A student at a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, has killed two people and injured six on campus, Madison police said Monday afternoon. The shooter is also dead. Police Chief Shon F. Barnes said in an earlier briefing that the shooter had killed four, but the department clarified the number in an update. At 10:57 a.m., officers received an active-shooter report at Abundant Life Christian School. Officers did not fire their weapons and found the suspected shooter dead, Barnes said. Those in the hospital have injuries that range from minor to life-threatening, Barnes said.
I thought Walz was really good at talking about the freedom to have guns, but the necessity of preventing school shootings. Who knows if we could have gotten anything done if we won, but of course we’re now staring down the barrel of years more of absolutely nothing changing, and things probably getting worse.
(Link is to CNN live coverage, text from the WaPo, which is hard to link to.)
The Opportunity for Democrats
wenchacha
And this school probably had the Ten Commandments on a wall.
The arrogance of suggesting that outlawing videogames, gay people, trans people, drag shows, etc., will solve all our problems. Oh, I forgot arming all the teachers. That’ll do it.
Heartbreaking and infuriating, all at once.
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
Just ridiculous
Professor Bigfoot
I used to say all the time, “if the gun community cannot engage honestly with those who simply don’t want kids killed in job lots at school, sooner or later their precious 2nd amendment will go away because “fuck your dead kids” is a lousy campaign slogan.”
I now know I was wrong.
justawriter
My first thought was a crass comment about gun humpers saying there isn’t enough GOD in schools, but I will hold my tongue. My sympathies to all the families and children involved.
Gretchen
And there will be much less hand-wringing about small children getting shot than the United Health CEO last week. That was high tragedy; this is just daily life in America.
bbleh
@wenchacha: yeah I heard the “teachers should carry guns” thing a few days ago, and not from a MAGA nutcase either.
Reminding them that even trained police officers miss half or more of their shots in uncontrolled situations seems not to make a dent. “Guns fix problem, huh-huh, huh-huh-huh.”
Miss Bianca
@wenchacha: A book I read recently made a compelling argument that violent movies, far from spurring criminal activity, actually made violent activity/crime rates go *down* during the times that they were showing. Why? Because the target audience for those movies – mainly, young men, the demographic that statistically commit the most violent crimes – were all at the movie theater!
Which is one of the reasons I do hold with gun restrictions but don’t hold with bans on violent movies or video games or any other media.
Lapassionara
Abundant Life? Hah!
cain
@Gretchen:
The CEO being shot is a new pattern in gun violence. But also, will have a lot more scrutiny than kids being shot. I remember some convos about this back in august or something.
When you shoot and kill kids you aren’t hurting the system. When you shoot and kill CEOs, you are directly attacking the system and the system responds.
Unlike the fetus which can be given the level of ultimate purity, kids are a mixed bag. So it isn’t easy to use them as political props.
Suzanne
@bbleh:
I have a whole slew of teachers in my family and friend group. Every one of them has said, “Nope, I’m out”, if they would ever be asked or directed to carry. Just…. done with the whole career.
Professor Bigfoot
@bbleh: The average American has no idea how just absolutely difficult it is to hit a small target with a handgun, nevermind under actual life-and-death combat conditions.
I quit concealed-carrying because I realized I wasn’t willing to do the practice and training that I believe a concealed carrier OUGHT to do. Shooting is a losable— and EASILY losable skill; and you really gotta practice and train regularly, like real, trained *gunmen do to be sure of hitting small targets at distance.
But if you ignored the training and practice and assumed they WERE all John Wick, what do you bet that mouthy Black kid is the first one shot?
(*Navy SEALS, Marine Force Recon, Air Force Pararescue… real, TRAINED gunmen)
robtrim
We know the dead and wounded – how about the number traumatized?
That’s part of the real cost of unregulated gun availability. No democratic, civilized nation puts up with this barbarity, except the U.S. Which raises the question about our national sanity.
The Christian Nationalists and the White Nationalists and the MAGA enthusiasts have mapped out our country’s road to hell. We’ll be there before we know it.
