Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

People are weird.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Let’s finish the job.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

“woke” is the new caravan.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

We’re not going back!

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Mass Shooting in El Paso

Mass Shooting in El Paso

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An estimated 20 are dead and many more wounded. The shooter opened fire in a Walmart with an assault rifle.

There are rumors that the killer published an anti-immigrant screed on one of the chans, but it hasn’t been confirmed. Jesus, this is sickening.

Reader Interactions

159Comments

  2. 2.

    Lapassionara

    American exceptionalism is a gigantic lie. Our inability to take action to protect our civic spaces is tragic and infuriating.

  4. 4.

    mrmoshpotato

    Gubbermint terriknee prevented. Fuck the NRA and their ammosexual cult.

    I almost don’t want to know the names of the victims. RIP

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    I have the alleged shooter’s alleged manifesto. Pretty much what you’d expect. Great replacement theory referenced. Things like that.

  7. 7.

    Ruckus

    @Lapassionara:

    American exceptionalism is a gigantic lie. inability to take action to protect our civic spaces is tragic and infuriating.

    Considering that many other countries have taken steps to do just that I’d say that you are certainly correct.

  8. 8.

    A Ghost To Most

    Fucking assault weapons.

    On behalf of all the people who helped build the commercial internet, my humble apologies. We really thought we were doing a good thing.

  9. 9.

    p.a.

    Fuck this fucking timeline and the subhumans- Republicans- who enabled it, beginning w Lewis Powell, Nixon, Buchanan, and everyone since including the voters.

  11. 11.

    Ella in New Mexico

    I’m very familiar with that area and that Walmart is shopped in by lots of mid-low income Hispanic families and senior citizens. God bless them.

    If this guy is who they are saying-white, young and radicalized racist–it was like shooting sitting ducks in a pond for him. Fucking bastard.

  13. 13.

    lamh36

    @Adam L Silverman: Ive seen a good bit of journals saying it contains what you’d expect, white supremacy and hatred of immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants

    Any mention of Chump?

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    You may also have noticed that not one of those armed Texan good guys and gals did anything. One, interviewed by MSNBC, indicated he did draw his conceal carry pistol, but either lost it when he went to grab a bunch of unattended kids and get them to safety or the cops took it from him. It was unclear from the interview.

  17. 17.

    TS (the original)

    From a down under perspective, we hardly report such events any more. If politicians won’t own the connection between their gun fetish and mass murder it is impossible to see a solution. The freedom to be able to do the normal things of life without fear of not making it home has been an assumption all my life. Cannot imagine living without that freedom.

    For those caught up in the event, there is much sadness, for those who keep voting for this horror way to live, just nothing.

  19. 19.

    debbie

    @lamh36:

    Speaking of Trump, I heard it reported that Elijah Cummings has invited Trump to come to Baltimore and see for himself what a wonderful place it is. Think he’ll go? //

  23. 23.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Police on the scene told reporters 18 dead. Police spokesmen refuse to confirm that; it’s morphed into 18 casualties on the local news.

    Local hospitals say they have 22 injured.

    El Paso Community Foundation has gotten set up to take donations.

    Beginning to hear from the candidates.

  26. 26.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lapassionara: @Ruckus: Despite conservatives glomming on to the phrase, American exceptionalism was originally an insult directed by Stalin to the leaders of America’s communist party.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-joseph-stalin-invented-american-exceptionalism/254534/

    Although a superiority complex has long pervaded the national psyche, the expression “American exceptionalism” only became big a few years ago. (In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton called on Americans to “vindicate the honor of the human race.”) What’s more, Tocqueville didn’t invent the term. Who did? Joseph Stalin.

    In the 1920s, the lingering specter of World War I and austere German reparations battered Europe’s market-based economy, giving rise to class tension and stark inequality. For worn-down workers, socialism and communism started sounding like pretty good ideas. A world revolution — indeed, the rise of the proletariat — seemed possible, and the Communist International was stoked.

    But the Americans just wouldn’t fall into line. The United States had long since passed the United Kingdom as the world’s largest industrial power, but hadn’t yet plunged into the Great Depression. To members of the U.S. Communist Party, it was a paradox. Why, in the what appeared to be the purest capitalist Western economy wasn’t there any desire for egalitarianism? Had Marx been wrong when he wrote socialism would, inexorably and universally, emerge from the ruins of capitalism?

