Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The revolution will be supervised.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Republicans don’t trust women.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Follow the (Consumer) Money

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… The main reason that companies have been increasingly willing to take one side of hot-button social issues (the left-leaning side) is that’s increasingly a good strategy to please customers and employees.

Partly, this is because certain policy issues have disproportionately left-leaning polling. Gay rights are popular. Most of the gun regulations on offer in the current debate poll well, too.

But it’s also because socially liberal segments of the public punch above their weight as potential customers (and, in some cases, as potential employees) for these companies…

Meanwhile, in recent decades, American politics has become much more polarized by age than it used to be, and much less polarized by income than it used to be. Affluent people are not (yet) a Democratic-leaning demographic, but they’re not the strongly Republican-leaning demographic they were 30 years ago. And young people report strongly liberal attitudes on social issues and strong opposition to President Donald Trump.

All of which means, when a company like Delta Air Lines imagines its average target customer — on the early side of middle age with plenty of disposable income — that customer is probably a lot farther to the left politically, especially on social issues, than would have been true in the past…

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134Comments

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “Hope is outstanding and has done great work for the last three years,” Trump said in a statement.

    “She is as smart and thoughtful as they come, a truly great person. I will miss having her by my side but when she approached me about pursuing other opportunities, I totally understood. I am sure we will work together again in the future.”

    I guess trump doesn’t know that they don’t house male and female prisoners together.

  3. 3.

    MattF

    Also, I suspect there’s a higher percentage of women in the frequent-flyer demographic than there used to be. Not all guys any more.

  5. 5.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It must be awful to work there, though. You forget that about horrible people- that they’re also horrible to other terrible people.

    I saw something yesterday where career people who work for Sessions have noticed Sessions only defends when Trump attacks him personally. He doesn’t defend the department- the people who work for him.

  6. 6.

    Kay

    I don’t think this theory fits for Wal Mart. Them moving away from gun fetishism seems to me like a real move.
    Wal Mart (IMO, based on the stores in northern OH and MI and IN) has gone from being a middle class store to a really low end store. The stores are a mess. They’re dirty and disorganized and they’re aren’t enough employees there to run them properly. People here are convinced the stores have gotten dimmer- like, not well-lit enough. They think it’s some cost-saving measure. They don’t even maintain the exterior or the grounds. There’s trash blowing all over the place and they haven’t cleaned up the exteriors of the building since they put them up. I think this last generation of Waltons are just plundering.

  7. 7.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Josh Marshall‏ @joshtpm

    Oh man, I don’t want to be critical. But I can’t believe that Haberman is actually going with this claim that Hicks departure is unrelated to yesterday, that she’d been thinking of leaving for some time and there’s ‘no perfect time.’

    377 replies 823 retweets 4,728 likes

    Axis Sally got a 15 year sentence for broadcasting propaganda.

    Just sayin’

  9. 9.

    Wag

    When I was growing up in Colorado, you could but 3.2 beer at age 18, but had to be 21 to buy wine and liquor.

    In our country you can now buy any rifle, including an assault rifle, at age 18, but have to wait until 21 to buy a handgun.

    So does that mean assault guns are the firearm equivalent of 3.2 beer? WTF????

  11. 11.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Wag: Legal analyst on the local news here was saying that there’d be lawsuits about this and that they’d have a good case, since 18 is an adult. I think he’s full of shit, you can’t buy booze or cigs here in CA until you’re 21.

  12. 12.

    Kay

    @Wag:

    I wonder if people are just sick of it. They’re sick of the regular-as-clockwork tragedies and the sadness and the mayhem. How many times have we seen that gun, the profile of it or a photograph, the AR-15? I fucking hate that thing. It looks like pure evil.

  13. 13.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    He’s so fat the button is about to pop off his suit.

    I don’t I’ve ever seen someone wear six inch stilettos to a funeral

    (photo)

  14. 14.

    raven

    Civilians started to be able to buy the weapons shortly after they were developed for the military, but Chivers argues that doing so was still relatively uncommon. Many American gun-owners didn’t know or didn’t think about the option of owning a semiautomatic weapon.