KatKapCC
As I said in the other thread, gun-lovers are sick. Like truly. It is a sickness. And not only is there no cure, they don’t want one to be found. And the rest of us have to suffer the side effects of their illness.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
I thought one of the ten commandments was thou shalt not kill. This has got to be one crappy christian school.
Chief Oshkosh
@Professor Bigfoot: Yep, I can remember saying that to a gun humper all the way back at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre. Boy was I wrong.
Their take on school shootings is one of many reasons that I have absolutely no sympathy with anyone in the GOP, or who voted for Trump, or who continues to be a gun humper. Hopefully the next scourge that comes along kills them a whole lot faster than the last one. That’s right, motherfuckers, only drink raw milk, never wash your hands, and please, whatever you do, don’t get vaccinated.
Annie
arming teachers won’t help. I took classes given by the California Highway Patrol about responding to active shootings when I worked for one of the California appeals courts. The first class was IIRC in 2008 when the marriage equality cases were pending in the California Supreme Court, which was in the same building. (The Supremes were getting a lot of threats from the anti-same sex marriage crowd.) The California Highway Patrol Active Shooter Response team told us that if you had a gun at the scene of an active shooting, you were likely to get shot by police responding to the scene since obviously they don’t know who’s who when they first arrive. They also told us that these situations were very fluid and unpredictable and that the cops themselves — trained to deal with this — had trouble figuring out what was going on. Their suggestions: first, get out of the area if you can, and make sure you know at least 2 routes to leave your work area; second, hide (though this was not a great option because, depending on where you hid, if the shooter found you, you were trapped). Fighting back was the last option.
Oddly it was actually somewhat comforting to know there was no one-solution-fits-all way to handle this.
Bill K
@Professor Bigfoot: Conversely, handguns were designed for morons and weaklings. Any fool can use a gun to kill. A 1-year old got a handgun out of the mom’s purse and killed her with it.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@bbleh: I can attest to that: when I was conscripted, I proved to be a better-than-average shot with a rifle, and proved to my own satisfaction that a firearm in the hands of an average person is NOT a precision instrument.
laura
Life in America- less abundant every single day.
KatKapCC
@Annie: Whenever people talk about arming teachers, I always want to ask them: What happens if a teacher, while trying to take out a shooter, accidentally kills an innocent kid? I would imagine these situations are chaotic, people running through the halls trying to get to safety. How is a scared teacher supposed to know immediately which kids running past them are innocent and which are not? What should happen to a teacher who kills a student, even in what they believe is self-defense? And what about that teacher’s mental state for the rest of their life?
Or what if a kid breaks into the locked drawer where the gun is kept and uses it to kill others? Or someone outside the school knows about it and does the same?
The gun worshippers never want to contend with the terrifying possibilities of their ideas.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Currently sitting in my 2nd grade classroom reading about another school shooting. I had just look up the Sandy Hook anniversary. 12 years ago 2 days ago. Nothing has fucking changed.
Professor Bigfoot
@Bill K: Negligent morons are another story.
That mom’s negligence caught up with her quickly.
trollhattan
Freedom of speech for me, not for thee.
Trump’s scheme is clearly blanketing the nation with defamation and slander suits to warn off negative stories about him of any kind, going forward. The degree to which this works is yet to be seen but it will have an effect, you can count on that.
robtrim
@Professor Bigfoot: Carrying a gun in public is a fool’s errand. The likelihood of negative outcomes far exceeds the chances of you doing any good. If you want to protect others, and yourself, carry a portable defibrillator. Odds are it will save more lives.
JaySinWA
Honey trap possibility?
I’d look at the methodology for the report, but if true, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the pre-crime audience isn’t being primed for emulating what they see. I don’t think there is much evidence for that either, just that the numbers don’t really prove anything.
trollhattan
@Old Dan and Little Ann: It’s cruel and crushing. What has changed, if you will, is how these have become so common they are losing their capacity to horrify us.
“Just as the Founders intended.”
–Federalist Society and most of the Supreme Court
KatKapCC
@trollhattan: And I am going to sue the Chinese restaurant we got takeout from last week, because the numbers in my fortune cookie were not the winning lottery numbers.