    America’s radical left considered the national condition, contrasted it with Europe, and concluded leftism would be a hard sell stateside thanks to characteristics forged along the frontier. Americans were different: individualistic, profit-crazed, broadly middle class, and as tolerant of inequality as they were reverent of economic freedom. The nation had “unlimited reserves of American imperialism,” lamented Communist propaganda at the time.

    In 1929, Communist leader Jay Lovestone informed Stalin in Moscow that the American proletariat wasn’t interested in revolution. Stalin responded by demanding that he end this “heresy of American exceptionalism.” And just like that, this expression was born. What Lovestone meant, and how Stalin understood it, however, isn’t how Gingrich and Romney (or even Obama) frame it. Neither Lovestone or Stalin felt that the United States was superior to other nations — actually, the opposite. Stalin “ridiculed” America for its abnormalities, which he cast under the banner of “exceptionalism,” Daniel Rodgers, a professor of history at Princeton, said in an interview.

    Stalin, to say the least, wasn’t happy with Lovestone’s news. “Who do you think you are?” he shouted, according to Ted Morgan’s biography of Lovestone. “(Leon) Trotsky defied me. Where is he? (Grigory) Zinoviev defied me. Where is he? (Nikolai) Bukharin defied me. Where is he? And you! Who are you? Yes, you will go back to America. But when you get back there, nobody will know you except your wives.”

    As the Great Depression enveloped the United States, Stalin’s argument — if not his bluster — seemed well grounded. “Exceptionalism was a disease, a chronic disease,” wrote communist S. Milgrom of Chicago in 1930. “The storm of the economic crisis in the United States blew down the house of cards of American exceptionalism,” the American Communist Party declared at its convention in April 1930.

    Of course, the predictions failed: with the help of war, and despite Franklin Roosevelt’s new welfare state, the U.S. economy stayed on the capitalist track. As American communism receded, so did talk of exceptionalism in leftist circles. Dismissive references appeared in academic research now and again, but usually in relation to communism’s failure in America. Not until the 1980s did it suddenly reemerge, charged with a new connotation of national superiority. According to a Factiva survey, The New York Times was the first mainstream outlet to revive “American exceptionalism,” when in 1980 Richard J. Tofel implored Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to defend this distinctive cultural aesthetic: “As our unquestioned supremacy recedes, we need to decide what “America” means to us, and what it means to the world.”

    Sound familiar? Over the following 20 years, there was a lot more talk like this; exceptionalism appeared in national publications 457 times. The next decade had it 2,558 times. But since 2010, it’s gone viral, leaping into print and online publications roughly 4,172 times.

    How did a phrase intended as derision become a rallying cry of American awesomeness? As significant portions of the electorate — think Southern Democrats — shifted toward the GOP in the 1960s and 1970s, conservative thinkers charted a new Republican identity emboldened by triumphalism and uncompromising patriotism. Doubting exceptionalism became “un-American.” Looking to history for more evidence, conservative intellectuals stumbled across Tocqueville, who in Democracy in America had described a nation as “exceptional” for its devotion to practicality over art or science. He lent enough oomph to credibly define America as categorically transcendent, Rodgers said.

  28. 28.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @debbie: That was the guy who said he was active military. He sounded like he was amped up on adrenaline when they interviewed him.

  30. 30.

    Emma

    Is it horrible that my first thought was another day, another dollar for the weapons dealers and their captive politicians? I feel for the dead and their families but almost at a remove. The knowledge that nothing will change leaves me frozen.

  33. 33.

    Elizabelle

    It’s getting to where Americans’ ability to get around and enjoy free assembly is endangered by the [misreading of] the Second Amendment.

    We won’t know when, but I think we are getting near a tipping point. This happens way too often, and there is no way to protect oneself.

    I heard William Bratten saying on MSNBC saying that police have to get faster at responding to these. Bullshit. By that time, several people have already been shot and/or killed.

