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You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Ammosexuals / Open Thread: Florida Woman, New NRA Poster Child

Open Thread: Florida Woman, New NRA Poster Child

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From that Jacksonville Ledger article:

…[Jamie] Gilt, a 31-year-old Jacksonville resident, spoke to In-Gauge, a Winter Haven non-profit National Rifle Association training organization, Tuesday night about what happened to her on March 8 that made national news and sparked a conversation about gun safety…

Gilt said she left her Jacksonville home that day the same way she always does.

She grabbed her loaded .45-caliber handgun and brought her 4-year-old son, Lane, along with her to go look at a horse at her cousin’s home for her 10-year-old stepson.

She said she usually wore her gun in a holster on her hip, but that day she decided to put it under her driver’s seat…

While driving down the road, Gilt’s son had unbuckled himself to get a toy on the floorboard, Gilt said that is how he got his hands on the handgun.

Soon after, she heard a loud bang and saw something hit her windshield. It wasn’t until she looked down and saw herself covered in blood that she realized she had been shot.

Her son had picked up the handgun and shot through her seat, hitting her in the back…

Her name and what happened were all over the news, and she was condemned for being a, “bad mother,” she said.

“People post things and they absolutely destroy anyone they think is in the wrong,” she said. “And that’s what they did to me.”

But Gilt isn’t focused on that. She is focused on showing others how important it is to be safe with a gun…

Now, Gilt is on the road to becoming a NRA firearm instructor and will be certified at the end of this month. She plans to teach classes and show people that the unexpected can always happen…

Originally the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office considered charging Gilt with a second-degree misdemeanor, allowing a minor access to a firearm, but the State Attorney’s Office in Sanford offered her a deal.

She had to complete a gun safety course, install a mounted holster in her vehicle, provide proof of safe storage of her firearms in her home and give 10 speeches on the incident and what she learned from it.

Gilt said Tuesday night she had already completed her 10 required speeches and that she was speaking at In-Gauge because she wanted to…

When I was growing up, a lot of the little old Irish and Italian ladies in the neighborhood never went further than their mailboxes without their rosary beads, which provided them with a powerful feeling of spiritual protection and a focus for meditation during idle moments. But when those beads accidentally fell out of their purses in the grocery checkout lane, or got left behind on the bus, I don’t remember that the emergency services ever had to be called out.

Reader Interactions

267Comments

  5. 5.

    LAO

    Can you imagine what it must be like to be so afraid, that you must carry a firearm on your hip at all times? I can’t.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Packing a clip to go to Walmart is a good idea.

    A noseclip.

    Basic cleaning has apparently become a quaint concept.

  10. 10.

    JPL

    One of the comments, at the link, mentioned that Jamie giving gun safety instruction, is like Sarah Palin teaching abstinence only to her children.

  11. 11.

    redshirt

    @LAO: Right? Enemies everywhere! Threats lurking around every corner. Every single person, especially the darker ones, a possible rapist, murderer, thief.

    I wonder if anyone’s done a study on the mental health of gun owners as compared to non-gun owners. I bet it’s a dramatic difference.

  12. 12.

    Ruckus

    Walmart in FL? Not a gun person at all but that would make me think about it. Of course I refuse to shop in wally world anyway so I’m spared some of the exposure.

  17. 17.

    Hal

    Chris Hayes seems perplexed that Hillary Clinton isn’t 12 points ahead of Trump at this point in the race. Is that so unusual at this period in a presidential year? I get it’s Trump and he’s terrible, but so are so many Republican voters.

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: A study on the mental health of those who hang out at Balloon Juice vs those who don’t might be interesting as well.

  20. 20.

    Amir Khalid

    People like Jamie Gilt are dangerously careless with their guns, and yet prosecutors don’t press charges over the consequences of their carelessness. They need to start throwing the book at people like Gilt, not let them become poster children for gun safety after disregarding it so cavalierly.

  25. 25.

    Diana

    @LAO: I agree with everyone here. However, I don’t think she carries her gun with her because she’s always afraid. Let me explain.

    In the 1980’s if you lived in a poor neighborhood in NYC you just expected to get mugged, or to get your bag snatched. It was a given. Living in the East Village from 1986 to 1989 I got mugged three times (and, yes, it was a young black man every time) and after I got mugged walking to the supermarket on a Sunday afternoon I got a thing of pepper spray and put it in my bag and didn’t take it out. I didn’t think I’d get mugged everywhere, I just wanted to make sure next time a junkie with a knife or a gun demanded my money I could pretend I was getting out my wallet to give to him only instead I’d get out the pepper spray and dose him.

    I got called for jury duty and the courthouse security guys confiscated it. Did I think I’d get mugged in the courthouse? No, I just forgot about it.

    This woman is clearly a nutcase but it is possible to get used to something like that and not associate it with danger. A big mistake, but it is possible.

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Just watched the summer encore presentation of La Bohème. No guns, just a very bad cough. Consumption be done about it?

    And on a completely different note, I am thinking a lot today of Tunch the Great, Tunch the Mighty, Tunch the Magnificent. It’s been three years since we all got the terrible news about his death. It still kind of takes me by surprise that I (and countless hundreds of others) had such a wonderful affection for a cat we knew only virtually. PIP (Purr In Peace), Tunch.

  27. 27.

    Patricia Kayden

    @LAO: Neither can I. Wouldn’t be comfortable around guns so cannot imagine needing to carry one around all the dang time.

  28. 28.

    Felonius Monk

    @raven:

    There are plenty of people at BJ who own guns.

    But how many of us have let our 4 year old shoot us in the ass?

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Hal: At the end of 8 years of the worst president in our lifetimes, who lied us into a costly war of choice, destroyed the economy, and tried to privatize social security, and let an American city drown, a rock star presidential candidate from the other party, who ran one of the most perfect campaigns in American history, beat a doddering old man who picked Sarah Palin as his running mate by a mere 7 points with 52.9% of the vote.

    I know it’s Trump, but people’s expectations of the American electorate are way too high.

  32. 32.

    LAO

    @Diana: I grew up around guns, learned gun safety at a very young age and went target shooting with a parent regularly. Respectfully, I don’t think pepper spray and a gun are a fair analogy.

    ETA: if you read the article, she carries the gun on her hip when she expects to interact with strangers. It has to be, IMO, motivated by her fear.