Elizabelle
From The Guardian’s shortish article about this latest shooting:
Was about to write “it’s not Americans, it’s Republicans that defeat any meaningful efforts.” But, in view of the election results:
I hope that those voters hysterical over the price of eggs and groceries realize they just gave carte blanche to these murders continuing.
ArchTeryx
As I mentioned last thread, our sclerotic politics about guns assures nothing will get done in the near future. They have a LOT of one-issue gun voters, and with a corrupt SCOTUS and a multitude of veto points, it assures the possibility of nothing. Does that mean all is lost forever? No. But it does mean that something fundamental has to change about our politics before anything will get done. The Sandy Hook massacre came close, but it did not breach the fortress walls the gun nuts, all the way up to SCOTUS, have set up around the 2nd Amendment.
Old Man Shadow
I’d like to thank these little children for their brave service and their sacrifice to keep America free.
Lyrebird
Most teachers I know feel pretty protective of all of their students, even the mouthy ones, but I don’t know a random sample, for sure.
I do wonder how many names (ETA: there are that0 should go on a monument to Black LEOs, security guards, and bystanders who got shot while helping rescue or protect someone else.
one of our ongoing shames as a country, along with our school shootings…
Gretchen
@Old Dan and Little Ann: I really thought that Sandy Hook would change the conversation on gun control.
I just saw that David Hogg is running for Vice-chair of the DNC. He’s one who isn’t giving up.
A Ghost to Most
@Lapassionara: They misspelled Lies.
sab
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: RWNJ say “thou shall not commit murder”, which makes a lot of killings okay.
Old Man Shadow
@Elizabelle: Oh, we haven’t struggled at all. We’ve accepted that little children must die so we can enjoy Omelas.
Well, except for the parents of those kids. But they’re not important like us and CEOs.
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
Hmm, interesting theory and one wonders what the chronology could be.
First popular snuff-revenge pop movies I can recall were the Dirty Harry and Death Wish franchises, plus arguably the spaghetti westerns. All were popular during a period of soaring violent crime that would not peak for another decade or so.
ArchTeryx
@Old Man Shadow: Considering the only cure for the Omelas Syndrome, it’s an interesting metaphor for our coming hard times.
JCJ
@Miss Bianca: I might have mentioned this here before, but some genius recently suggested that the game “Among Us” could be the cause of the UHC CEO killing. It is a silly computer game that kind of reminds me of playing “killer” in Boy Scouts where whoever gets the ace of spades has to wink at people to kill them and not get caught until everyone is dead. While some of my fellow scouts are likely not perfect citizens I doubt any of them became murderers
Miss Bianca
@JaySinWA:
As I recall, there’s more to it than just the showtimes themselves, naturally – there’s the alcohol involvement factor, for another thing. Kids sitting in a movie theater watching a movie are not sitting in a bar getting drunk and then picking fights, for example. Altho’ now that some movie theaters are starting to serve alcohol…
TONYG
@bbleh: I have zero military experience and zero experience with guns, so I did a quick lookup of the degree of basic training in firearms all U.S. Army recruits get — ”
Basic marksmanship training
This training lasts about 2–3 weeks and includes qualification testing.The redesigned program has soldiers shooting 600 rounds and receiving 92 hours of training.” Now consider the fact that very few teachers are 18-22 years old and in peak physical condition. Will teachers be fired if they are over 30 or have physical disabilities? And which taxes will be raised to pay for all of that firearms training for those young, physically fit teachers? Like all of the arguments from the gun lobby, this is absolute bullshit.
Elizabelle
@Old Man Shadow: No. Stop with that “we” business. We jackals are not in that group.
“We” don’t own this. One bit
Too much of this. Could any of us name the last five school shootings? Just plain “mass shootings.” I cannot.
Shooter was a juvenile and student at the school. Which is K-12, I think.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
My wife tutors math and physics at East High School here in Denver. My best friend’s wife was one of the crime scene techs at the Aurora movie theater shooting in 2012. She spent years in therapy afterwards.
Mass shootings are real and touch on far more people than one thinks. And yet, nothing changes.
