and, like, i've mostly given up on the prospects for any kind of meaningful gun regulation, because i know a lot of gun owners who are, i think, otherwise good people and who i think are unlikely to ever give them up. this is the price of that.
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 24, 2022
I wish I didn’t agree with this. Yes, I’m going to keep trying to change peoples’ minds, because we have to keep trying, but…
but having known someone who *did* think of himself as a reasonable person *right up until* he got murdered in a totally justified police shooting, things can get out of hand much faster than anyone realizes.
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 24, 2022
guns remove all of the guardrails and the safety nets and the restraints that keep you or others safe if you lose your capacity to reason *before* you're able to do more permanent damage to the world around you.
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 24, 2022
Many, many years ago, a friend-of-a-friend ‘lost’ a toddler when his slightly older kid found daddy’s gun in mommy & daddy’s bedroom. Story was that the guy found a new hiding place for the gun… but he wouldn’t get rid of it, on the grounds that well, now Junior *knew* how dangerous it was, right?
(I sometimes wonder what happened to that kid. He was maybe too young even to remember what he’d done… )
Republicans: the problem isn't guns, it's mental illness.
The company that made the Uvalde shooter's gun: https://t.co/MM2ymrWt1I
— Moment Meeter (@agraybee) May 25, 2022
SiubhanDuinne
I am incoherent with rage tonight. I cannot possibly comment rationally, so I am going to go to bed and let Ian Carmichael read to me until I drift off.
Shalimar
Sometimes it just seems like people are evil and it will be better when global warming wins and all of us die.
Eljai
What a heartbreaking day. The pain those families in Texas are going through — it’s horrific. There’s a chorus of people on Twitter right now and a few on cable TV that insist that nothing will change. I refuse to join in. There is a way to make things change — get majorities big enough to do something about it. That means we hold the House and we add a couple more seats to the Senate so we can do something about the filibuster and get some decent legislation passed. It is doable if we put in the work.
mrmoshpotato
That ad posted by agraybee is beyond deplorable!
I watch a lot of off-grid cabin YouTube channels (Alaska, Yukon…), and some of these people have guns in their videos. One couple in Alaska grows all of their own vegetables and hunt for meat.
Guess what they don’t have? THEY DON’T HAVE FUCKING ASSAULT RIFLES!
BigJimSlade
It’s not the guns, it’s that we’re shallow, greedy, paranoid, short-sighted, self-righteous, murderous dickheads. AND the guns. Sigh… so we’ve got a lot to work on.
Damien
Nothing will change. Until it’s not kids getting murdered but pro-gun politicians, or a couple Fox News hosts. Why do you think they’ve got all the bodyguards? It’s because they know it.
Geeno
All options seem to boil down to two stances:
1. “The pain those families in Texas are going through” – Fuck ’em, this is their own doing, it’s what they voted for.
2. These people must somehow be disenfranchised, as they are clearly incapable of discerning their own good.
Not wanting to take responsibility for those people, I say “fuck ’em”.
Amir Khalid
Remember all the Westerns where the sheriff didn’t allow guns in town, and would tell arriving out-of-towners to leave their guns with him for the duration of their stay?
Geeno
‘@Amir Khalid: They have excised those sheriffs from history. Everything was settled in high noon shot outs.
Tazj
I’ve read commentary on social media that it’s too late for this country to do anything now because there are too many guns out there already.This is our country now as heartbreaking as it is. I refuse to believe that. There are always things we can do. Assault rifle ban, gun buy back programs, making manufacturers liable and making people who don’t store guns properly responsible are just a few ideas. I read a few days ago that someplace (maybe in California?) was buying back guns for gas cards.
I know things are stacked against us, with Republicans and the NRA, but I’m not going to be resigned to this reality .
stinger
‘@ Tazj — thank you.
Another Scott
I disagree with machi. Polling has shown that Americans, even a majority of Republicans, want sensible gun laws. Something like 90% wanted background checks, etc.
I remember back in the day when our leaders enjoyed actually leading on important issues involving the commonweal. Now for too many what matters is getting elected and then making as many PAC friends as possible to have a giant war chest to never lose any future election.
Laws? Rules? Norms? Those are for the little people and the rubes.
Biden and the Democratic party have a compelling set of issues to run on and to crush the GQP on. Fighting Covid.