  33. 33.

    mike in dc

    @Baud:
    Tribalism, racism, ideological polarization. Even so, I expect Clinton to win by double digits in November, basically because some portion of the electorate will have a sudden attack of sanity.

  38. 38.

    Felonius Monk

    Just a reminder to those that are interested. Season 2 of Mr. Robot starts in 20 minutes.

    WHO IS TAKING CARE OF ELLIOT’S DOG, FLIPPER?

  41. 41.

    JGabriel

    @PaulWartenberg2016:

    I hope all 18 Republican Senators who voted against Dr. Hayden’s appointment all get hit with Overdue fines that block them from checking out more books.

    Pretty sure that, being Republicans, none of them read anything but Breitbart and their Twitter feed – which is just as well since if they took out any books from a library, they would probably just scribble all over them with crayon.

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    @mike in dc:

    some portion of the electorate will have a sudden attack of sanity.

    And this attack of sanity is going to come from where?

  46. 46.

    redshirt

    @raven: Not sure how I offended you tonight. By saying it would be interesting to see a mental health study comparison between gun owners and those who don’t own guns?

  52. 52.

    Fair Economist

    Her name and what happened were all over the news, and she was condemned for being a, “bad mother,” she said.

    She *is* a bad mother. She has guns and children in the same house. That’s a significant risk to the children.

  53. 53.

    LAO

    @Baud: Fun fact about Ike, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease during his first term.

    Not relevant to anything, but just one of those weird facts one learns when they too suffer from Crohn’s.

  55. 55.

    Peter

    @Baud:

    I expect double digits simply because the Trump campaign seems to be allergic to the work of actually campaigning. Turnout is going to go sharply against them unless they change their acts and change them fast.

  56. 56.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @redshirt: I’d want a bit finer divide, People who feel they must be armed all, or almost all, of the time vs those who own guns but don’t feel undressed without it. But I got what you intended & its OK.

  57. 57.

    Kropadope

    @OP: If you don’t carry guns, you likely won’t have gun-related problems.

    @PaulWartenberg2016:

    It took FIVE WEEKS for a Republican-controlled Senate to let up on their Secret Holds to vote in a Librarian of Congress.

    How do they expect to destroy modernity if they allow people to collect vast repositories of human knowledge?

  58. 58.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    @mike in dc: that’s a very good pt.

    Ike is the last non-incumbent to win by double digits in a 2 person race. And that was 64 years ago and he had unique status of being non political before running. Before that it was FDR cuz of the Depression. Before that Hoover cuz he was running against a Catholic. Before that Harding cuz of the backlash of WWI and women voting. Outside of those 4, no other non-incumbent has won by double-digits in a 2 person race.

    So not only is it rare, it only occurs unique circumstances.

  62. 62.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kropadope:

    If you don’t carry guns, you likely won’t have gun-related problems.

    Lots of people who don’t carry guns get shot by guns. Getting shot seems to be a gun-related problem. YMMV.

  63. 63.

    redshirt

    @Schlemazel Khan: No, I mean everyone. There’s a statistic I read but can’t source that fewer and fewer Americans as a percentage of the whole own guns, but those that do tend to own many more than in the past.

    Obviously, this does not apply to everyone. But with a large sample size, it would be interesting to see if there were any notable differences.

  67. 67.

    JGabriel

    @Hal:

    Chris Hayes seems perplexed that Hillary Clinton isn’t 12 points ahead of Trump at this point in the race.

    I’m perplexed by all the people who seem to think it’s Clinton’s fault that she’s not 12 points ahead, instead of it being the fault of the American electorate and the underfunded educational system that apparently failed the 40%-45% of voters willing to elect a bigoted bewigged charlatan to the Presidency of the United States.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: She’ll have to pass the NRA instructor’s course. They do not mess around with that. For whatever the NRA has become since the Cincinnati Revolt in 1977, it still maintains excellent safety courses and requirements to certify instructors. This, and promoting marksmanship, was its original mandate and raison d’etre and it is woven into the organizations DNA.

  78. 78.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @redshirt:
    Meh, I own some guns and, while I admit my brain is not normal, I really don’t think it has the same issues as a gundementalist ammosexual.

  79. 79.

    JGabriel

    redshirt:

    There’s a statistic I read but can’t source that fewer and fewer Americans as a percentage of the whole own guns, but those that do tend to own many more than in the past.

    Josh reported the same statistic a while ago at TPM, maybe you read it there? Unfortunately, I don’t recall what his source was.

  81. 81.

    Kropadope

    @Omnes Omnibus: Which is why I framed it as a matter of likelihood.

    Charles Branas‘s team at the University of Pennsylvania analysed 677 shootings over two-and-a-half years to discover whether victims were carrying at the time, and compared them to other Philly residents of similar age, sex and ethnicity. The team also accounted for other potentially confounding differences, such as the socioeconomic status of their neighbourhood.
    …
    Overall, Branas’s study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.

    While it may be that the type of people who carry firearms are simply more likely to get shot, it may be that guns give a sense of empowerment that causes carriers to overreact in tense situations, or encourages them to visit neighbourhoods they probably shouldn’t, Branas speculates.

    Emphasis mine. Also, I’ve read elsewhere that guns in the household are more likely to be used on members of the household than an intruder.

  83. 83.

    Sherparick

    @Hal: As No More Mr. Nice Blog points out, a three year campaign of vilification by Republicans and Right-Wing media on one side and “True Progressives” on Left, all helped along by some gobsmacking unforced errors (the whole e-mail fiasco and taking huge speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, etc.) have left a mark and roughly 50% of the country either hates or does not trust her or both. http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2016/07/this-election-is-going-to-be-nailbiter.html. Trump is hated more, but the MSM cares more about click bait and profits, and Trump has been great for both so they want the show to go on as long as possible. http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2016/07/this-election-is-going-to-be-nailbiter.html

  87. 87.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Hal: No. There are several things going on right now. One is that the Quinnipiac poll is considered to be oversampling whites as a portion of the electorate. And by oversampling I mean that the amount of whites they’re including in the survey aren’t actually represented in the Presidential election year electorate any longer. Another issue is that Secretary Clinton took a bit of a hit as a result of Director Comey’s unprecedented press conference last week followed by the two Congressional hearings with him and AG Lynch. Given that Trump thrives on chaos, and needs it to make his strong man arguments, the events of the past 10 days or so and their non stop coverage making things seem as if the US is going to fly off its axis, is probably undergird some additional polling support for him. Remember, despite violent crime, outside of homicide in Chicago and Baltimore and rape/sexual assault (and this is more that we’re getting more women actually reporting rape/sexual assault than ever before), is at near historic lows and law enforcement is still considered by Americans surveyed to be one of the most respected and appreciated professions, Americans actually believe the opposite. Finally, the polls just released are not going to capture the Senator Sanders has endorsed Secretary Clinton bump.

