epidemics. We, increasingly, have our equivalent in mass shootings.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
How about Michael Bloomberg. He’s talked about spending that kind of money fighting for gun control, so maybe buying a gun company and either shutting it down or using its influence to moderate the NRA would be at least as good a way of spending the money.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Actually, the gun industry in the US is in trouble for exactly the reason you highlight. They’re undergoing a whole bunch of bankruptcy and consolidation because they’re having a hard time making much money. Instead of trying to get out of the business or to find some other way of selling guns, they’re ramping up the marketing- which in the US includes trying to ramp up people’s paranoia- and trying to sell more and more guns to the people who already have them.
Jane E
I wish I could be that optimistic.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Eight weeks of [mandatory] bootcamp. LOL. I can get behind that. The exercise alone might save some of their lardasses.
@Tom Levenson: All common sense. Treats the weapon with respect for its deadly potential.
SiubhanDuinne
I hope this is an issue that the post-presidential Obama Center (Foundation, Institute, whatever it ends up being called) embraces actively and noisily, along with related issues of institutionalized racism, economic injustice, etc.
schrodinger's cat
We never see the the people who have died because of these shootings. The zealots need to see the results of their extremism.
Ned Ludd
@Tom Levenson: Strict liability to manufacturer, retailer, and legal owner of any damages resulting from a gun. Anyone injured by, say, Joe Smith’s Glock pistol purchased at Walmart can sue each one of those parties for damages, and the only legal questions are: (1) was it really a Glock pistol? (2) Was it really purchased at Walmart? (3) Is it really legally owned by Joe Smith? Let’s say treble damages for injuries caused in the commission of a crime for good measure.
Woodrowfan
a bunch of out-of-town gun-nuts showed up in McLean, Va to attend hearing about a gun-store opening next door to an elementary school. They came armed and did their best to intimidate the meeting. Several parents who complained about the gun store have gotten death threats. The pro-gun movement is fascist, period.
? Martin
@Amir Khalid: It is crashing. Colt has filed for bankruptcy. Ruger and S&W are struggling. The problem with a shrinking addressable market is that you have to get more and more money out of fewer and fewer people, which means you have to dump a ton of money into marketing and differentiated products – customizable assault rifles and shit like that. So your fixed costs climb disproportionately to your marginal profits. At some point you need to expand your market – you need new buyers. They aren’t arriving. They are never going to arrive.
There’s a psychology concept called an extinction burst. I won’t presume to predict this is an extinction event for the gun industry – it’s been so incredibly resilient it’s difficult to imagine that ever happening, but this kind of ‘binging’ behavior is pretty suggestive of one.
It’s hard to say how it’ll ultimately play out. Right now it’s a pretty clear wedge between Democrats and Republicans, but it’s also a growing wedge between the Confederate states and other parts of the nation. California isn’t just tightening gun laws, but also actively confiscating guns (this shit is hard). At some point it will come to a head. I don’t think it’ll be a fun thing to be around.
? Martin
@Tom Levenson: I would only do gun registrations and training in order to carry a license, and nothing more. Gun registrations will tell you the scope of the problem. How many refuse to comply (they are no longer law-abiding gun owners), how many criminals have them, etc. Once you have this information, the next steps become clearer. Maybe we don’t need a huge deterrent – registration may be the only needed deterrent. Maybe we need bigger deterrents.
We are working in the fog right now, by design. First step is to clear the fog. Next steps will reveal themselves.
Cervantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
Post-Presidential Obama is unlikely to have as much power as Pre-Post-Presidential Obama does now.
Baud
@Cervantes:
Only unlikely? Just how much power do you think ex-presidents wield?
Aleta
Of course, the changes are coming on their own. It’s horribly ironic that by resisting changes in licensing, registration and purchase, the anti-gun-control factions have contributed to increased metal detectors, security cameras, security guards, police gear and paranoia. Hastening the security state and wider acceptance of surveillance.
Cervantes
@Baud:
And … ?
Elizabelle
We need the CDC, at minimum, keeping stats of gun-related deaths and injuries, analyzing the causes and researching how to prevent as many as we can.
This is a public health issue. It deserves treatment as such.
We won’t know the cause of gun violence until we look for it
from the Washington Post, July 27, 2012
Ned Ludd
I’m telling you guys: strict liability for manufacturers, retailers, and legal owners:
(1) No question of 2nd Amendment violation. Buy and sell all the guns you want, you’ll just be held accountable should (when) anything bad happens.
(2) Internalizes incentives for safety all up the line. Owners will have financial incentive to insure and keep their guns secure. Retailers will have incentive to do their own thorough background checks. Manufacturers will have incentive to invest in R&D for safer technologies, etc.