    That changed after a shooting at a Stockton, Calif., elementary school on Jan. 17, 1989, that left 5 dead and 29 wounded.

    “Before Stockton, most people didn’t know you could buy those guns,” Chris Bartocci, a former employee of AR-15 manufacturer Colt and author of Black Rifle II, told CNN. He argues that people went out and bought the weapon after reading and hearing the news reports about the school shooting.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I still say part of it is that people don’t have Obama to lean on now. It’s frustrating but there’s this weird feedback loop that our side has where they check out when the Dems have the presidency.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    I did not know this until this last shooting- I thought the only difference was you could hit more people, faster:

    ALL GUNS CAN kill, but they do not kill equally. Compare the damage an AR-15 and a 9mm handgun can do to the human body: “One looks like a grenade went off in there,” says Peter Rhee, a trauma surgeon at the University of Arizona. “The other looks like a bad knife cut.”
    It’s possible to argue about everything when it comes to the politics of guns—including about the definition of “assault rifle” itself—but it’s harder to argue about physics. So let’s consider the physics of an AR-15.
    A bullet with more energy can do more damage. Its total kinetic energy is equal to one-half the mass of the bullet times its velocity squared. The bullet from a handgun is—as absurd as it may sound—slow compared to that from an AR-15. It can be stopped by the thick bone of the upper leg. It might pass through the body, only to become lodged in skin, which is surprisingly elastic.
    The bullet from an AR-15 does an entirely different kind of violence to the human body. It’s relatively small, but it leaves the muzzle at three times the speed of a handgun bullet. It has so much energy that it can disintegrate three inches of leg bone. “It would just turn it to dust,” says Donald Jenkins, a trauma surgeon at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. If it hits the liver, “the liver looks like a jello mold that’s been dropped on the floor.” And the exit wound can be a nasty, jagged hole the size of an orange.
    These high-velocity bullets can damage flesh inches away from their path, either because they fragment or because they cause something called cavitation. The bullet from an AR-15 might miss the femoral artery in the leg, but cavitation may burst the artery anyway, causing death by blood loss. A swath of stretched and torn tissue around the wound may die. That’s why, says Rhee, a handgun wound might require only one surgery but an AR-15 bullet wound might require three to ten.

    The damage is much worse- they’re much less likely to survive.

  29. 29.

    raven

    @Kay: That is what they were made to do. Of course for several days Mornin Joe railed that the AR-15 was more deadly than the M-16 when they fire that same round.

  30. 30.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Sure, that could be true but I still don’t think that explains Wal Mart. Wal Mart here is the gun demographic. That’s their customer. Maybe too much. Maybe that’s why people here drive 20 miles to grocery shop at Meijer, which has basically the same prices and is an actual grocery store :)

  31. 31.

    Hoodie

    @Kay: They’re going after online sales and even web services, competing with Amazon. They’re probably disinvesting in brick and mortar, particularly in low-margin areas. A lot of those stores will be closed in the next few years, maybe replaced with some other version, like Target’s small stores in urban areas. That’s part of the demographic trend described in this article. The only thing the GOP base has left is gerrymandering.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    People are responding to the absence of Obama, Walmart is responding to the people. I don’t think Walmart would be doing this if everyone else were ho him in response to the latest shooting.

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: 538 picked it apart a while ago for midterm elections: there’s a party-with-the-White-House disadvantage, and a Democratic disadvantage, and they’re of roughly equal size. That probably generalizes to some degree to political engagement outside of presidential years.

    It’s not necessarily any special character defect of Democrats; our voters are more likely to be financially insecure and working multiple jobs, to be raising young children, to be students living far away from where they’re registered to vote, to be the targets of various suppression measures, etc. And they don’t have the self-propagandizing pipeline of Fox News and media telling them to be terrified all the time.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    A physician who treated victims of a shooting in a FL airport (not an AR-15) also treated the high school kids and she said that’s why so many of those hit with that gun die. There’s just massive bleeding and organ damage. So maybe instead of fighting over the definition of an assault rifle they could categorize differently.

