I sense a shift in the political wind on gun control. I know, crazy, right? Even before Newtown, but especially since that horrible event resulted in exactly ZERO congressional action on gun safety, I lost hope that Americans could ever make headway against our insane gun culture. I don’t expect the 17 deaths in a Florida school this week to spur much action in the short term. But this feels different.
I could be wrong, so if you’re gearing up to tell me that nothing will ever change and I’m a fool for thinking this latest senseless tragedy might move the needle, save your pixels; I’m already telling myself the same goddamned thing.
But here’s why I think something MAY be shifting now, and in response to a mass shooting that wasn’t a third as deadly as the worst shooting in the last six months. I think we may be at least approaching a Rubicon because more people are joining an awful club no one ever wants to join — the subset of folks whose lives have been touched by this madness.
I’ve shared with y’all before that I witnessed a workplace shooting ages ago. Before that, I was indifferent to guns. I grew up around them. My dad is a gun nut, and he taught us kids to shoot. Guns were part of the furniture in rural FL when I was growing up. Hell, my granny had a rifle to shoot poisonous snakes that strayed into her yard.
But the day I was compelled to flee a madman with a gun, I acquired an opinion. Mass shootings were still pretty rare back then. In the decades since, the flood gates opened. The circle of people whose lives have been directly affected by mass shootings keeps widening. But the number of people joining that terrible club through an indirect experience is growing even faster.
The thing is, you don’t have to be shot or witness a shooting to join that club. The dues are experiencing fear and helplessness because of some random asshole with a gun. And fear and helplessness you feel when your child could be a victim is the worst of all.
The horrifying frequency of school shootings is part of it, but, as a gunsplainer will probably tell us all shortly, your child’s chances of getting caught up in a school shooting are still pretty damn slim. But the ripple effect keeps getting wider regardless. School shooting drills are widespread enough, and school lockdown events are frequent enough, that it may finally tip the damned scales.
A few years back, I exchanged text messages with my kid when her school was on lockdown due to a nearby gunman, and there are no words to describe the dread. Commenter Cermet had that same experience this week. In both our cases, no child was hurt, thank God. But in my case — and I suspect I’m not alone in this — once the all-clear was sounded, that galloping sense of existential dread was replaced by incandescent rage.
I asked myself, why the fuck should my daughter and her classmates and teachers have to practice a plan to barricade themselves in a classroom against a shooter? What are we buying with this trauma? Space for some dickless, neckbearded fuck-nugget to dress up in camou and parade around in the woods playing Rambo? That thought had a corollary: Fuck your fucking hobby, assholes!
My daughter’s high school has about 1,500 students. Presumably, many of her classmates also texted their parents during the lockdown. Multiply that across the nation. I bet a lockdown happens every damn day, somewhere in this country. Every damn day. That’s hundreds, if not thousands, of kids and parents who became acquainted with that specific type of fear.
Now, not everyone will react the same way I did, obviously. Some stupid dickhead doctor quoted in a post here yesterday about the Parkland shooting reacted with “don’t take muh gunz!” And his daughter is a student there! She could have been killed!
But fear is turning to anger. This morning, I got a message from our county sheriff on a neighborhood app. It alluded to the Parkland school shooting and was meant to reassure parents that our local cops are on the job to protect our kids. It had an “if you see something, say something” component. Within minutes, hundreds of people responded, and they had to shut the comments down. People are PISSED!
The bottom line is, most people, including most gun owners, are in favor of commonsense gun safety measures like universal background checks. I haven’t seen polling on it, but my sense is that the majority of Americans — by a healthy margin — would favor a ban on military-style assault weapons or at least a ban on huge magazines.
The problem has been that, while most sane Americans agree that more gun control is needed, they aren’t as fanatically devoted to that position as their opposite numbers in the ammosexual community. It wasn’t personal to them. It’s becoming so now. That could change things.
germy
Dupe1970
I hope this is true but I fear it is not.
donnah
We have to make it happen. If it means gun buybacks at the local level, that’s a starting point. There are gun laws on the books that are not enforced; let’s nag our representatives about it. The Republican Senator here in Ohio, Rob Portman, took money from the NRA and he’s getting a letter from me asking what he’s using to wash the blood of teenagers from his hands.
When the empty-headed hairball of a president mouths the words to a nation and is clearly unable to express any genuine empathy or sympathy and doesn’t even mention “gun” in his thoughts and prayers monologue, making things happen on the national level will be tougher.
But that’s why we fight harder. Gun lobbyists are in business to sell death. They get huge support from gun-lovers and we need to out-shout those vermin. Make things happen from our home bases, get into organized rallies, make noise!
Elizabelle
Betty, this feels like Oswald and the mail order rifle to me. “Parkland.” The name of both a Florida school shot up, and a president shot up who received his final Catholic rites there. Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
I think cable news and all the news, really, depresses and suppresses people who want to push for action against gun violence and for gun regulations to protect the public. “The view from nowhere” insures we get lots of chirpies telling us that nothing can be done.
Don’t believe them.
The Onion. Gets it more right than their MSM brethren. ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
I think the bubble is about to break.
kindness
I don’t think anything is going to happen under this Congress. Next Congress however should kick ass if we can get our shit together.
We need huge GOTV drives and to set up folks to help people get to the polls come November. For now, we’re at Republican’s mercy which is no mercy at all (because we don’t give them any $$$$).
Kay
Great post, Betty. We had a lockdown last year because a student threatened a bomb. They brought out bomb sniffing dogs from Toledo so it took all day. We have the automatic alert system now and it’s small town so I would have heard almost immediately anyway even w/out it but some of the very young kids were so scared they were crying and wouldn’t be comforted or calmed down. I think being led out of their school triggers news footage they have seen, because some were really terrified.
It impacts every school family. I’m not putting myself into the shoes of families who lost children but we’re all AWARE of it in a way that simply wasn’t true in the past.
TenguPhule
Sorry Betty. Sandy Hook & Heller. All the outrage, the pain in the world is not going to replace 5 SC assholes, 18 GOP Asshole Senators and 120 GOP House Assholes this year.
msdc
This is why we come to Balloon Juice: a dose of sanity in an insane world. Thank you, Betty.
donnah
I’ve saved this quote and I’ve been posting it at my favorite blogs.
“Senators say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.”. Gabrielle Giffords April, 2014
Elizabelle
@germy: It’s true. WaPost just now:
TenguPhule
@kindness:
Sadly no, Manchin and his fellow biapartisan fetishists won’t help us if it comes to a vote.
And fucking Heller means we need 5 SC justices to overturn it.
Fair Economist
It does feel different, and the reason seems to be that this time the near-victims have a voice. A lot of us assumed that when young elementary students were the target that the nation would rise up in outrage, but it turns out most of the “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” nonsense is just an act, and when it doesn’t suit the outragee’s motives it’s ignored. But when teens post on social media they don’t want to be shot so some ammosexual can load up his phallic symbol it’s a lot harder to ignore.
japa21
Yes, I do think there is a difference this time. And the media is playing a role too. The interview with the mother of one of the killed who was yelling at Trump to do something and screw thoughts and prayers. The interviews with the kids who were there and their anger. I am not going to say that there will be something significant done, but I am somewhat hopeful.
Rubio spoke and rather than just being negative about several of the proposed changes in laws, he was more of a “People will still find a way” philosophy. And he is partly correct. But if we can cut the shootings from 18 in 6 weeks to 18 a year, something will have been accomplished.
Fair Economist
@TenguPhule:
For a blanket gun ban, no, but for limits on assault rifles, background checks, closing the gun show loophole, etc. even the pro-gun Dems are on board.
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist:
I give it a week at most before the NRA starts digging into their backgrounds to start smearing them as druggies, sluts and ‘bad dudes’.
piratedan
ty for touching on one of my triggers….
I sat by the PC, with the radio on and the TV on for days when Tucson happened. Watching my Congresswoman fight for her life, knowing that a young girl had already been killed and my anger needled into incandescent rage while the GOP state lege trotted out the old “let’s not be hasty” and “its too early to talk about this sensibly” and in the very next session felt it was okay to designate a state handgun…. then later, the GOP opponents for her seat held a fund raiser by raffling off a gun and tickets to fire semi-automatics for their “cause”.
I could give a fuck about your “right” to own a gun, I hate the fact that our courts have been so mealy-mouthed into accepting THAT framing of the 2nd amendment I just want to scream. You want to own a gun, then fine, sacrifice a weekend every month to train on proper use and gun safety. Show up a week a year to train in emergency protocols, you want to own a gun, then join the National Guard. I don’t have an issue with guns, I have an issue with gun fetishists and their need for more fucking firepower than any reasonable person could need short of a zombie apocalypse.
swiftfox
Bouie is correct. Start showing the bodies and you will get action.
Also disappointed to do a google to see if Freeform did lose H Potter. And they did. Still won’t subscribe to HBO.
Elizabelle
@TenguPhule: Let’s start with the helplessness, right here and now.
Lot of those congressjackholes got to get re-elected this fall, and people are WOKE about the danger of sending their kid to school.
Could you just put a sock in it?
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist:
I wish this were true.
Elizabelle
@TenguPhule: I am serious. Go find another thread.
Fuck you for derailing this thing with pessimism at the outset. Go play on Facebook or something.
