This is an important part of returning some sanity: Stigmatize the gun culture. There was once a time when the gun industry itself wanted nothing to do with the weird fixation on things like the AR. (Read @ryandbusse on this.) https://t.co/Tazsf5vMHk
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 11, 2023
I was arguing for this idea on Sadly, No a good 15 years ago (Remember when people smoked in *maternity wards*?… ) The other commentors scoffed, but certainly things haven’t *improved* (especially for young people) since then…
New Pew/CDC data: Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens rose 50% in two years—up 100% in 10 years
This is the highest level of gun violence against children recorded this century, and more than 2X higher than the 2012 low. pic.twitter.com/yeheY81X6p
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) April 10, 2023
Here you go. pic.twitter.com/g1nEWtc7yR
— Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky) April 10, 2023
There are too many guns floating around where kids can get their hands on them. And the guns themselves are getting more dangerous…
A new study has found that fatalities from gun violence in the U.S. have increased over time, with more victims dying at the scene of a shooting before they can be transferred to medical treatment facilities. https://t.co/8OzAvAzF9W
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 9, 2023
Case in point: … Now everybody will remember my name!
A 23-year-old bank employee armed with a rifle shot dead five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville while livestreaming the attack on social media, police said https://t.co/iXDUuSVSvZ pic.twitter.com/hJlsujUhlE
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 11, 2023
People are cracking on this but I think it's important to highlight when someone isn't an easily-dismissed basement-dwelling loser.
You have to break the narratives until the only constant that remains is the guns. https://t.co/KpOhtvU5UT
— Jack Walsh (@JackWaltimore) April 11, 2023
The AR-15-style rifle used by a gunman to kill five people at a bank in Louisville on Monday morning will be auctioned off to the public in the future, according to Mayor Craig Greenberg. https://t.co/Sdv9I6L1ej
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 11, 2023
Baud
“Slightly used.”
Keith P.
@Baud: I wonder if Harlan Crow puts in a bid or two.
Suzanne
@Keith P.: Maybe George Zimmerman.
sun
Make NRA gun safety rules federal law. Then losing control of your gun isn’t an oopsie; it is a crime. And you don’t get to have a gun anymore.
CliosFanBoy
Damn, that was a great blog. I still miss it and Tbogg.
SpaceUnit
So Kentucky has a law that requires firearms used in mass murders to be immediately auctioned off to the public?
That’s fucking insane.
bbleh
There are far too many Americans for whom their gun is an essential totem of their masculine identity. They have many rationales — “protection,” “respect,” “rights,” “preparation,” etc. — but even if you could convince them that each and every one was misguided, they’d still react to the idea of gun control as though it were enforced sterilization.
It’s either overwhelming numbers or a die-off of the present culture of “toxic” — ie, desperately immature — masculinity, and neither is going to be quick or easy.
Just call me Mr. Sunshine.
Michael Bersin
Twelve-year-olds and marriageability.
Continuing to defend the indefensible, right wingnut Missouri state senator Mike Moon (r) steps in it.
You might want to stop digging, Mike (r)
Suzanne
@bbleh: You’re 100% right.
karen marie
@Baud: From that isolated quote, I was under the mis-impression that the mayor was boasting about it. Turns out, not so much.
Raoul Paste
There is something so wrong about auctioning off that gun. Instead of erasing the loser who murdered people, now his gun has an identity.. You’d expect to see this in a dark comedy
Jay C
@SpaceUnit:
IIRC, the applicable KY law is that murder weapons aren’t auctioned off “right away”, but only after they are no longer relevant as evidence, I.e. after the case in which they are involved is “finalized” – so probably not any time soon.
Still not quite right, though….
ColoradoGuy
Given the provenance, that AR-15 will fetch a high price at auction.
SpaceUnit
@Jay C:
I guess they don’t want these guns to have any “down time”.
That’s some crazy hillbilly bullshit. If I lived in Illinois I’d be petitioning the governor to build the wall.
Jackie
@Suzanne: Kyle Rittenhouse.
Dan B
The ad campaign Cesca calls for seems great. We have to create a rebrand so that guns are seen as a crutch for guys who don’t believe they’re “real men”. Penus extenders is one brand that already exists. AG’s filing suit would rapidly arrive at the Extreme Court. That should be avoided. First create a very vocal groundswell.