    The U.S. Army defines assault rifles as “short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges.”

    Nothing more powerful than a rifle?

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    our voters are more likely to be financially insecure and working multiple jobs, to be raising young children, to be students living far away from where they’re registered to vote, to be the targets of various suppression measures, etc. And they don’t have the self-propagandizing pipeline of Fox News and media telling them to be terrified all the time.

    But all that is still true. It doesn’t explain why now? (If this really is different.)

  39. 39.

    different-church-lady

    Ah, good. Soon you will need to be at least 21 before you can go shoot up a school.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Is a rifle a single shot? I can’t get into this. Let’s just go with “the cartridge” whatever the hell that is. Velocity. They don’t believe in biology but I’m pretty sure they still believe in physics. If not we can drop a gun on their head.

  44. 44.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I don’t know either, to be honest. I’m just sick of giving in to these fuckers. No more!

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: @Kay: The AR-15 uses a .223 Remington cartridge (also known as 5.56 mm), a caliber commonly used for hunting varmints. There are many calibers used in hunting that impart far more kinetic energy. Comparing the .223 Rem to a 9mm Parabellum isn’t an apples to oranges comparison but they aren’t explaining the reasons why one does so much more damage in a meaningful way. The bullets in a .223 are likely to be smaller with a lot more powder pushing it because it’s casing is larger than a handgun round. This is true for nearly all rifle calibers vs handgun calibers. The advantage of the .223 is that it is a high velocity, low recoil round, which makes it far easier to fire repeat shots with some accuracy. My .30-06 bolt action kicks like a mule. The .223 in a bolt action is more like a push. In a semi-auto, it is probably hardly there at all. (Raven?)

    I have read that in the military loads of the .223, the bullet has a tendency to tumble upon impact increasing the amount of damage the bullet will do. I have no idea if this is true or not.

  46. 46.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: All that means is that Democrats need a larger push to get energized (they turn out just fine in presidential elections, for instance–wasn’t quite enough in 2016, but there’s not a consistent disadvantage there).

    The totality of the Trump administration is a large push.

  48. 48.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    All the more reason to ban assault rifles for civilian use. If I’m understanding what you’re saying, they’re overkill and aren’t needed for hunting.

  49. 49.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    CNN anchor Erin Burnett reported Wednesday that Hope Hicks left the White House after being berated by President Donald Trump for being “so stupid” in admitting to Congress she sometimes tells lies for the president.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: They probably couldn’t find a substitute teacher. End of snark, that IS weird. The article at the Guardian doesn’t have anything on the guys history or motive.

  51. 51.

    Schlemazel

    @Kay:
    I think it would be more useful to ban long guns with removable magazines and limit magazine size to 5.

  53. 53.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: I think that, while there are differences in the damage done by different types of long gun, getting into the effects of different calibers and types of round is probably splitting hairs. I’m about as non-expert as you can get, but it seems to me that the main thing concerning mass shootings is that (1) long guns do a lot more damage per shot than handguns, and (2) semiautomatic long guns can be fired rapidly, many times, to do it to a lot more people. And there aren’t a lot of legitimate reasons for civilians to have the second aspect on the menu.

    Overall handguns are actually a bigger problem, but that’s just because there are so many of them and they’re easy to hide and carry (a different issue).

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Rifles can be single shot. Bolt, pump, lever, and hunting semi autos generally have a 5 round magazine.

  55. 55.

    ThresherK

    @Kay: When I go to Wal-Mart locations in nicer suburbs (probably as nice a location as they get in) in suburban New England they are not like that.

    I think it’s more about the strata of the customer or potential customer here.

    And I can’t imagine many McD’s being run that way. Every one is supposed to be the same (even as some are better than others). Wal-Mart has managed to underdo McDonald’s in this manner.

  57. 57.

    danielx

    @Baud:

    If you had to give a definition, any semiautomatic rifle capable of using firing more than five shots without reloading wouldn’t be a bad place to start. That would include virtually all modern infantry weapons, to the best of my knowledge. It would not include bolt or lever guns, which comprise the vast majority of hunting rifles. I have not heard of any mass murders committed with grandpappy’s old thirty-thirty lever action, be it noted.