    This has to stop. We are the only country where this happens again and again and again. And I am sick of the Eeyores who will moan “well, if 20 dead schoolchildren weren’t enough …” because the public’s will for background checks was thwarted by the NRA and their congresswhores.

    I think we need an assault weapons ban AND taking those now in private hands out of those private hands. If they can meet stringent requirements for “collector”, with $10 million/insurance, then we can talk to them about maintaining the precious weapon under stringent conditions. Unloaded, and with great difficulty in obtaining ammo.

    Enough is enough fucking enough. We don’t need to live in the Wild West.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    MSNBC is reporting that they’ve just received updated information that confirms 18 killed. That’s killed, not wounded.

  38. 38.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Elizabelle:

    We are the only country where this happens again and again and again.

    That’s pretty much what Booker just said.

  39. 39.

    Ella in New Mexico

    I have friends who work in the trauma ER’s in both Del Sol and Texas Tech hospitals and my heart goes out to them today. I’m sure it’s all hands on deck down there.

    It’s time to fucking outlaw automatic assault weapons, all of them. Confiscate every single one of them and establish extreme penalties for illegally possessing one.

    I’m a recreational gun owner and a supporter of basic 2nd Amendment rights but Goddamn it this has to stop.

  40. 40.

    Lapassionara

    @Adam L Silverman: interesting. Thanks.

    I always thought it stemmed from the early puritans, who viewed the US as a “shining city on a hill.”

    In any event, it has paralyzed our leaders.

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    If “they” want to make this upcoming election about guns as a major public safety issue, bring it on. There are more of us than of them.

    It will be such a pleasure to turn our young voters out in 2020. Those who have been practicing active shooting drills over and over.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    And he’s active military! I go crazy whenever these fat slob couch potatoes brag that they would go full Rambo on any gunman threatening them. Totally bogus; they’ll either freeze or shoot wildly and hurt people around them. Fucking guns.

  44. 44.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Given the shooter was taken alive, it’s a pretty safe bet that he’s white.

    ETA, never mind, thread didn’t refresh so I didn’t see that it was already confirmed

  46. 46.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Adam L Silverman: Local news (KTSM) is still saying they haven’t heard any update since the police walked that number back earlier.

  47. 47.

    mad citizen

    @Elizabelle: Old Chris Rock comment–make bullets cost $5000 each. I saw a story on Inside Edition of two unrelated people–man and woman–who were at the Vegas and Gilroy mass shootings. This presents the Consoler in Chief with a difficult decision–does he go down and console brown people?

  48. 48.

    patrick II

    @Lapassionara:

    American exceptionalismin is giant lie

    The ideals the country are based on gives us the opportunity to be exceptional, but only when we live up to them. Otherwise we have the same potential to be a third rate cdictatorship as any other country.

  50. 50.

    debbie

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s getting to where Americans’ ability to get around and enjoy free assembly is endangered by the [misreading of] the Second Amendment.

    I cannot understand why their rights take precedence over my right to be safe from assholes like them.

  52. 52.

    MattF

    But… but… Trump’s racism is actually a brilliant political maneuver to get voters worked up and is the path to electoral victory. So, one must -not- complain about streets being littered with corpses. It’s really just politics.

    Or.. so I hear.

  54. 54.

    M31

    @debbie:

    hahahah in my fantasy world Trump is taken on a tour of Baltimore and is shown dozens of disgusting rat-infested apartments, all owned by Jared

    As Jared is taken to the slammer for code violations, he and Trump are kicked in the nuts repeatedly, and Baltimore residents cheer and feast on crabcakes, lake trout, and chicken and waffles.

    Thanks for coming to my TED talk

  56. 56.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Elizabelle:

    I heard William Bratten saying on MSNBC saying that police have to get faster at responding to these. Bullshit. By that time, several people have already been shot and/or killed.

    How does he suggest the police respond to a situation that isn’t a crime until it becomes a crime?

    Every one of these soon-to-be-murderers with legal guns wasn’t committed a crime until they started shooting at people. I guess everyone needs a live-in cop because of kitchen knives’ potential to be used in murder.

  58. 58.

    TS (the original)

    @Elizabelle:

    If they can meet stringent requirements for “collector”,

    No-one should be a collector of weapons of mass destruction. Take them all.