Jeffro
@germy: Oh hey – wire and bank fraud are included in those charges(!) Gee I wonder if Mr. Gates helped direct Mr. Mueller to that particular avenue…
Spanky
@donnah: What we have to buy back is both houses of congress.
Kay
This to me really misunderstands the central and huge role “school” occupies in childrens’ lives. Outside of home, school is their community. It’s where they live. All of their close relationships with other people (outside their family) are centered in that building. They’re not adults. They don’t have a variety of settings. They basically have “home” and “school” in that order.
Comparing school to a swimming pool just misses by a mile. Technically correct, I suppose, but so far from their real daily lives that it’s irrelevant.
Regnad Kcin
#showthebodies
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
This was supposed to be true after Sandy Hook too.
Tractarian
I doubt any actual legislation will come of this, but it does seem as if the Overton window on gun control may be shifting a bit. When you have the NY Times’ house conservative suggesting repeal of the 2nd amendment, that’s significant.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Fuck you for pretending we haven’t already been here. Go back and read the Sandy Hook threads.
Downpuppy
@Fair Economist: This is it. Instead of grieving, silent survivors we’re seeing loud & angry ones, with the anger directed at Trump, Scott & Rubio, instead of some fake target.
Also helps that “Thoughts & Prayers” has become a scorn magnet.
MJS
@Elizabelle: My thoughts exactly. Just the other side of the “nothing can be done” coin.
Richard Grant
I think that it will move the needle in a “vote them out” direction with one important element being the survivors’ raw tweets.
Ksmiami
@TenguPhule: the bottom line approach we need to take and message is thus: the nra is a terrorist organization. Period. Times 10000
Brachiator
I hope so.
And yet…. I had to stay away from most of the news and the media yesterday. Today I was listening to some talk show hosts in full “nothing can be done” mode. They were trying to be “positive” but everything they said angered me. One of them at least acknowledged a need for gun control, but said that it would take 100 years to change people’s minds.
We can’t wait that long.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Interesting that you say that. I was also struck by the “Parkland” coincidence, although I didn’t mention it in comments.
The JFK assassination was for me — as for so many — an introduction to gun violence. And I think Betty’s on to something about the rapidly widening sense of fear/outrage/”enough-is-enough.” I’m sensing a little bit of the same shift.
Bostonian
The NRA is a ghoulish organization that profits from death. All their money is soaked with the blood of children. Any Republican who took blood money from the NRA should be attacked publicly for it. Any Democrat who took blood money from the NRA should be primaried. Manchin, Leahy, Bishop, Peterson, Cuellar: GTFO.
Jeffro
The GOP’s non-response response of “thoughts and prayers, part 834” is one more thing where the government is not responding to the will of the vast majority. When 93% of gun owners and 96% of the general public think universal background checks are a good idea…c’mon, man..
And I think having the combination of cell-video from the actual students in the actual shooting, plus the very well-spoken teenagers’ pleas for the “adults” to DO SOMETHING will have an effect.
The Dems have clearly lost their fear of the NRA. I hope they get their messaging together and keep talking about it as a public health issue (like seat belts and safe food and what not) and resist the GOP’s last-ditch defense of trying to make it a Dems vs Reps issue. It is, of course, but still.
MJS
@TenguPhule: Yes, because things never,ever change.
DHD
We all know that the reason so many Asshole-Americans (or “Americans of Assholepean Descent” or whatever) are so fond of guns is just straight up racism, right? Black guy becomes president and gun sales go through the roof, but now that one of their own is on top, gun companies are filing Chapter 11. Correlation isn’t causation but when they were basically saying exactly that for eight years it’s hard to think otherwise. “I need a gun for self-defense” is just code for “I am afraid of black and brown people”.
So maybe, just maybe, if enough people are coming to realize that they have more to fear from the white kid down the street than a black guy in the Oval Office, we might get somewhere.
Spanky
Nine-zillion point type at the top of the WaPo webpage. I just don’t know if this derails the gun control argument we should be having, or willactually advance it.
TenguPhule
@Ksmiami:
Yep. Russian funded and owned.
JPL
The local next door group started a thread on how to keep your child safe. Overwhelmingly the comments favor more money for mental health and gun control.
The latest mass murder changed things.
Miss Bianca
@Tractarian: And yet, he has to go there with “liberals are just as bad because blah blah”. When you say, “it’s time to repeal the 2nd Amendment” and then talk about all the proposed legislation that could take place under that repeal as stupid and beside the point, then what, actually, are you advocating for? “Repeal the 2nd Amendment, but fuck liberal gun control laws cuz liberals don’t get it about gunz” is…well, kind of stupidly undercutting your own argument.
ETA: But then I’d expect stupidity from that particular commentator. Still kind of amazed he’d actually try to make a “conservative” argument for the repeal, do have to give him props for that, however grudgingly.
Sheldon Vogt
@TenguPhule: 143 bullets would
Sab
@TenguPhule: @TenguPhule: Sandyhook was small children. These Parkland kids are teenagers, active on social media, and very angry.
chopper
speaking of which apparently highline community college south of town here is in lockdown due to a reported active shooter on campus.
Joeg
@TenguPhule: go piss on someone else’s wheaties. consider yourself ignored. pessimist coward.
TenguPhule
@MJS:
To change things we need Gorsch off the supreme court. Nothing is going to change until we have a SANE non-corrupted Supreme Court that won’t play Cleek’s Law with gun control.
MisterForkbeard
OT, but Mueller just indicted 13 Russian Nationals and 3 Russian entities for interfering with the 2016 election in favor of Trump and against Hillary: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/16/russians-indicted-in-special-counsel-robert-muellers-probe.html
TenguPhule
@Sheldon Vogt: Yes, but I was trying to be polite.
Cermet
The local media played this hard until they discovered that the kid had a pellet gun and the event instantly disappeared. Actually, appropriate. However, getting a text from your child saying someone has a gun and is roaming the school halls and they are locked down in their classroom is very hard. Having her say she loves you and good bye in fear is not something anyone should experience. Having to have your child face real guns as the police stormed her classroom by mistake (and seizing a kid also by mistake) is actually a highly dangerous situation (but I understand why the police felt it was required and they had little choice in the heat of that moment) – the issue for me (after the fact) was that it just takes one wrong move by anyone and a terrible tragedy will occur. Yes, it is personal for me. Aside: as my daughter said, the boy was a fairly good kid, well liked. So, I believe the boy did not mean anyone any harm. This hyper fearful school/police action is required since weapons are so powerful now thanks to the lack of proper laws.
Major Major Major Major
The opinion places I read felt a little different this time too. Instead of (just) histories of how our ‘understanding’ of the 2nd amendment got to this point, or just rage against the NRA, I’ve seen pieces about how it doesn’t have to be this way, electoral strategies for breaking the NRA’s chokehold, and so on, that I don’t remember seeing before. (The gist is that if we run pro-gun-control candidates in districts where that’s likely to be a winning message, and get enough of them swept in on an unrelated wave, we can claim a mandate. Make-your-own-reality hackery, which we lack to our continued detriment.)
I don’t remember seeing stuff like that before. But yeah, not with this Congress or this president, but two years is a political lifetime.
Emma
@TenguPhule: Stop it, for God’s sake. Do you get pleasure from telling people how hopeless life is? Does it give you a sense of superiority to be the “realistic” one in the room?
Jeffro
By the way, among all the other bad solutions being put out there (arming teachers, etc) I saw suggestions for making schools completely bullet proof (replace all the exterior glass, I guess?), and “lock-down-able” within 2 seconds of any teacher hitting the ‘panic button’. I can’t begin to list all the ways this is a horrendous idea. Schools are already pretty damn secure (and tense). I wouldn’t want to go through my school day (as a teacher or administrator) knowing that anyone on the staff could suddenly lock all the doors, send the whole school running for cover, and have SWAT teams responding.
Tom
My vote goes for applying the same common sense regulations to guns that we already apply to cars, the other mass killer of young adults. You want a gun? Take training, pass a test, have a valid license that you have to periodically renew and show to law enforcement upon request, register your guns, required to buy insurance so if your guns are used to harm someone else they have some compensation and be required to have the insurance certificate with you whenever you are bearing arms, special restrictions and licenses for particularly dangerous items (e.g., trucks, assault rifles).
TenguPhule
@Joeg: Obviously you’ve forgotten Sandy Hook and what happened afterwards.
Betty Cracker
@TenguPhule: See the second paragraph in the post? That’s for you. Now give it a goddamned rest, Eeyore.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
For starters, great way to trap folks in buildings. So now arsonists can become the new mass killers.
Sab
@Jeffro: Anybody notice that they don’t actually say “thoughts and prayers” anymore? Now it’s just “prayers” or “prayers and condolences.” Obviously they got a new script from whomever.
Marianne Molleur
Agree that something, however small, seems to be changing. People aren’t buying the automatic responses anymore. Josh Marshall had an editorial up about how we changed the way we look at drunk driving. How we’re now used to having to plan how we’ll get home. Because the carnage became unacceptable. We may be reaching a tipping point.
Tom
By the way – the Second Amendment specifically says “…the right to bear arms…” not the right to own them.