The strong economy. Getting out of Afghanistan and rebuilding our international relations. Supporting Ukraine and taking down VVPs war machine. Justice and voting rights and safe neighborhoods at home. And on and on. The GQP literally wants to bring back feudalism and the dark ages while talking about freedom.
Let’s play up their nihilism and anti-Americanism. We need to tout our successes and make them own their policies.
Cheers,
Scott.
Will
My mind drifts between the it’s useless to the darkest of dark thoughts that it would take the “stars aligning” for several of these to happen over an October during an election year. Multiple schools shootings every other day with double digit deaths, mostly in red states, and a Vegas style triple digit attack.
I just want to puke thinking that. I’d rather that not happen than us have gun control cause that would be such a tragic loss just to solve something that shouldn’t be so excruciatingly hard to fix.
bbleh
It continues to mystify me that even gun owners whom I believe are reasonably intelligent somehow think that ANY form of regulation of firearms means COMIN’ TO TAKE MUH GUNZ.
Testing and licensing drivers does not mean taking cars away from people. On the contrary, you can misbehave wildly with your car — you can even kill someone — and still not have it taken away. But even otherwise intelligent people seem completely oblivious to the notion of sensible regulation, of the HUGE space that exists between confiscation and a complete lack of constraint.
I continue to believe it’s closely bound up with the weirdly juvenile notion of masculinity that prevails in the US. Gun = penis = manhood. ANY social control over guns is therefore equivalent to emasculation.
Major Major Major Major
Here, have a Samwise to distract you. https://twitter.com/tynanpants/status/1529298439271501824?s=21&t=RiBn5lEfGoAnSZkKab_uFg
Chetan Murthy
Another Scott:
“I disagree with machi. Polling has shown that Americans, even a majority of Republicans, want sensible gun laws. Something like 90% wanted background checks, etc.”
I want to agree with you. And you could have substituted “raise taxes on the rich”, or “keep abortion legal”. Or lots of other things. But then I remember that there’s this idea in economics, called “revealed preferences”: don’t ask someone what they want, or what they believe; instead, ask them what they buy, what they vote for, what they will forgo, for something else.
And the revealed preferences of Americans are pretty clear (to me): we’re a bloodthirsty, greedy, small people, who can’t even be bothered to protect the weakest among us.
eclare
‘@M4: Photos of Samwise are always welcome, such a regal kitty.
Major Major Major Major
‘@chetan apparently there was a background check referendum in Maine in 2016 that was polling like 60-33, outspent the NRA 7:1, lost 48-52.
Redshift
‘@bbleh:
Decades of radicalizing propaganda from gun manufacturers and their lobby will do that.
Kattails
Beau of the fifth column did a YouTube commentary on this issue just a couple of days ago, placing blame squarely on gun owners and the hideous culture they’ve created in this country.
Sooner or later someone is going to show one of the bodies. Maybe it would take that; maybe not even that would do it.
Redshift
Another Scott:
Yeah, I don’t find that assessment very convincing either. As with abortion, our problem isn’t public opinion, it’s *intensity* of opinion, and how strongly it drives voting behavior.
In the places in the country where the vast majority of people live, I have rarely been somewhere where a person saying they carried a gun, or saying it was a good thing for people to carry guns for protection, didn’t make people feel uncomfortable. People who have an attitude that guns are not a problem in the hands of a “reasonable” person wouldn’t feel that way.
However, it is a real obstacle that most people believe crime is constantly up, and it is much more dangerous to be living now than in the past, when in fact the opposite is true.
Boussinesque
Every time this happens, I get sick with rage. I work with kids as an academic tutor, and I can’t help but think “what if it happens here next?”. Between shootings and inaction on climate change (I tutor AP Environmental Science as well), I worry about the world we’re leaving to them and my younger cousins. I refuse to believe the problems are insoluble, but nights like these make me want to drink a lot of rum and bury my head under the pillow.
Another Scott
‘@Chetan Murthy – Sure. And Americans have always been like that. Jefferson wanted farmers to grow grapes and make wine because too many colonists were drunk on whiskey and beer all the time. Insert Asimov’s famous quote about America always having an anti-science undercurrent.
But even with that, we had elected leaders and a system of politics that generally worked to keep the country moving forward (with important and horrible counter-examples). Leaders saw the importance of the system and of setting a good example.