  58. 58.

    Lapassionara

    @Baud: This is true. And it is also true that you are not permitted to participate in the debate about guns if you don’t use the correct terminology.

    If a gun cannot be used for hunting because of the damage it does to the animal being shot, then it should not be legal to possess.

  59. 59.

    danielx

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    “I can do all the lying necessary all by myself!”

    Presumably she was under oath when she admitted she lies for the shitgibbon on occasion, and she takes a potential perjury charge seriously. Unlike her former boss, who lies as a matter of course and doesn’t see anything wrong with it. As for how seriously he takes an oath, this is Donald J. Trump.

  60. 60.

    ThresherK

    @Baud: Perhaps, but there’s a history of Wal-Mart being the only store for miles around in some places, and having real competition in others. I’m lucky enough to be in the latter.

  61. 61.

    Kay

    The President’s remarks also conveyed a sense that with an armed teacher around, any shooter would quickly be shot and killed, ending the potential tragedy quickly and happily. The real world has not been so neat. There was an armed law enforcement officer present at the time of the 1999 school shooting in Columbine who did engage in a gun battle with the killers but this did not quickly and easily stop the assault. In fact, twelve police officers fired 141 shots at the two killers, none of which hit their targets. Overall, 12 students and one teacher died, and 21 were injured before the two killers committed suicide.

  62. 62.

    jonas

    @Kay: I think it depends on the area. I suspect, however, that the Waltons really don’t have an eye on their stores anymore so much as on Amazon and online retailing. That’s where the future is and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Walmart (as well as Target) eventually abandon a lot of their stores as more retailing moves online. In the meantime, they’ll probably just let a lot of them go to seed.

  64. 64.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    Maybe that’s why people here drive 20 miles to grocery shop at Meijer,

    When I was a little kid, in Ann Arbor, in the late 70’s our Meijer’s had a loft / second floor strip of shops that was off one of the walls.

    There was a barber shop, where my mom took me and my brother to get our hair cut. Next door was a donut shop, so if we were good and nagged our mom just right we could get a donut after the haircut.

    Would just go back to see how the store has changed, if I could.

    I don’t think there’s a grocery store / barber shop combo any more.

  65. 65.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: Absolutely. Assault rifles are made to kill… people. Nothing else. Lately there has been an effort to repurpose them for hunting (larger calibers etc) and I have seen a big push in that direction on the covers of the gun porn magazines, but this is all done in an attempt to normalize them. Nobody needs more than 5 rounds while hunting**, and if they do, what they really need is practice.

    **when I hunted I rarely missed, but when I did I never had a 2nd shot. Deer are too quick and our woods are too thick.

  66. 66.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: That is my proposal, except I would apply it to handguns too. Jared Loughner used 30 round clips in his massacre, and wasn’t stopped until a good woman without a gun grabbed** his gunhand when he had to reload.

  68. 68.

    satby

    @gene108: actually, several of the Meijers around here have small beauty parlor /barber shops, nail shops, and bank branches inside. So do the Walmarts.

  69. 69.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: One of the guns the Columbine killers used was a semiautomatic handgun with huge magazines–banned under the ’94 law, but theirs was grandfathered in. Even emphasizing the difference between an AR-15 and a handgun probably underplays the danger of such handguns.

  70. 70.

    gene108

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    I wonder, if she wanted to quit, but was looking for a way to do it.

    Watched Erin Burnett for a bit last night. She had Tom Rooney (R-dipshit) on and he was whining about how the question of whether Hope lies for the President or not was soooo unfair. It was well out of bounds of the Russia investigation and was set-up as a gotcha question, because sometimes, he tells his secretary to say he’s not there, if he wants to avoid a call and that means his secretary is lying for him.

    He really seemed hell bent on finding ways to exonerate Trump from charges of working with the Russians.

