In an emotional moment, Rep. Jared Golden apologized for opposing an assault weapons ban, said he’ll now support one, and asked his community for forgiveness in the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Maine. #BanAssaultWeaponsNow pic.twitter.com/pdXv9ybTXl
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) October 26, 2023
After hearing about the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, the city where he teaches, “I felt, for the first time … that I was part of the reason America is a country where [public spaces] are all too often shooting galleries” @Tyler_A_Harper writes: https://t.co/HtHh4CUgBm
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) October 26, 2023
======
In the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper asks himself “‘How Much Blood Is Your Fun Worth?’”:
… Last night, as I sat on my couch watching CNN anchors discuss a mass shooting that left 18 dead and 13 injured in Lewiston, Maine—the little city where I teach at Bates College and where I lived until recently—I thought about my terrified students who were sheltering in place. About my colleagues who live in town who could have been at the bar or bowling alley where the violence unfolded. About my former neighbors on whose porch my wife and I had spent many evenings drinking wine and talking politics. I thought about the hospital workers who were in the middle of the worst night of their life, and—as the child of a retired police officer—about the sons and daughters and spouses waiting at home while their loved ones ran toward the danger rather than away from it. I thought about all the people waiting for news, or getting news…
… As the night wore on and surreality gave way to cold reality, my grief also slowly gave way to guilt. I felt guilty and complicit and, in some imprecise but unshakable way, culpable for the violence on my television and social-media feeds. I felt, for the first time, like I was part of the reason that mothers have to ask their children for photos of open windows. That I was part of the reason America is a country where college campuses and bars and bowling alleys are all too often shooting galleries. I felt guilty because gun nuts are, whether I like it or not, my people: I grew up in gun country. I spent my teenage years working at a Pennsylvania gun club. I’ve been a gun owner nearly my entire life…
The honest truth is that I have always viewed the gun-violence epidemic—and my relationship to it as a gun owner—as an abstraction, remote from my own life or choices. Like many gun owners, I had always supported stronger gun control. If it requires written and practical exams and dozens of hours of training to earn the right to drive a motor vehicle, I have never understood why the same should not apply to firearms. But my views on gun control have also been wonkish, academic in nature: It is something I care about and have written about but have never felt deeply. That changed yesterday as I found myself racking my brain, wondering if I had ever heard my students or colleagues or friends or neighbors mention Schemengees Bar & Grille. Wondering if someone I knew could have been there. Wondering if I was going to get The Call or The Text or The Email.
Today, as my wife and I stay locked in our home—the gunman, still on the loose, is the subject of a sprawling manhunt—I am filled with nothing so much as rage. Rage at my gun-nut friends from home who will see this tragedy as a reason for less gun control, rather than more of it. Rage at every conservative pundit who has ever uttered the phrase “good guy with a gun.” Rage at the state of Maine, which has some of the most lax gun laws in the country. Rage at the politicians here and beyond who have refused to solve a problem for which solutions readily exist. Rage at myself for being so blind.
If you had asked me before yesterday why I own guns, I would have fed you the same line I had fed my liberal friends and my wife—and, above all, myself—for years. I would have told you that I own guns for hunting, for protection, for blasting clay pigeons out of cloudless October skies. I would have told you that I own guns because I come from a gun family and guns are some of the only things I have left from people I have loved. I would have told you about the rifle that my holler-born, Great Depression–surviving grandmother kept under the bed, the 20-gauge my grandfather used to bring home Thanksgiving turkeys, the 30-06 that took my father’s first deer. I would have told you I own guns because I am a hunter and I own guns because I write things that sometimes make people angry.