    I wouldn’t freak out about anything yet. Trump likely has a ceiling in the high 30% to low 40% range he can’t get above. The question/issue is going to be where Secretary Clinton’s floor is.

  89. 89.

    SFAW

    @Amir Khalid:

    They need to start throwing the book at people like Gilt

    Now that she’s been confirmed by the Senate, Carla Hayden can do that.

  90. 90.

    Kropadope

    @JGabriel:

    I’m perplexed by all the people who seem to think it’s Clinton’s fault that she’s not 12 points ahead, instead of it being the fault of the American electorate and the underfunded educational system that apparently failed the 40%-45% of voters willing to elect a bigoted bewigged charlatan to the Presidency of the United States.

    I love how the local zeitgeist holds voters to a higher standard than Democratic politicians. A politician you like is underperforming? Blame the voters!!!

  91. 91.

    chopper

    Originally the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office considered charging Gilt with a second-degree misdemeanor, allowing a minor access to a firearm, but the State Attorney’s Office in Sanford offered her a deal.

    She had to complete a gun safety course, install a mounted holster in her vehicle, provide proof of safe storage of her firearms in her home and give 10 speeches on the incident and what she learned from it.

    God bless America!

  93. 93.

    rikyrah

    The HillVerified account
    ‏@thehill
    JUST IN: Top Trump VP candidate Pence had records from his 12 years in Congress sealed

  94. 94.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Amir Khalid: Considering Sanford’s demographics, its not surprising. Its just on the edge of Orlando and where the airport is. While it has an urban core, it is, itself, basically a suburb for both Orlando and Port St. Lucie, And it has sizable rural areas that include lot of agriculture. It is also on the edge of Florida’s horse and cattle country. Its almost 60% white and its neighboring county, Seminole, is closer to 80%. My guess is if I were to go and pull religious demographics it would be overwhelmingly Protestant evangelical (either Evangelical, Charismatic, or Fundamentalist). The decision by the State’s Attorney (what we call District Attorneys in Florida because we’re special) shouldn’t be surprising.

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    And just as an aside from someone who has had to carry a gun for work: this is not an acceptable, practical, or smart carry method.

    So don’t carry it that way, i.e., in that location.

    But, frankly Adam, if you could carry one there, then perhaps I’ve been confused about who you are.

  98. 98.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JGabriel:

    I’m perplexed by all the people who seem to think it’s Clinton’s fault that she’s not 12 points ahead, instead of it being the fault of the American electorate and the underfunded educational system that apparently failed the 40%-45% of voters willing to elect a bigoted bewigged charlatan to the Presidency of the United States.

    They believe that Bernie Sanders would be ahead 12 points or more, on the basis of head-to-head general-election polls taken during the primary period that showed him beating Trump by about that much, sometimes more. I don’t personally believe that those numbers would stand for long were Sanders actually nominated and the focus of serious personal attacks from the Republicans, but at least it’s possible to cite actual numbers.

  100. 100.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kropadope: I think that you are misreading the statement. The fact that Republicans tend toward a floor somewhere in the low 40%ish range is there. Only in rare circumstances (Obama vs Keyes), does it not hold.

  101. 101.

    SFAW

    @Kropadope:

    A politician you like is underperforming? Blame the voters!!!

    No, the voters get blamed because an irrationally-high percentage of them believe the most ridiculous/insane bullshit, all because Roger Ailes figured out how to stroke them.

  103. 103.

    Kropadope

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They believe that Bernie Sanders would be ahead 12 points or more

    I doubt that, considering the disbelief of the state of polling appears to stem from strongly held opinions that Hillary Clinton is the cat’s meow.

  112. 112.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    No reputable librarian throws books.

    Oh, please. If she were reputable, would the Republicans have put all those secret holds on her nomination?

  114. 114.

    JGabriel

    @efgoldman:

    Is there a circle of hell big enough, and painful enough, for every Republiklown office holder?

    Demons be working on it:

    Tenth Circle Added To Rapidly Growing Hell

    … “A nightmarishly large glut of condemned spirits in recent years necessitated the expansion of Hell,” inferno spokesperson Antedeus said. “The traditional nine-tiered system had grown insufficient to accommodate the exponentially rising numbers of Hellbound.”

    Adding to the need for expansion, Antedeus said, was the fact that a majority of the new arrivals possessed souls far more evil than the original nine circles were equipped to handle. “Demographers, advertising executives, tobacco lobbyists, monopoly-law experts retained by major corporations, and creators of office-based sitcoms–these new arrivals represent a wave of spiritual decay and horror the likes of which Hell has never before seen,” Antedeus said. …

    … Frigax The Vile, a leading demonic presence, is one of the most vocal supporters of the new circle.

    “In the past, the underworld was ill-equipped to handle the new breed of sinners flooding our gates–downsizing CEOs, focus-group coordinators, telemarketing sales representatives, and vast hordes of pony-tailed entertainment-industry executives rollerblading and talking on miniaturized cell-phones at the same time. But now, we’ve finally got the sort of top-notch Pits of Doom necessary to give such repellent abominations the quality boilings they deserve.”

  116. 116.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Let’s just say that Adam is probably going to ban me.

    If he does, who will be left to be Head Cheesehead? redshirt?

    ETA: I hope redshirt wasn’t drinking anything when reading that.

  118. 118.

    Kropadope

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I think that you are misreading the statement. The fact that Republicans tend toward a floor somewhere in the low 40%ish range is there. Only in rare circumstances (Obama vs Keyes), does it not hold.

    People’s opinions on things will differ. There are very smart people who vote for Republicans and very dumb people who vote for Democrats. I also believe people demand voter purity here because people have demanded in the past that I get on board with proposed legislation being fought for by Democrats down to the last detail. These people suggested I should keep my opinions about how the legislation should look to myself until officials are elected who agree with me completely.