  71. 71.

    satby

    March is coming in like a lion here, with rain turning to freezing rain, turning into snow later today. The floods from last week subsided here, but we’re still under flood watch. Won’t take much to overtop the river banks again, and some areas were still flooded.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin: In my ideal world there would be a mandatory buyback period of say 2 or 3 years financed by a tax on firearms and ammo sales. After which there would also be severe penalties for anyone in possession, and even more severe penalties for anyone selling, or manufacturing.

  73. 73.

    Honus

    @OzarkHillbilly: yes it’s true. It was specifically designed to tumble like that for that reason.
    Your 30-06 was the military round for decades. It’s a much bigger bullet and about a third slower than a .223. The .223 doesn’t kick as hard, it’s designed for automatic as well as single fire, and because it’s a smaller, lighter round, you can carry more rounds with the same weight than a .308 NATO or a 30-06. Also, the armalite/stoner rifle is a lot lighter than an M-1 or M-14.
    The Kalashniov (AK-47) is much different than the AR-15/M-16. It fires a short casing 7.62 (.30 cal.) round that is a heavier bullet and much slower than the .223. The .223 is accurate and effective for several hundred yards. The AK-47 round is pretty worthless over 150-200 yards. The trade off is that the AK47 is cheap and reliable. The M-16/AR-15 more expensive and requires more care.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    They still have the coin-operated kiddie rides for a penny. Well, “ride”. They go really slowly. Like an inch. Up and down. The most boring ride in the world.

  77. 77.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: I did not know that about how Loughner’s shooting spree ended. I do know that people at the event who were armed hesitated to use their weapons because they weren’t sure who the shooter was because the scene was so chaotic. Her aide who was shielding Gabby after she was hit and on the ground was almost shot by a “good guy with a gun”.

  78. 78.

    Honus

    @debbie: absolutely. An AR-15 with a 30 round magazine is a joke for hunting. While the .223 round will kill a deer, the .270, 30-06, 7mm-08 or .243 are far superior.

  79. 79.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Honus: You can bury an AK-47 in the mud for a year, dig it up and fire it w/o even bothering to wipe off the mud.

  80. 80.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    A North Georgia social studies teacher, known as the longtime “radio voice” of Dalton High School football and basketball, is facing charges after he fired at least one shot inside a classroom Wednesday, and he once tried to confess to having someone killed, police said.

    The alleged confession was one of two previous incidents involving Randal Davidson and local police.

    Dalton police could not verify any of the information Davidson said on March 21, 2016, about having two friends kill someone on his behalf. Police ultimately took him to Hamilton Medical Center because he was having suicidal thoughts, according to a police report. The school was made aware of the incident, police said.

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think the biggest problem with the 1994 federal ban wasn’t that it had bad criteria (they were imperfect but way better than nothing), it was that it didn’t actually grab any guns. Guns that people already owned were all grandfathered in. In hindsight, it probably had some positive effect anyway.

  83. 83.

    Honus

    @Schlemazel: he’ll, limit it to three. I never knew anybody with any sense that shot a deer five times. Duck hunters often have shots at multiple birds and are already limited by law to three rounds.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @opiejeanne:

    The FBI analyzed 160 cases of active shooters over the period from 2000-2013, and not one was stopped by a concealed carry permit holder who was not active duty military, a security guard, or a police officer. 21 were stopped by unarmed civilians.

    That might be deceptive though because obviously those categories of people are more likely to be armed. If you’re a police officer in Ohio you don’t need a CCW permit.

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: My experience with those kinds of coin-operated kiddie rides is that the kids little enough to ride them are just as happy to climb and play on them when they’re stationary. I don’t know how they make any money. (I’ve never seen any that are still a penny, though.)

  86. 86.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @opiejeanne: Yeah, an older woman (60s i think) she jumped up and grabbed his gun hand and caused him to drop his 2nd clip, just as a couple other guys tackled him. I was in a barbershop and was listening to a conversation between a couple locals, the basic gist of it was that banning expanded round magazines was a useless thing to do.

    One said in agreement, “Yeah, you know how long it takes me to replace a clip?”
    To which I interjected, “Long enough to stop Jared Loughner.”

    The weather suddenly assumed great importance.

  87. 87.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    LarryO read a report from one of the trauma doctors after this last shooting, and the doctor tried to explain the difference between guns and the machine of war. It was grim??