(3) Makes economic sense– internalizes social costs of gun violence to those who privately profit. It would effectively then push up the price of guns & ammo and reduce sales, reducing the number of guns in circulation.
(4) Non-specialty retailers like Walmart, etc would probably get out of the business overnight since they wouldn’t need the hassle.
(5) Market-based solution! Suck it, libertarians!
Baud
@Cervantes:
So… Your original comment doesn’t make sense to me.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
@? Martin:
I’ve heard that a popular complaint from Mexico and Central America is that their countries are flooded with guns purchased in the U.S.A. Which I always figured would be a big help for American gun manufacturers, but I guess not.
Does this mean that all these guns going south of the border are secondhand guns or otherwise not profiting our “legitimate” gun manufacturers? Or is the demand from south of the border still not enough to keep them afloat? Or are the Mexicans and Central Americans simply exaggerating the scope of the matter?
Arcnor
If the murder of twenty-six people — twenty of them children — in an elementary school did not shock the American populace enough to act, if it didn’t push the American political system past the point where its calcified, rusted, and rot-caked gears could not help but groan and grind into action, if it couldn’t overcome the immediate delusional insistence that nothing happened, it was the federal government, it was the video games, or the kids today with their music, or anything, anything, but the easy availability of massive quantities of weaponry to a populace increasingly inclined to use said weaponry… nothing will.
I am not the first to say this. Dan Hodges said it long ago: “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”
American is the Land of the Gun now; perhaps it always was, to one degree or another, but it’s all the way gone at this point. The rest of the industrialized world understands this. It’s just understood that the United States is in the throes of potentially suicidal — or, maybe worse, homicidal — dementia, and we’re all sort of looking at each other, and realizing the fact that so many of our economies, security measures and diplomatic treaties are utterly dependent on the presence of a not-insane America makes us… slightly more vulnerable to the whims of a foreign electorate gone mad than we’d like, and we’re all very quietly saying the same thing: “Holy shit, they’ve really lost it this time; reality itself is the enemy to a large portion of the American populace now, and they are armed, both individually and collectively, like no society in human history has ever been armed. What the entire fuck do we do? What can we do? Because hoping for the best seems like a losing bet here.”
Still waiting for an answer on that one.
Aleta
@Woodrowfan: yeah, they claim to care about freedom while practicing totalitarianism; about the Constitution while disregarding democracy; about being on the side of the people while they fantasize shooting them down.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cervantes:
Oh, I’m not suggesting for a second that he should ease up on these issues between now and January 20, 2017. But it’s a different kind of power he’ll have beginning January 21, 2017. For one thing, he’ll have the luxury of selecting his own priorities, rather than needing to deal with every earthly thing that lands on his desk. That in turn will give him the power to focus. As someone who has been closely watching Jimmy Carter in action for three decades, trust me, a former POTUS has plenty of power if he chooses to exercise it.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think that it’s mostly that the demand from Latin America isn’t enough for them. There aren’t that many drug traffickers, and they don’t need a personal arsenal for each of their enforcers to destabilize the whole country. It isn’t even close to the market they can get by selling multiple guns to all the paranoid people in the US.
Elizabelle
@Arcnor:
I see that sentiment a lot, and it is so batshit not true. “America” hasn’t decided dead elementary schoolers or dead anyone is bearable.
We are in the grips of a dysfunctional Congress that’s been bought by the NRA and others who don’t have our best interests at heart. Our TV networks may be fine with the dysfunction: they get eyeballs when the atrocities pile up, and campaign ad money to keep poisoning the system.
But there is a cumulative effect, and this feels different to me. The winds are changing.
I wonder about the motives of those who turn up and say “nothing can be done. We deserve this.”
We sure as hell do not.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
I think Sandy Hook brought on the realization that gun lovers were absolutely incapable of being moved.
A guy
In the meantime black on black deaths continue. White meth addicts in West Virginia continue to put kids and police at risk. Don’t come for my guns fuckers. You won’t make it out
Cervantes
@Baud:
Not to worry. I was simply trying to avoid making a categorical statement. Purely a matter of taste.
Have a great evening.
Anniecat45
Yes, I know this is anecdata, but here it is anyway:
A young Danish woman came to San Francisco for six months as a consultant to an American company. (I met her on a walking tour that I give.) That company was trying to get her to stay in San Francisco permanently just after Elliott Rodger shot all those people in southern California. She told her company “**** no,” she did not feel safe here with all these people carrying and she was going back to Denmark where she’d be safe. The company here had offered her double her Danish salary. She didn’t think it was worth the risk.