Poe Larity
Every Gun Is Sacred.
Sanjeevs
Feinstein quitting Judiciary Committee
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3947985-feinstein-asks-for-judiciary-replacement-after-calls-for-resignation/
trollhattan
Amidst everything else, DiFi swears she’s coming back, “real soon, y’all.”
Jeffro
How about common-sense gun safety laws AND gun-shaming AND whatever the fuck else?
What do you say, psycho minority-of-even-GOP voters? You’re the only ones holding us up here, after all.
Jeffro
@Sanjeevs: thank god. this is the important part.
sab
There is legislation moving through the Ohio legislature to lower the minimum age of police hires from 21 to 18 because 18 year olds are mature enough to be cops, and local governments are having trouvle recruiting.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Smoking in OB wards? How about a 14 year old smoking in the pediatric ward of the hospital?
/raises hand
The 70’s was a weird decade…
lowtechcyclist
Gotta call bullshit on the notion that this matters:
Many teens feel suicidal at one time or another. I certainly did. But in most cases, the urge passes if there’s not a quick way of making it happen. Like a gun.
So it’s not like a teen (or younger) gun suicide is a death that would have happened anyway. A teen gun suicide is a totally preventable death.
And thank you, Dad, for never owning a gun. I’ll always be grateful. (He was a conservative Republican – voted for Goldwater, even – but he was quite rationally aware that a gun in the house was more likely to kill or wound a family member than an assailant.)
Lulymay
@ColoradoGuy: Yeah! I guess we should all applaud that this particular gun has finally “won” his stripes, right?
Jeffro
I see the WaPo’s two mainline GOP twits Thiessen and Olsen are in full panic mode tonight:
Thiessen: Swing Voters Are Just Fine With Trump Being Charged (Even Though They Think It’s Politically Motivated). That’s a Warning to the GOP
(translation: abandon ship! abandon ship!)
Oh really, Marc? They don’t believe he committed any crimes?? (Also, the blessed list doesn’t ‘go on’, for FSM’s sake. The orange clown did nothing but golf and tweet all day)
Fucking hysterical! “If trumpov wasn’t trumpov, by golly, even though voters kicked him out, they’d welcome him right back in!” LOL
Olsen: Abortion Is Not The Magic Bullet Democrats Think It Is
Hear that, Repubs? Just “keep your cool” (and keep trying to ‘fudge it like Youngkin’*)
*I’m totally copyrighting that btw!
Keep pushing, Dems, we’ve got ’em on the ropes!
Jackie
@Sanjeevs: That’s a step in the right direction! I wonder who will be appointed in her place?
Tony G
@bbleh: Unfortunately, I think that you’re correct. I despise the NRA and similar groups, and I despise the gun industry — but I don’t think that they are the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is the millions of Americans who have developed a fetish for guns — and in particular a fetish for military weapons like the AR-15 (and for military grade body armor too). If (by some magic) the gun industry were to start an ad campaign promoting “responsible” gun ownership and mocking the “GI Joe” gun fetishists, the fetishists would reject and denounce such advertising and take their business elsewhere. There’s a deep sickness in the culture of the United States, and I don’t think that any advertising campaign would correct that. Most AR-15 owners are just insecure, pathetic men who are not really going to shoot anybody — but the widespread availability of these weapons amplify the lethality of the small number of people who are shooters.
AlaskaReader
And just what did your Senator say?
NotMax
@ColoradoGuy
Which face of Fox will put in the winning bid and proceed to caress it on camera?
Tony G
@lowtechcyclist: Yes. I had plenty of “suicidal ideation” when I was a lonely teenage boy — but I never acted on it. If there had been a gun in the house, maybe I would have. Instead, I had a chance to grow up and get over it.
Anne Laurie
Yeah, that’s the point. Studies show that a suicidal teenager who has to — from one British example — blister-pop a few dozen paracetamol tablets, is a teenager who has a good chance of not dying, because the impulse passes or they get distracted.
Guns make it too damned easy (and not just for teens) for a fleeting impulse to become a permanent tragedy.
Jackie
@Jackie: After reading the article, I see DiFi’s requesting a “temporary replacement” for her spot until she returns.🤪
dmsilev
Huh.
Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says
Emphasis added. One guess as to their political leanings.