  88. 88.

    Baud

    Some good news.

    NC House Democrats
    @nchousedems
    We made history today. For the first time a Democrat has filed each and every House seat in the state – that’s right, all 120 seats. No Republican will get a free pass and every voter will have a choice. #ncpol

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    When they get a little older they ride them just to jeer at them. Mine used to say “oh, THIS stupid thing”, as they’re clamboring aboard. It’s one of their duties. Oh ALL right, I will get on the dinosaur.

  91. 91.

    Honus

    @OzarkHillbilly: yes, but you can’t hit anything much past 50 yards with it. You can shoot six inch groups at 250 yards all day long with a .223. Two completely different weapons. Both have their advantages and drawbacks.
    BTW, Are you nearer to Elkins or Charleston?

  92. 92.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin: The ’94 federal ban was an attempt at needle threading, trying not to hurt anybody’s feelings, hence the definitions were so narrow they were easily engineered around. You are right tho, it was better than the nothing we got now.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Maybe it’s hindsight with this new information I have but I feel like there’s a real sense of horror from the first responders after these things. I wonder if it’s that extreme carnage they’re seeing.

    I was struck by what that doctor wrote, that 6 out of 7 survived the airport shooting because she could treat them. They’re dead by the time she gets them with the AR-15.

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: The right is really fond of that kind of nibbled-to-death-by-ducks attack on any sort of regulation–in which the opposition pushes back to extract concessions of some sort, and then uses the imperfections induced by those concessions to argue that the whole thing is useless or absurd. We can’t ban all guns? OK, ban semiautomatics. You need supposedly need semiautomatics for some reason? We’ll ban large magazines. Oh, but that won’t do any good, you can switch magazines really quickly, so don’t bother doing anything.

    The latest attempt to take down the ACA is in the same spirit. “We managed to damage the ACA in such a way that we can now construct an argument to call it unconstitutional, so now you have to overturn it completely!”

  98. 98.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: A bunch of states still have regulations similar to the ’94 ban. Obviously you can carry guns trivially across state lines so they’re not all that effective. And they have the same defects–grandfathered weapons, criteria that let some pretty bad ones through. But I notice most of the really big mass shootings lately have been in states without these bans.

  99. 99.

    Honus

    @OzarkHillbilly: this. Forget about defining assault rifles and just band detachable and/or high capacity magazines. That was pretty much the case until 30 years ago. Nothing except .22s held more than five shots. Revolvers and automatics held nine at most, and the vast majority held six or seven rounds.

  100. 100.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Schlemazel:

    I think it would be more useful to ban long guns with removable magazines and limit magazine size to 5.

    I agree with the magazine size limitation, but disagree with the long gun ban for the simple reason that while AW bans poll high, the instant you start talking about banning grandaddy’s Remington Model Four or antique Winchester SLR, that support will dissappear, at least among gun owners and their friends/families.

    Hit the magazine sizes first, and then we can revisit the issue later if it’s not sufficient.

    IMHO, half a loaf is better than over-reaching and coming out with the status quo.

  102. 102.

    Chyron HR

    @Baud:

    FIFTY STATE STRATEGY! FIFTY STATE STRA–wait, what? They did? All of them?

    (ahem)

    WHY ARE DEMS RUNNING RACES THEY WON’T WIN? STOP BEING LOSERS, YOU LOSERS!

  105. 105.

    Honus

    @OzarkHillbilly: sorry about that. I was getting you mixed up with JR in WV. It’s still early for me.

    You are exactly right. The AK-47 was designed to be cheap to make, low tolerances, and reliable in poor conditions for use by third world and guerilla forces. The M-16 was for more well-trained and equipped NATO forces.

  107. 107.

    rikyrah

    Kay,
    Did I miss you commenting on the two loans revealed about Kushner while he was taking meetings in the White House?

  110. 110.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Honus:

    The Browning GP35, M1 Carbine, and the AR-15 itself among others, were all available over 30 years ago.