GregB
Trump’s hoax talking point is getting harder and harder to sell.
geg6
@TenguPhule:
Wrong on Heller. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Heller allows gun control measures. Just doesn’t allow outlawing all of them.
germy
Ruckus
Betty, I wrote on a probably dead thread that we don’t worry about things we can’t change, like hurricanes or earthquakes. We prepare for them and practice and refine those preparations but we can’t change them. To me the NRA/2nd amendment bullshit feels the same. We’ve been told for a long time that we can’t change this entire process that we’ve practiced responses but not actually done anything to change a changeable situation. At some point it’s going to dawn on enough people that it is a changeable. It’s going to reach it’s tipping point.
Maybe it’s now, maybe it’s time that enough people realize that it’s bullshit that we elected a shithead for president, that we have our kids hide in school to hopefully keep from getting shot or that we don’t go to a concert in fear of getting shot, or just plain don’t walk down the street. I remember when we supposedly had an overpass shooter in the LA area in the late 80s. Drive to work, get shot. Sometimes many things have to coalesce to bring about change, maybe this is that time.
We are changing our politics, slowly, why not our laws and safety?
TenguPhule
@Tom: That would be my vote too, now which Democratic Senator can be convinced to bring it up like that?
MJS
Your arguments are all over the place. You keep referring to Sandy Hook, but no legislation came out of that, so the Supreme Court didn’t come into play. Are you now saying legislation is possible? Because earlier you said it wasn’t.
In any event, my comment simply meant that past isn’t necessarily prologue. You seem to think it always is, as long as past = something bad.
Belafon
@kindness:
Democrats won’t be able to do a whole lot except investigate in the next election, even if they win every seat in the House and sweep every Senate seat because they’ll only have a 4 vote majority. They will need to investigate, write bills that force Republicans to block, and set up 2020.
Spanky
Reading the indictment, it warms the cockles of my heart to read “including the Presidential election of 2016” over and over. Driving that point home.
Amaranthine RBG
It is possible to increase public safety and lower the number of homicides in which firearms are used through application of targeted, common-sense regulations and other public-health-like approaches.
It’s also possible to expend a lot of energy campaigning for inane pointless and ineffective laws which, if enacted, might result in lowering the number of homicides in this country by 2 or 300 per year – about the same number of people who get killed by lightning.
Let’s see where the effort goes this time.
Kay (not the front pager)
I have an appointment so I don’t have time to read all comments. Someone may already have said this.Betty, I think you’re right that there is a change in the air. It reminds me of the way Repubs used anti-gay sentiment to divide us and win elections in the ’90s and ’00s. It worked great! Until it didn’t. I know I’m not alone in being surprised by the sudden, tectonic shift in opinion about gay rights and marriage equality. But remember, marriage equality was found constitutional under a Supreme court as conservative as the present one.
It may not happen tomorrow, or this year. But I do think we have crossed a barrier now. At least I hope so.
TenguPhule
@geg6: Heller protects handguns. The problem is that the NRA and the GOP then clobber attempts to regulate rifles with “but handguns kill more people so you’re not addressing the real problem!” and our legislators get rickrolled into trying to protect us against handguns too…and run into Heller.
And I would not trust the currently GOP corrupted SC to not use Heller to ram AR-15s down our legal throats if a case came up before it.
MisterForkbeard
@Spanky: Yeah. I’m hopefuly we can get a new thread to talk about it a bit more, with input from various front pagers. That said, I’m not sure how much more we can talk about it right now – there’s just not a ton of information.
Major Major Major Major
@Tractarian:
…which one? Not going to spoil one of my free articles clicking on something thus described.
Amaranthine RBG
@Spanky:
And, doesn’t it look like Mueller signed the indictment with a fountain pen?
I don’t know why, but I really like that personal touch. I bet he is the type of person who still sends handwritten thank you notes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cermet:
I was thinking about you and your daughter. Can’t even imagine what you went through yesterday, but I hope there’s some equilibrium for your daughter (and her classmates and teachers) in the days to come.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Maybe not the SC judges, or all of the Senators, but the House could be flipped this year. That would be a step in the right direction. A cliche, yes, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Betty Cracker
@MisterForkbeard: Reading it now. Holy shit! I think someone’s working on a post in the backroom about it.
Amaranthine RBG
@Tom:
it’s “keep and bear arms”
germy
@Spanky:
From the WaPo article:
I don’t believe that.
Of course there was collusion.
geg6
@Fair Economist:
This. And they’ve been all over anyone on FB and Twitter letting all the gun humpers have it. If they were my kids, I’d be bursting with pride. The kids are all right.
Mark
Highline College, about 17,000 students, in Burien Washington went on lock down this morning because of reports of shooting on campus. No shooter or injured found at this time.
http://komonews.com/news/local/highline-college-in-lockdown-after-reports-of-gunfire-on-campus
Fair Economist
@TenguPhule:
Dude, you need to check your facts. Manchin proposed the amendment for expanding background checks and closing the gun show loophole.
Brachiator
@Tom:
I don’t know. Pretty much strongly implied by one word you omitted.
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
And note that I would be willing to get rid of the 2nd Amendment if necessary.
Spanky
@MisterForkbeard: Oh hells yeah! Holy crap! Read the indictment, everybody!
Jeffro
@Tom: I think we should interpret “arms” as “two”. That’s it – two guns per gun-owning adult, no more. Hey, it’s plural…
prufrock
@Miss Bianca: He also used the “AR-15s aren’t true assault rifles” line. He’s full of shit. Modern M-16A2s aren’t fully automatic either; they have a three round “burst” mode that is primarily used for suppressing fire. In fact, when I was a Marine many years ago, I was taught that the best rate of fire for well aimed (meaning lethal) shots was 12-15 rounds a minute, which an AR-15 is perfectly capable of and indeed is designed to do.
JPL
@germy: The meeting at the Trump tower proves collusion, imo. Remember not all collusion is against the law.
Rosenstein stated several times in this indictment.
John PM
@Jeffro: Is this being proposed by the same assholes that vote against all referenda to pay for new schools or repairs/upgrades to existing schools? Because I am sure they will reject the idea once their is a chance their property taxes will go up.
Betty, I have noticed a shift this time as well. The Parkland Massacre is getting a lot of attention here in Chicago because Anthony Rizzo of the Cubs graduated from there and knew some of the teachers and families. He spoke at a memorial service this morning and broke down several times. I heard part of it driving to work this morning and almost had to pull over because I started tearing up. My optimism is slightly higher than it has been in a while.
TenguPhule
@MJS:
Sandy Hook should have gotten legislation passed. Republicans killed that attempt.
We can suggest legislation, good legislation too. McConnell will kill it in the Senate, but we should still do so anyway.
What we can’t pretend is that it will ever come up for an actual vote. We might be able to do so if we flip Congress, but in that event the Democrats in the reddest states would almost certainly not vote for it, all the Democrats willing to sacrifice for the greater good got swept out after the ACA vote.
Maybe I’m just being too cynical, but I also don’t trust this SC to not expand on Heller’s departure from past precedent.
Spanky
@Spanky: … and I’m only a third of the way through!
Jeffro
Btw with it now coming out that the FBI was alerted to/warned about the ‘alleged’ killer…how long until Trumpov tweets that they weren’t doing their jobs “probably because they were busy helping with the Witch Hunt” ? There is a fair chance of that popping out of ol’ Orangemandias’ account and sadly we all know it.
debbie
And yet, despite the shooting, Congressional candidates in Florida and Kansas are giving away AR-15s.
lamh36
Ugh…even if i wasn’t already seeing BP (for the 2nd time next week), shit like this would make me,not just buy a ticket, but buy MULTIPLE fuqn tickets!!!
FUQ’ers
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@MJS:
New legislation is always possible so long as you have the votes (and follows rules and certain procedures). Getting more Dems elected at every level is priority numero uno.
Mark
@Fair Economist: Are you the fair economist from Calculated Risk?
Miss Bianca
@Cermet: I read about this situation yesterday, how awful for you and your daughter. Relieved it turned out to be non-lethal, and appalled at the police tactics that are now considered mandatory in such a situation.
Jeffro
@John PM: Oh I have no idea if the folks proposing yet more fortress-like security are against higher taxes, but I’m sure it’s a safe bet. It’s the same mindset that says building more prisons (or buying more aircraft carriers) is always the right answer, even if other, cheaper solutions are at hand. They’d rather pen their kids up in Fortress Schools than do anything to actually solve our multi-faceted gun problem.
Gelfling 545
Have seen a number of dhecks on FB today made out to various Republicans in Congress on which the amount is “ thoughts and prayers”, presumably to give them an idea of jst how useful these are as a practical matter.
jimmiraybob
Anything short of a total and retroactive assault weapons ban (alternative branding, a private military arsenal ban) will be illusory. The ban could be accompanied by a compensation or buyback program funded by gun-centered taxes and fees and maybe a kick in by insurance companies that don’t want to keep paying out for the devastating costs of gun violence and mass killings. Maybe medical and police first responders could chip in a few nickels to add to their own safety. I’d be more than glad to pay the taxes necessary to return to a moderately sane society.
Mental health is too fluid as an indicator and what do you do if you suspect someone might be nuts enough to join the American Race to Top the Last Body Count – what psychopath prone to mass slaughter doesn’t like a good challenge.