A guy
Good riddance to the Danish chick . She probably would have sat on her rights like lily Ledbetter and wanted money for it
Cervantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
Didn’t think that’s what you were suggesting, either.
If you’re suggesting he may be able to do more about guns once he leaves the Oval Office than he has been able to so far, well, let’s just say you can color me skeptical.
Would love to be wrong about this, obviously.
Roger Moore
@Cervantes:
I don’t know about that. If he manages to accomplish anything on guns after he gets out of office, it will be more than he’s managed in office. Not that I’m blaming him for that. He has actually tried to do something about guns, but he’s hit a stone wall in Congress.
debbie
@Cervantes:
Actually, Obama could. His foundation (or whatever) could commission the studies on gun violence that Congress won’t allow the CDC to conduct.
Elizabelle
@Arcnor: To take the last part of your message — and got to say, that quote about Sandy Hook from Dan Hodges just sets me off — I see he’s a Brit (one-eyed now, after a bar fight) writer and columnist.
I wonder if he’s under the assumption that we’ve got something approaching a parliamentary system — the Freedom whackjob caucus in Congress may be confused on that count.
We don’t become a nation of Eeyores.
We push for funding study of gun deaths and injuries and prevention. Getting a handle on the number and circumstances would be great. The NRA realizes how powerful it is, thus the cutting funding in 1996. The numbers will shock.
We exert pressure on media to report the gun violence totals.
We talk to like-minded folks and make sure to get out the vote. Federally and in our local elections.
We support anti-gerrymandering legislation in our own states. Without gerrymandering, we would not have these extremists in Congress. Make the congressional districts represent constituents, not the incumbent.
We show up in meatspace at gun safety events and at political gatherings.
It’s going to take a while to get better legislation through Congress — gonna take a more representative House and we need a better Supreme Court too. Legislation along points Tom outlined upthread would be great. Patience is in order.
At some point, once we have a better Supreme Court, we take a fresh run at the Second Amendment. I don’t see us banning guns, but we could regulate them and restrict their ownership and type, and insurers could be a huge help there.
It’s frustrating and very sad that gun violence — and our political system — are so out of control. Very wearying.
Elizabelle
@debbie: I say we make restoring and expanding CDC funding a priority. Could be a great rallying and starting point. Put it on the radar for 2016.
Cervantes
@debbie:
I agree — but it’s not my experience that our Republicans in Congress pay a lot of attention to studies, least of all independent studies whose findings they are pre-disposed not to like.
Incidentally, have independent studies already been conducted? Are they being conducted, just not by government agencies?
@Roger Moore:
That’s a good way to put it.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I’m inclined to use a crossbow to stand my ground against anyone I see with a a hand gun or assault weapon.
jayboat
Here are some numbers to ponder.
Last year while I was on location in the midwest I wound up on a perch with a photographer friend from the St Louis area. Since we were in place for a couple of hours, conversation ensued. He has been employed by Remington for nearly 25 years. During our talk he told me that his employer ships 11 millions rounds of ammunition per month.
Just to the states.
Another 7 million overseas.
Elizabelle
NY Times on Obama’s visit to Roseburg. End of the story; sounds like Obama may have gotten some support from the community too:
Obama Consoles Families in Oregon Amid 2 More Campus Shootings
I look forward to hearing the barely audible remarks later. Gonna be smarter than anything the gun humpers come up with.
Cervantes
Via @Elizabelle:
The Onion or not The Onion?
Elizabelle
@Cervantes: I know.
JG
Pictures of the carnage need to be public – even if illegally obtained and released. Make the lawmakers respond to them. Maybe the CDC Study effort winds will change but money rules all.
Make lawmakers see and respond to the visuals. Like the allies made the German residents tour the camps. Like america had to respond to firehosing civilrights bridge walkers. When everyone saw the film and pictures the very next morning above the fold it became real – undeniable. Make them OWN IT!
Gun control laws will be so slow and baby-stepped to keep the money rolling in. So much money s being made and so much fear is now commonplace. To the point of addiction (ex: fox News on 24/7 at many homes and retail stores) that many people feel a criminal revolution is imminent.
I don’t see any positive movement until the gun nuts can no longer have a reason to hide their disgust at the carnage. It may violate privacy and other rights but I feel we have no other options. Appealing to common sense; presidential lectures; and calling Congress is a joke.
Tehanu
I want to be there when “A Guy” takes on the Feds with his personal, private, undoubtedly well polished arsenal of prick substitutes. My bet will be on the First Cav.