AlaskaReader
@Tony G:
The NRA, and similar groups along with the gun lobby and the right wing in general, are absolutely responsible for grooming those fetishists.
The psychopathy had a source, it’s right in front of you and you want to imagine they aren’t responsible?
karen marie
@trollhattan: Nobody misses Mitch. Who’s acting minority leader? Is it Thune?
McConnell was admitted to the hospital on March 8 and hasn’t been seen or heard from other than a claim that he was “in rehab” following a “concussion.”
It’s been three weeks since a flurry of stories claiming that McConnell’s “alive and well” and “eager to return.”
Has everyone – including the media – forgotten about him?
different-church-lady
They’re building a special private circle of hell for Wayne LaPierre.
different-church-lady
@Tony G:
You think they did that without the NRA’s help?
Sanjeevs
Discord server guy won’t be getting any pardon
different-church-lady
@karen marie:
Maybe bringing the south back into the union wasn’t such a hot idea after all.
Ksmiami
@Jeffro: fortunately the average Joe Bob gop guy in state houses aren’t listening to these guys
different-church-lady
@Sanjeevs: Maybe the internet wasn’t such a hot idea after all.
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: exactly- time to move the good ppl and US military assets out of most Southern states and let them go.
bbleh
@dmsilev: yeah this … sucks. And waddaya wanna bet the guy was never flagged as a security risk — indeed the contrary?
Far too many people have clearances, in part because far too much information is classified.
I’m gonna guess this sort of thing has happened many times, but here it’s appeared in a new form — gamer culture! I suppose it’s better than running to the Russians as a form of idealistic protest but … blech. I hope they put him away for a good long while.
Another Scott
@Tony G: I think it’s good to remember that culture is changing all the time, but change is always slow and difficult.
My dad’s 1955 Chevy didn’t come with seat belts – he added them when he bought it from the original owner in the early 1960s. I remember when there were supposedly huge controversies about requiring seat belt usage. Or not having smoking ads on TV. Or stigmatizing drunk driving. Or requiring motorcycle helmets. Or being 21 to drink alcohol.
Yeah, one ad campaign probably isn’t going to do it by itself. But it’s the type of thing that needs to be done as part of the overall effort.
Normal people working with normal people to change what’s acceptable is the way to lasting progress. It takes longer than passing a law, of course.
Cheers,
Scott.
Daoud bin Daoud
@NotMax: Ooh! Ooh! We could watch Laura Ingraham use the murder machine as a dildo on TV. That should help her ratings!
different-church-lady
@Another Scott:
I think we’re the only species that constantly invents new ways of killing ourselves.
different-church-lady
@Daoud bin Daoud:
Why are you doing this to us?
Daoud bin Daoud
@karen marie: really, does anybody miss Moscow Mitch?
Dan B
@different-church-lady: The NRA waged a relentless media campaign to make guns the go-to macho accessory. We need a relentless media campaign to make guns the accessory of weak guys.
Jackie
@karen marie: McConnell who?
😉
Daoud bin Daoud
@different-church-lady: sorry, my sense of humor is rather dark.
Honus
I still miss Sadly, no. A mention there of Cole’s conversion on the road the Shinnston, WV is what sent me here.
Dan B
@Another Scott: Very well put. When these campaigns work we don’t notice them. It’s like fish not noticing water. The campaigns need to be omnipresent and relentless to work.
Craig
@Sanjeevs: Fuck DiFi. Just fucking resign. She’s worse than useless. Plenty of better people who never flew the Confederate flag over SF can be my Senator.
Citizen Alan
@sab: Well, we have to give the high school dropouts something to do with their free time. Not all of them will be able to make it to congress like lauren boebert.
C Stars
@Dan B:
make guns the accessory of weak guys.
I think there’s already a somewhat prevalent public impression that guns are the accessory of stupid guys–or stupid people–based on all the horrific news stories of children shooting themselves, or each other, or their parents, or their teachers, with unsecured guns they got at home.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne: I’d forgotten that bastard’s name.
JoyceH
@Dan B:
We definitely need to do something to make the gun fetishists as beyond the pale as the drunk drivers and sexual harassers are now. And I’m old enough to remember when drunk driving and sexual harassment were considered appropriate topics for ‘humorous’ skits on variety shows. Granted, there are still drunk drivers and sexual harassers, but there are, I think, fewer, and the ones left aren’t just laughed off when they’re exposed. We need to reach the point where nobody would DREAM of posing with their guns for the family Christmas card.