  120. 120.

    Miss Bianca

    @PaulWartenberg2016: Woo-hoo! Are you going to the ALA? What is librarianship like down in Florida, anyway? Do any of your library boards pass resolutions about the carrying of firearms into the libraries? The last one I worked at had a big notice painted on the door that it was a firearm-free zone, because of a Board decision.

    Yay for the new Librarian of Congress!

  123. 123.

    dmsilev

    The fifth (I think) Seal of the Apocalypse has been broken: Tom Friedman is making sense

    We can survive a few years of such deadlock in Washington, but we sure can’t take another four or eight years without real decay setting in, and that explains what I’m rooting for in this fall’s elections: I hope Hillary Clinton wins all 50 states and the Democrats take the presidency, the House, the Senate and, effectively, the Supreme Court.

    That is the best thing that could happen to America, at least for the next two years — that Donald Trump is not just defeated, but is crushed at the polls. That would have multiple advantages for our country.

  126. 126.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: and the Venn diagram between firearms owners/carriers and BJ commenters would be even more interesting still! Would there be correlations in the mental health data, I wonder?

  127. 127.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: No, unless its an absolute emergency and I have no other choice, I do not go into, let alone shop in Walmart. Or Wal-Mart. Or Wal*Mart.

  129. 129.

    SFAW

    @Peale:

    I actually own a cheese-hat and cheese-tie and have a Packer garden gnome.

    This is me, backing s-l-o-w-l-y away from the screen, trying not to make any sudden moves which might upset you.

  130. 130.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: I was still in heavy-duty lurk mode when Tunch’s death notice came up. I almost broke down and posted then, but I thought, “ah…John Cole isn’t going to care about one more person he doesn’t know telling him, “I’m sorry, person I’ve never met, about the death of your cat whom I only know from your stories about him”. But watching all the outpouring of grief really did something to me: that’s when I started hanging out in the joint seriously, tho’ I didn’t really say anything for a long time after that.

    PIP Tunch, indeed.

  131. 131.

    redshirt

    @Adam L Silverman:@SFAW: I think the Packers are cool and hope they do well. If the Pats can’t win every year (FUCK YOU GODELL!) I wouldn’t mind seeing the Pack win it all.

    Remember that AZ-GB playoff game last year? Wow! Aaron Rodgers is awesome.

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kropadope: Opinions will indeed differ. I would say that people around here would tend to consider themselves pragmatic liberals as a general rule. They would rather get 60-80% of what they really want and fight the rest later instead of holding out for everything and getting nothing. They also get annoyed when people who won’t compromise to move things forward call them sell-outs.

  134. 134.

    redshirt

    @Adam L Silverman: I haven’t stepped foot in a Wal Mart in 5 years and hope to never again. How can any of us support a corporation so destructive to our country? Oh yeah, that’s right, I save 20 cents on a cheap t-shirt.

    Interestingly, my Mom worked in one of the earliest Wal Marts down by Ft Leonard Wood. Didn’t seem so evil back then.

  135. 135.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: That was Cotton that held her appointment up. That’s why I figured it was him again this time. He made it clear he did so not because of a professional or political opposition to her or her appointment, but because as she’d known the President for decades it would be a personally directed attack at the President.

  136. 136.

    Kropadope

    @SFAW: It’s not “some people say” when I point out which people or group of people were doing it and/or where the information can be verified. This time I’ll even give you a link.

    The standard you describe more accurately characterizes about 85% of the Bernie-related criticisms that may be read on BJ.

  137. 137.

    Peale

    @dmsilev: unfortunately decay and rot are in this case self-fulfilling prophesies. There’s a large contingent of voters who think the country has already gone to hell and somehow sees decay all around it even when statistics aren’t showing that. Outside their homes, there’s dozens of heads being found in the desert, don’t ya know. And while they may be struggling to make ends meet, we might as well be living in Weimar Germany, what for the rampant inflation and high rises. And if we think it’s just the “Make America Great Again”, here is Vox to explain why Pokémon Go represents the hellscape that is late capitalism (Oh, those Marxists, they wish it was almost over).

  139. 139.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: That we know of. I’m sure others have done so as well. They just haven’t been arrested and subject to a cavity search that got reported on TV.

  141. 141.

    Lizzy L

    @dmsilev: Yeah. Saw that. Still somewhat dazed. Though I expect by next week he’ll be back to his usual conversations with random taxi drivers.

  143. 143.

    Peale

    @Omnes Omnibus: Farm & Fleet had em, but that was years ago. You really should meet my mother. She finds things. I just checked and Overstock.com now has them.

  144. 144.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: I own two shotguns and a rifle.* I comment here. My sanity? I will leave that to others.

    *Two were gifts from an uncle. One was an inheritance. I have never purchased a gun.

  146. 146.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SFAW: I can’t carry one there, so we’re all tracking. In Iraq I used a pancake holster on my right hip at 3 o’clock when not wearing my body armor and a holster attached to the lower left chest of my body armor, barrel pointed down, when wearing my body armor. I was not a fan of the drop holster options.

  147. 147.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Miss Bianca:

    I think a lot of us read that headline, gasped out loud, and burst into tears. I know I was in public someplace and called some unwanted (and unwonted) attention to myself. A few hours later, the wonderful image of Angel Tunch appeared (if you’ve never paid much attention, it’s over on the right hand side of your monitor serving as an avatar for the Balloon Juice Facebook page). Such a sad day, we found out a few hours before the news of Tunch that General Stuck’s death was confirmed, which some of us had been quite worried about.

    I’m sorry it took that sadness to bring you aboard as a commenter, but I’m glad it happened. You’re one of the sanest and nicest people around these parts.

  149. 149.

    Kropadope

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    They also get annoyed when people who won’t compromise to move things forward call them sell-outs.

    Unless you’re an actual policy maker, your willingness to compromise is pretty much irrelevant as far as moving policy forward. Also, if one is wedded to the “compromise” position to the point of unwillingness to discuss alternatives, he/she is not a pragmatist but rather an intransigent moderate who is every bit as unlikely to move anything forward.

  150. 150.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @rikyrah:

    Cole did such a great thing, though, although he was nearly incoherent with misery. He took his grief and our grief and turned it all into donations to a pet rescue site. Cole is a good man.

  152. 152.