Background checks might provide a sliver of relief but that’s all.
A retroactive requirement that each and every weapon owned in America must be registered and carry a valid insurance policy might mitigate some of the problem(s). Maybe in conjunction with a military-style murder weapons ban.
But, as long as the weapons designed to kill and maim en masse on the battlefield are available to any public idiot and/or psychopath without any supervision or oversight (and I’m looking at the hate groups and “militias” out there too*) the weapons will be the only single constant in any equation.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the 2nd Amendment lunatics whose fee fees will be damaged.
*There would still be ways to dress up like soldiers and wear really cool wrap-around shades and handle really cool military weapons and use really cool military lingo – it’s called join the fuckin (bleep) military, you chicken-bleep, mother bleepers.
Fair Economist
@JPL:
One thing I think we should bring up is that there is something everybody can do to improve their personal safety, and it doesn’t require changes to Congress or the Supreme Court:
Avoid personal relationships with gun owners. Don’t date them. Don’t do business with them. *Especially* don’t marry them. That one action cuts your chance of homicide by about a third, IIRC.
RoonieRoo
The daycare in my town had a bomb threat and evacuation today. DAYCARE!!
japa21
@germy: That statement does not preclude collusion. Just that the specific people being indicted did not collude with the campaign in such a way as the campaign knew they were being manipulated. These are not the only actors out there. In fact, Trump is stupid enough to point at that and say, “See it exonerates me” when it doesn’t do so, but in saying that he would have to acknowledge the interference actually existed, something he has been reluctant to do so far. Also, does the indictment in any way connect this activity to the Russian government?
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist: His amendment also loosened restrictions on interstate gun sales, made exceptions for family & friends and went the extra mile to ban the registry of firearms.
So..not exactly the kind of legislation we’re looking for to actually solve the problem.
Stan
@piratedan:
Indeed, this is one mainstream interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Professor Ahkil Reed Amar from Harvard is pretty close to this position.
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist:
Clever and effective.
MJS
@TenguPhule: Yes, you are being too cynical, but I suspect you already know that. And at the risk of repeating myself, I’m not arguing with your take re:the barriers we face. I’m arguing with your apparent philosophy that no barrier can ever be overcome.
opiejeanne
@TenguPhule: I knew it would be you. I just knew it would be you.
She said to save your pixels.
Fair Economist
@jimmiraybob:
Very not true. A large proportion of homicides and suicides are with very recently bought guns. This is another case where you can’t save everybody or even most, but you could still save a thousands of lives per year.
geg6
I can tell you from my own small perspective here in my small town Western PA campus cocoon, there is certainly a change that began when we endured our own lockdown and deaths that anyone whose window faced the right way (which my office window did) could see a beloved campus staffer be gunned down and then view her assailant blow his own brains out. All the gun humpers here have kept their damn mouths shut ever since. Nothing like crouching under your desk in your office with the lights off as gun shots go off and bodies are laying in the parking lot to center the mind.
bemused
I have also been feeling a shift. I’m hoping it doesn’t fade but something does feel different this time.
mai naem mobile
Parkland is in a safe blue area and I think the NRA and their GOP pals are going to try to sell it to Dolt45 as a blue area that you’re never going to get votes from. Rubio ss a big fat coward. Maybe Ivanka will be the moderating force.
Amaranthine RBG
@Fair Economist:
Not to mention the fact that “assault” weapons are used in a very, very small percentage to gun homicides in this country.
At some point, I wish people calling for more gun control would be honest with themselves and ask themselves whether they care about lowering the number of people killed or whether they are just motivated by some bizarre hatred for a particular type of firearm.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: As The Onion runs after every one of these, “Gorilla Sales Skyrocket After Latest Gorilla Attack”
@mai naem mobile:
*snrk*
Matt McIrvin
@Kay (not the front pager): The time from Stonewall to Lawrence v. Texas was 34 years, during most of which time no apparent progress was happening. And gay-rights movements had been working under the general social radar decades before Stonewall. During all that time, it must have been easy to imagine that nothing would ever change. Why did everything suddenly accelerate in the 2000s? Beats me. Public sentiment probably just got to some tipping point.
I don’t think we’re going to be able to tell in advance what the tipping point is. It probably won’t be an event that strikes us as obviously suited to be the tipping point.
opiejeanne
@Elizabelle: Oh, I love you so much.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: When you target the NRA you best not miss that first shot. I suspect we’ll only get one chance at this in our lifetimes, after that the NRA is gonna go all in to destroy us as an existental threat to them (which to be fair, we are).
Mart
@Tom: Agree about requiring insurance. Get caught with no insurance – pay a fine and get it, or community service. Have an AR-15 with bump stock, fine; insurance costs $10,000 per year. Have a single shot .22 rifle for hunting squirrels, insurance is $100/year. Yes, punish the 3% that own half the guns, too bad for them. Maybe they could sell back a couple dozen weapons to save on insurance. When a teacher gets mowed down the gun owners insurance fund can offset the families financial loss. Same with all other maimed or murdered persons. This can be figured out.
JPL
@mai naem mobile: lol Ivanka is to worried about what in this indictment means.
kindness
You know when the US will start getting a balanced appraisal of gun violence? When crazy people start shooting up news crews/rooms. Not hoping for this to happen, really I’m not. But until the MSM thinks it’s their own butts in the fire, they will continue to milk the issue for clicks and ratings.
There are now Walter Cronchites out there now sadly.
@TenguPhule: Damn you are a pessimistic ass today. Please go smoke some legal weed somewhere and lighten up. You aren’t just harshing our mellows, you are liking the attention you are getting which is kinda what Trump does. Don’t be a Trump.
Fair Economist
@TenguPhule:
Maybe. Or maybe not. We don’t lose anything by trying. I say put up an bill that would prevent some school shootings and see if both Kennedy and Roberts are willing to be labelled child killers.
TenguPhule
@Amaranthine RBG:
Can I call it or can I call it, folks?
/SMH
Sab
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: Our Congresscritter used to be proud of his 90%+ NRA rating. Now he has backed away from that and doesn’t belong to NRA anymore. I consider that substantial progress. He probably won’t be afraid to vote sensibly in the future. I never had the sense that he actually liked guns. Just doing what his voters wanted. Now he is aware that others of his voters feel strongly otherwise.
Also, good luck on your job search. If you get it and end up working 80 hours a week, will you still remember to check in with us?
Matt McIrvin
@kindness: Eh, it’s already happened a few times.
John Revolta
@Jeffro: Yeah, I thought this too. In fact I guarantee that this is Hannity’s big talking point tonight- “FBI too busy harassing Presnit to protect your kids!1!!11!!1!”
debbie
@Brachiator:
Also the choice of the word people instead of persons. The Second Amendment clearly refers to groups of people, as in colonies, having the right to form militias to protect themselves, not the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms. Think about it: In the 18th century, would any colonist even think about restricting firearms? How else were they supposed to get meat?
Spanky
This new indictment is AWESOME in its sweep and excruciating detail. And no one should wonder how we (the US) got all of those tiny details.
TenguPhule
@kindness:
This has already happened. A female reporter was gunned down on live tv. So was her camera man.
Nothing fucking changed.
trollhattan
Each and every one of these hits home, even as the first reaction is now, “Shit, not again!”
My kid had an active shooter lockdown in elementary school during a running gunbattle in the neighborhood close enough to hear the shots and the gunman’s screaming crazy girlfriend. Her current high school had a gun murder in front one morning, several years ago. The nearby community college had a parking lot gun and knife battle resulting in a death a couple years ago. Much longer ago I awoke to gunfire and the sound of a car crashing into a house across the street from my apartment–another murder. I doubt my experiences are unique.
Whatever it was Australia did in response to Port Arthur–that’s what I want. I will never vote for anybody who gets a nickel of NRA money or refuses to take a stand against America’s #1 terrorist organization.
jimmiraybob
@Fair Economist: I was thinking in terms of magnitude of scale – mass shootings. And nothing I said precludes using background checks, etc., in conjunction with ridding us of military designed killing machines.
Gelfling 545
@TenguPhule: So yout suggestion is that we do nothing then? It will be difficult so forget it? Fine. We can all just sit around and stew in our helplessness. I’d rather fail trying than just give in.
Betty Cracker
@Amaranthine RBG: You’re right; we’re motivated entirely by mindless discrimination against the poor, innocent Bushmaster. We couldn’t possibly be motivated by a desire not to see another classroom of 1st graders shot to pieces.
Fair Economist
Assault rifles are not a leading cause of gun deaths, but they still cause a few hundred deaths per year, they *are* a leading cause of gun terror, and most importantly they are a leading source of gun maker profits. They are well worth restricting.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, AIDS was a pretty catastrophically humanizing event, which (in the public eye) happened between Bowers v. Hardwick and Romer v. Evans. The rest up through Obergefell was Kennedy building on Romer. As for why 2000 in particular? I imagine it had something to do with the people who grew up in the shadow of AIDS replacing super old homophobes like Reagan.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Perhaps. But I doubt it will be as easy as all that for the NRA. What Betty said about more people being involved (or knowing someone who was) in mass shooting events really struck me. The pool of people affected by this shit could reach a critical mass, even with guys like that idiot doctor.
jimmiraybob
@Amaranthine RBG: Here’s some honesty. Nothing about gun control measures precludes more attention to and funding of health care. This is not zero sum.