But it is only now that gun violence has visited my little corner of the world that I have been forced to confront reality, a truth that has been there all along but that I have refused to admit: I own guns because I like them and because I am an American and I’m allowed to and no one stops me. I own guns because—until this moment—gun violence was something that happened Anywhere else and not Somewhere close to me. I own guns because I have never been forced to question—to really question—why I do or what they’re for or what would happen if I had to work a little harder for the right to own them. You might find this confession myopic or selfish, but it’s also the truth. And I’m admitting it because I think the root of our country’s gun problem is that we refuse—gun owners and gun critics alike—to say this truth out loud…
So rather than rattle off a list of warmed-over ideas such as “assault-weapons ban” or “mandatory background checks” or “red-flag laws” or “commonsense gun reform” that are probably not going to come to fruition tomorrow or the day after or next year or the year after, I’ll just resort to being honest. The inescapable fact is that the only people capable of shifting the gun conversation in this country are the people who buy them.
I am, like most Americans who own guns, responsible. Yesterday’s events haven’t made me change my mind about being a gun owner. The reasons that motivated me to own guns in the first place are no different today than yesterday. The shooting in Lewiston changed my mind about being a quiet gun owner. I have spent years of my life making apologies on behalf of my gun-nut acquaintances. Staying silent when friends bring up the National Rifle Association despite my fierce opposition to that organization. Not pushing back when they call minor reforms such as mandatory waiting periods “totalitarian.” Changing the subject rather than asking Why do you need a military-style rifle?
As a gun owner from gun country, I’ll let you in on the dirty secret that everyone knows in their heart of hearts: The AR-15 is America’s best-selling rifle not because people need them for protection or because our country is full of aspiring militiamen or paranoid whack jobs waiting for civil war. People own AR-15s because they think they’re sexy and cool and manly. Because they have barely any recoil and Army surplus ammo is cheap. Because their buddies have them, so why shouldn’t they? Because they are toys—the most dangerous toys in America, but toys nonetheless. Mothers must ask their sons for pictures of open windows because Americans own AR-15s, and they own them because they are fun.
And if the past 24 hours have convinced me of anything, it is that the only way things are ever going to get better is if more gun owners start asking our friends the one question that matters: How much blood is your fun worth?
Try this in a small town…
People are shocked when mass shootings happen in a small town or small city, but that is where they are most likely. One-third occur in places with 10k to 50k residents (Lewiston has 36k).https://t.co/XYBymnDH8x pic.twitter.com/E79TY8zoPU
— Kieran D Williams (@KDWilliams7) October 26, 2023
Seems like a good time to remind people that GOP Congresspeople wore AR-15 pins instead of American flag pins to own the libs.
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) October 26, 2023
The Senate adopted an amendment yesterday making it easier for veterans with mental disabilities to buy guns. Sen. Angus King of Maine voted in favor. Chris Murphy said it will allow “actively suicidal,” veterans to buy deadly weapons.
https://t.co/JW4wnw17Ik— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) October 26, 2023
Chief Oshkosh
WTF, Angus? You should know better.
Brit in Chicago
How can you not be worried about assault rifles until there’s a mass shooting in your own hometown (and the district you represent)? I suppose it’s better than his never opposing them, but it still leaves me baffled, furious, and frustrated. Can’t we get better representatives?
ETA And now asking for forgiveness? Maybe, if he shows his sincerity by doing something like not standing for Congress again but quitting to work full-time on passing MUCH tougher gun laws.
S Cerevisiae
That is definitely the question to ask. He also makes the right point that ARs are “cool” and “manly “ which is pure marketing. We need to shame the owners of these deadly toys, that they own a share of the bloodshed. There is no such thing as a semi automatic AR any more with all the tricks out there to modify them so reclassify them all as machine guns under the existing 1934 law.
jonas
To my knowledge, not a single one of the massacres in recent US history committed with a high-powered assault rifle involved a known criminal using an illegal or stolen weapon. Every single one was committed by someone who had obtained their guns fair and square in a licensed gun shop.
That’s the problem.