I’ve made this analogy before but we are the Aztecs. We need to sacrifice innocents to the 2nd Amendment God as it protects our freedumbs…and underscores that we are a violent culture and that’s just fine and dandy to folks.
Also too, this has been a long-term GQP/NRA strategy: make these incidents so common as to make people powerless to stop them, that we’re just too numb to react. When some people buy more guns and ammo in response and the rest of us remain inert, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
How many times do we have to say this, when we did nothing after the massacre of white 1st graders, this society made a choice.
Stoopid country.
ETA: And I get the issue when we parse “we”, as in “What’s this ‘we’ shit kemosabe?” But it’s easier to couch it that way.
rikyrah
@trollhattan:
Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) posted at 2:15 PM on Sun, Dec 15, 2024:
The top story on the NYT home page this afternoon: “Trump and His Picks Threaten More Lawsuits Over Critical Coverage”
Written by @davidenrich, who has a book coming out next year “the weaponization of libel law and the campaign to limit press freedoms.”
(https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1868389515326312795?t=IqEPeNSn2vo43jAlj4M5yQ&s=03)
Martin
@Professor Bigfoot: I think there was a great lesson from the NYPD when they confronted a gunman outside the Empire State building in 2012 and managed to shoot 9 bystanders. I think it’s safe to say the NYPD spend a lot of time at the shooting range.
We have this idea that skill activities can make humans perfectly determinative, and no, that never happens. You can invest all the time in the world in being a perfect driver and you’re still going to fuck up now and then.
Elizabelle
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
And stop that shit too. It was REPUBLICANS who sabotaged any meaningful change after Sandy Hook, which horrified the majority of Americans. At least 90 % wanted to crack down on guns in the wrong hands, and their easy sale.
We remember Sandy Hook.
I am sick of “we” doing so much disinformation there.
“We” did not make this choice any more than “we” elected Trump.
Sick of the cheap cynicism.
Barbara
@Gretchen: In my view, the outsize reaction is due almost entirely to the dawning realization that people “like us” might also be in the line of fire.
Professor Bigfoot
@robtrim: Thats the entire point of training and practice.
It requires a LOT to be at all effective.
I’m too lazy for that shit… but, to quote the Vice President, “somebody breaking into my house is gonna get shot.”
Princess
“Abundant Life”
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: Oh, NOW they’re worried about Trump. NOW they write about what Trump is planning to do…to THEM.
Seems like it’s really true, what my daddy used to say…”it all depends on whose ox is being gored.”
And it’s only now that these particular oxen are going to start bellowing.
Professor Bigfoot
@Lyrebird: I agree with you, almost all grade school teachers are there because, well, they’re truly the “good guys” and they genuinely love their students.
But this is America.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle: Republican takeaway from Sandy Hook essentially “We gotta ban crazy people.”
Princess
@Elizabelle: It’s not just Republicans who won’t deal with the gun issue. It’s all the people who don’t bother to vote. In other words, it’s a huge majority of Americans
Trivia Man
I was a block away in a store. My receipt says 11:05 so i know i was inside and heard no shots. As i walked out, 2 police came tearing up the road. As i navigated out of the parking lot they arrived from all directions. So glad it is a low count, i fear the day when the inevitable major incident happens.
TONYG
@Miss Bianca: And, of course, one fact that has to be considered is that these school shootings (and other newsworthy mass shootings ) are GOOD FOR BUSINESS and are therefore discreetly WELCOMED by the gun lobby (which, after all, is just an industry lobbying group). Twelve years ago, at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre I was working in an IBM office in upstate New York with a bund of mouth-breathing gun fetishists (I’m sorry; I meant to say “men proudly defending their Second Amendment rights). Several of them loudly proclaimed that they were going to run out to buy more guns and ammunition “before Obama makes guns illegal”. The gun lobby LOVES these mass shootings; they’re good for business.
gvg
@Suzanne: The first time I heard it advocated for was from a teacher. Could not get through to him that he did not have the attention to do 2 jobs well at the same time. This was before 911. There are 2nd amendment worshipers among teachers too. Now parents might not be. What would happen is a split school district like a congregation coming apart at the seams with arguments. Possibly faction fights with control switching every election. Not education.
