Bouncing off of Adam’s post about the Odessa murders…
Last night a bunch of folks gathered together for some fun, a high school football game in Mobile, Alabama. A teenager showed up with a gun and shot ten other kids. By some astonishing good luck, no victims died. Nine of them had to go to the hospital and six have been released from care already. The shooter left the scene and turned himself in this morning.
So there you have it: two cities, two crowds just going about their business, trying to have some good times on a weekend, and two assholes who demonstrate as brutally as possible the the right to free assembly can’t be fully trusted in these United States.
Second Amendment absolutism is at war with the right to assemble, to express our ideas freely, to pray if and as we choose.
Practically or actually unregulated guns directly threaten civil society.
Gun violence does more than just murder individuals. It threatens the ability of Americans to express the consent of the governed.
The citizens of Mobile, of Odessa and Midland, of everywhere in the US, no longer have the full enjoyment of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of an afternoon’s entertainment.
I know that mass shootings produce a relatively small fraction of the death toll from firearms; suicide takes two thirds of that total. But terror is not about the absolute destruction terrorists are able to inflict; what counts is the impact on the terrorized society, the change in our behavior, our expectations, and our ability to make free and unfettered choices about whatever it is the terrorists care about.
That’s what mass shootings do: make it harder for all of us to live the way we want.
The fight against the NRA, #MoscowMitch’s GOP and the rest of the gun cabal is a campaign against those who are, right now, using the tools or terrorism against the United States of America.
Georges Seurat, The Circus, 1891
trollhattan
Amen. Because they are such a fresh and apt example, following New Zealand’s lead since their recent massacre would be an excellent start.
I’ll be in the bar.
germy
karensky
Thanks for this, Dr. Levenson and for your comments as well, trollhatan.
I wish I had an inside track to Senator Warren so I could share your post but maybe you have one as she is your senator.
This is the best description about this nexus that I have ever read. I am going to use it whenever and wherever I can.
I will be in the bar too.
trollhattan
@germy:
Good for Beto. That’s exactly what needs to happen.
rikyrah
I am ashamed to say that I didn’t even know about Mobile??
laura
The American dream, endlessly filing through a metal detector.
germy
@laura: Well, it’s the American dream for the metal detector manufacturers.
M. Bouffant
@rikyrah: No one died, so …
Context:
Sebastian
Good for Beto. It had to be said and someone had to stake out the position, now we can rally around it and drive public opinion. That’s how Overton Window works.
Adam L Silverman
@M. Bouffant: The stadium was at a school. It is already a Federal felony to carry a firearm onto a school property. It is usually, but not always, a state felony as well.
Mary G
VERY SERIOUS TRIGGER WARNING.
This tweet has video of a group of adults and children on the ground in Odessa; it’s horrifying, even though they all seem to be alive. I wonder if the way we don’t show the actual results of a shooting keeps it theoretical and benefits the gunhumpers.
germy
I imagine trump is on the phone right now with Wayne LaPew, reassuring him that the NRA has nothing to worry about.
Ruckus
@germy:
If there was a phone call I’d bet it went the other way, something about if you want support and money……
Patricia Kayden
So when do mass shootings become the norm? How many Americans have to be sacrificed at the NRA’s altar? Democrats need to make changing our gun culture their first priority if they win the White House and Congress next November.
Madness.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@laura: …barefoot.
debbie
I’d like one gun lover to explain to me why his/her right to carry firearms supersedes my right to be safe from assholes like them.
debbie
@Mary G:
We’re too busy not saying their names. //
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
I can’t remember where in Ohio it happened, but the day after the Dayton shooting, there was a car backfire outside a mall and it caused all kinds of pandemonium.
chris
Saturday, 31 August 2019. SSDD.
ETA: Also this. massshootingtracker.org/data
TS (the original)
@M. Bouffant:
It is NEVER an option to talk about removing the guns. The population is now divided into 2; those who have bodyguards and those who take their chances. The people not implementing gun laws – belong to the former group
Chyron HR
@M. Bouffant:
“All copies of the Capcom Classics Collection for Nintendo Switch are hereby banned. Guns are still cool though.”
