Reports out of Texas are devastating. The people of Sutherland Springs need our prayers right now.
— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) November 5, 2017
It was a church. They had the prayers covered. What they needed was a gov't that loves people more than NRA money. https://t.co/mHjggII9GT
— Zeddy (@ZeddRebel) November 5, 2017
Enough with the “thoughts and prayers already.” The Bible teaches us that faith without works is dead. Do something or say nothing. https://t.co/ekYTtpQhDk
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 5, 2017
To people saying "Even churches aren't safe anymore," Dylan Roof killed 9 people at a church in 2015. They haven't been safe for a while.
— Sean Kent (@seankent) November 5, 2017
Churches have never really been safe.
4 little girls…Birmingham…1963…— TraumaQueen33 (@TraumaQueen33) November 6, 2017
TX Attorney General on Fox News says only way to stop mass shootings like this is for more people to bring their guns to church with them. pic.twitter.com/LVPqEu5ntY
— Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo) November 5, 2017
At approximately the same time as the shooting…
Open carry rally begins 11 a.m. at the Texas Capitol https://t.co/R9JftcqmtC
— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) November 5, 2017
I just keeping thinking about the scene in Brazil where the bomb goes off in the restaurant and everyone just keeps eating and chatting while they cover the wreckage and wounded with a screen. Paul Ryan is the maitre d of that restaurant. https://t.co/bioq5Phyfo
— Matt Wallace (@MattFnWallace) November 5, 2017
Cermet
The ONLY way this will change is when democrats take both houses and kick the orange puss ball out of the white house.
Elizabelle
I am with Joy Reid’s comment.
Those people are dead for nothing more than gun sales and adolescent fantasies by too many “adults.”
Not expending any grief or anguish or even curiosity over this one. Dead people in a church. Check. Next shooting victim could be me, or you, as we go around our business outside our homes.
TV’s off, because I am sick of the post-mass shooting kabuki. It’s a ritual of words. Nothing can be done. Nothing. That’s what they want us to conclude.
Droppy
Ironic that the party with no viable thoughts of its own and whose piety is entirely politicized (as opposed to the requirement that they should pray quietly in their closets) is offering two of the things it doesn’t have to offer. It also doesn’t have any action, so there’s that, too.
Major Major Major Major
This is not a comment on the contents of this thread, but I found a graffito that is my spirit animal some days https://instagram.com/p/BbKLCJJA84f/
geg6
@Elizabelle:
I feel the same way. I am somewhere beyond cynical about this.
LAO
So, I have my alarm set to an all news radio station and I awoke this morning to Trump’s claim that the Church shooting was vindication of the “good guy with a gun theory.”
PS my dog is now frightened of me, and I expect will now choose to sleep on the couch.
Chris
This is NOT Politicizing The Tragedy While The Bodies Are Still Warm, because reasons and shut up that’s why.
JCJ
I know it will never happen, but the recent changes in Wisconsin for prescribing nark0tics makes me wonder if this could be applied to guns. If I prescribe even something like At1van (lor-a-zepam) or a pain medication I have to review a state database. This way I can see if the person had this prescribed by someone else recently. A limited number of gun purchases could be allowed to prevent the stockpiling that is done and might make them known.
Oh yeah. Freedumb. What was I thinking?
Major Major Major Major
@JCJ: yeah, Fat Tony didn’t invent a constitutional right to benzos, you see.
Adria McDowell
Oh, Joy Ann, don’t you know? Real Kkkristian ‘Murikkkans(TM)* don’t believe that in that “works” stuff. That’s for papists and liebruls, dontcha know. Real Kkkristian ‘Murikkkans(TM)* just need “faith”** and the Prosperity Gospel!
*read: white, straight Christians-in-name-only.
**read: unregulated-capitalism-as-long-as-it-isn’t-harming-Real-Kkkristian-‘Murikkkans and white male supremacy.
Oh, and fuck Paul Ryan’s love-Ayn-Rand fake Catholic bullshit.
Major Major Major Major
Sometimes when I’m feeling righteously mad at these alleged Christians I think of a Leonard Cohen lyric.
Edited to fix a typo that included itself in the spirit of the rest of the song
Ridnik Chrome
I wish that every time a Republican congresscritter uttered the words “thoughts and prayers” a flying monkey would appear and whack them over the head with a two by four.
MikeEss
I think that’s the long tern NRA/Republican 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 in response, and the rest of us remain inert. It’s sickening…
Chris
@Ridnik Chrome:
Or shoot them in the head.
Amaranthine RBG
Insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting different results.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
It’s obvious why. Agreeing with them is Just Common Sense, while disagreeing with them is Politicizing Everything. Once you understand that very basic point, everything they say makes perfect sense.
Elizabelle
@Amaranthine RBG: Going up to NoVA to do some canvassing for Kathy Tran and Ralph Northam and our wonderful Democratic ticket. Yea!
No time for this post-mass shooting kabuki. Fuck this shit.
geg6
@MikeEss:
I fear that’s me now. Just numb and able to mouth the excuses before they are even uttered. I just don’t know what to do other than vote and work for Dems. So far, that’s not working. How many people have to die before it does? The number seems infinite at this point.
satby
@Elizabelle: Right there with you.
Elizabelle
@MikeEss: It’s working, is it not?
I am sick of American “exceptionalism.” The word is actually “adolescence.”