Delk
Everybody imagines the gunshots they see on tv. There might be a bit of blood splatter but the bullet goes in and leaves a nice little round hole in the body. There needs to be giant posters of what a kid actually looks like after one of those rifles makes hamburger of its body. Parents of slain children need to show what happened to their kids.
Also, every drag queen needs an AR-15 as part of their outfits.
Dan B
@C Stars: You don’t want to use just one term, like weak. There are plenty of descriptors like stupid and dumb that would be good. We just need to incorporate them in stories and repeat, repeat, repeat.
RaflW
@trollhattan: Wow, Dean Phillips (D-MN) is often staking out quite moderate positions. He’s a decent guy, and not a prima donna who uses centrism to puff himself or cause problems, but rather I think he is genuinely a moderate, cautious person.
If he called for Feinstein to resign, that seems at least a little seismic.
NotMax
Even then they were blatantly offensive. #1 – #2 – #3*
*(0:00 to 1:59) Recognize him?
NickM
Maybe the anti-gun campaign should focus on demonstrating to women how much more dangerous it is for them if their intimate partner owns a gun.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
Nope.
To those who collect lots of guns, they are phallic symbols. The more one has the more they think they need to make up for whatever they think is wrong with their junk. They may not even see it or understand this themselves but that’s what it is. They would never admit this consciously but dig deep that’s the cause of having 4/5 or 20 or more guns.
coin operated
@Daoud bin Daoud:
You’ve brought gun-fetish porn to it’s logical conclusion. Golf clap…
Redshift
@Tony G:
Millions of Americans spontaneously developing a fetish does not fit the definition of a root cause. I don’t mean we should let any of those bozos of the hook, but increasingly insane marketing from manufacturers of guns and amateur military gear is absolutely part of the problem, as is deliberate radicalization by the NRA and Russia.
On top of that we have deliberate undermining of belief in institutions by conservative politicians and media, following a common authoritarian pattern of telling people they have to protect themselves because the world is very dangerous and they can’t count on anyone else, which splinters community to make people easier marks. (And at the same time demanding worship for cops and the military…)
bbleh
@Tony G: @different-church-lady: @Another Scott: @Dan B: @C Stars: @JoyceH: having several multi-gun owners in my family, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that trying to marginalize ALL gun owners, or gun ownership in general (eg they’re all “gun nuts” or “fetishists”) would almost certainly fail. There really ARE responsible gun owners — even if probably far too many of them, and in many cases for what I consider pretty shaky reasons — and deliberately making them enemies or villains almost certainly wouldn’t help. Indeed, I think that plays right into the hands of people like the NRA, by giving them grist for the paranoia mill.
I think instead the focus ought to be separating the responsible ones from the irresponsible ones, eg emphasizing that gun safety — not gun “control” — and responsible gun ownership are in everyone’s interest, with which I think most of them would agree almost automatically — they don’t like random mass shootings any more than anyone else does — and that there are reasonable steps that can be taken to keep guns out of the hands of irresponsible, unsafe people. And importantly, the emphasis is still on guns: there’s no distracting babble about, eg, mental health care (which of course is the worst kind of bad-faith red herring). Get the majority of gun owners on the side of “responsibility” and “safety,” rather than tarring them all as “gun nuts.”
bbleh
@Ruckus: uh … I thought that was pretty much exactly what I was saying?
Craig
Sebastian
We should let go of the term “assault rifles” and call them what they are: “school shooter rifles”
planetjanet
@Tony G: There very much was a change in strategy by the gun manufacturing. The Washington Post has been running a great series on gun violence. One was the very graphic marketing angles. The article at this gift link is from a seven month investigation into the origins and clearly points to the marketing strategy.
https://wapo.st/41nl2f1
Carlo Graziani
@bbleh: I think this is almost right, but not quite.
The thing one should recognize about guns is that they are fun. Marksmanship is fun. The technology is fun. Even hunting is fun, and if one eats what one hunts, more ethical than buying industrial meat at the grocery store (disclaimer: I eat meat, necessarily grocery-store bought, although I’ve also roasted whole pigs and goats, and even de-boned several pigs for porchetta. Which is to say, other than the trouble, inconvenience and expense, I have no problem with hunting).