Too much of our politics is small and petty now, and causing great damage by not fixing the real problems we face. We don’t need new physics or new inventions to address gun violence or the injustice of sending innocent people to decades of incarceration or death, and all the rest. We can solve these problems through incremental continuing progress.
tl;dr – Flawed people can still do good things if they are willing to work on it. But leaders must be willing to lead in a sensible direction.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
This is the wrong approach. The public doesn’t need to be convinced. They are convinced.
The problem is that Democrats, and other groups aren’t willing to force these changes in the law to take place. The NEA and AFT can do this by going on strike, effective immediately. Lawmakers will have all summer to fix this shit before families are impacted, but teachers will not return in the fall without adequate safety. Universal background checks, red flag laws, etc.
That’s 4.7 million educators. CFT can throw in another 300K. The public is long convinced of the need for change. Stop trying to convince them and act.
dnfree
Our daughter who teaches elementary school is distraught, not for the first time.
Kattails
Maybe a t-shirt that reads “WELL f*cking REGULATED” or “what part of WELL REGULATED do you refuse to grasp?” Or definitions of “regulated” and “militia”.
Fuck these assholes.
Rusty
In 1986 I was a sophomore in college, that year a student at my former middle school in Portland CT was angry that the principal told him he couldn’t wear a hat in school. So he went home, got his father’s assault rifle from the back of the closet door, came back shot at the principal, wounded a secretary and killed the head of maintenance in the school system. Then he took a classroom of students hostage until his aunt convinced him to throw the gun out the window. My father had been the superintendent up to the year before and knew everyone involved, the head of maintenance even did some side work on our house.
At a previous job, the attorney in the office next to mine had a son at Simons Rock in 1992. His son was shot and nearly died when another student with an assault rifle killed two and wounded three others.
In 2011, I spent 5 weeks as a jury member hearing a federal drug conspiracy case in Rochester NY. The heart of the case was a suburbanite traded his assault rifle for drugs with an inner city gang. The rifle ended up being used to shoot up a house party that had rival drug gang members. Fifteen year old Carmela Rogers was killed along with several others wounded. I never want to sit through the testimony again of a witness describing a 15 year old bleeding to death.
I am a very boring average American. How the hell should I know so many people shot by just assault rifles? It’s totally out of control. Our culture and obsession with guns is beyond pathological. It’s going to be a nasty fight but the soul of this country is at stake.
phdesmond
‘@dnfree Her life could be on the line one day. no wonder her being driven to distraction.
JWR
The Man-Chin speaketh:
.
“…The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity,” Manchin told reporters, repeating an argument he has made on other issues, including on voting rights. The senator has emphasized the importance of protecting the input of the minority in the Senate.
“You would think there would be enough common sense” in the Senate to pass gun control legislation without nuking the filibuster, Manchin added.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/joe-manchin-says-hed-anything-023225213.html
.
So, according to Joey, the murder of 19 kids and 2 teachers isn’t already “total insanity”, not even worthy of a simple carve-out? Good to know. I guess. But damn, I so wish we could just boot his sorry ass clear out of the Senate.
phdesmond
‘@Rusty:
that’s eloquent.
prostratedragon
@Tazj: And controlling ammunition. It’ll take a while to bite, but will have an effect much sooner than doing nothing does.
wmd
I’m a gun owner.
I’ve been saying lets require any auto-loading firearm to be banned from being kept at home. If you want to shoot it in competition it can be kept at the armory at a licensed firing range.
This means all semi automatic rifles, handguns, shotguns. I have a .22 target pistol that would need to leave my safe and be kept at an armory, even though it is very unlikely to be used in a mass shooting.
Double action revolvers should be kept at an armory.
Bolt action rifles, lever action rifles. single action revolvers, muzzle loaders and any single shot firearm that isn’t regulated by NFA may be OK to be kept in a home safe. None of them have a high rate of fire possible.
cain
‘@wmd perhaps a law requiring that such guns must kept in an armory ?
CaseyL
I find myself getting really angry at Biden and Schumer. They want to restore and preserve norms that the GOP stomps all over when it’s in power. I understand that. But I can’t tolerate it any longer. Their desire to maintain institutional integrity is just another thing the GOP can use to keep bleeding the country to death – literally.