Professor Bigfoot
@Elizabelle: which means SOMEONE let him have access to a gun, somehow.
The very idea offends me. I have no kids at home, there are never any kids in my house unsupervised (or at all, really)– but all my firearms are under lock and key. There is only one loaded gun in the house and it’s in a biometric safe two steps from my bedside.
People who don’t keep their guns secure just straight piss me off, because it’s a part of their incompetence.
Professor Bigfoot
@Martin: Absolutely fair point, even more applicable with guns.
“It is possible to commit no errors and yet still lose. That is life.“
eclare
@Gretchen:
I saw that yesterday, best of luck to him. We need to get more young people involved.
Elizabelle
It will be interesting to see how the juvenile got the gun, and if his/her parents/guardians might end up arrested and indicted.
Does not bring back the lives lost, but I am glad to see the crackdown on people leaving firearms around carelessly.
Professor Bigfoot
Has anyone ever examined exactly why American “gun nuts” are so absolutely adamant that their unfettered, unrestricted access to every gun imaginable “shall not be infringed?”
Has anyone really engaged with WHY the far right is home to these “patriots?”
robtrim
@Professor Bigfoot: True. And having a firearm for home defense makes more sense to me than carrying a concealed one in public.
Unfortunately, suicides make up nearly half of the gun deaths in the U.S. So, having a firearm at home takes a lot of careful consideration.
Miss Bianca
@Professor Bigfoot: Do you think they’re going to be honest about it?
It’s amazing to me how many white men I know who, while conservative, are fairly reasonable on a lot of issues *except* when it comes to guns. Then they start foaming at the mouth, especially when you start asking them questions like, “why DO you need all these guns, anyway? Just who do you think is going to come after you? Be specific.” Is it their neighbors? Or is it “sophisticated urbanites”, as Gene Wilder so eloquently put it?
If you can get these guys to give you a straight answer before they just start melting down into utter incoherence, you have more strength than I do.
BC in Illinois
@Professor Bigfoot:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
School shootings, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .
Attacks on religious gatherings, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .
Random gun violence, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .
Stochastic terrorism, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .
Ksmiami
@Chief Oshkosh: come sit by me. I’ll be ok if they are all done in by their own foolishness and stupidity. And no I do not want the Democratic Party to save them.
JKC
At the risk of repeating myself, a significant number of Americans love their guns a whole lot more than they love their kids.
Professor Bigfoot
@robtrim: Also very true.
I know one guy who’s a thoughtful concealed carrier. That man is at the range every week; he’s a member of a competition shooting club; and he carries every day.
But then he’s Black and he’s a senior scientist with a major corporation, so he doesn’t fit the bubbatype.
With that said, though, almost every man-Jack who does carry SHOULDN’T, and way too damn many of ’em are too eager to draw their weapon.
Feckless
The democratic “leadership” that is incapable of message control and worships one sided bipartisanship shot those kids just the same as the Republican who pulled the trigger.
12 years since Sandy hook!
The entire Dem leadership cohort should resign in shame, instead they will lineup to kiss the KGB/NRA/GOP ring.
Professor Bigfoot
@BC in Illinois: Tulsa, Rosewood, Elaine, Ocoee, the Red Summer…
Professor Bigfoot
@Feckless: What, prithee, were these Democrats supposed to do in the face of the absolute, dogged Republican/conservative opposition?
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: These people also don’t seem to think any teachers are themselves potential mass shooters.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca:
You know, I have a specific answer to this question. It’s THEM. The conservative gun-owners in my neighborhood. That’s who I think is going to come after me. But I don’t have any guns.
Kay
Americans have made it abundantly clear they won’t sacrifice anything for children. They refuse to even lock up their weapons – too much work. We had to send two parents to prison in MI for refusing to stop a school shooting, and it won’t be the last time.