The truly toxic part of the American view of gun ownership is not related to any of that. It’s the idea of a right to lethal self-defense. That notion—that there are circumstances where one has the right to kill another human—has wormed its way into our politics, and poisons the entire conversation about guns.
This “right to murder” is, among other things, very obviously supported by racial animus, which drives White fear and anxiety. Note well that Black citizens, unlike Whites, are placed at extreme risk in encounters with law enforcement should they choose to exercise their right to concealed or open carry.
Isolating and stigmatizing the right to kill out of fear from other weapons ownership justifications would really clarify the argument. No other civilized nation on Earth recognizes that right. My long-time wish is that this toxic nugget at the heart of the gun “debate” should be explicitly called out by political actors. Publically labeling the NRA as a “Murderer’s Rights Organization” would be an excellent start, in my view.
different-church-lady
@JoyceH: As of only six years ago you could be a sexual harasser and yet still be president.
NobodySpecial
It’s really simple for me. Ammosexuals are a tiny minority even among gun owners, with outsized influence only because the NRA has become a lobbying group for hostile nations.
Simply put it to the reasonable ones that if they don’t find some way to get back control, the large majority that doesn’t own guns and hates guns will cheerfully stop worrying about what they think and will take action the first chance they get to every gun owner’s dismay.
If every time you offer a compromise, the other side just digs in their heels, eventually you stop trying to compromise with them.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Jay C:
Greenberg is incredibly pissed about it.
different-church-lady
@bbleh:
I am not entirely anti-firearm. But I am quite entirely anti- NRA as constituted by the leadership of Wayne LaPierre.
Matt McIrvin
@Carlo Graziani:
I get the impression that the majority of gun deaths are ultimately consequences of the idea that having a gun for self-defense makes you safer. I know lots of otherwise perfectly reasonable people who have bought into this despite all statistics to the contrary. But having a gun for that purpose means that it has to be available for ready use at all times, which outside of a highly controlled situation is just counter to gun safety.
I can’t entirely dismiss the idea that there is a collective right to lethal self-defense. But I do think it needs to be organized, collective, and tightly controlled lest it turn on you. The idea that an ideal society is some powderkeg cold war of all against all is just insanity.
Narya
@bbleh: with you on this, as someone who also knows multiple responsible gun owners and users.
jonas
@Tony G:
Your point that the demand for assault weapons means a greater chance of one of these weapons falling into the hands of a psychopath is right on. But the NRA *is* very much responsible for this. In the 80’s, it started partnering with gun manufacturers to create new markets for firearms. Sport shooting and hunting with a boring ol’ 30-30 were on the decline. So you start seeing this push to get people interested in military-style assault weapons and the NRA is right there along with the weapons makers convincing members that they need these weapons not to hunt or anything, but to assert their 2A rights to own weapons and pwn the libs. They’re they ultimate “fuck you” gun — to the government, to the damn hippies, to anyone who says you’re a pathetic pussy and not a real man. If you look at NRA propaganda over the past 30-40 years, all that old “responsible firearm ownership” shit is long gone — it’s all about cultivating the militia lifestyle and stockpiling as many weapons as possible. Also, see the full page Remington Bushmaster ad on page 25 of American Rifleman! That’s no coincidence.
Eolirin
@bbleh: This might help with the murder stats, some, though I expect, much less than we’d want it to, but it won’t help with the suicide stats very much.
And for adults at least, those dwarf the homicide numbers by a large amount, and are mostly preventable deaths, and mostly not people with a history of mental health issues.
The problem with any kind of gun ownership is that people can be safe and responsible right up until the moment they aren’t, and then it’s too late.
There’s only one way to deal with this that lets people keep guns and that’s to ban storing guns with ammo and making it illegal to take ammo in any quantity outside of ranges or sites set up to enable hunting, and forcing all of it to be accounted for at all times.
It’ll be just as easy to ban them all as pull that off though.
But guns are fundamentally incompatible with public health and safety otherwise and there’s no way to fix that or segregate out people who are safe to have them and people who aren’t in a way that’s going to work. Suicide and murder are typically impulse driven and anyone can get depressed enough or angry, or scared, enough under the right circumstances even if they’ve never gotten there before in their lives. If they have access to a gun and ammo when that happens, it’s going to end badly. If they don’t they probably get over it before they do anything.
