3 days after a 15-year-old killed 4 classmates in Michigan and the parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter we have Congressman Massie from Kentucky tweeting this insanity with his family pic.twitter.com/tAmIfVeoIq
— Wu-Tang Is For The Children (@WUTangKids) December 4, 2021
At least we can assume Rep. Massie supervises his offspring around those weapons, because nobody’s dead yet. Of course every young person tends towards a ‘just kill me now’ expression during these holiday photoshoots, but waving the really big boomsticks around like Red Ryder air rifles is not (as I understand it) recommended…
Or maybe it's a CETME? The receiver looks more that way but the handguards look off
Either way something weird is going on with the gun on the left
— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) December 4, 2021
Massie is the guy who was going to object on something important—the first COVID relief I think?—which would have needlessly required all the members to go to DC to vote in person. He’s apparently one of those guys who gets aroused by making everyone hate him.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) December 4, 2021
Yikes. They'd see what was wrong with it, certainly. https://t.co/jooJn3oBCK
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) December 5, 2021
I mean look, regardless of where you stand politically, everyone with a functioning brain deep down knows that if Omar posed for a picture with her family packing heat like the Massies, it'd be the end of her career, the Democratic Party, and probably both Minnesota and Somalia.
— Starfish Who Just Wants To Grill (@IRHotTakes) December 4, 2021
Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Lost
VOR
As probably everyone will point out, daughter in the middle seems to be pointing her weapon at Mom.
eclare
Mom is also pointing her gun at red plaid shirt guy.
Mart
Massie and wife are MIT engineers. Made a bundle on a computer invention. Are they playing a part so long like Joe Cornporn Kennedy, Cruz, Hawley and others that they are stuck in character?
PJ
The War on Christmas is really getting out of hand.
West of the Rockies
Vile putz.
craigie
@Mart:
Just goes to show, you can be intelligent without being smart.
eclare
@craigie: And sometimes big time college degrees just mean you were good at taking tests.
prostratedragon
@Mart: Ditto Charles and David Koch. Fortunately the MIT scientist in my family is quite sane. (Scientist v. engineer?)
Poe Larity
What gun would Jesus own?
Chetan Murthy
@craigie: Many an engineer resembles that remark *grin*.
RaflW
I don’t think we should crank up a bullshit factory like the right has, but that last Starfish tweet is like about 4 million other tweets. Rather than say “This fucking pisses me off and Republicans have to stop this shit because they’re evil” we get countless “if a Democrat did this there’d be hell to pay”.
The comparison tweets unsurprisingly have zero impact on Republicans or the public discourse.
If what Republicans are doing is wrong (and oh, man, is it!) then say so. Enough with the butthurt why are R’s given a pass? laments.
(Sorry I’m so crabby. It’s just weak sauce and I’m so over it. MAKE A GOD DAMNED FUSS!)
oclib
Some of you might remember this republican from Nevada. There might have been others, but this is the first time I remember seeing a Christmas card as such….
theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/dec/08/las-vegas-republican-michele-fiore-christmas-card…
suilebhan
Can you say “assholes” children? I knew you could.
MaryLou
@VOR: And Dad’s getting ready to blow Mom’s kneecap off.
Tony Gerace
@Mart: MIT engineers. I wonder how many MIT students are highly intelligent psychopaths? Yet another “elite” school producing graduates for our sick culture’s elite leaders.
scav
And the same people rushing to defend, if not celebrate and honor this festive warband are the same that took to their fainting couches over a red coffee cup taking the Christ out of Christmas. Or, do the Massies et al carefully put a hollow-point in their nativity manger?
Chetan Murthy
@Tony Gerace: I have a friend who went to MIT. Smart, kind guy. He told me that the thing is, everybody who goes to MIT was a nerd in high school. They get to MIT, they’re surrounded by other people like them, and they sort themselves out again: so some become jocks, some social butterflies, some nerds, etc. He became a pretty normal guy — smart, but normal otherwise. But there’ll be those that are gaping assholes (like Massie), b/c that’s part of the distribution of humanity, so to speak.