We don’t value children at all – we’re sort of infamous internationally for it. What we value is money.
hotshoe
To think that those stupid parents (now heartbroken but predictably no less stupid) took their kids to that private school to keep them “safe” from DEI / socialist / brainwashing / transing / whatever-fear-flavor-of-the-month / ungodly public school.
I’m sorry for the other traumatized children from that school.
Kay
They really did have a choice this last election – they chose more school shootings. I am sorry for children though – their parents are spoiled six year olds who refuse to accept responsibility for anything. Hey, if the guns don’t get them polio or pertussis will!
Baud
@Kay:
IMHO we need to stop thinking about ourselves as part of them. There are two cultures in America, and ours is the minority culture, and our culture values its kids. Unfortunately, we have the live in the same space with the majority culture, and are affected by them, but that’s something that’s true of every minority group in a society. We just have to learn to do it.
karen marie
@justawriter: I got no sympathy. The parents at this school voted for this.
Miss Bianca
@hotshoe: Isn’t this the second school shooting recently that was at a private Christian school rather than a public school? If there are any more shootings at private schools, are those parents going to start pushing for gun control?
hells littlest angel
Soon to be known as the Not Quite As Abundant Life School.
pat
I don’t know how old the shooter was or if he committed suicide or why he did this.
I want to know where he got the gun. And I hope that the owner of that gun has the book thrown at him.
TerryC
I am at least glad that no weapons appear to have been injured and no CEOs inconvenienced.
Kay
@Baud:
Thanks, that’s interesting – sincerely. I’ll think about it.
Elizabelle
@Baud: That is true. Good comment.
karen marie
@TONYG: And then there’s the insurance. Because you would have to have insurance to cover accidental gun discharges, teachers going nuts, a student getting the teacher’s gun and shooting the teacher and/or other students, or a student stealing it and shooting people on the street or family members. Who’s going to pay for that?
Kay
@pat:
Michigan’s “duty” laws are a little unusual so may not apply in every state but the Michigan case where the parents were charged was watched very closely in juvenile law circles. I predict there will be more.
karen marie
@Martin:
Then you think wrong. State and local police have to demonstrate minimal proficiency at most once a year.
Chief Oshkosh
@Elizabelle:
Have you met any of those voters?
Suzanne
@gvg: That is crazy.
Yes, I have met quite a few right-wing teachers. (Makes me crazy, but whatever.) But I cannot imagine the liability. Imagine injuring one of your own students by accident. Or taking your eyes off your gun for a moment and one of your students grabbing it. Who’s liable? The teacher? The district?
We have been touring high schools for Spawn next year. They all have metal detectors.
Gravenstone
What happens when (not if) a student finds a teacher or staff member’s weapon?
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
We had a felon with a gun shoot two kids at an Oroville, CA Adventist school, then commit suicide on site. The boys live on, one paralyzed probably for life. Not one positive outcome will be had from this particular monstrosity.
Trivia Man
@Trivia Man: apparently i am still too optimistic. As the sirens raced past me, i assumed big wreck on the freeway nearby. Not until i realized where they were turning did i fear a mass shooter.
Kay
@Gravenstone:
They’ve already left the weapons in bathrooms for students to find.
We had a 15 year old shoot and kill a 16 year old accidentally. The adults had tossed the loaded gun on a clothes dryer in the garage.
Any effort at all is too much. They will do nothing to avoid this.
eclare
@Professor Bigfoot:
My cousin is a reasonable gun owner. He keeps his guns in a floor safe. I once asked him why, and he responded “I have a teenage son.”
pat
The thought of arming TEACHERS in CLASSROOMS filled with CHILDREN is mindbogglingly stupid.
More guns!!
Yeah, that’s what we need!!
Is this a serious recommendation? Remember where the armed police would not even enter the school? Uvalde, was it?
I know it comes up every time, but I can not imagine anything worse than having armed teachers roaming the school halls…..
trollhattan
@Kay:
I remember the teacher who dropped her gun while using the can, shooting herself (non-fatally). Which had me pondering the Utah law preventing parents from learning which, if any teachers in their kid’s school was packing heat.