Sab
@TenguPhule: @TenguPhule: She was female, so that didn’t really count.
Elizabelle
Can you guys even name the last 6 major mass shooting incidents?
They happen so much now, that I have given up on that. It is insane.
MJS
@TenguPhule: How old are you? We’re you alive when Reagan and James Brady were shot on national television?
Stan
“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The term “bear arms” doesn’t mean to shoot guns. It doesn’t mean own guns. It doesn’t mean some freedom to hunt or defend one’s home as an armed individual.
The act of ‘bearing arms’ specifically means serving in the military or militia. It is related to the whole old concept of the citizen as a responsible member of the community, who does things like vote, go to town meetings, and yes, defends the community from threats when needed.
Thus the idea of requiring service in the military or National Guard as a prerequisite to gun ownership is completely consistent with the first amendment. There’s plenty of scholarship on this – I am not making this up, much as I do wish I’d been the one to think of it.
The Moar You Know
@jimmiraybob: They would then find out, to their horror, that the only people allowed to carry on base are the MPs.
Guns being banned on base, but allowed in base housing has had a predictable effect, and one that I wonder is not cited more often: the murder rate on base is, with the exception of the Nadal terror attack, zero, while base housing has some of the world’s highest murder rates found anywhere. Same population (literally), same everything with only one variable.
David Evans
@Amaranthine RBG: But they are used in a high percentage of mass shootings, for obvious reasons.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Perhaps if someone notable, like Sean Hannity, were gunned down on television? No, probably not.
Lee
I’ve been hammering people on FB that the first step in any sort of solution to gun violence is repealing the 2nd Amendment (moving the Overton Window). The funny thing is I’ve started to get people that agree with me.
The argument: The only way to reduce gun violence is to reduce access. You cannot reduce access without first repealing the 2nd Amendment.
TenguPhule
@MJS:
Things could change, but they’d have to be taken out in the correct order.
National Legislation is not going to do it. The rules work against us there.But it can still be proposed by Democrats.
State legislation is more likely to succeed. Provided of course that we support local Democrats who take the risk to do so. Get it on the ballot and see if there’s enough local support to pass it.
The elephant in the room is that the gunhumpers like to sue and their backers have deep pockets. So to deal with that the sane control groups have to be prepared to pool resources and invest in legal teams prepared to fly out to any state to fight any suits against sensible gun regulations. Its going to be long, painful and expensive. But it can be done, at least up through the Court of Appeals.
And then we come to the Supreme Court. Where it comes down to whether or not we can convince that vain peacock Kennedy to do the right thing.
And if we can get a majority of the STATES into sensible gun regulaton, THEN we push for a national law.
Lee
@The Moar You Know:
Holy Shit that really is a ‘more you know’.
I’m going to google for more information on this!
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@Sab: Who is your congressperson? And thanks for well-wishes. I hope I get the job I got a second interview today. I talked about it on a previous thread. I’ll always come around here. Where else can I read about mustard and a naked mopping.
Amaranthine RBG
@David Evans:
This is true, but mass shootings are a tiny percentage of overall gun homicides.
Here’s the thing: completely banning “assault” rifles would be very hard to do politically and, if successful, it would have a very minor impact on the overall problem.
If you wanted to design a campaign that completely exhausts the spirit and momentum of gun control advocates by channeling their efforts into combating a (relatively) minor problem, going after “assault weapons” is the perfect idea.
jimmiraybob
@The Moar You Know: So true. I was actually thinking of a combat deployment for the posers.
TenguPhule
@Gelfling 545: No. But you’re going after the wrong target. Trying to do it through Congress is a lost cause at this time. Its good for some news stories but its not going to change things.
Aim for the State legislation.
The Moar You Know
@MJS: Not sure if he was. I sure was. The clip of Brady trying to hold his brains in while his blood is spraying all over his hand and the street will haunt me forever.
And not that I’ve gone looking for it (once was enough thanks) but that clip seems to have vanished down the memory hole.
Amaranthine RBG
@jimmiraybob:
Sorry, I was unclear.
I was advocating a public health approach to gun violence, e.g. what is the problem, what is the most effective way to combat the problem, where should limited resources be directed, what can be done via education and persuasion in addition to legislation, etc.
I wasn’t playing gun control against healthcare.
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist:
Yes, they are.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I’m personally under no illusions that this will be solved overnight. Maintaining consistent control over the presidency and Senate at least for several cycles would go a long way towards fixing the SC and federal bureaucracy. If the SC is made more liberal, that will help tremendously as well with protecting liberal/progressive legislation. Get those originalist morons off the court.
TenguPhule
@MJS:
Alison Parker was murdered in 2015. Our media has gotten much worse since Reagan.
cleek
it is a requirement of the 2nd Amendment.
Amaranthine RBG
@Betty Cracker:
I know that you are misstating what I said in order to parody it, but, really please give some thought to whether you think the past approach that has failed again and again is the best way forward.
Bin Laden suckered the US into wasting trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives by his 9/11 attacks. Everytime there is a school shooting people start yammering “We much seize every assault weapon in America – that is the only solution.” That’s the thing about terrorism, it provokes stupid, irrational responses. That, more than the act itself, is what makes terrorism effective.
jimmiraybob
@Amaranthine RBG:
“…combating a (relatively) minor problem…”
I’ll tell you what. You run this by the “lucky” survivors that will live with this terror for a lifetime, and the brothers, sisters, friends, parents, uncles aunts, grandparents, of the victims of these mass shootings, and an increasingly traumatized nation and get back to us.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: My beef with Betty’s “This time is different!” is that its not different. The votes are just not there in Congress.
We want to see real gun control changes? Going to have to do it the hard way, state by state. One lawsuit at a time, same as how the NRA did it to get their way. Attitudes not only have to change, we need to keep them changed.
Brachiator
@Amaranthine RBG:
Too many guns.
Get rid of the guns
Getting rid of guns.
Educate people to give up their guns
Persuade people to give up their guns
ban weapons and restrict gun ownership
Get rid of guns
I hope this was clear enough for you.
Sab
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: Tim Ryan, same as yours. I think his change is actually huge. Normal for Akron, but Wow for Warren and Youngstown.
TenguPhule
@Stan:
Unfortunately the Heller decision threw all of this out as far as the legal system is concerned.
Getting this standard back in there is a priority.
Amaranthine RBG
@jimmiraybob:
Why don’t you just say “Won’t someone think of the CHILDREN!!!”
Look, if you talk to the family of someone with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, they will probably tell you how horrible it it is an lament that there is so little spent on research and treatment of the disease.
But that money would be save many more lives teaching people to wash their hands when it’s flu season.
jimmiraybob
@Amaranthine RBG:
“Everytime there is a school shooting people start yammering “We much seize every assault weapon in America – that is the only solution.”
I am “yammering” about the only single constant in the equation. Yes, I realize that is stupid. I will try to be less grating in the future. However, there is evidence that removing the single constant in the equation is effective. Yes, I realize that this is stupid too. Let us carry on compounding the national trauma.
Gravenstone
@TenguPhule: Why don’t you take your eternal defeatist attitude and shove it up your fucking ass, boy?
Wapiti
@Regnad Kcin: Yeah, yesterday I was thinking of Emmett Till’s mother, and her decision to have an open casket funeral for her maimed son, so people would see…
I do wonder if broadcasters or papers would carry the images of dead teenagers, if a parent made that decision.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I think Betty means that momentum seems to be starting to pick up which could translate into more activism and votes that might cause a political shakeup that starts the process for changes. I’m excited for state level races. Several special elections have gone our way now, some at the state level. I’d like to think progressives have learned their lesson about supporting local candidates as well as presidential ones. The pool of political talent has to come from somewhere.
Aardvark Cheeselog
It seemed like there was a high density of tweets/snapchats/intragrams &c coming out of the school while the shooting was happening. I think there were a lot of people who really stopped to think what it would be like if it were your kind holding that phone on the other end.
One of these days we’re going to get one of these where the kid with the phone streaming the video winds up looking down the wrong end of the gun barrel right before the feed goes out.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: People in the movement seem to think AIDS knocked them back instead of helping–aside from the fact that it was directly killing them, it got the general public thinking of gay people as dangerous plague carriers, doomed by their own behavior. There were calls to round them up into quarantine camps, televangelists saying it was God’s judgment.
But it also did have a radicalizing effect: ACT UP’s refusal to play nice, and a big push for people to come out publicly.
If you look at Gallup polls on support for decriminalizing gay sex, it was actually flat near parity (with some undecideds) in the late 70s/early 80s, then there was about a 10-point drop right when the AIDS epidemic became widely known. That lasted a few years and then it went back to what it was before, then approval started rising in the late 90s when the really effective HIV treatments came into use. And there was a big but temporary backlash right around the Bush reelection gay-marriage panic in 2004.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx
I think you could look at that chart and make a case that AIDS lost the movement a decade, but it’s debatable.
Amaranthine RBG
< @Brachiator:
That all makes about as much sense as abstinence only education.
Hey, nobody can get pregnant if nobody is having sex. I HAVE SOLVED THE PROBLEM.