Elizabelle
@Mary G: The rapidity of that gunfire.
chris
@debbie: Times Square too. A motorcycle backfired and people ran. Something, something, polite society…
HalfassedHomesteader
We need to stop measuring the magnitude of mass shootings in deaths. People traumatized might be a better measure.
HalfassedHomesteader
On the bright side we can all look forward to 2 days of support for gun control from trump until he gets the call from wayne.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Because. Just because.
They have nothing logical, nothing sane, nothing realistic to say. No one in a society not at war needs an assault rifle. Or a 100 rounds of ammunition. Of course those assholes think they are at war, but wouldn’t have a fucking clue if they were actually in a war, with the other side shooting at them.
They have nothing logical, nothing sane, nothing realistic to say.
There is nothing logical, sane or realistic about shooting unarmed people because they don’t agree with you. There is nothing logical, sane or realistic about having weapons of war at the disposal of civilians.
Mary G
@Elizabelle: The woman lying on her child to shield him or her just got me, and the dad saying “it’s all right, I got you.”
Baud
@Patricia Kayden:
All of them, Katie.
namekarB
There is always room for compromise. Since all of these mass shooters have been overwhelmingly white males, perhaps we should restrict the right to bear arms to keep arms out of the hands of white males.
Mandalay
It’s hard to find good news on guns, but the story of someone in Oregon losing their guns and being hospitalized after issuing death threats is actually a happy one:
The man was troubled, he needed medical help, and he got it. He now understands why his behavior was wrong, and nobody got hurt:
I’m calling that a win for red flag laws.
Martin
Well, the good news in all of this is that tomorrow a bunch of new laws go into effect in Texas to loosen gun restrictions.
debbie
@Mandalay:
I don’t care how self-aware he is; he needs his guns removed from him.
Mike in NC
We’re damn close to the point when a day in the USofA without a mass shooting becomes newsworthy.
Calouste
@debbie: If he is self-aware, he would be OK with having his guns removed from him. And his dad’s guns as well.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
Even in a war, shootings such as this one shouldn’t have happened. The man was a prisoner, hands tied behind his back, shot in cold blood. And that was in a massive war, by a general of the army we were supporting, against an enemy. Shot in cold blood for no reason other than the general was a cold blooded killer. And it’s worse in the case of all of the mass shootings in this country. We aren’t even at war, let alone shooting at the people killing civilians in cold blood.
The shooters are cold blooded murderers.
Nothing less. We are not at war, although they are an enemy.
Cold blooded murderers always are an enemy of any civilized society.
And we are allowing them to be armed.
West of the Rockies
@TS (the original):
Everyone must suffer, be inconvenienced, traumatized, shot, and (all too often) killed so that gun owners can be allowed to shit in the punch bowl.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
It just goes to show how normalised and commonplace these shootings have become. Which in and of itself is one of the most tragic aspects of our gun culture.
West of the Rockies
@namekarB:
Fail.
SiubhanDuinne
Reposted from the tag end of dying thread downstairs:
My late father was, for a few years (1967-1971 IIRC) the Music Director/Conductor of the Midland-Odessa Symphony Orchestra. I don’t claim to know West Texas at all well, but I visited two or three times to attend concerts, so even that small bit of familiarity brings today’s shootings closer to home than I’d like. Heartbreak for the families of those murdered, best wishes to the wounded as they recover.
(My dad detested M-O, but a gig’s a gig.)
J R in WV
@germy:
God bless Beto O’Rourke — and that’s exactly what we need to do !!
I have lots of friends who love to shoot their large magazine rifles at tin cans and deer. But I know there are people out there who will shoot at people, and that has to stop. Arrest everyone who doesn’t sell their weapon of mass destruction back to the government.
Just like New Zealand!
Jay
@debbie:
Y’all have that there 2nd Amendment, which has become festishized.