Southend
Forgive me for being dense here, but I don’t understand the part about “open windows”?
jonas
I think that’s the only thing that will eventually put a dent in it. You have to make these man-children running around doing their Navy SEAL cosplaying look and feel like the idiots they are.
raven
Great article by Tyler Austin Harper I only wish it wasn’t paywalled. I have a Jewish friend who live with his family way out in the country and he’s asking for advice about buying a gun(s). I questioned why he thinks he wants one now and the “protection” answer is pretty high on his list. I recommended that he look at various shotguns but went on t ask him what he really thought he, and his wife a kids, would do it threatened? My perspective is that, if you keep firearms for protection, they have to be laded and ready to go AND you have to be willing to actually shoot someone. I also told him that they would all need basic firearms trying and to be willing to practice shooting. I don’t know what he’s going to decide but I hope he makes a wise decision. I sent him the “non-paywalled” article. Disclaimer, it’s been probably 10 years since I’ve fired any of my guns and they all fit the “handed down from family” category. They are all secured and far away from any ammunition.
raven
@Brit in Chicago: How about he changed his mind?
waspuppet
I hate to quote Bill Maher (hopefully, someone else said it first so I can stop crediting him), but he said it years ago — if they admit that they just own guns because they like them and they’re fun, everyone else will say “Well, I do things for fun that I accept limitations on. Why shouldn’t you have to?” That’s why they do the fake Founders piety.
Matt McIrvin
@raven: I question whether guns as protection are net useful for anyone aside from really, really exceptional situations. The things that make guns useful for self-defense at a moment’s notice are the same things that make them dangerous. So how threatened, and how prepared, and how mentally stable, do you have to be to get to the crossover point where the safety you get from having the gun exceeds the danger it presents to you and yours? I suspect that almost no real-world peacetime situation qualifies.
MomSense
Fuck. I’m not ready to accept apologies. Maybe that’s bad of me but I’m just not. I’ll wait to see if they actually DO SOMETHING. Until then they can go fuck themselves.
Matt McIrvin
@Brit in Chicago: Golden is a Democrat but this does remind me of the conservatives who take the liberal position on one and only one culture issue (often gay rights) because it affects them or their family personally. Can you really not see further past the end of your nose?
raven
@Matt McIrvin: I agree except may the fact that they live out in the woods and there are critter who can hurt you makes a difference.
Brit in Chicago
@raven: Yes, and of course it’s good that he did so, and if he’d been a Republican I expect he would not have done so. But it shouldn’t take it’s happening in his backyard to convince him. It’s like someone who’s been viciously prejudiced against LGBT folk suddenly seeing the light when their own kid comes out as gay. This is a person who is send to DC to act in the interest of his district and the nation as a whole, and those interests didn’t change when mass gun violence reached Lewiston. We deserve better.
dc
I don’t understand the reference to a photo of an open window in the Atlantic article:
Miss Bianca
@waspuppet: Bill Maher used to make some sensibly pointed points, back in the day, rather than merely being a cranky elderly contrarian.
Brit in Chicago
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, exactly. (I wrote my response before I’d seen yours.)
Barbara
My nephew was in his first year of college at Virginia Tech when an obviously disturbed student killed 33 people, among them a Holocaust survivor who put himself in the line of fire to allow his students to escape. I knew lots of people whose kids were there that day.
A law school classmate of mine — salt of the earth kind of guy — was one of three people killed in 2002 when a very disturbed former law school student where he taught opened fire.
And on the other side, my mother worked for a man whose son shot seven people — four died — targeting immigrants because somehow he held their success responsible for his failure. No matter that his own parents were immigrants.
Right now, I presume that my SIL and her husband are sheltering in place in Portland and that I would have heard if they had been hurt.
So, you know, welcome to the rage club, but these incidents are so common, so ubiquitous, it’s more surprising when you actually can’t think of anyone you know who has been or might have been affected.
And really, is that what it takes for you to be concerned about the loss of life?
God Damn It.