TenguPhule
@Gravenstone: Have you forgotten that the Sandy Hook parents got DEATH THREATS and accusations of being part of a hoax? There was a story last year about how one of the fathers is still being targeted to this day by gunnuts who believe he’s making it up.
They’re going to target these victims too.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@Sab:
I haven’t been paying attention to him, but I still won’t vote for him ever again.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Maybe someone should target them. They’d run crying to the police faster than you can say “boo”.
jimmiraybob
@Amaranthine RBG:
OMG. Do I dare think of the dead and surviving traumatized children? What folly is this?
Although, in fairness to me, I also give a shout out to the brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, teachers, coaches, and extended family as well as a traumatized nation. So yes, the children….
trnc
Next time some wingnut says one fraudulent vote is too many, ask them how many gun deaths and injuries they find acceptable.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:
We’ll see. I could be wrong.
Its just that seeing the story the other day about the fucking father who had a daughter there and STILL couldn’t fucking find it in himself to choose her over guns….I’ve just about thrown up my hands at how deep the crazy has gotten.
Brachiator
@Amaranthine RBG:
Stupid comparison. But thanks for trying.
Let’s keep focused here. The goal is to get rid of guns.
Amaranthine RBG
@Brachiator:
Okay, here you go: I have Daniel Defense DD5V1 and a Sig 516.
Make me a reasonable offer and we’ll complete the sale through gunbroker.com. I’ll ship the firearms to your FFL and (assuming you can pass a background check) you can then pick them up and melt them down or whatever you want. I pinky promise to never buy another “assault” rifle.
Here’s your chance to make a real difference
Betty Cracker
@Amaranthine RBG: Just expressing contempt for your self-serving, arrogant bullshit at #111. That is all.
Gelfling 545
@TenguPhule: I’ve got not too bad legislation in my state. It helps the people in FL, TX and elsewhere not one whit. And Congress has been trying to pass legislation to override local laws. A national effort is needed.
Matt McIrvin
@TenguPhule: On guns I’m thinking in terms of the slow boring of hard boards. I doubt anything is going to change legally right now. But here’s another interesting Gallup chart:
http://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
From that, it looks to me like Sandy Hook actually was a turning point! That was right at the end of 2012. Support for stronger gun control hit bottom in 2012, and has been rising since then–looks like there was a strong temporary reaction that didn’t last, but a linear rise after that. We just haven’t seen the actual payoff yet; might not for a long while.
efgoldman
@Fair Economist:
As I commented last night, CBS interviewed a small group of uninjured survivor kids, all of whom lost friends. Universally, they said something has to be done about the guns. So maybe there’s hope in the next generation.
As long as the NRA party has control. no matter what the majority wants, nothing will change.
Ocotillo
I am not sure what is different this time but it does feel different to me as well and fortunately, I am not one who has been directly affected by this thus far.
It is time to begin a movement to repeal the second amendment and write a newer, less ambiguous one. All along, since we have that cursed amendment, too many of us have tried to come up with legal arguments and justifications for allowing gun ownership but with sensible regulation. Since the NRA has devolved into a lobby for the gun merchants and the conservative movement have adopted the second amendment as an article of faith, politicians have listened to their “solutions” which typically meant broader access and less regulation of firearms. The result has been a miserable failure.
Like so many people on the side of gun regulation claimed, access to more guns has resulted in more gun violence. The logic of only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun is not as effective as keeping the gun out of the bad guys hands in the first place.
The time has come to try something else and again I propose the repeal of the second amendment. I know any potential inhabitants of Mars will hear an audible reaction should that actually be said out loud by anyone with any weight in our political system but we, the people who want sensible gun control have surrendered a long time ago and it is now time to draw a line in the sand and truly reengage in the fight.
Gelfling 545
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: I don’t believe that a single person here is under that illusion.
efgoldman
@piratedan:
Actually the Army owns the guns
jimmiraybob
@Amaranthine RBG: Well, as long as your weapons are safe. Just in case anything should happen to them though, Thoughts and prayers dude, thoughts and prayers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@kindness:
That already happened in Virginia.
Ruckus
I’ve been shot at 4 times in my life. None of them while in the military. Two were “hunting” incidents. One was someone fucking around with a gun. Only one was someone aiming for me. Thankfully at that point in my life I could run, it was dark and they were a lousy shot. These are not the only things that have happened to me that could have killed me. Many of us have had or will be in situations that could kill us. Weather, cars, natural disasters. We have weather predictions to warn us so we can adjust, we have made cars safer, buildings safer…. But we refuse to acknowledge that the things we need least, guns, need to be made safer, that their use needs to be controlled. Conservatives want to revert to the supposedly better olden days. Simpler days, that weren’t, when hunting was normal, when the population was much smaller, whiter…. But time doesn’t stop or back up, it marches on and over people who can not adapt to change. It’s up to those who understand that the good old days weren’t, when a childhood disease could kill you or cripple you for life, that change is here, it always has been, that time and life march on, like it or not. Are things better in my rear view mirror, or in looking outside my window today? In many was a resounding yes, but in one way a resounding no! And that is in our neanderthal ways of making us respect guns instead of making them respect us.
No one should have to go through all that, especially kids.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Eighteen year to date.
I’ll save you having to click the link, but Fox News (of course) says it’s far less because 7 happened outside school hours and so don’t count.
Sab
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: I can’ t stand him either, but his Democratic primary challenger is odd, and his likely Republican challenger is very much a Republican.
Please don’t be a purity pony. We need good Democrats in the primary. If we don’t get them we need to vote for sort of bad Democrats because the alternative is a Republican Russian funded agent.
I do think Tim Ryan is an idiot, but he is amazingly less idiotic than he was when he first ran. Our job as constituents is to communicate with him. He does seem to listen if banged upside the head hard enough.
Examples: immigrants, and guns. Those are difficult changes in Ohio, and he has made them.
Gravenstone
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: One of the kids from the school basically said that their generation would be the one responsible for making this needed change about guns. It may well take a generation to effect that change, but it’s coming.
The Moar You Know
@efgoldman: Very true. It goes out of the armory, it goes back in the armory when you’re done.
One of the things that I found unbelievable and unacceptable about that shooting in Mesa, AZ, where that cop murdered that guy in the hotel, was that his department allowed him to carry a personal weapon on duty. He was armed with his own personal guns! I’d never heard of that before, and it ought not to be allowed.
Amaranthine RBG
@Betty Cracker:
I won’t argue, because I don’t care, about the “self-serving” or “arrogant” insults.
But its not bullshit. It is simple fact. You are a savvy enough to know that you can’t rebut what I said with facts. Hence the insults.
I think that, deep down, you actually do suspect that the approach I criticize is self-defeating but you just can’t quite accept that yet.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@efgoldman: I have a 15-year-old. We live about 30mi from Stoneman Douglass as the turnpike flies, and while she doesn’t have friends there, her classmates do. There was a lot of following the action on her social media. There are a lot of traumatized kids out there today, if her reaction is any guide.
EDIT:
One of the things I talked with her about last night is how, in representative systems, a committed minority can block an lukewarm majority for a long time. The NRA hammerlock on politics strikes me as one of those things that’s an insurmountable problem, until one day it isn’t. We’ve seen a number of those in the last 30 years. Here’s hoping its day will come soon.
Cermet
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you; she is doing very well – not sure I would handle such a thing anywhere as well.
@Miss Bianca: Thank you, too.
While the Florida and others where students died in mass are far and away the most terrible to imagine, just experiencing that possibility for a few minutes is not anything anyone here, I hope, ever has to endure.
Fair Economist
@Ocotillo:
It’s not a crazy strategy. It worked for gay marriage – not by itself, but as part of a broader push, with some pushing for full equality immediately and some pushing for half measures. The result ended up that the half measures went through, and that shifted opinions rapidly towards full equality. I see no reason the same approach won’t work for guns.
Cermet
@Ruckus: Wow, glad you are fast. Sorry that happen. Understand about hunting – I had a near miss while hunting many years ago (A brother trying to hit a dove that took off and was smart to fly by me! Luckily, my brother missed us both.) But frankly, hunting is dangerous and we know what we are doing (most of us.)
Betty Cracker
@Amaranthine RBG: Your latest attempt to read minds reeks of the same bovine effluvium that mars your effort at #111. If I were to engage in the type of bad-faith assumptions that are the hallmark of your comments on this topic, I’d accuse you of being either too obtuse — or too focused on protecting The Preciouses — to see that the original post and most of the subsequent conversation focus on a specific manifestation of gun violence, i.e., random mass shootings, for the very good reason that that subset of gun violence degrades our quality of life intolerably, scars our children and is something that can be ameliorated fairly simply if we can summon the political will. Maybe just show up here and scream “SQUIRREL!” repeatedly next time the owner of an assault “rifle” mows down a group of schoolchildren. It’ll save you time and us the annoyance of parsing your blather.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Apologies if someone stated this upthread. I think it is beginning to sink into people’s minds that We.Are.Not.Safe.Anywhere. as long as this epidemic goes on. We are all walking targets. I for one am tired of it.
Cermet
@Ocotillo: Repealing the second amendment isn’t necessary; it says a well regulated militia – so strict regulation is SPELLED OUT IN THE FUCKING SECOND AMENDMENT! The courts but mainly the inferior court as well as congress need to take the main part of that sentence to heart!