    Miss Bianca

    @JGabriel: Hey…I knew some Republicans who use the library. It’s always really interesting talking to them – particularly when you get them on the subject of taxes for public services.

  154. 154.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kropadope: Was the PPACA a step forward? It was the result of pragmatic liberals. Is it perfect? No, but if you go back to the threads from those days you won’t find anyone in favor of it saying anything but that this is decent and a huge step forward. You know, a big fucking deal. Holding out for the public option was going to go nowhere.

    Phone calls and letters to legislators matter. If pragmatic liberals call and say, “not perfect, but please vote for it” it matters.

  156. 156.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: What IS it with these lame librarian – I’m sorry, shopworn librarian – I mean, that is to say – just plain silly librarian jokes? What, so we amuse you? You think we are here for your AMUSEMENT? //

  159. 159.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I would say that people around here would tend to consider themselves pragmatic liberals as a general rule. They would rather get 60-80% of what they really want and fight the rest later instead of holding out for everything and getting nothing. They also get annoyed when people who won’t compromise to move things forward call them sell-outs.

    Ah, thank you for spelling it out so cogently. At least, I like that description myself. I’ll cop to it.

  160. 160.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: One of my frat brothers from college spent time as a staffer on the D side of the Iran-Contra hearings and later got an MLS. He is now chief research librarian for a decent sized city in Indiana. He is also bald now. He is a great guy and a good liberal. If I had his life, I would eat my 12 ga.

  161. 161.

    Kropadope

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Was the PPACA a step forward? It was the result of pragmatic liberals. Is it perfect? No, but if you go back to the threads from those days you won’t find anyone in favor of it saying anything but that this is decent and a huge step forward. You know, a big fucking deal. Holding out for the public option was going to go nowhere.

    I agree 100%, however what I was pointing out is a different phenomenon. People who confuse either dedicated commitment to mid points between two extremes that don’t get anyone any of what they want or an eagerness to abort difficult fights in the name of pragmatism are not pragmatists, just really smug about being above the fray.

    Relating the second group to the PPACA fight, at least a couple high-profile Democrats thought the PPACA was a doomed effort and wanted Obama and Congress to drop it for other priorities. They would have seen us get literally nothing. For the first group, think Joe Lieberman before Ned Lemont happened.

  162. 162.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: I am somehow not surprised by any of these revelations. Had you been a hunter or a regular firearms user before you went into the Army? If you don’t mind my asking.

  164. 164.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Law librarian, man. You’d need to get another degree, which – I don’t know about you – I’m a little loath to do at my age, but I’d consider it if I already had the law degree. It’s a great life.

    @srv: I have thought it was rather ironic, considering how much time I’d spent in heavily-armed cities (Detroit and Chicago), that I’ve never felt tempted to carry a gun for personal safety till I’d been out in the back country – rattlers, mountain lions, bears…but so far I never have.

  165. 165.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: No. I never hunted. I’ve only done a bit of trap shooting since I got out. Lately, my niece and nephew have wanted to learn about guns, so my dad and I (dad is is a better shot; I am a better instructor) have been teaching. The first 10 rules or so are safety related. Technique only matters once safety is handled.

  166. 166.

    Major Major Major Major

    I’m sure somebody already covered this, but I see Nate Silver basically threw up his arms in frustration and said to check back in a month if we want to make any sense of the polls.

    At least, that was my gloss.

  167. 167.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kropadope:

    People who confuse either dedicated commitment to mid points between two extremes that don’t get anyone any of what they want or an eagerness to abort difficult fights in the name of pragmatism are not pragmatists, just really smug about being above the fray.

    That isn’t the crowd here. If you thought it was, it would explain some of your assholishness.

  171. 171.

    Eric U.

    I’m headed to Hawaii on a surprise trip. Do you think they would show me Obama’s original long-form birth certificate?

    I’d hate to waste a trip.

  176. 176.

    Kropadope

    @Omnes Omnibus: I only talk about my sexuality when it is relevant to the conversation and I would like you to provide me an example of my purporting to be “purer” than anyone, please. ETA: The largest contingent of purity ponies here insist on pure support for Democrats. It isn’t enough to simply vote or advocate for Democrats, you must support what they are doing and not criticize a single detail.

    @Omnes Omnibus: It isn’t? Could’ve fooled me.

  177. 177.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Miss Bianca: One of my friends in college was from Pueblo. Which he made sure I’d pronounce Pyeb-lo, not Pweb-lo. This was important to him.

  178. 178.

    JoshL

    The nerve of some people. To call her a “bad mother” just because she gave her four-year-old child a loaded gun!

    Luckily that kid survived the incident. Hopefully he won’t be scarred for life from the fact that he SHOT HIS MOTHER. We already know the mother feels no remorse for having almost murdered her own son. Obviously her 2nd amendment rights are more important than the life of her own child. After all, he’s already born! We know kids don’t have any rights after that!

  179. 179.

    seaboogie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    A study on the mental health of those who hang out at Balloon Juice vs those who don’t might be interesting as well.

    I don’t know if you caught it, but Anne Laurie had an interesting comment within a thread regarding just this subject a year or more ago. It was a compassionate view that alluded to the notion that many of the denizens here may have experienced more than our share of dysfunctionality within our families and/or deal with the same ourselves, and that this is a useful forum for us for more than the obvious reasons.

  180. 180.

    Tehanu

    I was surprised to learn that the mother whose 4-year-old shot her actually lived to tell the tale. I guess that’s better than her dying and the unfortunate child being traumatized for life, but it’s only better for him on that level — I pity the poor kid being brought up by this paranoid bimbo.

  186. 186.

    NotMax

    Watched the trailers for Stranger Things, showing up on Netflix July 15th.

    Shall be giving it a pass. Struck this jaded old geezer as a cross between bad Spielberg and worse Crichton.

  188. 188.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Eric U.:

    I’m headed to Hawaii on a surprise trip.

    You just announced it to the entirety of Balloon Juice. How much of a surprise can it remain?

  189. 189.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Kropadope:

    The largest contingent of purity ponies here insist on pure support for Democrats. It isn’t enough to simply vote or advocate for Democrats, you must support what they are doing and not criticize a single detail.

    The fuck blog are YOU reading?

  191. 191.

    eclare

    Since open thread, has anyone caught HBO’s latest, The Night Of? If so, any opinions? Just found out John Turturro is in it.