Geminid
@MomSense: Rep. Golden can’t do anything until Democrats retake the House. They passed an assault weapons ban last year without Golden’s vote, and I think they’ll pass one in 2025 with Golden’s vote. Then it will be up to the Senate again.
raven
@Brit in Chicago: “LGBT folk suddenly seeing the light when their own kid comes out as gay.” Well, not all of us were born knowing exactly what is correct.
KrackenJack
@Matt McIrvin: This.
Matt McIrvin
@raven: If you’re dealing with something like bears or mountain lions, you probably also don’t need the level of hair-trigger reaction that you’d need to realistically defend yourself from a hostile, armed human.
Suzanne
So many of us are too nice to say that “gun country” and “gun culture” is fucking gross. It is broken. It is a bad culture and it often produces bad people with bad values. Your dad taught you to hunt when you were six, and you don’t need to hunt to live? That’s fucked up. Your dad might be a nice guy, but that’s fucked up, and it was fucked up to pass that value on to your kids.
E.
I think our culture is so goddamned selfish that it’s going to take non-school massacres like this one to move the needle at all. Most adults aren’t in school and don’t have family in school. But if they start wondering if it’s safe to go to Cracker Barrel, well now that’s different.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Gun safety is a tougher issue for Democrats in Maine then in many other states. That can change though. Ten years ago, Virginia Democrats were still afraid to touch this issue, but from 2017 on they have made it work for them in the suburban districts that are now the battleground. If Rep. Golden represented a Virginia district he might well have voted for the assault weapons ban. It might have cost him his Maine seat in a district Trump won twice.
Fun Jared Golden Fact: By land area, the 2nd Maine CD Golden represents is the largest district east of the Mississippi.
Chetan Murthy
@dc: I read part of the article. The student’s mom asked him to send her a pic of an open window in each classroom the kid has a class in, so the mom can know her kid can escape if there’s a shooter.
gene108
Several years ago I read an article, and I don’t remember where I read it, that interviewed some of the 19 people who survived being struck by a car. Some had permanent physical disabilities that has totally changed their lives and what they can strive for.
It changed my view the term “wounded”, when describing mass shootings. I used to think wounded people physically got back to normal. That’s not the case with some wounded.
This would be a heavy ask of survivors, but follow up reporting on mass shootings showed how badly “wounded” can physically disable a person, it might put some more pressure for gun reform.
khead
@Matt McIrvin:
I know WAYYY too many yahoos who like to think they would respond like John McClain… but I suspect they would more likely respond like Fredo Corleone.
Alison Rose
The sad fact is, too many people in this country would answer the question in the post title with “As long as it isn’t mine, the limit does not exist”. Gun humpers do not care about anyone else’s life. They don’t care if people die. That might not be a civil thing to say, but it is true.
OzarkHillbilly
Funny, I’m a gun owner and never felt that way about them. In fact, I felt the exact opposite. I have always felt that only pansy assed, limpdick, cowardly, wannabe tuff guys owned them. I have long fantasized about renting a billboard on I-44 that said, “If thought an AR-15 was gonna punch your man card*, guess what? You’re still the same pansy assed, limpdick, cowardly, wannabe tuff guy you always were.”
*remember that ad campaign?
Wapiti
@gene108: That’s a sobering thought.
How much as a country are we doing for these survivors?
Maybe the gun-owners need to be chipping in for the down-range cost of their fun.
Paul in KY
@S Cerevisiae: A semi-auto AR15 with a 20 round mag is a terrible & fearsome weapon. No need to ‘full auto’ it. I can do tremendous damage just 1 trigger pull at a time. Very easy to change magazines, also.
Paul in KY
@raven: Agreed on the ‘they have to be ready to go’ if you are using them for protection. I had em when I was alone, but now with wife & kid, they are gone from house. Back to softball bat.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brit in Chicago:
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, Rep. Jared Golden didn’t write that article in The Atlantic — someone named Tyler A. Harper did, and AFAIK he’s not an elected official. But he’s asking an important question, one that I hope Congressman Golden is willing to ask himself and his gun-humping colleagues.