As a parent I would sure as hell have wanted to know if I was sending my child into a classroom that had a gun in it. So I could fucking opt out of sending my child into that particular classroom.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Annie: Do you mean the appeals court in Sacramento, where I worked?
trollhattan
@pat: Time to dredge up McMegan’s brilliant scheme to train those toddlers to rush the gunman en masse, because it’s better to do that than just sit idly waiting to be shot.
Professor Bigfoot
@eclare: Hat’s off to the man.
Because a lot of these people are either barking mad or sack-of-wet-mice stupid.
JPL
OT trump is considering Moskowitz for FEMA. Wonder why? Another seat for the repubs.
Suzanne
@pat:
Uvalde County voted for TFG by 16 points.
lowtechcyclist
@Annie:
That was the summary of the active shooter training at my Federal workplace as well.
lowtechcyclist
@robtrim:
In 70 years on this planet, I have never once been in a situation that would have been improved by my possession of a firearm. I see no reason to think that’ll change in the 20-30 years I likely have left.
lowtechcyclist
@trollhattan:
Wonder what she said when the Uvalde cops refused to go in after the shooter. I’d love to know why she would expect more of elementary school students than the cops expect of themselves.
Harrison Wesley
@Suzanne: Not just any police – SWAT. Their motto: “Hey, a man could get hurt….”
Kayla Rudbek
@karen marie: I know someone in federal law enforcement who commented that you could meet the marksmanship standards for Customs with your eyes closed or shooting over your shoulder. He was in INS before they merged with Customs to form CBP.
Elizabelle
The shooter was a 17 year old female, per AP.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle: Plot twist.
raven
@karen marie: you don’t achieve minimal shooting proficiency practicing once a year
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Yes. And the police chief was a teacher, earlier in life.
raven
@Elizabelle: There goes the knee jerk reactions.
trollhattan
Old guy nobody cares about nevertheless has cogent thoughts.
Has incoming other old guy blamed this on Democrats, yet?
eclare
@Elizabelle:
Whoa.
Captain C
@trollhattan:
I’m not sure where we’re going to stash 70+ million Republicans, but OK, I’m down.
Elizabelle
From the FTF NY Times roundup:
The shooting was the 323rd at elementary or secondary schools this year.
Elizabelle
This looks worth scrolling through. The K-12 School Shooting Database. Founded by David Riedman.
https://k12ssdb.org
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
If you’ll forgive the rounding, that’s ONE PER DAY. And not even considering weekends and vacation days.
Captain C
@Elizabelle: So, basically, every day.
JaySinWA
Obviously they weren’t fetched up proper. If they had trained in McMegan’s way they’d have behaved better. Of course if the kids had been trained properly it would have been over before they got there. McMegan can never fail, she can only be failed.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan:
Whoa.
That article you quoted should have ended with, “Authorities have also not determined what, if anything, the shooting of two kindergartners had to do with the shooter’s proposed ‘countermeasures’ to US response in either Palestine or Yemen”.
Elizabelle
WaPost story after a 2023 Flint, Michigan school shooting. Since they can’t ban guns ….
Backpacks. We are so fucked.
karen marie
@raven: It depends on your definition of “minimal proficiency.”
Elizabelle
@Captain C: Land of the free.
Citizen Alan
@Miss Bianca: I am expecting a lot of things to horrify me over the next 4+ years. The Post and the NYT and CNN going out of business and individual reporters being bankrupted by frivolous defamation suits after the SCOTUS Nazis overturn Times v. Sullivan won’t be one of them.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Hey I know: McArgleBargle can lead the charge!
Citizen Alan
@Miss Bianca: I have a friend (the DM of our gaming group) who is a younger gay man and who votes Republican because of guns. Because it’s fun to fire off rounds at a stationary target and he’s angry at the thought of the Democrats taking away his toys. We never talk politics, but I can’t help side-eye him at times.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Captain C:
A bit from my comment above:
The long tern NRA/GQP strategy:
Make these incidents so common, and make people feel so powerless to stop them, that we’re all just too numb to react. Some people will buy more guns and ammo in response, and the rest of us remain inert. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Citizen Alan
@Gravenstone: Wasn’t there an in incident where an elementary school kid found the gun that the School Resource Officer set on the back of a toilet while he was taking a dump and then forgot about?