  199. 199.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kropadope: I once interpreted a comment that was debatable and you call dishonesty? Fuck you. I spent the whole evening being open to your views. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. You are kind of a shitty human.

  200. 200.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: @Gin & Tonic:@NotMax: Okay. I’m not a big fan of his histories. And while I know he was the executive producer on Falling Skies, which I enjoyed – as something to watch on the ipad while doing cardio at the gym – I find that his stuff just doesn’t seem to gel or be enjoyable or both anymore.

  202. 202.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: I had major issues (and not just its ahistoricity) with his Bridge of Spies, which was an interesting story that could have been done better by so many other directors.

  203. 203.

    seaboogie

    @redshirt:

    That’s awfully mean

    You say that, and yet weren’t you the fella that said the other night that Alton Sterling’s kids would be better off with the proceeds from a lucrative lawsuit against the police than to have their father alive and selling CDs in a parking lot?

    Money solves a lot of things, but having your parent gunned down kind of affects your life, I would imagine. Am I mis-remembering? Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’d rather be wrong.

  205. 205.

    Kathleen Smith

    Netroots Nation 2016 St Louis, MO July 14-17, 2016: 2 registrations for sale at $135.00 apiece.
    Paypal only. I have bought and sold registrations to NN over the years with no problems for either party. All I need to do is give them your info: name, address, email and the transfer is done.
    Our loss/your gain.
    This is way below what I paid for them. We have a business meeting that came up :/
    The current registration at NN2016 for activists is $370.00 + $3.40 fee.
    Local’s Day pass is $99.00 +$3.40; Non-local’s Day pass is $175.00 +$3.40.
    MY First Balloon Juice Post!
    (References from another political activist site are available upon request :))

  207. 207.

    Nom de Plume

    @mike in dc:

    1984. 1972. 1964. 1956. 1952. 1932. 1936. That’s about 1 election in 3.

    And that only represents 5 candidates–two of them among the most popular presidents we’ve ever had. So it’s actually less than one election in 4, if you’re adjusting for different presidents.

  208. 208.

    Kropadope

    @Major Major Major Major: Did you link I provided to the thread on the gun control sit-in? Literally the first words I wrote were that I was glad the Democrats were taking a stand on gun control. However, because I disagreed with them on one facet of their proposal; the no-fly, no-buy provision; people reacted like I ate a baby head-first and posted it on youtube. It wasn’t even that I disagreed in principle that a person deemed unsafe to fly should be disallowed from buying a gun (In fact. I DID agree on that point). I just thought there were problems with the implementation of the no-fly list that needed to be addressed.

    I was called the usual names, such as libertarian ammosexual gun-humper. Few people who responded actually were interested in debating the matter at all and I was told at least once I should shut up until there were people in Congress who believe exactly 100% as I do, a ridiculous standard for permission to engage in a policy debate.

    I agree with the Democrats more often than not, but the second I put a toe out of line I’m treated like the anti-Christ. I thought this was a political blog, not a cheerleader squad.

  209. 209.

    Major Major Major Major

    @redshirt: I criticize Dems all the time, I’d only advocate for rah rah go team starting in… would you look at that, one week.

    But it’s not only fine but desirable and some would say necessary to criticize during the more sausage making parts of the political process.

    @Kropadope: As I recall I agreed with you and didn’t get called any such names.

  211. 211.

    TriassicSands

    @PaulWartenberg2016:

    I hope all 18 Republican Senators who voted against Dr. Hayden’s appointment all get hit with Overdue fines that block them from checking out more books.

    I’d be shocked if any of those Republicans had read anything longer than a tweet in the last several years. Books? We don’t need no steenking books!

  213. 213.

    Kropadope

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I once interpreted a comment that was debatable and you call dishonesty?

    You misspelled “frequently.” I thought you were dishonest a couple times on this very thread, but you may have missed it because my corrections were very gentle. Nearly every time I interact with you, you misrepresent something or many things I say. It’s only natural that at some point I would begin to assume it was deliberate.

    Also, I’m still waiting on that example of my purity proclamations.

  214. 214.

    dmsilev

    A tentative GOP Convention speaker list

    Night 1: A Benghazi focus, followed by border patrol agents and Mr. Shaw, whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant. Senator Cotton, Mr. Giuliani, Melania Trump, Ms. Ernst and others.

    Night 2: A focus on the economy: Mr. White, president of the U.F.C.; Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas; Michael Mukasey, the former United States attorney general; Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a vice-presidential possibility; Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader; Tiffany Trump; Donald Trump Jr. and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

    You have to really feel sorry for the staff writers at The Onion. How do you satirize this?

  221. 221.

    Original Lee

    OT, but I just watched Some Like It Hot with my teenage niece and nephew. The Daphne story arc feels a lot different now that gay marriage is legal everywhere.

  223. 223.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: Why would LTG Flynn be speaking on economics night? Also, Mukasey came out pretty negatively in regard to Trump a month or so ago – though he did play both sides do it.

  224. 224.

    TriassicSands

    @Gin & Tonic:

    OMG! It’s been years since I heard anyone say Pee-eb-lo. I lived in Colorado for many years and couldn’t believe that people would pronounce the name of that city that way. I remember being in the car once listening to the radio and a Colorado radio personality was making fun of people for pronouncing it Pee-eb-lo. He couldn’t believe they’d be so stupid. Then, with a straight face (though I couldn’t see him, I’m sure he was serious) he mentioned having grown up in Bee-yoo-na Vista (Buena Vista — also Colorado). Unbelievable.

  225. 225.

    Kropadope

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Funny, no one was bothered when I was defending the ACA against people demanding single payer or nothing or that no bill be passed without a public option. When I was advocating for immigration reform, that was alright. No one suggested I was stupid then. I doubt anyone who ever honestly assessed me would believe that.

    If someone doesn’t agree with you, that doesn’t make him/her a dumbfuck. I provide examples, quotes, links, etc. and I describe my logic as I’m best able. You can disagree with me, fine, but when you resort to these personal insults, I’ll just go ahead and believe that it’s because you don’t have a cogent point to make in rebuttal.

  230. 230.

    seaboogie

    @Kropadope: You are arguing with a lawyer, and are so engaged in a mental colonoscopy that you haven’t paid enough attention to realize that you should just call him a clown.

    Apologies, Omnes…..