Eyeroller
I suppose I shouldn’t be astonished anymore, but the Senate actually passed an amendment to allow easier gun access for mentally-ill veterans on the same day that a mentally-ill veteran carried out a mass shooting? Also I see that now they think he was targeting an ex-girlfriend, and that he had a history of domestic violence, because of course he did–most mass shooters do.
Matt McIrvin
@SiubhanDuinne: Ah, thanks, I missed that.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
clap clap clap
WV Blondie
@raven: First, perhaps your friend is thinking about getting a gun because of the antisemitic poison that’s spreading so fast.
Second, if they are “way out in the country,” there could be any number of wild creatures – including rabid ones – that could pose a threat.
I don’t own any guns (though I grew up in a gun family – my dad was a bird hunter). I asked him once about having a gun in the house for protection. His advice? A pump-action shotgun, since the sound of it alone is enough to send an intruder away.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MomSense: We all saw how they vowed change after Sandy Hook. But now was not the time, they said. Thoughts and prayers.
If blasting a bunch of first graders to hamburger didn’t motive change, nothing will. I’ve given up
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: In that case (hostile armed human) you are hoping that the presence of your weapon will run them off. Racking a pump shotgun has a very distinctive sound (for example).
Paul in KY
@Eyeroller: Mentally ill veterans have alot of disposable income. Get a check from the government every month. Why should they just blow it all on thorazine and cigarettes? //s
Delk
Every one of those ‘murder porn’ shows on the Oxygen Network starts with a horrific murder that takes place in a ‘small time town where these things don’t happen’.
snoey
@Paul in KY: Nephew in Montana keeps an unloaded pump gun under the bed. Figures that either the sound of it being racked will do the job or he’s fucked no matter what.
Paul in KY
I’ve said it before, but if we are interested in reducing the number of these weapons out in society, a very robust buy-back program can work (IMO) By ‘robust’ I mean paying out good money for these weapons.
I would see it as a caravan that comes to a certain town, after alot of advertising, and sets up shop in a parking lot. You have your appraisers (who value the weapon and do it leniently, as you are trying to get them to relinquish the gun), followed by the buyers, who pay out for the weapon & take posession of it and then the ‘crushers’, as there is a metal squisher there too and the purchased weapon goes straight into it.
I think done the right way, hundreds of thousands of weapons could be removed and turned into scrap.
Redshift
Now there’s something that hadn’t occurred to me. Maybe that’s something to put on the agenda when Democrats can actually pass laws again – changing the surplus regs so that weapons and ammunition cannot be sold as surplus and must be destroyed instead. (It might make a dent in the militarization of the police as well, though that’s not just weapons.)
Paul in KY
@snoey: Smart nephew :-)
Alison Rose
Oh God. LegalEagle has a new video up about the gag order on TIFG, and the thumbnail has a photo of him mocked up to show him wearing a ball gag. Where’s the brain bleach at.
coin operated
@WV Blondie:
@Paul in KY:
Was going to say the same thing but y’all got there first.
coin operated
@Alison Rose:
I saw this and thought “well..It would be the only time in history someone managed to get him to STFU!”
Honus
@raven: I’m pretty much in the same situation gun-wise. Trained to shoot and hunt in my teens in West Virginia by mostly by veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. I’ve always had firearms around and I’m comfortable and proficient with them, but I haven’t hunted in nearly twenty years and I hadn’t discharged a firearm in six or seven years until my wife told me there was a copperhead by the swimming pool and I shot it with a .22
as comfortable as I am around guns it’s been nerve wracking the two or three times in the past fifty years that I’ve thought there was an intruder and I needed to pick up a weapon for protection. I can’t imagine doing so at this age if I’d never owned a gun.