    Before, it was only military surplus and a few other models.
    Now it seems that almost every gun maker sells at least one AR clone or other high capacity rifle, let alone the explosion of pistols with 15+ round magazines.

  111. 111.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Oh, but that won’t do any good, you can switch magazines really quickly,

    That argument is answered with, “Well than good, they are totally needless and you have no objection then.”

  113. 113.

    Soprano2

    @Kay:
    Here in SWMO the Walmarts are mostly pretty decent. Last year they did a “remodel” of the one my my neighborhood, which consisted of a fresh coat of paint on the outside and some new shelving on the inside, plus pissing the customers off by moving a bunch of stuff around and changing the product mix somewhat. We’ve noticed that Walmart’s product prices seem to be getting higher, and they’ve gotten rid of a lot of the cheapest stuff, so I guess they’ve decided not to compete against the dollar stores. As for smaller Walmarts, they already have them here – they call them Neighborhood Markets. They’re a grocery store with some non-grocery stuff also available, and are a lot smaller than the supercenters. My regular Walmart has a hair salon, a nail salon, a Subway and a local bank branch inside up at the front. I do agree, though, that in many lower-profit places they’re probably not investing much money in the stores, because they figure eventually they’ll shut them down. As usual, it’ll be the marginal people who are hurt first. Further south in MO and northwest AR they tried something like a convenience store, but they ended up shutting them all down. In one town it really hurt, because it was the only store of any size in that town, because all the other local stores were closed down.

  114. 114.

    Honus

    @Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): AR-15s were available over forty years ago but you might see one or two in a gun shop once in a great while. Unlike now, when there are racks and racks of them, and you have to look to find a Model 70 or a Browning bolt action rifle. Housewives weren’t shooting hundreds of rounds an afternoon with them on gun ranges, Dana Loesch wasn’t posing in high heels with an AR-15. And 20 and thirty round magazines were pretty much unheard of then. The army used 15 round magazines in Vietnam.

  115. 115.

    Barry

    @gene108: “When I was a little kid, in Ann Arbor, in the late 70’s our Meijer’s had a loft / second floor strip of shops that was off one of the walls.”

    It still does. Not a bakery, though.

  116. 116.

    Kristine

    Any idea whether the prize demographic is taller than average? Because more legroom would be a lovely concession.

    I’m just outside that age range, but I still have legs that need room.

  117. 117.

    Barbara

    @Kay: In addition to courting the same on-line shoppers that Amazon does, I think Wal-Mart has also looked more at expanding to a wider variety of low income consumers, that is, in urban areas, where gun violence is seen more as a serious threat to personal well-being than as a potential means to counter that threat. Wal-Mart has opened several stores in the District of Columbia over the last few years. I don’t expect them to abandon their traditional base but they probably can’t afford to take a hard line and feel the need to do something.

  118. 118.

    Kristine

    @satby: I’m on the northern edge of that system. Looks like I’ll miss the bulk of it. Not complaining. My sump pump is sill working through the early thaw and last week’s storm.

  119. 119.

    MCA1

    @Kay: Whatever the case on Walmart’s physical store quality, I think this combined with the Dick’s move is important. I want people to have to go to a seedy part of town to a place next to a pawn shop and other disreputable establishments to get their gun fix. It’s not a normal consumer impulse to buy a killing machine, but having them on display at giant retailers belies that. Make people feel a slight sense of shame about this sort of purchase, and make them go way out of their way to do it. We need to ostracize the gun humpers instead of acting like it’s perfectly normal that they can feed their fetish 30 feet away from where I’m picking out a slow cooker or a pressure washer or some bath towels.

  120. 120.

    BC in Illinois

    You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

    There is a St. Louis County Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense meeting tonight. They moved from the library meeting room, where they met in the past, to the local middle school auditorium. Here is their announcement from this morning:

    Due to a large number of RSVPs we may reach capacity at our event space despite having booked a much larger space. Please arrive early if you want to get a seat.
    We will have handouts with action-items so even if you can’t get a seat you will know how to help take action to reduce gun violence. Thank you!!

    They probably also need to mix more punch.

  122. 122.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    I think this last generation of Waltons are just plundering.