I have a FAC, a Lisence, Registered Weapons and Unregistered weapons, just tools really.
Guns are in Gunsafe A, ammo, Gunsafe B, bolts and firing pins, hidden lock box C.
I need a transportation permit to take some of the guns to the range to fire them, ( the only place I legally can) despite having 320 acres. They have to be unloaded and locked up for the trip. The permit is good for one trip, there and back.
I am fine with that.
For “home defence” on a rural property in the sticks, I have a rosewood bokken.
Never had to use it, outside of the dojo.
Chetan Murthy
@SiubhanDuinne: Y’know, I fuckin’ *hate*/*hate*/*hate* Texas. Familiarity [growing up there] breeds incandescent contempt. But still, this …. ugh. You can hate people, and still not want them to be gunned down in some sort of murderous rampage. Ugh.
Nobody should have to live like this. Like that. Nobody. Nobody. Even my worst political enemies. Nobody.
Suzanne
I have a douche you colleague (of course he’s Libertarian) who insists that “the state has a monopoly on violence”. I told him that it is the height of delusion to believe that that is so.
debbie
@Suzanne:
God, that sounds like a throwback to the 60s. He’s not delusional, he’s wrong.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chetan Murthy:
Couldn’t agree more. Thanks.
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
I spent a night in Midland/Odessa, TX a few years ago, driving home from Cochise county AZ, it was as far as I could get in a day’s drive. The motel next to mine was a ruin, I saw the next morning the roof was down into the first floor.
There were some interesting trucks in the big lot behind the motel, a giant racing boat on a huge truck, oil field equipment, like giant engines, mud pumps, pieces of derricks.
I ate in a Mexican place, after cruising slowly through town looking for something that wasn’t a chain place. And a package store to get a pint of brown liquor. The TexMex food was good. So was the brown liquor — I slept well and made it to Arkansas for the next night.
Baud
@Suzanne:
You should have slapped him to prove him wrong.
Elizabelle
From the Los Angeles Times story:
SiubhanDuinne
@J R in WV:
I drove through Midland-Odessa, or close enough, about seven years ago on my road trip from GA to AZ. Didn’t stay over, though — got as far as El Paso and spent the night there. And on the way home a week later, took a completely different route.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud:
I’m quite sure you’re joking. And yes, as a joke, it’s pretty funny. [until we reflect on our straitened circumstances]
I’m a firm believer in the value of humor in these times, and so I applaud your intervention. Yeah, these jokers, if they only learned the value of their ideals ….
HalfAssedHomesteader
@Baud: Atomic grundy would suffice.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: I feel I must say again: Baud, we need to be able to laugh, even if thru our tears, because if we can’t do that, then we won’t live thru this.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
God help me, these events are so fucking ordinary now that I can’t even think of the fourth. El Paso, Dayton, West Texas. I’m forgetting one that in all likelihood had me in its grip for hours and hours of news coverage at the time. And, as I said to Rikyrah above, that’s the real tragedy of these events — the fact that they happen so frequently that they just become background noise.
Marcopolo
I started a small monthly donation to Moms Demand Action the day of the El Paso shooting.
Please feel free to join me in supporting them. Their chapters and volunteers do yeoman’s work every day of the year all across the country. And they are especially amazing in the support they provide to electing Democrats at all levels” local, state & national.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s too much.
satby
Exchange daughter Qunoot is in Texas for a semester, in San Antonio. Her parents must be sick with worry, as I also worry. Imagine having the courage to send your hijab wearing child off to this insane place twice.
None of us should live like this.
Jay
@Marcopolo:
????????
Chetan Murthy
@Elizabelle:
This. So much this. I keep wondering when parents will just say “enough already” and stop all this. because nobody can raise children in a war zone, and everybody is somebody’s child. I just ….. don’t get why it hasn’t happened. I mean ….we freak out when our babies wander towards traffic, b/c we understand that they can’t properly comprehend the dangers involved, and yet somehow, these *same* parents don’t get it, that their *same* babies are being exposed to gunfire every day. Sigh.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
It is indeed too much. But I am thoroughly ashamed that I use that as a reason, an excuse, to forget any of these mass murders. Whether it’s guns or Trumpism, my biggest fear and greatest terror is that I might allow myself to take any of this for granted, to accept it as normal. For one of my psychology, that is what I fight every day.