Oh, yeah, I was also repeatedly taught never to bring a loaded gun into the house
Alison Rose
@coin operated: I have this daydream that he might trip and fracture his jaw and need it wired shut to heal. Sure, he could still type, but at least we wouldn’t hear his Godforsaken voice for a while.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin: That’s exactly right. I would have to find myself in an exceptionally risky situation before deciding that I needed a gun in the house for self-defense. Like if I lived in a particularly high-crime area where there were a lot of break-ins or home-invasion robberies, or a sketchy rural area with very limited law-enforcement coverage (iow, if someone were threatening you and you called the cops, it would take anyone a half hour to show up, if at all). And then it would probably be a 12-gauge with non-lethal loads or something. Just chambering a round would probably be enough to send most crooks running.
Of course, if one hunts, those guns and their ammo are secured in a heavy-duty safe with a lock and would not be immediately available for personal defense.
patrick II
Jim Jeffries classic explanation of Americans and guns
Jim Jeffries gun control
Jim Jeffries gun control 2
Honus
@Matt McIrvin: I agree. I figure if the sweet gentle Rottweiler that sleeps next to our bed doesn’t deter an intruder, neither will a nervous guy with a shotgun.
TriassicSands
There were 5 rabies deaths in 2021, the highest number in decades.
Not exactly a big problem or one that necessitates more than 20 million assault rifles in the hands of private citizens.
Wild animals?
And
Again, no justification for owning assault rifles. Not even a reason to own any firearm.
Honus
@Matt McIrvin: mountain lions aren’t coming anywhere near your house. (Bobcats may run through your yard, but it’s almost a zero chance they will attack you. And I’ve scared 450lb black bears out of my garage by banging on a pan lid with a spoon. And if you’re going to kill a bear and not just piss it off, you’d better have some really large caliber ordnance. One or two or eight shots from a .38 or 9mm probably aren’t going to stop a bear before it mauls you.
Unless you come upon them on their turf out in the woods, very few animals east of the Mississippi are dangerous. Snapping turtles scare me the most.
Uncle Cosmo
After having been burglarized once and mugged once, I considered getting a handgun for self-defense – until I realized it would be a primary theft target for anyone who knew I had it (at home or away). A friend recommended a pump-action shotgun with the shortest barrel allowed by law: Too big and bulky for a mugger to concealed-carry, so not a huge target for burglary. No particular training needed to aim or discharge (point in general direction, pull trigger). And no way an intruder knows from the sound of the pump whether the first load is lethal or just salt shot.
ETtheLibrarian
He has a point re gun owners like him standing up (and stopping the silent assistance to the NRA). The NRA has power because so many members have been quite for decades. They can ignore those who support every measure particularly if they think their members are behind them. I mean why wouldn’t they think the members support the mission no one has really said/done anything to the contrary? Maybe all those supposed responsible gun owning members should quit, though is looks like many already have (if they are any still left)?
Oh and Angus, needs to feel some blow-back.
Dan B
@Matt McIrvin: A group from a small city in Texas did twelve simulations of active shooter with paintballs. In none of them was these shooter shot. In all of them buy one the defendants were killed. The one who survived it was because they ran away.
Jackie
@Paul in KY: As of last I heard, only eight of the 18 who were killed have been identified. The damage from the AR-15 bullets made too many unrecognizable to ID without DNA samples. We learned that after Udalde.😢
rikyrah
This don’t smell right…
AT ALL
Greg Pinelo (@gregpinelo) posted at 8:57 AM on Fri, Oct 27, 2023:
Ok, this is weird. Johnson and his wife “took custody” of a 14 yr old black child who they call their son. He never appears in family photos. This “son” is only 11 yrs younger than Johnson. Little is known about him other than Johnson occasionally uses him as a talking point.