    I jest, who in the US will ever do this – a democrat who tries – gets defeated at the polls, a GOPer never tries.

  60. 60.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    The truth is sometimes worse than the disease. In this case it’s just a true observation. And has been twisted and taken by some as a justification for shitty behavior. It can be taken to justify any number of things, including racism, which it certainly has been in some minds.
    I endorse the concept that we are all citizens of the world. This rock has enough humans on it to render it getting close to inhabitable in many areas. Especially when a percentage of them have continued to believe that they are the chosen ones and deserve all the spoils of industrialization that has taken place over the last 150 yrs and are willing to kill to make that happen, either themselves or by proxy of governments. Conservatism is central to that concept of we are better, we deserve more and everyone else deserves enough less to cause them to die.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elizabelle: Police were actually on site, as were Fire and EMS, at the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting, both because they were working as on site security and because they ran informational booths. The police response at that shooting last week was under 90 seconds and the most recent reporting indicates the Gilroy shooter committed suicide before the cops, that responded in under 90 seconds, could take him out.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie: Not calling you an Eeyore. But I tire of those who wail we. cannot. do. anything.

    Which is not you. I think people say that to demoralize the rest of us.

    Fly on the wall: I would bet some gun humpers are having some uncomfortable conversations with family members, in the wake of the Gilroy and this El Paso shooting.

    It. Is. Too. Much.

  64. 64.

    Ivan X

    I learned about this 20 minutes ago via a technical support agent I was on the phone with. She lives in El Paso, and she has a family member in law enforcement, so she got the news early. Her family was ok, and frankly I was shocked that she kept her professional compsure under the circumstances. So upsetting. I’m sort of internally defended from outside horrors because I’m empathic and I find them too devastating to process. But speaking to someone in real time who could have just as easily been at that store got to me and I cried after I got off the phone. I hate that this is now the world in which we live, and that I feel like it is only going to get worse before it gets better, if it ever does. I guess I have to also admit that I’m not just struck by grief, but also scared. This is feeling less like a fever and more like a cancer. With that said, cancers can be fought and defeated. I want to transform my sadness and fear into resolve. But right now I’ve just got sadness and fear.

  66. 66.

    debbie

    @mad citizen:

    There was also protest when someone suggested putting a serial number on each bullet. Expensive and improved traceability. Works for me.

  67. 67.

    scav

    Well, this culture may or may not be intinsically exceptionally prone to violence, but it is certainly exceptional in being willing to not only indulge, support and even take pride in its gun violence.

    I could undoubtedly just put that comment on auto-text.

  69. 69.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Apparently he’s from Dallas, so he specifically wanted to do this closer to the border

    You literally can see Juarez, Mexico from the interstate a few yards from that Walmart.

  71. 71.

    Martin

    @debbie: Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

    There’s lots of different boundaries to the in-group. Race, gender, but it’s petty clear that democrat/conservative is strongly one now. That’s obvious to us in CA where Trump offers Putin whatever resources he needs to fight fires in Siberia, but CA fire disaster aid gets pulled and we get a lecture on raking our forests.

    As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

    The 2nd amendment is part of that backwash – created so that slave owners could form militias to put down slave uprisings. Today it’s being used in exactly the manner it was intended.

  74. 74.

    MomSense

    We are not responsible enough as a society to manage 2nd Amendment Rights. The gun nuts have had ample time to prove they can handle it, and they have failed. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t get to trample all our other rights.

    Enough is enough. This carnage has to be stopped.

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    @Elizabelle:

    I heard William Bratten saying on MSNBC saying that police have to get faster at responding to these. Bullshit. By that time, several people have already been shot and/or killed.

    At the Gilroy festival apparently the cops got the shooter within a minute, still 3 dead and several wounded. A minute probably seems like a lifetime when someone is shooting at you, in fact I know that seconds feel like a lifetime, I have been shot at, once in civilian life, walking down the street. Obviously they missed. Had the shooter had an assault rife it probably would have come out differently and I wouldn’t be writing this. All the gun humpers seem to forget that we didn’t have nor sell assault rifles in the public domain 40 yrs ago but we do now and the restrictions are laughable at best.

  77. 77.