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne: Because they don’t love their kids.
Elizabelle
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That is what has happened.
This is traumatizing to many of you. And you can’t stop it or do much about it.
Citizen Alan
@JaySinWA: After nearly 20 years, I am still irrationally proud of getting banned from the Atlantic comment section after I told McMegan that she was a sociopath.
Citizen Alan
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Republicans love school shootings. Whenever there’s a school shooting, the gun nuts rush to the guns stores to buy more ammo because they think this time the Dems will finally ban their guns (which will never happen). So the gun sellers are flush with cash, which means the gun lobby is flush with cash, when means that GOP politicians can line their pockets with donations (aka legal bribery). And as an added bonus, school shootings instill helpless rage in liberals, which psychopath conservatives find hilarious. Republicans ADORE school shootings.
Baud
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
It’s always the fault of the trans.
Or the blacks.
Or the Muslims.
Or the __________ (fill in blank with any group except white conservative males).
Gvg
@Elizabelle: school boards only have authority over schools, the kids in school and the teachers. They can’t take any real measures. That would be on the state, and somewhat on a city or county. Even the feds don’t have as much to say as the state. And that depends on what and who you elect.
Annie
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
no, First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco.
Raven
@karen marie: hitting what you aim at
Annie
Here’s a case from my former court (I’m retired now) involving a cop — a cop! — who left his gun in his car, “unsecured”, overnight, which violated police department policy. Car was broken into, gun stolen and used to kill somebody. The victim’s mother sued the city. She initially lost on summary judgment but the Court of Appeal reversed that. You would think a cop would take his weapon indoors with him! Here’s the opinion, the first part of which outlines the facts of the case (legalese comes later).
https://www4.courts.ca.gov/opinions/archive/A161279.PDF
Case was Perez v. City and County of San Francisco, Court of Appeal case number A161279.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
This was a female, apparently.
Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: true story – since I always have bandaids and anti bacterial wipes, I recently aided a elderly woman who got badly scratched at a dog park. So even carrying basic first aid supplies is more helpful than weapons.
hotshoe
@Miss Bianca:
short answer: no
long answer: not even if gun violence costs their own lives as well as the lives of their children. It’s a fundie school; they’re all members of the inhumane cult. They believe in Death. Not life.
Thinking about mass murders, I’m surprised there aren’t shootings more often at christian schools. Seems to me to be the perfect storm of Means, Opportunity, Motive.
Means: weapons present in home.
Opportunity: well, same or even more so than similar public schools — my guess is that the quality of any deterrents at an evangelical school is on par with the quality of the education there, ie substandard.
Motive: bullying, fear of being called gay, shame at being actually gay or being anything less than perfectly pure, convinced that you’re going to hell no matter what, might as well take a few with you when you go — it’s amazing that any child can live through a decade of church school without feeling homicidal.
Omnes Omnibus
@TONYG: Most soldiers can’t shoot very well at all.
Bupalos
@Miss Bianca: I suppose they made that case with no actual data. As one does these days if one knows how the wind is blowing.
sounds like it should be true, therefore…
Bupalos
@hotshoe: meh. This is mostly wrong insofar as I’ve seen.
my Mormon uncle shot and killed his own child who was sneaking into the house after hours. We never again heard about guns or gun rights from him. Three years and a few dozen cases of gin later he killed himself with the same gun.
people are people.
hotshoe
@Bupalos:
I’m sorry you were deprived of your cousin and then your uncle. I’m certainly not going to argue with you about your family’s experience with gun death and regret.
Kayla Rudbek
@hotshoe: when I was in Catholic high school, I had a sign hanging in my locker, “Patience Hell, I’m going out and kill somebody” which I bought the print of (so not a handwritten note). I probably would have been expelled or sent to mandatory therapy these days.
Just Some Flyover
@KatKapCC: They wouldn’t really care (something something thoughts and prayers not withstanding) unless it was THEIR kid who was shot and killed. And if it was? They’d sue the teacher.