(https://x.com/gregpinelo/status/1717903427315941593?t=-cK64lsoaJO_SAd39XlfwA&s=03)
Honus
@Suzanne: that’s another good point. When I was growing up in the enlightened liberal paradise of 1960s West Virginia, I wasn’t allowed to have even a .22 rifle before I was 14. Today they make miniature pink “Chipmunk” .22s to put under the Christmas tree for for pre-school girls.
Raven
@Uncle Cosmo: The “racking” of a shotgun as a deterrent
https://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/article/to-rack-or-not-to-rack-the-perpetual-shotgun-question/
Dan B
@Alison Rose: AR 15 wounds are horrific because there is a huge shockwave. These “wounds” are probably missing limbs. I don’t know how anyone would survive a foot wide “wound” to the torso or head.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: That’s as weird as Matt Gaetz’s “son” Nestor.
raven
@WV Blondie: “Perhaps”? That was the only reason I mentioned he was Jewish.
WV Blondie
@raven: You didn’t elaborate and I didn’t want to presume. My best friend is Jewish, lives in dense, well-educated suburbia, and she’s nervous (though not enough to want a gun).
Paul in KY
@Honus: Yeah, for a bear, being shot by a .38 or 9mm is just going to piss it off.
Paul in KY
@Jackie: That’s what they do. Designed to make a big nasty wound that causes the recipient to be out of commission immediately.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: The ole ‘Rent a Black Kid’ ploy!
raven
@WV Blondie: I know, I even thought the post would have made as much sense if I had left that fact out. Of course plenty of folks did like the post anyway.
lowtechcyclist
@Dan B:
This. The wounded aren’t dead, but their wounds will have done devastating, irrevocable damage. These aren’t ‘patch up the holes and go on with your life’ wounds.
Miss Bianca
@Honus: Uh, mountain lions come very damn near *my* house, and my neighbors’. Ditto bears, bobcats, coyotes, and rattlesnakes, as well as other fauna less dangerous. The only use that firearms get around our place is for hazards posed by wildlife – so far, in my experience, limited to the shooting of rattlers that were a little too close for comfort.
TriassicSands
Apparently, from some comments here, the answer seems to be just what the Republicans want — for everyone to be armed. That will make us safer?
It’s possible that the best reason to buy a weapon now (and an unlimited amount of ammunition) is to be able to fight back if and when the fascist Right starts a civil war. That would mean an assault rifle. Yep, that will make us all safer.
An assault rifle ban? That’s probably pointless because the Left (decent people) is never going to be as well-armed as the Right. I saw a figure that there were 20,000,000 assault rifles in the U.S. in 2021. A ban might prevent (most) future sales of assault rifles, but I don’t see the gun nuts voluntarily giving up their toys. So, we’d still have 20,000,000+ assault rifles out there and the overwhelming majority of them are most likely in the hands of right-wing gun nuts.
Party on America.
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne:
Jared asked for forgiveness in his statement.
Ok – just going to say this here but he’s kind of a dick. Not as arrogant as Troy Jackson, but he definitely holds his finger up to see which way the wind is blowing.
He campaigned with ads and images firing a gun for CD2. Now he’s positioning to run for governor and needs the libs in Southern Maine.
MomSense
I know some of you watched Dr. Shaw’s daily press conferences during the pandemic. One of the victims was the ASL interpreter who was signing during those press conferences. He was one of the kindest people you could ever hope to know. He was helping the deaf contestants at the corm hole tournament. He gave so much of his time to Pine Tree Camp. Josh Seal was a champion – a truly wonderful human.
Glidwrith
@Alison Rose: Yep. I had a co-worker whose husband collected guns. Sandy Hook happened and the bitch said she was concerned that higher levels of regulation would keep hubby from collecting guns. It was her last day on that job, I wasn’t terribly civil in my expressed opinion.
raven
@Jackie:
All 18 victims killed in Wednesday’s shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine, have been identified by the state medical examiner’s office, the office administrator told CNN on Friday.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@OzarkHillbilly: An old friend of my family was a Sgt. Major who’d served in the 30’s, WWII, and Korea. His view of assault rifles was, they were for people who had more money for ammo than they had skill or sense. “Guess they expect to miss a lot.” His contempt for those people was beyond words.