    TS (the original)

    @Elizabelle:

    But I tire of those who wail we. cannot. do. anything.

    I watched 8 years of President Obama trying to do something & during that time saw more states implement laws that allowed guns to take pride of place over people. I hope you do something but it becomes more difficult to see where/when that happens.

  79. 79.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    reporter in El Paso asks police rep about “terrorist gang activity” that she’s heard people talking about

    I wanna know who she works for? Sinclair?

  80. 80.

    Sloane Ranger

    Please don’t take this the wrong way but, as a Briton, I was wondering about the costs of treating those who were fortunate enough to only be injured as a result of this outrage.

    At least some people will need some very extensive medical interventions which may not be covered by their insurance. Are they expected to pay or does the government cover treatment in these circumstances?

  81. 81.

    Martin

    @debbie: As Adam might say, the only way is through. Assault weapons are illegal in CA to own or buy. You need to pass a background check to buy ammunition. We do seize firearms from people with convictions, restraining orders, etc.

    It’s not enough, but it is helping. Nevada and Arizona being so open with weapon sales doesn’t help. I would expect CA to continue to push the envelope here with additional legislation. So, more can be done at the state level. I have no opposition to boycotting states.

  82. 82.

    Martin

    @Sloane Ranger: They’re expected to pay. There will be lawsuits, but a 21 year old has no money. They might get somewhere suing the gun maker – that’s actually making progress from the Sandy Hook families.

  84. 84.

    Mike in NC

    At least 19 dead and 40 wounded in El Paso mass shooting per MSNBC feed on our ship. When we dock in Belfast tomorrow, we ought to hear from somebody asking, “What exactly the fuck is wrong with you Yanks?”

    Short answer: Republicans

  86. 86.

    Martin

    Dems should pass a house resolution opposing Trump pardoning this individual. It’s trolling, but I’m not above that at this point.

  87. 87.

    trollhattan

    @Ruckus:
    The coroner has determined the Gilroy shooter’s fatal wound was self-inflicted. As best I can infer the cops did drop him but he finished the job himself. Not exactly suicide-by-cop but surely a go-down-in-a-blaze-of-“glory” scenario wherein he had no plan to leave the place alive. He had body armor at home not worn that day.

    We’re armed to the gills and less free by the day. Somebody tell me how guns make our lives better? I’m armed with thoughts but my prayers are dried up.

  89. 89.

    Betty Cracker

    @Sloane Ranger: I remember at least one of Parkland kids had to do a GoFundMe. This country is insane.

    ETA: Most of the Parkland kids were middle-class and up, but one poor kid who had a long recovery was un- or underinsured, and his family didn’t have much.

  90. 90.

    Mary G

    This guy is a particular coward. He was taken alive. Couldn’t even have the coutesy of suicide. I don’t want to know his name or hear about his mental illness or whatever excuse they come up with. I am so tired. The poor families. I am against capital punishment, but won’t protest if this guy gets the needle.

  91. 91.

    J R in WV

    @Lapassionara:

    As I understand it, these guns fire several bullets a second. There is no legitimate civilian use for them.

    No, not quite accurate. Legally, you still need to pull the trigger every time you fire a round, so maybe once a second, if you aren’t aiming at anything but just firing.

    I agree that giant magazines and automatic weapons aren’t necessary for anything in civilian life.

  92. 92.

    Betty Cracker

    Just saw an image of the suspect on the news. Looks like you’d expect — a pinched-faced, angry-looking, white incel psycho.

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Mike in NC:
    I’d use the wider answer of conservatives but yes they are the problem.
    That’s not to say a lot of liberals are gun owners and don’t consider complete outlawing of guns. And we do have a history, yes even current history of many police being a major issue of violence against citizens. So it’s not just guns in the hands of the people, it is a matter of power and who and why that power exists. Far too many people of color have been shot while unarmed for this to be just a gun issue, it is a power issue as well. The guns just make it easier to make a power statement against the unarmed.

  94. 94.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ll never forget when we first moved to NM in the mid 80’s and we drove through El Paso, seeing the brightly painted cardboard shacks lining the dirt streets of Juarez for miles, just a few feet away. All the years before 9-11 we had practically open borders here as people came and went for work, school, to visit family and get medical care. It was hard to tell you were even in the US in many places in El Paso and Las Cruces. Still is sometimes.