Jay
ruemara
@Patricia Kayden: It’s already the norm. We had a mass shooting last night and it didn’t make the news. We’re already there.
This is our 279th shooting this year and we’re at day 243.
Either way, the financial section of the 1619 project is up in the audio folder I made for it. Hopefully, I can get to pages 43-50 by Wednesday.
JPL
@Chetan Murthy: A seventeenth month old was shot. It appears she will be okay but it is also unnecessary. This is exactly who we are.
Jay
MomSense
@trollhattan:
I hope he has a security detail.
TS (the original)
@Jay:
guns are a man made disaster – they will hinder, not help during times of natural disasters
Procopius
@Mary G: They do it less now, but in Thailand the press used to show the corpses with maybe a black bar across the eyes to “protect the identity of the individual.” Pretty ghastly, some of them. Road accidents, murders, police shootouts, whatever. There’s even a magazine (or was, I haven’t visited a newsstand for many years) called “191” for the phone number of the Crime Suppression Division of the Police, that carried true crime stories and even more horrific pictures. I think that kind of reminder of what bullets actually do would be helpful. Too many Americans have had death sanitized for them. They see movies where a victim is shot in the chest and all you see is a red stain on their shirt and they fall down. Even the Quentin Tarantino movies don’t show what it’s really like.
Marcopolo
So I realize this is really OT but I’m not a front pager & cannot start a thread on a lighter note.
However, this is currently a piece up on the BBC website:
American cheese: Does it deserve its bad reputation?
Give the entire piece a read, it is actually nicely informative…especially about the huge tariffs on exporting American cheeses to England & the EU.
And if anyone would like to comment on a local cheese or creamery they like that would be great too. I am particularly fond of Marcoot Jersey Creamery across the river in IL. Fresh cheddar cheese curds are awesome!
And, yes, I do own one of their “Udder Cheeses don’t compare” t-shirts, though apparently it is smaller than when I bought it while I was working on a small organic farm…
Anyways, any other cheese lovers out there with stories to tell?
Jay
Procopius
@debbie: Wossisname, “Joe the Plumber,” did that several years ago. After one of the school shootings, if I recall correctly. I may not have his exact words, but he said, to a parent of one of those dead children, “Your dead kid doesn’t supersede my right to carry a gun.”
Jay
@TS (the original):
Guns are a tool, not a fetish.
In the US however, they are more popular than dildo’s and vibrators, which many state have banned.
catclub
@Marcopolo:
Didn’t we also learn recently there are huge tariiffs for dairy products between the US and Canada?
Drdavechemist
I work at a school in a relatively safe urban residential neighborhood adjacent to a prestigious university. This week, we learned that we will be locking all exterior doors during the school day, issuing RFID swipe cards that must be displayed at all times to all students grades 6-12, and sending all visitors, including parents, to a single door with a video link to the reception desk. Our head of school basically acknowledges that this is security theater, but felt like we had no other option but to give the appearance that we are trying to prevent a mass shooting event. It’s maddening, since Sandy Hook proved that a locked door is not sufficient protection. No public space is going to be safe until we dramatically reduce the availability of guns.
Procopius
@Ruckus:
Errrmmmm… I remember that. At the time, it was reported that, in fact, the victim was a Vietcong who had just murdered the General’s wife during a widespread attack (Tet of ’68). According to the linked article it wasn’t the General’s wife but family members and kids of some of his men. I don’t want to absolve the General (head of Saigon’s security forces, IIRC), but I thought at the time that he had some provocation. I was stationed in Germany, at the time, but I heard the backstory. Maybe in the States it was different. The linked article is really excellent, a rarity in my experience. Perhaps you didn’t read the article, just the picture.