How did he tell me this? I was wondering about another guy who also went to MIT (we were all three in the same graduate program) — he seemed a complete nerd, and I didn’t understand how my friend and this guy were so different. Which led to my friend explaining all this.
El-Man
Massie isn’t ex-military… is it legal for him to own an belt-fed full-auto M60 machine gun?
Reverse tool order
Do I have this right, some of you say this Massie family being twisted is on being MIT grads or engineers? It’s accurate and useful to say that?
I’d like to see evidence, a plausible mechanism to explain it, and how your school and profession compare. Or maybe just something that does some good?
Presuming you want pressure to have some effect, concentrate force to the area it’s needed. If we collapse these little right-wing bubbles, well, look up the effect of cavitation.
I’ve got work to do in the morning, so not back till later. And, it’s true that I’m just an FNG here.
Warblewarble
Gun toting photos are a constant feature of Massholes presentation ,as they are for many other rethugs. The xmas gun photos are nothing new with these chuds Masshole just got ahead of the pack ,others among them are probably feeling like sore losers. Highlight the sheer indecency.
Raven
@El-Man: Being x-military has nothing to do with gun ownership .
Elizabelle
The family that sociopaths together.
Wondering if any of those five Massie children will have escape velocity, and escape the casual meanness they’ve been raised to flaunt. They’re likely intelligent. Are any of them empathetic, once you remove them from the family clan?
Betty
It’s time for a grassroots movement on behalf of the children who have been made martyrs by the Second Amendment. Make these fanatics see and feel the lost lives and the pain their loss has meant to loved ones and the wider community.
Central Planning
I saw that pic on facebook, although the guns were replaced with giant dildos. I didn’t know the context for it before, but now I do.
Big Picture Pathologist
Here is an insane but somehow predictable update.
One of Reason magazine’s (yeah, I know) associate editors, Bruce Binion, made a comment to Massie’s tweet pointing out how bad this looked. Massie took offense and tagged the chief Reason editor in the reply, effectively snitching on Binion. Massie explained that he did it because he knew the donors to the magazine wouldn’t be happy with this, and then blocked Bunion.
I other words, besides looking like an oversized baby, Massey has the temperament of one:
twitter.com/CPostcapitalism/status/1467560374392213507?s=20
tam1MI
@MaryLou: And Dad’s getting ready to blow Mom’s kneecap off.
Given how tightly his finger is wrapped around the trigger, it’s a miracle he didn’t.
dnfree
Way late to this, but my husband just said Ilhan Omar’s family should make a holiday card with all of them wearing backpacks. No need for actual guns.
Tom Levenson
@Tony Gerace: I know it’sa dead thread but I have to say that this comment is one of the worst I remember reading here.
I’m a professor at MIT. I’m reading my students’ final work for the term right now. I also serve on the Institute’s distinguished fellowship committee–basically, the group charged with helping our best get major fellowships. I am continuously awed by the creativity, ambition and empathy of those applicants, and reading the work of my mostly first-year students I am, again, excited by what they see as important, and how they hope to make the world better.
Do we have asshole students? Sure; 4,500 undergraduates means that some will be or become less than the best of our people. But to suggest that MIT’s education made the Massies bloodthirsty imbeciles is…
The kindest thing I can say it post hoc ergo propter hoc is an old and elementary error.
Reverse tool order
@Tom Levenson: Thanks. I was struck by the lack of more pushback on denigration of two entire groups of people.
I come here for wheat, not chaff. Word by word, moment by moment, where are you all taking this thing? Is that where you want it?
Urban Suburbanite
I have a couple photos where I’m posing with firearms (it was one of those ranges in Vegas where you can fire full-auto weapons). It’s one of those almost every male has, whether it’s on a technical in Libya or a range in Iowa. But then there’s weird habit of white suburbanite men insisting on this tryhard bullshit. Doing a holiday family photo with firearms is fucking weird, even if your daughter isn’t pointing at mom. Even gun people (and there’s a deeply fucked up subculture) hate this stuff.
If that gun is a full-auto M-60, I doubt he owns it (it is not easy to get the permits for those things). Or it could be a semi-auto version available to civilians. Either way, this is some tryhard bullshit.