    This part of the country is a world away from the rest of the US.

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Martin: Not really. California regulates auto loading rifles based on their look. So, for instance, you can buy an AR 15, but it cannot have a telescoping stock, just a fixed one. It can only have 10 round magazines and the rifle has to be designed so they don’t drop free. Rather they have what is called a bullet button instead of a normal magazine release that allows the magazine to drop free.

  98. 98.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @debbie: Fuck that. Trump’s attack isn’t about facts or whether Baltimore is or isn’t a nice place. Trump wouldn’t change his tune or tactics even if Baltimore were the Garden of Eden. Trump is engaged in race-baiting propaganda and such invitations (if in fact real) only perpetuate the pretense that if only the Tsar knew…when in fact the Tsar was the driving force all along.

  99. 99.

    Elizabelle

    Happy to report that I got a text from Everytown/Moms Demand Action within 40 minutes of this BJ post going up. Telling me how to find activities in my area.

    In Richmond, VA, Governor Northam called a special session of the General Assembly on July 9th, to deal with gun violence, which the Republicans in the legislature adjourned without action, 90 minutes in.

    I hope that will hurt the GOP, badly, in upcoming state elections. Virginia is the site of the Virginia Tech shooting, and we recently had 12 municipal employees and unlucky bystanders killed in Virginia Beach.

    Enough is enough.

  100. 100.

    john fremont

    @Ruckus: My rifle qualification in USMC recruit training involved a rapid fire drill of putting ten rounds on a target in under a minute at distances of 200 to 300 yards. Yes, a minute is a long time to be shooting in a crowd in close quarters.

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Martin: I understand, but it doesn’t make them illegal. And you can do a lot of damage withe a California legal AR pattern rifle with only one ten round magazine. If you’ve also got a handgun or two, you can do a lot more damage.

  103. 103.

    KSinMA

    @Lapassionara: Here’s some context for the Puritan use of “city on a hill,” from Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity” sermon. (He didn’t add “shining”–that was Ronnie Reagan.) The sermon was basically about taking care of the poor.

    “Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.

    Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.”

  104. 104.

    RedDirtGirl

    @mad citizen: there have been other stories about people who have been in the middle of more than one mass shooting. I guess that’s only going to increase.

  105. 105.

    Betty Cracker

    The manifesto allegedly posted by this shooter mentions the Democrats “pandering to Hispanics” in the first debate and repeats Trump/Republican lies about Democrats wanting “open borders” so they can outnumber white people and achieve one-party rule. The shooter claims he held these views before Trump came on the scene in an attempt to absolve Trump. Again, this document hasn’t been verified as genuine. The info in it (age, gun type, location), etc., make me suspect it is genuine.

  106. 106.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Adam L Silverman: Absolutely. And it’s why I’ve loved it here. We can hardly stand going back east to visit family anymore–it’s so damn homogenous.

  108. 108.

    worn

    Oh what a fantastic bit of news to read as I exit the Hartsfield security line, on my way back to Oregon after a service in Cordele for my uncle who was shot in cold blood with an AR-15 last Sunday night. He bled out a few minutes later despite the efforts to save him.

    Hard to describe the grief in my family resulting from this. And now I wait to return to Portland with much sadness and even more questions.

    Yay, America!

    Warren (currently ruminating in the ATL & soon to be + undetermined)

    Steve, are you here?

  110. 110.

    trnc

    @debbie:

    Fuck the Second Amendment.

    The amendment isn’t the problem. The people who have twisted it into something for their own sick purposes are.

  116. 116.

    Jay

    Are you … are you serious right now? Far-right extremists pushed a hoax about antifa planning a “siege” in El Paso — a hoax that actually could inspire violence — and he’s telling *antifa* to stay out? What even is this? https://t.co/zmOlO6ZPg8— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) August 3, 2019

  118. 118.

    CaseyL

    What is there left to say? The country has a terminal disease, and not enough people care enough to effect the cure.

    I favor getting rid of the 2nd Amendment. It has served no useful purpose for a long time.