Ksmiami
@TenguPhule: then we target them right back. Bully’s are cowards
Gerald Parks
I’d just like to point out something…the rage, hopelessness, frustration and anger that nothing is being done about the senseless murder of children, woman and men in local schools by people with guns IS the very same human “feeings” that fueled the “Black Lives Matter” protest accross this Nation.
Hummmm …a white supremacist group trained this boy to kill Americans … is he NOT a terrorist?
What is a terrorist?
In America?
Chip Daniels
Ima just keep pounding this drum.
I refuse to accept the “right” to own a gun in a modern civilized society.
I won’t begin any discussion by ceding that ground, or some throat-clearing “of course I accept the individual right…”
No, I don’t. In a modern civilized society, guns should be a highly regulated tool like dynamite or toxic chemicals.
I’m particularly not interested in starting every discussion with “what do we think we can get passed with this Congress”.
First we destroy the public acceptance of some natural right to a gun, then we win elections and appoint judges to ratify it.
Yes, I may not live long enough to see it, and thats fine.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Said here before that I did temp duty in the Shore Patrol in my government days. We carried a nightstick. The only SPs to carry a sidearm were the gate guards. Even their supervisor, who I rode with, didn’t carry. Now this was a long, long time ago, in a life far, far away but it was that way on every military base. I also carried a loaded sidearm while on duty in port on the ship I was on for two yrs. There were two of us on board, armed, in port. Even tied up at a public access pier in a public port, domestic or foreign, only two of us. Ten rounds each. To protect an entire ship. Went on a navy day tour of the replacement class ship of the type I’d been stationed on, 4 yrs ago. There was a sentry on the pier, body armor, side arm, assault rifle, 2 guards as we boarded, with side arms. I don’t know if this is now normal or was for show. For many this is a scary time to be alive, mainly because they seem to want to be scared or want to do things that make it easy to be scared. But times change, we need to understand that we are not the worlds guides to life, not the perfect people many think themselves to be, and maybe actually a part of the problem of a lot of the world.
Embir
On a cold night in British Columbia I headed down to the hotel hot tub to soak in the snow. A nice older couple, my age, were soaking and chatting with a younger couple when I go there. Within 5 minutes it came out that the older couples only child was killed in the Vegas shooting. They were still processing it, visiting with the FBI, dealing with his fiance who was traumatized. As the lone American in the tub I got very quiet and apologetic – what else does one do? There was a deep shame that our culture had done this to them.
At a dinner party 2 months earlier three couples sat down only to have one reveal that just weeks earlier they had been at the event in Vegas with a large group. Friends of theirs didn’t come home alive. They were still in shock, processing it. That was the only topic of discussion for the whole meal.
So yeah – I haven’t been to Vegas in 10 years, but that shooting has rippled out in ways we are still only starting to comprehend.
Is there an Act Blue page where we can match the NRA dollar for dollar in races? I’d be all in on that one. You want t spend on Marco Rubio (R Bloodshed), we’ll match you. That is the only language they understand.
TenguPhule
@Ksmiami: You can’t shame complete assholes. Believe me, I’ve tried.
Matt McIrvin
@Gerald Parks: Yes.
2012, the year of Sandy Hook, was also the year Trayvon Martin died.
PaulWartenberg
regarding Parkland:
I think this is a different situation than before because this time it seems like the kids who survived the shooting are aggressively swinging back at the pro-gun punditry and wingnuttia. Previous shootings, the victims were more seeking comfort and safety – along the lines of “I love my family” and “OMG this is crazy, send me hugs” kind of posts – and rarely spoke out about the situation they’d just gone through. THIS time, the first thing these teens are saying out of their mouths are “Jesus F-ck Sh-t, when are the adults in charge of things gonna do something to stop the guns?”
We’ve got the teens of Stoneman Douglas going onto CNN and verbally slapping the taste out of the Far Right talking heads’ mouths.
They are not rolling over.
They are stepping up.
Lee
@Cermet: The problem with that is 30-40 years down the road everyone will have forgotten except the NRA. They’ll start buying representatives again and the next generation will be saddled with the same problem.
Repealing it solves that problem.
PaulWartenberg
You wanna know how this mass shooting is the turning point?
Because this time, as the shooting was in progress and as the teens were Live-Tweeting their situation, they were getting tweets back from previous mass shooting survivors telling the Stoneman Douglas kids what to do.
We’ve reached Critical Mass. This is happening so often that more people have lived through it than people who haven’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: I’ve been thinking of smoking as another analogy–there was a decades-long push to convince people that smoking was dangerous, which eventually resulted in increasingly strict labeling laws, advertising restrictions, then things like public smoking bans.
Smoking is still legal but prevalence is way down–from 40-something percent of the whole US population at mid-20th century (I suspect that was a huge majority of men and a large minority of women) to about 16 percent now and still dropping.
A visceral and graphic public-education campaign to convince people that guns don’t make you safer would not go amiss.
Ruckus
@Cermet:
I’m not fast enough to outrun a bullet. No one is of course, that’s the entire point of a gun in the first place. The only defense is to not be in the way of the bullet, or to take out the shooter. The first is much safer than the second. Much. Safer.
It was dark enough and I was fast enough to get out of sight though. It was close enough that I heard it pass me by. Closely. (I’d heard that sound before, the other 3 times.) If they had had more than a crappy revolver (this was decades ago), like say an AR15, I’d bet I’d not be here now.
ET
What I have found particularly revealing this time is that some of the students (victims) are calling out the adults. I don’t know if i have ever really heard that. They are also calling them out in a way the feels different. That student on CNN (among others likely) calling out that Lahren tweet. I saw one that was calling out people for offering prayers.
That being said, I don’t think things will change. For many, their god is called Gun and they are willing to accept any number of martyrs including their children and people they knew.
AM in NC
@Fair Economist: This. A thousand times, this. For the first time post-shooting that I recall seeing, the people who were there are vocal, pissed, loudly calling for gun safety regulations, AND are being given air play by the media. The fact that they are sympathetic kids helps. The percentage of people who owns guns is decreasing in this country (even as the gun fetishists hoard them in bulk), and I think the horrific repeat of these kinds of events is making younger people even less likely to want to put up with allowing the insane gun culture the gun manufacturers have bought an paid for to continue unabated. It’s one more thing that is going to turn today’s teenagers and young adults more firmly toward Democratic voting patterns. It gives me long-term hope for our country.
cokane
hate to be cynical but i dont see much different this time. the key is if this story stays in the news for weeks and in these times, that just seems impossible. I’ll say one thing different is that these kids are old enough to articulate a point of view and many of them have publicly come out calling for gun control… so that’s different. But man, Las Vegas was forgotten about in a month, I fear the same is true here.
Shalimar
@Gelfling 545: His other routine suggestion of the Trump era was that we start murdering people we disagree with politically if we want to change things. I’m not entirely sure TenguPhule is against gun violence.
Ruckus
@Chip Daniels:
Exactly.
The bullshit that cars kill people is just that. We regulate the crap out of cars and they are much safer than they were 40-50 yrs ago. That people use them carelessly, or even maliciously is an issue. But the big issue with the bullshit argument is that cars are not intended as a device to murder with. A gun is. And while a gun has uses, it is a tool that is so available and has so many negative uses and is so final in those negative uses, that in any modern society it has to be very controlled usage or none at all, because any public usage is almost guaranteed to be deadly.
celticdragonchick
@Mart: As long as Heller is on the books, you are not going to be able to use confiscatory taxes to attack a right. That opens the door to poll taxes for voting etc and we really do not want to do that again.
cokane
@Ruckus: cars also save lives, ambulances and the whole infrastructure that helps create a wealth of products and services depends on the existence of cars. so even if car deaths outnumber gun deaths, arguing that “cars are bigger killers than guns” is simply a failure to understand their NET deaths.
There are some instances where guns save lives such as occassional personal defense stories, but they do nothing to fundamentally create the society we live in, as cars do.
celticdragonchick
@PaulWartenberg:
Agree.
PST
I think Betty may be right about this. I consider Ed Rogers (in the Post) to be purely partisan rather than ideological. He doesn’t even try to lead opinion; he’s a weather vane who reflects what the leadership is thinking. He’s a place to check the party line. He wrote a weak-tea we-must-do-something column today about doing more to keep guns out of the wrong hands.
Ruckus
@Embir:
A fellow I worked with 2 yrs ago was standing at the concert next to someone shot. Luck was his only protection. I don’t know about your luck but if I depend on luck, I’m going to have a shitty outcome, every – single – time. Normally it’s just every other time.
Steve in the ATL
@PaulWartenberg:
Holy fucking shit. That this is even possible is an indictment of our society.
TenguPhule
@Shalimar: Its not murder if they’ve been tried and convicted.
celticdragonchick
@Steve in the ATL:
No kidding.
debbie
@PaulWartenberg:
Wow, that is genuinely a reason for hope for change.
Ruckus
@ET:
Yes they are.