    I know someone who worked directly for Mrs. Walton, financial affairs. It isn’t just he second generation according to him. They want maximum profits and don’t give a crap about their customers or employees. The family makes billions a year, they don’t care two shits about anyone but themselves. And really they make no pretense about it either.

  123. 123.

    frosty

    @Kay: Dead thread probably, but the Guardian had a good article about the hospital staff after the Vegas shooting. They had to turn a civilian ER into a MASH unit with no warning. Did a good job, too.

  124. 124.

    gvg

    If Walmart is pushing online sales, they need to improve their search engine. It comes up with too much nonsense with no connection to what I asked for. Didn’t use to. Almost as bead as Sears. Search search function is the worst I have ever seen and is also not compatible with many mobile devices. Also walmart is putting in associated merchants, not just their own stuff.
    If I type in Spiderman dvd I should not get 47000 items including clothes that don’t have spiderman on them or furniture. No idea why they think they are more likely to make a sale if the overwhelm with wrong answers.
    Walmart is getting seedy looking, even new stores. Stock outs are common for over 15 years and it’s getting worse. I don’t think the amount of diet coke you are going to sell is that unpredictable. Anyway, they should be in good position to do on line sales but probably won’t succeed because they aren’t putting competent work into it.
    Amazon has the best reviews but their search does still get a little to non specific. Frankly ebay does that the best IMO. Good search results are the flaw I see in almost all online shops of real stores so far.

  125. 125.

    cmorenc

    @Matt McIrvin:

    semiautomatic long guns can be fired rapidly, many times, to do it to a lot more people. And there aren’t a lot of legitimate reasons for civilians to have the second aspect on the menu.

    Well, you never know when you might have to cut down a whole herd of deer before they can get away. As a hunter in the woods.

  126. 126.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @rikyrah: I saw Quinerley, live and in person along with Cheryl Rofer, just over a week ago. She’s just returned home to St. Louis after her New Mexico trip. I think she’s taking a bit of a break from BJ, but she’s fine.

  128. 128.

    No Drought No More

    “Scaramucci also was irked that Kelly “would allow Hope to date Porter if he’s got that information.”

    My question: As Trump is obviously orchestrating a campaign to can Kelly, where will the next scapegoat be found? Who is going to believe the problem is Kelly, and the ship has been righted?

    Does The Mooch even care that Trump also knew of the allegations about Porter? Or is T. M. implying that Kelly intentionally withheld the information from Trump? Either or, the question stands: does he even care? Unless he’s cultivating a clown persona, he obviously doesn’t care about his own reputation, for example. So what does he care about? Having a camera pointed at his silly ass so he can spout off? I guess that must be it.

  130. 130.

    No Drought No More

    MSNBC is running a chryon this morning which reads that “Trump accuses congress of being petrified by the NRA”. It’s occurred to me Trump might well be alluding to Russian/NRA monies that flooded GOP coffers, rather than pointing out the politically obvious. In fact, that explanation makes perfect sense to me.

  131. 131.

    No Drought No More

    Has too much time passed for FOX “news” to conflate Billy Beer with Kushner’s $1/2 Billion dollars (with a B) worth of recent “loans”? Would anyone be surprised if they tried? Not me…

    And let’s all chip in to the campaign coffers of the first congressional democrat to invoke Kushner’s “loans” in to the infamous vacuna coat of the Eisenhower era. You didn’t know a vacuna coat could be infamous? Then look it up.

  133. 133.

    Donna genz

    @Kay: in populated urban and suburban areas I would agree with you. In smaller towns, they are the only option and yes, ours is dirty, poorly lit and underserved.

  134. 134.

    No Drought No More

    So, Kushner arranged the “loans” at the White House. Is it to much to hope that the deals were cut in the Lincoln bedroom?

    Probably so. It appears I’m growing a little greedy for more and more good news. I’ve cheered up considerably over the past year myself. Remember how you felt when you realized The Trumpster was your next president? Personally speaking, I could only stomach watching cartoons for the next six weeks. If I’d been a journalist at, say, MSNBC, I would have been fired for being AWOL..

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