Carlo Graziani
@Matt McIrvin:
You should not dismiss that idea. It is, in fact the entire point of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
That would be the only amendment of the Bill of Rights that opens with an apology,
…rather than an open and forthright declaration of a Constitutional right (” Congress shall make no law…”)
Obviously, and I mean obviously, the Framers were writing about collective self-defense here. What they were guaranteeing was a State right to form a militia, not an individual right to commit murder. They were writing about what today we call the National Guard.
Want to be an Originalist? Bring that hammer down on the textfucking assholes who converted that amendment into a perfect right to murder a fellow citizen.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Cough, cough, Russian money laundering, cough, ahem
Eolirin
@Narya: I would suggest that US style gun ownership is inherently reckless and irresponsible and that such people do not exist in this country.
Unless they don’t own ammo and don’t keep it with their guns, and there’s other, impartial, third party, humans who are going to get between them and being able to use their weapons on themselves or other people, they at best create cover for every other instance of something horrible happening, and are at worst a single breakdown from becoming that something horrible themselves. And in any event trying to protect the “innocent” gun owner that’s going to be responsible and safe makes it impossible to actually solve the problem.
This isn’t any different than vaccination. It doesn’t work if it’s not more or less universal. And I don’t think it’s reasonable to continue to defend a hobby you enjoy over stopping tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths; anyone willing to make that choice is actually a monster.
It doesn’t have to be like this, the Swiss show a way to avoid having to go there, but culturally it’s going to be this way here. This is ultimately an all or nothing struggle and there isn’t a way to compromise on just getting rid of the damn guns that’s going to work here. We will continue to have massive unnecessary death as long as we allow access.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@karen marie:
McConnell is a Republican and on their team, so the media is hands-off with him right now.
Someone ought to toss the media a worthless bone and leak a fake story that Hillary is deathly ill.
mrmoshpotato
It’s apparently a state law which makes it even more ghastly.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@dmsilev:
I haven’t been paying attention to this story. What exactly does “grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia” mean? Is the spying on allies true? What are these “diplomatic fires” for the WH and how serious are they?
Kelly
@Carlo Graziani: Guns can be a lot of fun. My Dad had handloading equipment when I was a teen. As a science nerd I spent a lot of time with the tables in the handloading manuals fascinated by all the permutations of powder amount, powder type and bullets. Liked that more than hunting. Gradually quit hunting because I just wanted an aimless walk in the woods. One of my history teachers (also one of Dad’s hunting partners) at my 600 student high school collected guns. He still does. He has an AR as part of his collection of military rifles that span back to flintlocks. Most of his rifles are classic hunting rifles with meticulously maintained wood.
He finds the idea of a bunch of “black rifles” boring and weird.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Kelly:
Well, that’s obviously because he’s not a nutjob who wants to cosplay as a soldier aka be “tacticool”.
Both your father and your history teacher are people who appreciate guns as tools, appreciate they can fun to use in some circumstances, and in the case of your teacher, he likes to collect all sorts of firearms because he appreciates the historical value in them
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
“leaks”, real or not, pulling in everybody from Serbia to Egypt on one side or another, it’s pretty much a shit show, feeding Tankies and Vasnicks, US and NATO SOF forces in Ukraine,……..
“Clinton files” redux,……..
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Is any of it actually going to matter? It’s just a nothingburger, right? Your use of “shit show” makes it sound serious. Are there really US and NATO SOF in Ukraine?
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
bought some “tactical” underwear the other day. Supposed to help with sharts,……
tobie
@Jay: We don’t know if the documents were doctored. According to the Post, it was only when they appeared on Telegram, 4chan, and Twitter that doctoring became apparent. In their first iteration on Discord the docs seemed legit. This is at least what the Post says. We’ll likely never know the full story.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
at this point in time, any real information dates to January or older,
a bunch of it is probably manipulated disnifo,
it matters because eg, Egypt or Serbia. Real or not, it will be used by “players” to divide and weaken,
Who knew that a rissoto recipe could do so much damage,……..
Sister Golden Bear
@different-church-lady:
Will there be another race to
Come along and take over for us?