FlyingToaster
We’ve been trying to decide if moving to a town with a better (ahem) high school would be worth it. Right now I’m leaning toward leaving WarriorGirl in private school, because in our school we don’t have active shooter drills, we allow the abutters to use our basketball court during afternoon classes (and evenings), the abutters call the cops when asshats decide to drink and toke on the playground, etc. Yes, we keep the doors locked, but we did that before this mess started. But we don’t traumatize the 4-year-olds in PK, nor the 14-year-olds in 8th.
ThresherK
@Marcopolo: A good American cheese from the deli case (not “product”) is the base for my famous* no-drain mac and cheese. It really helps pull the sauce together, and then the sharp stuff gets added for bite.
(*Swiped from Cooks Illustrated.)
SiubhanDuinne
@Jay:
I look forward to the inevitable photo of Trump holding the child, giving the thumbs-up gesture, and adjusting his face into that stupid phony rictus of a grin.
Ken_L
It’s not just mass shootings though, is it. It’s the mother who panics when she sees her boy go out in the street playing with a toy gun, terrified some cop will come by and blow him away.
And it’s the cop, terrified when he sees a boy reach for his pocket that he’s going for a gun, and shoots him dead. Or the cop who attends a 911 call about a rape, sees a woman coming towards the car, and shoots her dead because he thought (mistakenly) she had a weapon. Or the father who kills his own daughter when she climbs in a window late at night because she’d forgotten her key and didn’t want to wake him.
It’s the ever-present terror generated by the pervasive presence of guns in the community.
Marcopolo
@ThresherK: Gotta admit I have not eaten a slice of “American Cheese” (like the Kraft wrapped in plastic slices stuff) in at least 40 years–pre high school graduation. I have friends who say it melts better when they are making things like cheese burgers but I am a snob who likes to use real swiss or cheddar.
My mom had a special place in her palate for Liederkranz cheese which was made in her hometown of Van Wert, OH. I could never get over its very very strong aroma.
Time for me to go to bed but let me leave y’all with the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch.
Ruckus
@Procopius:
I knew the backstory. He still walked up and shot the man in cold blood. Now this wasn’t the US and we know the laws that existed were often breached in the extreme. It was and still is cold blooded murder to walk up to a person in custody, which this man definitely was, and shoot him. And that is no different than any of the mass shooters. They are attempting and most often actually committing cold blooded murder. Cops have been videoed doing the same thing, walking up and shooting people in cold blood. This is nothing but cold blooded murder. Just because you can purchase a gun that is intended to commit mass murder, doesn’t mean you get to use it to do so.
Mart
@Jay: Assume you are saying you have the right to own a military grade weapon that you handle prudently so you can fire at a range for your fun. While 75% of the populace live in fear of these weapons that are engineered to kill humans on war battlefields. Maybe try another hobby?
Last week suburban St. Louis had a similar but non lethal HS football shooting – ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – Dozens of police officers scrambled to Parkway North High School Friday evening after a shot was fired at the site of a football jamboree.
Mnemosyne
@Mart:
FWIW, Jay lives in Canada and goes by his country’s gun laws, which are far more sensible than ours. As he was saying above, legally he cannot take his guns off his property without getting a permit each time, and he’s fine with that.
My brother who lives in IL was shocked to find out that other states don’t require a firearms license like IL does.
Richard Guhl
The gun god death cult demands regular human sacrifices to feed its ideology of fear. The fear of nameless others who might do you harm at any moment. The fear of seeming unmanly. And the answer it offers is a gun. But the thing is, once you succumb to fear, there is no end, because another threat can always be conjured.
It’s no wonder that 3% of the population owns half of the 300+ million guns floating around in our society. They are prisoners of fear. And their fear makes all of us less safe.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
It looks like no one responded. The fourth (actually the third shooting, time-wise) shooting was in Mobile AL Friday night during a high school football game. No one was killed, but there were injuries.
Hope
@ThresherK: recipe please