Lobo
Can’t believe I am quoting Loki but here goes…
Trying to fix what’s broken is hard. Hope is hard.
Fixing the situation will be hard, but what other choice?
brantl
@Matt McIrvin: Can’t the guy in the article?
You’re giving the guy who says the other guy is being unforgivably shortsighted, in a lethal situation, flack about being shortsighted; is your irony meter pegged yet?
WV Blondie
@raven: I figured you included it deliberately; I’m just well past the point of making tactful allusions – I’m to my sledgehammer phase.
brantl
@Suzanne: This is horseshit. If people eat what they hunt, or give it to other people to eat, don’t hunt on land where they aren’t welcome, don’t poach and hunt responsibly, how is it any of your business if they hunt? I am as anti-gun lobby as almost anyone else, but I don’t have a problem with people who hunt responsibly, and neither should you. People kill animals to eat the meat, whether it’s burgers or Bambi.
Start screwing with honest hunters, and you will probably never get any gun control in this country.
Martin
This is the same question that’s going to be asked when it comes to solving climate change and vehicular deaths. That fun weekend in Vegas carries a much larger cost than people realize.
Ksmiami
@brantl: plus real hunters don’t need or use weapons of war as it poisons the meat. We need the hunters in an alliance to get rid of the crazies
JustRuss
Exactly. And if it’s loaded and available, might end up killing someone you don’t want dead. I recently bought a non-lethal pistol. Fires rubber balls or pepper balls. Won’t kill anybody by accident–or on purpose–and useless for suicide. Can definitely ruin your day though. Got it for camping solo, never know who or what you’ll run into in the boonies.
Citizen Alan
@Alison Rose:
I will go further and say that most of the gun humpers love mass shootings. Deep down, they just love them. Especially the gun humpers in the GOP caucus. Every time there is a mass shooting, the gun freaks are seized with paranoid fears that the democrats will take their toys away. So they all rush out and buy more guns and ammo so the gun stores are flush with cash. Which means the gun manufacturers are flushed with cash. Which means the NRA lobbyists are flush with cash. Which means republican politicians are flush with cash. Plus it upsets libetals while stoking their own ridiculous feelings of unearned victimization. Republicans ADORE mass shootings.
gene108
@Dan B:
AR15’s and similar weapons fire the same ammunition used by armed forces in NATO countries. The ammunition is designed to cause as much damage as possible to the body. There are different types of NATO bullets that do different types of damage. Basically, the different bullets are about how big an exit wound is or what angles the bullet takes when it penetrates the body to maximize damage.
Just weird actual military bullets are on sale to the public.
Soprano2
@raven: You sound exactly like my husband. He’s always said you have to be ready to use a firearm if you want it for protection. He showed me a small “point and shoot” gun that’s hidden in a fake book in the bedroom, then he told me not to get it unless I thought I could fire it at someone.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Oh my. No, that does not smell right.
I believe we talked a day or two ago about skeletons in his closet, how long it would take to find them. I believe I also wondered whether it would be a live boy or a dead girl.
WaterGirl
@TriassicSands: Wondering if you saw the comment that Another Scott posted in one of the threads where you were talking about the hospital? Was that yesterday or Wednesday? Either way, I hope you saw it.
Feckless
Go door to door and take their guns.
Enough.
Mike in Pasadena
@gene108: How clearly important to see the permanent maiming of people who are merely “wounded.” Wheel chair bound, unable to care for themselves or speak. Show those injuries on TV. Interview victims on camera whose lives have been forever altered and damaged.
brantl
@Ksmiami: That’s kind of my point. There is responsible ownership of non-Rambo-esque weapons.