    I favor getting rid of all Republicans, who are both source and symptom of the disease.

    And I would restore pre-Reagan tax rates and estate tax, because we have created an oligarchy that cares nothing for anyone but themselves.

    …. I guess I do have stuff to say after all.

  119. 119.

    Ruckus

    @trollhattan:
    I was in the military, navy, and carried a loaded weapon as I’ve said here before. But guns were better controlled in the military than we do now in civilian life. My ex Marine buddy was in Vietnam in 68-69 for 13 months, at Chu Lai airbase. He carried a loaded M-16 with him everywhere. People I know of who served in Vietnam later had to turn in their weapons/ammo at the base armory every time they returned from patrol. We qualified once with small arms, and only the ones we had to carry while I was onboard the ship. We had no M-16s, we had BAR automatic rifles, Thomson sub machine guns and 1911 .45 caliber pistols. This was 71-73. There were (2) .45 pistols to protect the ship from walk on assault when in port. We had no small arms not under lock and key when under way unless the one magazine space that was possible to carry nuclear weapons in was open. Given the timeline I doubt seriously we ever had nuclear weapons on board.
    My point of all of this is that even the military, who use all sorts of weapons, including automatic small arms, do not allow them to be just randomly stored, carried, used, especially in public, unless in a war zone and then only when off a guarded base or one that isn’t as secure as possible. I was temporally assigned to the Shore Patrol at Long Beach naval station at the end of my enlistment and we carried only a night stick on duty. Only the Marine guards at the gates carried .45 pistols and not even their sergeants did.

  122. 122.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I have the alleged shooter’s alleged manifesto. Pretty much what you’d expect. Great replacement theory referenced. Things like that.

    Read it as well. On first quick pass, it has odd emotional rhythms and is weirdly flat emotionally, e.g. (bold mine)

    This is an encouraging sign that the Hispanic population is willing to return to their home countries if given the right incentive. An incentive that myself and many other patriotic Americans will provide.

    The bits about resource depletion and automation-taking-jobs are strange are interesting; these on-line communities seem to be indoctrinating(/generating) minds to think that corporations and the rich and powerful are bad and that the best solution is ethnic cleansing. As opposed to, say, monkey-wrenching corporations, or killing billionaires, or engaging in local politics allied with environmentalists.

  123. 123.

    Elizabelle

    @worn: I am so sorry to hear this.

    ETA: No thoughts and prayers, but I will keep your uncle in mind as I volunteer for common sense gun laws.

    In time, perhaps you can give us his first name.

  124. 124.

    worn

    @SiubhanDuinne: Thank you so much. I have been meaning for years to send a comment your way. I think i probably saw a few concerts conducted by your father when I was a younger man, growing up in Atlanta (I am recalling a comment you made some time ago; hopefully I am not wrong).

    Now +1

  126. 126.

    Ruckus

    That Marine buddy and I went to the Orange County fair yesterday. Lot’s of people having a good time, we had to all go through a scanner/bag search to get into the fairgrounds. Just like the airport, although the people working were much nicer. So it is possible to have public assembles be safer. But consider Las Vegas. The people in the crowd were fine, the shooter was able to be there shooting without ever being checked.
    So do we start checking everyone before they leave home or can start their car or board a commuter train?
    Or do we get rid of the fucking weapons of warfare?
    And the concepts of why the people who use them are angry and stupid and dangerous?

  128. 128.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Sloane Ranger: They pay. I’ve seen where friends of mass shooting victims hold car washes and bake sales to raise money for medical expenses, which of course are astronomical. In the richest fucking country in the world. Un-fucking-believable.

  129. 129.

    Chris T.

    America is exceptional in one way: we have the mostest bestest mass shootings. Averaging more than one a day now!

  131. 131.

    worn

    @Elizabelle: The situation is fraught. I need to see what the GBI turns up, if anything, before I share much else. I think they started the forensic examination of his (& possibly another’s) cell phone yesterday.

    Adam, who knows a little of my background, I think could figure it out his name. But I need to keep mum for the moment.

    But a many, many thanks for your support.

    ETA: anyone else of you good folks, too, who might reply while I am in my chair on the air. Your words are comforting more than you know.