Maybe Martians could do
Better than we’ve done
We’ll make great pets
My friend says we’re like the dinosaurs
Only we are doing ourselves in
Much faster than they ever did
We’ll make great pets
“Pets” – Porn For Pyros
Jay
@tobie:
the first iteration on Discord was “wiped”, so was the 2nd,
it’s the third that was “caught”,……..
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Why are Egypt and Serbia so important?
Does it have to be the case that these leaks will be used/effective to divide and weaken?
What part about “genocidal war” don’t these people get?
tobie
Again, according to the Post, OG shared documents with his little gamer group that some in the group downloaded. I think the leak is a big deal and what’s interesting/unusual is that the motivation doesn’t seem to have been espionage but a mix of a gamer’s need to show off to his friends and a general rightwing, anti-govt sentiment.
Whether, as the Post again says, Russians have infiltrated the gamer community to capitalize on this feeling is another question.
tobie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): We learned from the leaks that Egypt would be willing to serve as a middleman and procure weapons for Russia that Russia otherwise wouldn’t have access to because of sanctions.
Of all the leaks, this one struck as the most plausible.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
so, the Serbia “thing” was a claim that Serbia was shipping arms to Ukraine. That’s not “popular” in Serbia. They arn’t.
the Egypt “thing” was that Egypt was sending thousands of artillary rounds to the Vatnicks, while OSINT have found no Egyptian weapons in Ukraine, on either side.
So yeah, divide, cause conflicts,
like risotto,………
Jay
@tobie:
nobody, so far, has the OG,
nobody has even the second OG,
what we do have is a 3rd Discord, and 4Chan.
To go to the way back machine, we know that the IRGC and Wikileaks mixed the real and the fake,
We also know that the Vatnicks and both International and domestic Nazi’s have used Discord to organize, hiding their communications inside a torrent stream of Gamers convo’s
RaflW
5th Circuit has put out late night news (Law Dork tweet).
Apparently, after skimming, so apologies if I’m wrong: The TX case is stayed during appeal only inasmuch as the 2000 FDA approval stands, but later easing of FDA rules are enjoined.
Mifepristone can be dispensed, but requires up to three medical appointments, and only through day 50 of pregnancy. Dispensing by mail would not be an option if tonight’s ruling holds in the interim. I’m sure much more will be written soon.
eta: Liz Dye says basically that the 5th Circuit (3 judges from it) are making it much harder to use but not banning it. Or, as she says “It.s B.S.”
Jinchi
I understand where you’re coming from, you’re right that a suicides aren’t deaths that would happen regardless, but the question matters for how we deal with gun violence.
If every gun related death was due to accidents, the solutions would focus on mandatory training and additional safety features.
If every gun death was murder, those solutions would be useless, better alternatives would be restricting the lethality of weapons available, and denial of licences to people with a history of domestic or criminal violence.
And for suicides, we’re talking about the need for better social services and finding ways to keep suicidal people away from easy access to lethal weapons.
Right now, society is overwhelmed with tragic incidents of murder/suicides at schools, churches and other public environments. Our current solutions are to build schools like prisons and debate how many 5th graders could overwhelm a heavily armed intruder. Our society is being held hostage by corrupt rightwingers who see repeated cases of slaughtered children and simply shrug.
Jinchi
Wow that video is the worst attempt at disguising a person’s identity that I have ever seen. The voice apparently isn’t modified at all, and the kid’s characteristic features are seen from several angles, with color. There’s zero chance he isn’t instantly identifiable to anyone who knows him.
NotMax
@RaflW
Dare one describe it as splitting the baby?
cain
@SpaceUnit:
How is that closure? Basically the gun is a powerful symbol that cannot be destroyed – instead it must be passed on to someone else – who, what? Put it on a mantlepiece and say “hey! this piece killed a bunch of people! I rub the handle on my ass luck before I leave home”
RaflW
@NotMax: Oy.
It strikes me as an extremely political decision, one that significantly restricts pharmaceutical abortion while avoiding the ‘total ban’ position that at least some anti-abortion pundits have recently fretted about.
In states where abortion is legal, I’m presuming this will mean more procedural abortions. And in many of these states, providers are already struggling with demand since they’re taking in lots of border state patients.
This is all just preliminary till the appeal starts wending its way along. And the WA case is also pending.