I want Democrats to use power the way the GOP does. Without compunction or mercy or worries about norms. GET SHIT DONE. If this latest atrocity results in nothing changing, nothing happening, there really is no reason to keep voting for these people.
Words I thought I would never, ever say. But the rage is just consuming me.
Chetan Murthy
CaseyL: Someone said recently that the Dems don’t really control the Senate. After all, if the President’s party cannot get their main policy agenda thru the Senate, how can you say they control it?
Cinemansion, man. Cinemansion and all who ride in them. Epitaph for a Republic.
CaseyL
Chetan Murphy – I said to use power like a GOPer. That means blackmail, threats, withholding funds from their state. Set fire to his fucking houseboat, and spike her margaritas with cyanide. Do even worse to McConnell and his merry band of parasites. I honestly don’t care at this point.
Chetan Murthy
CaseyL: I think they’re afraid he’ll switch to being a GrOPer.
Ksmiami
This country is a shitpile and getting worse. Kill off the Republican Party or the country dies. That’s where we are
CaseyL
Chetan Murphy – Then let him. And then open a DoJ investigation into every dollar he’s ever gotten or spent.
Every GOPer, and Sinemansion, is a traitor to the country. Treat them as such.
Amir Khalid
‘@CaseyL
It would be a very bad thing if Democrats decided to give up on rationality and start racing the GOP to the bottom on nihilism. There would be no adults left in American politics, just two rival gangs of unruly children. Is that really what you want?
Chetan Murthy
CaseyL: Amir has the right of it. There are levels beneath which we cannot sink, or …. we’ll be just as bad as the GrOPers. There’s this argument that we can wield these weapons in the cause of Right And Good And Holy, and we won’t be tainted, won’t be corrupted, won’t end up evil. But history tells us that we *will* end up corrupted, evil.
Notwithstanding, I am *incredibly* pissed-off that we can’t do more. Specifically, Merrick Garland and the do-nothing DOJ.
CaseyL
Chetan Murphy and Amir Khalid – Then the US is done, but at least we’ll still have clean hands. Okay.
Chetan Murthy
CaseyL: I’m not disagreeing with your conclusion. Or as Murc of the eponymous Law put it: “it’s a lead-pipe cinch that sometime in the next 15yr, the GrOPers will take the trifecta, and once they do, it’s curtains for American Democracy”.
way2blue
What I would like President Biden to say is:
‘If you’re done with excuses and kicking solutions to gun violence down the road; then call your elected representatives and tell them. Here is a website that lists their contect information, state by state. If you’re done with elected officials kicking solutions down the road, run for office. Here is a website that lists contact information for organizations in your state that will help with tools and funding to be successful’
If we wait for the current crop of elected officials to do *something*, *nothing* will happen in most states. Or nationwide. As a start, let’s ban assault-type weapons; rapid fire weapons…
Ruckus
Amir Khalid 11:15
Those were deadly 6 shooters. Not friendly AR-15 or 15 shot 9mm semi auto pistols. And 18 yr olds are not allowed to drink, like in all those saloons… It’s totally different today. What with all the AR-15s or 9mm pistols, we all need to have them with us at all times or we’ll have nervous breakdowns from the withdrawal pains of not being able to shoot anyone we want, whenever, wherever we want.
Fucking guns.
If you live in a cabin, your nearest neighbor is 40 miles away and you have to hunt for your food, sure you might need a gun. But you won’t pick a gun that is basically only good for shooting humans because there aren’t any to hunt.
Fucking guns.
I worked at a business that was located at the edge of Watts, for 27 yrs and the scariest people were the fucking Newton St precinct LAPD cops. And I’m as pale as Casper. You know, the fucking ghost.
Fucking guns.
livewyre
Reluctant to delurk when things are so tense, but on the other hand, what better time? Although this will most likely be stuck in the lint trap anyway.
Going through this thread has been an experience, especially without a pie filter. Confession: Even as central as this community has been for me, I’ve grown addicted to blocking out the veins of despair and retribution and even extinction fantasy that run through us, especially in the shadow of a horror like this. Getting shocked each time the filter slipped may not have been an improvement. So one might see how this could be a bit of a change.