  132. 132.

    worn

    @Elizabelle: The situation is fraught. I need to see what the GBI turns up, if anything, before I share much else. I think they started the forensic examination of his (& possibly another’s) cell phone yesterday.

    Adam, who knows a little of my background, I think could figure it out his name. But I need to keep mum for the moment.

    But a many, many thanks for your support.

    ETA: anyone else of you good folks, too, who might reply while I am in my chair on the air. Your words are comforting more than you know.

  134. 134.

    cwmoss

    @Sloane Ranger: Venerated American tradition: the victims file for bankruptcy to discharge whatever medical bills aren’t covered by health insurance. Treasure your NHS.

  136. 136.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Lapassionara:

    I always thought it stemmed from the early puritans, who viewed the US as a “shining city on a hill.”

    The original language of a “city on a hill” came from the Sermon on the Mount. John Winthrop used it to say that everyone would be watching what the Puritans and if they failed to live up to their rules the whole world would see their sins. Later, JFK used it in this sense as combination aspiration statement and warning. It to a bullshit artist like Reagan to say that the US was already there.

    /end of lecture

  138. 138.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steve in the ATL: Eva Longoria, in her speech at the 2008 (I think?) Democratic Convention, said that her family didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them.

  140. 140.

    JanieM

    @debbie:

    I cannot understand why their rights take precedence over my right to be safe from assholes like them.

    Seconded.

    **********

    Until we do something about the 2nd Amendment, the Constitution is a suicide pact.

  144. 144.

    The Lodger

    @worn: Reminds me of a trip to New Orleans about 40 years ago. I can’t share the details now, but about two hours after an extremely fraught event, I thought I was holding it together. Then someone showed up wearing a gun and I suddenly felt the world had gone nuts.
    Praying for you and your family, I wish there was more I could do but that’s all I’ve got.

  146. 146.

    CaseyL

    @worn: I am so sorry. Condolences to you and your family. Wishing you the strength and grace to get through this.

    Mass shootings are happening, what, every day now? At least multiples per week. Sooner rather than later we will all know someone who’s been killed in one of these random massacres; or we’ll be one of the victims ourselves.

    I’m not scared. I’m furious.

  147. 147.

    Steve in the ATL

    @worn: late to the party, but I’m 100 miles east at Lake Oconee. I was there Thursday ending though—at ATL itself, not just in the city.

    Sorry for your loss and for your having to go to Cordele.

    GBI is actually pretty good. I hope there are some leads to follow.

  149. 149.

    A Ghost To Most

    As long as we are fucking with the Constitution, and a lot of you are advocating same, let’s get rid of protections for religion. It fucks up more people than guns do. So does alcohol.

  150. 150.

    opiejeanne

    @Mike in NC: We heard that 5 years ago from our taxi driver in Paris, and he was from Somalia. “What is it with guns in the Us?”

  152. 152.

    Singing Truth to Power

    Sean Kent
    @seankent
    Here’s a picture from Patrick Crusius’ Facebook page. Pretty clear who his hero is. #ElPasoShooting
    ·…
    1h
    Replying to
    @seankent
    By the way I’m not saying it was HIS picture. I’m saying it’s reported that he reposted it on his page. Y’all should know the difference is negligible before you cry fake. Regardless, his manifesto makes it clear who his damn hero was.
    /var/folders/sp/70fhhz8j1vv3qzh69www3crw0000gn/T/com.apple.iChat/Messages/Transfers/1.jpg

  153. 153.

    Singing Truth to Power

    The photo didn’t come through – it’s Trump’s name spelled out in guns.

  157. 157.

    worn

    @Steve in the ATL: @Steve in the ATL: Back in PDX. I know it’s late & the thread is dead, but there are more parties in the mix and more involved than are in the news stories.

    And hey! The train viewing platform in Cordele is pretty nice, as train viewing platforms go.

  158. 158.

    worn

    Also, too: thanks again, everyone, for your kind words. Y’all’s the swellest clutch of jackals there there mighta ever been.

  159. 159.

    jc

    An inhuman deed. Curious how these shooters are basically *never* 21 year old women who are unbalanced, racist, Trump-trolling, assault-weapon-toting nut-job loser idiots.

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