TriassicSands
But proven effective for the job it was made to do — kill people.
I would never use a slogan implying guns are for adults. Sure, they should only be in the hands of adults and a very limited number of those.
But in our gun culture guns are actually for children — stunted, insecure adults looking to boost their self-esteem and crippling inadequacies. Sure there are exceptions, but not among the people, I mean, gun nuts who parade around in public with their loaded assault rifles pretended to GI Joe on the front lines.
People who worship guns are, in my mind, mentally ill by definition. Therefore, if we want to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, we have to take them away from virtually every person who has them, especially those with arsenals.
Exceptions? Sure, but not a lot. Guns in the US are easy to get because we make them easy to get. And then we blather on and on about how sacred the 2nd Amendment is, sacrificing children and innocent people on the altar of yet another false god.
Banning assault rifles and taking them out of circulation would be a monumental task and there would likely be a lot of casualties along the way as the gun nuts decided they need to defend their right to have weapons designed to kill people by killing people. But it would be easier than the Civil War or WWII. Along the way, we just might have to ignore the SCOTUS majority, which would be a bad thing in the same way that refusing to hold Trump accountable would be a bad thing. As with Trump, failing to do it is the worse alternative.
Lots of work would have to be done and we, the left, need to firmly control the House, Senate, and White House. One beginning move would be to tax WMDs at a crippling rate. And ammunition. Huge problems? Yup. But we’ve got to end this madness and leaving 400 million guns in the hands of civilians, many of whom are very dangerous people, has got to be unacceptable.
I can think of lots of things that could be done that might still allow people to, say, target shoot, but only with specific firearms and/or weapons owned and controlled by ranges. Weapons that never leave their home firing range. Bullets of course, would be priced according to one’s income and net wealth, so the rich wouldn’t have superior rights. Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk could buy one bullet for $10 billion dollars. Each subsequent bullet’s price would increase exponentially. (Only a little tongue in cheek.)
Ruckus
@bbleh:
Yes, sort of. Sometimes you have to come right out and say the actual word. Leave no doubt, no stone unturned. Sure it’s the obvious word but sometimes you have to leave zero doubt as to your meaning……
LiminalOwl
@bbleh: I don’t know of previous intersections with national security, but Gamergate was a significant thing some years back: a segment of the gamer community, especially (my impression) MMORPG players, coalesced into a a cesspool of toxic masculinity that radicalized incels and their ilk. They started with objections to the infiltration of (what is now disparaged as) “woke” culture and went straight ahead into rape threats and death threats against women in that community. I don’t see much mention these days—hopefully not because mass media decided that something “only” targeting women was unimportant—but they’re still around, and likely on Discord. I’m guessing there’s a connection.
rikyrah
@karen marie:
It’s not like he’s the Senate Minority Leader or anything.
Amazing how the MSM isn’t reporting on him.😒😒🙄🙄
LiminalOwl
@LiminalOwl: (too late to edit) And gee, who’d have thought that entertainment based on use of weapons in fantasy would feed into real-life gun fetishism and misogyny?
among other souces: WIRED, ”How the Far Right Exploded on Steam and Discord”
AM in NC
Like you, AL, I’ve long wondered why Bloomberg or other gun safety groups didn’t fund a massive PR campaign making gun ownership associated with being scared babies. Have the hottest young stars of the day talk about how owning a gun makes you look weak because, “if I or my grandma can walk outside without a gun and not feel scared, why can’t you, supposedly manly man?” Then I thought that would be putting an almost literal target on these women’s backs and understood the reticence, perhaps.
But still, if young women and action hero sports hero dudes started making ad after ad talking about the pathetic ness of gun owners, I think it would make a serious difference moving forward. And then have buy-back/melt-down programs going too so that when a young guy inherits his older relative’s arsenal, he both have a disincentive to keep the guns and an incentive to get rid of them.
Betty
@Another Scott: Each of those safety campaigns was stymied by the relevant industry. Never leave out the money part when talking about why the changes were controversial.
Paul in KY
@ColoradoGuy: I first hope the law is changed and the weapon melted down. If it has to be sold, I hope there is no identification of what it was used for.
Paul in KY
@bbleh: The only real solution is to remove the already-there assault weapons from the owners. IMO, that can be done with a well funded buyback program.