  231. 231.

    Kropadope

    @Omnes Omnibus: I call you on it every time and when I provide a link to past conversations (which I have done more than once as you falsely asserted) you just dismiss it out of hand. I don’t keep a diary of every dishonest thing you say, so I think the best way I can proceed to prove it is to continue to provide in-thread citations.

    You still haven’t made any effort to “prove” your purity assertion.

  232. 232.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kropadope: I was more thinking of your string of tantrums and GBCW rants and general whiny petulance since you can’t have your Bernie. You’ve long since forfeited any right to be taken seriously.

    Dumbfuck.

  234. 234.

    Kropadope

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: You’re talking about a two-week span of time amid almost a decade I’ve been posting here where I was play-acting a monster that people like YOU were determined to see me as regardless of the actual content of my posts. Not only did I explain this several times, I winked an nodded toward it a few times as I did it. Some of the positions I staked out were so ludicrous there should be no way you couldn’t tell it was an act (e.g. I won’t vote for any Democrat at all, Bernie has to run as an independent if he wants my vote).

  235. 235.

    gwangung

    @Kropadope:

    You’re talking about a two-week span of time amid almost a decade I’ve been posting here where I was play-acting a monster that people like YOU were determined to see me as regardless of the actual content of my posts.

    We’re pretty sure you weren’t play acting.

    Basically, you’re an asshole, no matter what your political beliefs are, and you keep doubling down on it.
    And people treat you appropriately.

  238. 238.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gin & Tonic: I know, it’s very bizarre, CO pronunciations. It’s like they make an effort to butcher Spanish pronunciation. Buena Vista, for example, is “BYOONA Vista”, or just plain “Buenie” (“Byoonie”).

  239. 239.

    Miss Bianca

    @NotMax: @Adam L Silverman: I still think that “Duel” and “Jaws” are his best work. But I’m weird.

    For reasons of my own, “ET” was a particular nadir for me. And I’ll never forget how a gentleman friend won my heart completely by describing ET as “relentlessly heartwarming.”

  241. 241.

    Kropadope

    @gwangung: If it weren’t always the same handful of assholes asserting this, I might be concerned about what you think. Maybe a dozen or so people who refuse to engage in honest debate with people whom they have a disagreement with have accounted for nearly every confrontational conversation I’ve had on here.

    You’re just upset that I called you out for being glib propagandists with too much time on your hands.

  243. 243.

    TriassicSands

    @Miss Bianca:

    I was going to add something to my comment above, but for some reason I don’t have the right to edit my own comment.

    What I was going to write was this — you could have beaten me to it and I wouldn’t have known, because I hadn’t read all the way through either. However, I do think it is dumb enough (the pronunciation) to deserve two separate mentions.

    We can consider it the blog commenting equivalent of concurrent discovery in science. (How’s that for elevating the ridiculous to the sublime?)

  245. 245.

    TriassicSands

    @Miss Bianca:

    And finally. I’d love to know what’s behind those pronunciations. You rightly point out that it is Spanish names that get butchered. So, it is just Anglo yokel ignorance or was there racism behind it — showing contempt for Spanish names by intentionally mispronouncing them? Any idea?

  246. 246.

    Anne Laurie

    @TriassicSands: Don’t know about New Mexico, but the Upper Midwest is littered with towns named by people who wanted “romantic” foreign associations… which they’d picked up by reading. So Michigan has towns called Sa-LINE, Char-LOTTE, and my personal favorite: PEER-Y. Spelled ‘Pierre’.

    And then there’s that major Michigan city that was called Day-twa by its founders…

    So my guess would be ignorance, not malice. Although I’m sure the 19th century Anglo ‘founding fathers’ probably got quite snippy if the brown natives tried to reason with them!

  247. 247.

    Steeplejack

    @TriassicSands:

    I think it’s mostly “Anglo yokel ignorance.” At the time the screwy pronunciations got set in stone, the Hispanics weren’t on the radar enough to be considered worth insulting.

    For a non-Spanish example, Versailles, Missouri, is “Ver-sales,” and there are plenty of other examples, some of which I see Anne Laurie has weighed in with.

  250. 250.

    Arclite

    @ruemara:

    If she was black or Latino, she’d be facing charges. This is nuts

    Came to post the same thing. In addition, her child would be taken away and put in a foster home.

  251. 251.

    TriassicSands

    @Anne Laurie:

    I think you’re probably right about the Midwest, but in Colorado (or New Mexico) where the Hispanic population preceded the Anglos, I would be more suspicious of motives. Perhaps, unable to rename cities and towns, the Anglos simply decided to ignore the correct pronunciation and, in effect, claim the places as their own by changing the pronunciation.

    Then, many, many decades later, all I could think of is how dumb the locals sounded. I never heard a native Spanish speaker in Colorado pronounce either Pueblo or Buena Vista, but I’d be shocked if they used the ridiculous Anglo pronunciations. None of my friends in Boulder or Denver used the silly pronunciations, whether they were born in Colorado or not.

    @Steeplejack:

    You’re right. The S. Dakotan pronunciation is “Peer.” But that seems different from the Colorado cases where people are changing the order of syllables and doing it on purpose. It kind of reminds me of “noo-kyu-lur.” I’ve never been able to figure out why it is so common to mispronounce “noo-klee-ur,” which I don’t find difficult to say, but it is very common and many scientists and engineers do it too. (It always drove me crazy when Jimmie Carter would talk about “noo-kyu-lur” power. The guy was supposedly a “noo-klee-ur” engineer in the Navy, wasn’t he?)

  252. 252.

    TriassicSands

    @Steeplejack:

    Ah, yes, “Ver-sales.” You may well be right about the ignorance versus the dominance reason for butchering names. What’s funny is there are lots of other towns with Spanish names and I don’t know of any of them that are mispronounced.

  253. 253.

    Steeplejack

    @TriassicSands:

    I think a lot of the faulty Anglo pronunciations were the result of not knowing Spanish and pronouncing the names phonetically as if they were English.

    The one that always killed me in Atlanta was “Ponce [one syllable] duh Lee-on” for Ponce de Leon Avenue.

  254. 254.

    TriassicSands

    @Steeplejack:

    When you look at “Versailles” you can understand why someone who had never heard the correct French pronunciation would say “Ver-sales.”