Now, given what’s happened, I’ve grown to see how important it is to take account of all of that catharsis. Things matter because of being cared about, otherwise there wouldn’t be such a reaction. And it’s exactly in the heat of such a moment that one can become convinced that it’s down to whether to fight or die. Even if it wouldn’t help – maybe more so for having nothing left to lose.
Among the problems being, of course, that if killing off all the bad people worked, it probably would have already. And on the other side of the coin, if it made no difference, there’d probably be no one left to talk about it. Which leaves us here in the middle between victory and annihilation, not sure how far from either side or whether they’re pinching together as we go.
So this leaves (maybe not only) me with the question, what does it take?
What is it that will actually get us to the point of not having to struggle for the right to not be slaughtered or incinerated by total surprise, let alone the right not to have to worry about it?
That’s the difference to make, I think. The difference between Us and Them, or more likely between the way forward and the way down. There’s always worse to do. The void is always available. But what else might yet be? Let’s look for that – assuming we care enough to be upset about it.
Of course there’s always the greater question of what we are, where we stand, what we call ourselves, what the sticky note on the mirror says. What side are we on? Who are we calling on to speak for us or do violence in our name, to use words or force, to shoot or vote? Are we Democrats? Progressives? Nobody? Whose difference is it to make, anyway? What kind of leadership or membership is it that we need? Who are we waiting for? But maybe those questions can wait for a bit of healing. I for one could use it.
Jay
‘@Ruckus,
“We” get up every day, and try to be “good people”. That’s about as good as it gets, from helping somebody load their groceries in their car, to just trying to give our best advise.
Sadly, some days, because of our “own stuff”, we just walk on by.
Jay
Sorry for the FTFHNYT link, but,
ghost cat
Late last night when I was watching the news, one of the reporters on the scene said that there were still parents who had not yet been notified that their children were dead. The reason was something that I don’t really like thinking about. Many of the bodies of the children that were killed could not be identified because they were too badly mutilated. That’s what an AR-15 does. So officials were making identifications based on the clothing and shoes they wore and DNA samples collected from their parents. If this is what the families of these children and the people of Uvalde have to live with, I think every single fking Republican senator should have to see this too. And all of the fking Republican governors and state legislators that have been making it easier to buy a gun than get a drivers license. They should all be required to see in person what the bullets fired from an AR-15 do to a child’s body. This is the least of the pain that I wish on them right now. After so many of these mass shootings with AR-15s, I’m beginning to think that these images should no longer be hidden from public view. But I’m not too confident that it would make a difference with people who are ruled by gun insanity.
Gvg
Emmet Tills mom had an open casket funeral so people could see what was done to a child. It didn’t get results immediately but history said it made a difference. Not looking forward to it myself…would not know how to suggest it to these families, but I think if it was my child, and they had to use DNA to identify the body…I would be screaming raging mad as well as grief stricken and want people like Abbot to have to face it.
dnfree
‘@phdesmond
My teacher daughter thinks of her own life and she thinks desperately of her own children who attend different schools, but top of mind is wondering how she could protect the children she’s responsible for. She’s a reading specialist. She teaches in what is essentially a converted closet. There’s no place to hide for either her or her young students.
Ha
Never forget that the Supreme Uncourt has a history of undoing gun control legislation. So, we would not only have to take back Congress, but change the Supreme Court. And, do this somehow forever – as Roe VS. Wade has shown us.
Jinchi
‘@CaseyL: “I want Democrats to use power the way the GOP does. Without compunction or mercy or worries about norms. GET SHIT DONE.”
I agree. Screw the norms. Government should work.
And the Democrats don’t have to burn the place down. The filibuster is the main thing standing in the way of dramatic change, especially with regard to gun laws.
During the Obama years, too many Democrats spoke with an absurd passion for the filibuster, like Manchin. Trump and McConnell cured them of that nonsense. Two more Senators to counter Manchin and Sinema is all it would take to get major change in this country.
dnfree
Here’s what my teacher daughter posted to Facebook.
I sit in a school today willing to take a bullet for any one of these students but sick to my stomach that it should even be a part of my job description/thought in my mind. If you call yourself pro-life but you don’t care about gun control, you are not pro-life. If you only care about an unborn child but not a child who went to his last day of school just to have it end this way, you are not pro-life. You are pro-you. You are pro-it’ll never happen to me so why should I care if it is happening to others. You are pro-turn a blind eye to reality.