However, your post says far more than you think. All social change requires a tipping point because the whatever was accepted by a large enough segment prior to then. It’s not that instantaneous change will happen, it won’t, it takes time to change society, for exactly the reason of yours that I quoted. Those that like whatever have a vested interest in not changing. It might be monetary, it might be religious, it might be a refusal to change, but it is a vested interest. But in almost all societies, once that tipping point is reached change will happen. It may be costly, in money, lives, destruction, even dissolution of a government. But change will happen. It may not be the change that some envisioned up front, it may not even happen in their lifetimes, but if the mass of people want change and reach that point, change is inevitable. Read history. Change of direction has happened to every entity man has envisioned or affected, when the prior direction was mandated by enough people. All it takes is the tipping point.
KickBoxBanana
“I sense a shift in the political wind on gun control”
HAHAHA! You people crack me up sometimes.
I guarantee you 100% nothing will happen. Did they even ban those gun stocks they said they would after the LV massacre? Doubt they will ever do that either.
But we got rid of Franken over absolutely nothing compared to what is going on with Trumpov. So it’s all good. We are more pure or whatever and have our priorities straight.
Matt McIrvin
@cokane: Gun deaths are actually getting close to exceeding car deaths in the US. They’re nearly identical.
(Googling this will get you a whole lot of furious articles attacking the methodology of these comparisons and claiming they’re bogus for some reason. But I’m just going by CDC numbers for the whole US. Note that most gun deaths are suicides, which leads some people to insist they don’t count.)
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: I think we have hit the tipping point, or are damn near it.
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
I think that’s in progress. Will be helped along further if the investigation into money laundering via the NRA gathers steam. NRA is funding overwhelmingly Republicans, and the GOP is a toxic, toxic brand even without the gunpushers attached.
@Embir: Tragic. I hope that the stories of their unbearable losses help end this madness.
Antonius
“Fuck your hobby. Ban the guns.” has a certain ring to it.
Ruckus
@cokane:
And as much as we have shootings seemingly every fucking day, the numbers of people that use cars is dramatically higher. And almost all of us use them and do so reasonalbly. Few of us do so as irresponsibly as almost all of the gun users use their guns.
Fair Economist
@Ruckus: Even though it wouldn’t be everything I want, if guns were regulated as well as cars are (licensing for use; more advanced licensing for more dangerous models; requirements for insurance; confiscation in cases of safety violations, additional restrictions on teen users, etc.) I’d be pretty happy.
Big Picture Pathologist
Bookmarked for posterity. Great post, Betty!
VeniceRiley
It’s a slow progress situation. I have no doubt abetyted by Citizens United.
But, as for the bright future of the Dem sane Party, aided by demographic trends and social media. However, there are many many things the vast majority of the American people are for that Republicans will fight tooth and nail to prevent from ever occurring, and this is one of those. Eventually, we will win. Eventually. Then the dam will break like it did for gay marriage.
Shalimar
@TenguPhule: Your memories of the numerous times you have invoked violent imagery and rhetoric are different from mine.
Ruckus
Was googling for something else and ran across this in the WaPo.
Jennifer Rubin?
I don’t normally read the WaPo nor JR but saw this and went WTF?
Raoul
So, my partner is a minister. And he and the usher committee have had active shooter training. For satan’s sake, we have to train church ushers about what to do if a raging gun-toter comes in and starts to shoot a damn church up.
And yet the fetishists dare to claim some sort of liberty. I’d say my freedom to expect my partner to come home from the pulpit not shot dead is at least as important as your need to tote a piece of deadly hardware.
Same but more so for the freedom for kids to attend school without existential dread. Parents, too.
WaterGirl
@Spanky: Not sure what you are trying to say in your last sentence.
Raoul
@Ruckus: Rubin has been on a tear for months about the decrepit state of the GOP.
Of course this means most of the Right has dispensed with her as a lefty. But she has seemed particularly pissed off the past several weeks. I think the Roy Moore + Rob Porter stuff has just made it plain as day to her that the GOP is utterly lost and morally vacated.
Ruckus
@Fair Economist:
It would at least be a start.
However a couple of points. What does more dangerous mean? A crappy, cheap saturday night special 5 shot revolver can kill, just not as many as easily as an assault rifle. But possibly easier in tight quarters. And a modern semi automatic pistol is very effective at shorter distances and can be reloaded as fast as an assault rifle.
We have several states that basically allow anyone to conceal carry. Yes the require a permit but getting one of those is seemingly not all that difficult. So a permit to even own is not all that much of a restriction and what would it do for idiots that keep guns in their homes, say in the night stand, and have young kids? Nothing.
Really, it is guns that are the problem. It is access to guns that is the issue. Look at Britain for examples of how to make it better. Not necessarily great but a lot better. Look at Australia.
Ruckus
@Raoul:
Thanks.
I’d seen here that she was at least not slinging bullshit but didn’t know the extent. For a national paper and columnist, this is pretty strong stuff.
lowtechcyclist
Called up my Congresscritters today with two thoughts, one for the future, and one for the present.
For the future (since Congress in the present is controlled by Republicans):
Determine which guns have the ability to kill lots of people in a hurry. Confiscate them all.
The NRA and their fanboys have been calling us ‘gun grabbers’ for things like trying to close the gun show loophole. Well, fuck it, then: let’s be gun grabbers for real.
For the present: I’ve said this before, I’m sure, but treat the victims of these shootings the same way as we treat our soldiers who get killed or wounded in combat. The wounded should get the same VA care and benefits, the same pensions, and all the rest of it that people wounded in combat get. And the survivors of those killed should get the same pensions and whatnot that Gold Star parents, widows, etc. get. Plus those killed should have the option of being buried in military cemeteries.
They’ve gotten killed and wounded for our ‘rights’. Give them those benefits. Retroactive back to Columbine or Virginia Tech or whenever.
Ruckus
@VeniceRiley:
What if this is the dam breaking?
What if we help it along so that it is?
What if we don’t just throw up our hands and say:
“What can be done? We are all fucking doomed!”
Or:
“You will peel my gun from my cold dead hands!”
We’ve waited long enough for some leader to come along and do this for us. It hasn’t and isn’t happening. They are standing on the sidewalk watching the parade and asking the guy next to them, “These are my people, where are they going, I must get there and lead them!”
The majority are seemingly having enough, what with the election of drumpf and his collection of dolts, idiots, morons, self serving assholes, and assorted fucksticks, this shooting that the victims are not just experiencing but are fucking pissed about the people that can do something, having done nothing. This is exactly what societal change is about. Society changing the status quo.
J R in WV
@Tom: ‘
The 2nd amendment also says “Well Regulated” but we can’t get the judges to admit those words apply to the whole gun issue. Universal background checks including at so-called gun shows which are just as big a business as official dealers are, no loopholes – person-to-person sales or trades must pass through a dealer and a background check as well, universal licensing and insurance, when you renew your license you get a brand new background check, if someone leaves a person’s new record of lawlessness out of the gun control database, that person failing to update the database loses their right to a gun license.
Much more can and should be done, this is just a blog post, not a legal proposal. It wouldn’t catch everyone, people do lose their sanity suddenly sometimes. But if we had actual an actual real medical SYSTEM that covered everything for everyone, maybe we would, could catch most of those people who are losing it, before they lost it all.
J R in WV
@Lee:
The first phrase of the 2nd amendment (Not the first one, which is freedom of religion, speech and the press) is about “well regulated” – not about the bearing arms. We need good, well thought out regulation, which it would be difficult to bar given that well regulated is right there in the 2nd amendment.
I’m really tired of people imagining what’s in these amendments – Google the Bill of Rights and read both the original document AND the explanation of where we are today with regard to the judicial interpretation of the Bill of Rights. AT least get the numbers of the important ones right, for Dog’s sake!
Dman
@Amaranthine RBG:
How about ” nobody can be killed with an ar-15 if nobody is able to purchase one”
Oh and GFYS
Tata
Can we talk about our related Angry White Man problem? They’re just too dangerous to the rest of us for us to trust them with guns.
Daddio7
@Gravenstone<Now we are talking, his generation is the one doing all the killing. Very few homicides are committed by men over the age of 25. Insure that no man, Black or White, younger than 26 posses a gun and our homicide rate will equal Japan's. I am sure all of us old men will vote for that restriction if it protects our right to keep our guns. That is more than "Doing something", it is solving the problem. Insisting that all guns be given up means that there is an agenda other than protecting school children in play.
Gex
@Matt McIrvin: This is all in line with my thoughts on it.
We’ve had significant majorities who claim they want change, but it does not happen. Greatest Gen/Boomers/Xers are ossified in their positions (on either side) and intensity.
This will change when the post-Columbine generations come to hold the bulk of the power.
Several people cited gay marriage in this thread. While some minds did change, the biggest factor in the sudden advancement of gay acceptance and rights was generational change.
Few people change. Change happens between generations more so than within.
But, and this is the important thing, you have to push to make the change, even if you don’t think it will happen in your lifetime, so you can set up the next generation to take the next steps.
mskitty
@TenguPhule: Okay that’s it. You are deemed a TROLL, of whatever ethnic heritage I don’t know and care less. You KNOW Gorsuch isn’t going anywhere and there’s NOTHING we can do about it. NO legal mechanism (short of impeachment etc legal bzz). So take your pessimism back to whatever hole you burbled out of.
Big Picture Pathologist
@Stan:
You’ve gotten my attention, I would appreciate directions to this scholarship…