    But explain to me how P-u-e-b-l-o becomes Pee-eb-blo or Buena Vista becomes Bee-yoo-na Vista? That takes some work.

    I might be able, with a stretch, to accept Bee-yoo-na, but Pee-eb-lo is just ridiculous. Where the heck does the second “e” come from? Alternatively, they may be pronouncing the first letter and then, inexplicably, creating a silent “u.” It’s a mystery to me.

  255. 255.

    Steeplejack

    @TriassicSands:

    I went to Wikipedia because I was thinking that maybe the (mis)pronunciations are related to when the towns were founded and how prominent they were, i.e., towns founded/popular earlier would have had a less educated (Anglo) population educated (if at all) only on print media. Towns that were founded or became popular later would have had a better educated population with access (in time) to radio and, later, television.

    I’m too lazy too look it up, but we had a discussion here a while back about the pronunciation of Los Angeles, CA, with a hard or soft g. The hard g persisted well into the 1960s. (I tagged it on several episodes of Perry Mason.)

    Anyway, from Wikipedia about Buena Vista, CO:

    The name “Buena Vista,” Spanish for “Beautiful View,” can often be heard pronounced locally as “Biewna Vista.” This Americanized pronunciation was specified by Alsina Dearheimer, who chose this name for the town, which was officially selected over other names (Cottonwood, Mahonville) on the occasion of the town’s incorporation. Alternate pronunciations include “Bwena Veesta” (Spanish pronunciation) and simply “Biewnie.”

    I have no idea how to pronounce “Biewna Vista.” I presume that’s the Wikipedia contributor’s shot at the Anglo mispronunciation (your “Bee-yoo-na”). And it would seem to answer your question about getting an e sound in before the u. Go figure.

  256. 256.

    TriassicSands

    @Steeplejack:

    Thanks. That is interesting. You’re right about “Biewna Vista” being “Bee-yoo-na” — it’s easier to see if it’s written like this “Bi – ew – na” though I think the use of “i” is a poor choice for a phonetic representation. That sounds like an Anglo chose the name and the pronunciation — which means, in effect, the ignorance theory seems to be correct.

    Question: What’s so hard about “Bway-na” or however you want to represent the Spanish pronunciation?

  257. 257.

    Steeplejack

    @TriassicSands:

    I always remind myself that anybody can contribute to Wikipedia, and many of them are not good writers. Or experienced, e.g., as in seeing how phonetic spelling is usually done in dictionaries and reference works.

  258. 258.

    TriassicSands

    @Steeplejack:

    I’ve done a fair amount of copy editing on Wikipedia and the only changes I’ve ever had rejected were when I replaced some British spellings with American — it was my fault, I just have never been able to figure out why the Brits don’t know how to spell. And their pronunciation is appalling!!! I’m sure they feel the same way about Americans.

    You’re right, there is some fairly poor writing on Wikipedia, but overall the standard is remarkable for what it is.

    I have never been able to make heads or tails of Wikipedia’s pronunciation guides.
    On something like BJ I simply use what I hope will be commonly understood representations — I suppose I could refer to something like a Webster’s dictionary pronunciation guide. But I think — hope — that when I write “Bee-yoo-na” people will be able to figure out how that sounds when spoken aloud. I suppose accents for stressed syllables would help.

    As a final note, I should add that I live in Sequim, Washington — pronounced “Squim” (like squid with an “m” in place of the “d.”) It’s easy to tell who isn’t from Washington when they say “Sequim.”

  259. 259.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @TriassicSands:

    Always a good idea to tread lightly until you hear how the locals pronounce names. I winced when an “Alabama girl” on NCIS said she was from “Opa-lee-ka.” Opelika has a long i.

  260. 260.

    TriassicSands

    Opa-lee-ka?

    Ik! (That’s “eek” in case you aren’t from around here.)

  261. 261.

    seaboogie

    @Steeplejack (phone): I live in the North Bay area, and my mother – who is an ongoing challenge in so many ways – referred to San Fran (The City) as “Frisco”. Nope nope nope! Sometimes it’s not just pronunciation.

  264. 264.

    Matt

    She plans to teach classes and show people that the unexpected can always happen

    No, you useless waste of skin, the “unexpected” can’t always happen. In this case, in order for it to happen YOU had to both be so terrified of the outside world that you couldn’t go anywhere without your gun *and* YOU had to be thoroughly irresponsible with said gun. You don’t need firearms instruction, you need fucking therapy to figure out why you can’t leave the house without a round in the chamber…

  266. 266.

    gorram

    @mike in dc: And this is an incumbent-less race, so it’s precisely when we shouldn’t expect that sort of outcome.

    Besides, not even one of those instances were during my lifetime, in spite of multiple incumbent races having been – 1996, 2004, 2012. While incumbents are a pretty good predictor, almost all of those examples fall between the Great Depression and the Reagan Revolution, with a solid majority in the earlier portion of that. Back in those days, there was a huge constituency of White lower middle class people who tended to vote pretty consistently, and were subject to sudden shifts between the parties because of issues directly relevant to their lives – in 1932 (D) and 1936 (D) it was their economic survival, in 1952 (R) and 1956 (R) it was the perceived threats of both over-aggressive confrontation with communists and communists themselves, in 1964 (D) it was the implicit threat in a presidential assassination and racist violence, but in 1972 (R) and 1984 (R) it was the total disintegration of their perceived security in society.

    You can see the trajectory there – from routine economic populism to periodic outbursts of racially-tinged “security”-driven politics. A slim majority of lower income White people have kept up with trajectory, and voted five times for now coming up on four different rich White guys who have run on “screw the poor” platforms… because they expect them to clarify racial divisions to their benefit as White people. It’s not the same dynamic though, because that sort of result is only possible to really expect from the Republicans (so they’re no longer exactly “up for grabs” by either party), because a significant minority of that voting bloc have doubled back to the Democrats because of their basic economic needs (so they’re no longer a single cohesive demographic in terms of voting), and those two different groups are increasingly entrenched in those reasons for voting for their preferred party (so neither is likely to become a swing constituency again).

    Basically, the days of landslide presidential elections, at least in terms of the popular vote, are over for the time being. The group that largely was driving these sudden big shifts in votes split in two and both of those parts of it are each a fairly stable part of a major party’s base. Even the Republicans have kind of clued into this one – that it’s become a turnout-based ground game.

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