LAO
@Elizabelle: Thanks for the hard work!
Ridnik Chrome
Good article on the link between mass shootings and domestic violence:
Mike in NC
Paul Ryan understands the power of thoughts and prayers. They cost nothing, and will be a great replacement for Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Food Stamps, and Social Security. Lucky Americans should rejoice!
Brachiator
This Twitter message pretty much says it all.
catclub
Trump says it is a mental health issue, but the rightwing gunsellers have no mental health plan to address the problem, either.
That would take money and effort.
Barbara
This guy did not have evident mental health issues (well, he might have but they were not obivous), he is not Muslim, he is not an immigrant, he is not autistic, he was not a convicted felon. In other words, he is the kind of person that NRA thinks absolutely should have a gun. It has opposed any kind of ownership restriction for people with prior convictions related to domestic violence (in his case, a misdemeanor), even when they result in incarceration. So that’s a great big bummer for Republicans and the NRA — two massacres in two months where there is no fix that lies in depriving other people of their civil rights depending on their mental health or immigration history or their religious orientation.
The Moar You Know
@Cermet: Dems had the House, Senate and presidency from 2008 through 2010. Tell me what gun laws were changed.
I’ll save you the trouble: none.
It’s not even that much money. What they can deliver is votes, sadly. But this is the core of the problem; we gotta break the NRA. Don’t know how you do that.
catclub
@Amaranthine RBG: or the Onions’ version:
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
Amaranthine RBG
@Elizabelle:
Absolutely.
You’re doing the work that matters.
Butch
You are aware that while this shooting was under way an open carry rally was in progress in Austin? I guess it’s somewhat encouraging that only a few people showed up.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/open-carry-supporters-rally-the-texas-capitol/q7QkoNSUPm8tkLcZfCtMEP/
Brachiator
Radio talk show host Johnny Wendell pointed out that 4% of the population of the town of Sutherland was murdered by the shooter.
Elizabelle
@LAO: I have not done enough. Other years, out there as much as I could be. This year, not, because last year was just too demoralizing.
So: three cheers to all those who got out there and worked as hard as always. Many of them at this blog. Good people.
Hope a well-deserved victory will put some spring in all our steps.
rikyrah
rikyrah
The GOP tax bill would wipe out key deduction for nursing home residents
The GOP tax bill proposes the repeal of the medical expense deduction.
That deduction allows people who spend more than 10 percent of their income on out-of-pocket health costs to write them off.
This tax deduction is used by 5 percent of tax filers, but for the old and the sick it can be significant.
Bertha Coombs | @BerthaCoombs
Published 6:15 PM ET Thu, 2 Nov 2017 Updated 7:02 PM ET Thu, 2 Nov 2017
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/02/the-gop-tax-bill-would-wipe-out-key-deduction-for-nursing-home-residents.html?wpisrc=nl_finance&wpmm=1
catclub
Broken Ribs Gate:
Wow. And the guy who did the beating was in a wheelchair?
Was it someone here who noted that when neighbors do this adultery is often the motivation?
karensky
There have been 307 mass shootings in the US so far in 2017.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
There are other nations where people are randomly killed as they go about their daily lives on a regular basis, but we usually use adjectives like “war-torn” to refer to them.
MoxieM
– A white guy with a with a domestic violence conviction;
– he had a large collection of guns;
– frequent sounds of gunshot from the $800,000 family property where he lived; and,
– Internet misbehavior (sought out people on Facebook in the town he shot up, so he could harass them on line).
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Must be a “lone wolf”
donnah
I find that the problem with guns is the diversity of related issues. Gun use is so deeply entrenched in our culture that we are always going to be fighting on that front, no matter which political party is running the country. Second Amendment rights are the bedrock of American history and getting that mindset changed is a monumental challenge. Getting guns reduced in number when people don’t want to give up guns is a huge fight.
Then you have the NRA and pro-gun lobbies. They are vastly funded and their tentacles reach far and deep. They have politicians in their pockets and major corporate funding from all over. Our representatives are afraid of them and they will send lots of prayers, but no votes against the gun issues.
There are myriad problems with domestic abuse and mental health issues, and bullying and anger issues. How do we get a handle on that?
Gun trafficking is a real problem, too, as it applies to an underground market that our police forces have to contend with.
I felt a part of my soul crumble after Columbine, and pieces keep falling with every massacre. I’m heartsick and frustrated and angry and sad. I feel like we are running in quicksand and losing ground every day.
So how do we fight back? Would it help for us to make donations to anti-gun groups, as a way to fight the money of the NRA? Mayor Bloomberg has set up a collection of sites to fight gun violence and his umbrella group is Everytown for Gun Safety, at Everytown.org. They address many facets of gun control and proliferation and seem to be a good source of statistics and information.
What else can we do? It’s a rerun of the standard, “call your state representatives” and demand action. But in an environment where these violent acts keep happening, any action against the gun lovers has to count.
We can’t just keep crying when these events happen. We have to figure out some ways to fight back.
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
I thought he was. At the very least, he was court martialed for assaulting his wife and child and sentenced to a year in the stockade. That ought to have prevented him from buying a gun.
Barbara
@Ridnik Chrome: I am sure many more facts will come to the fore in the next few days, but this guy apparently spent nearly a year in the brig for reasons that are related to domestic abuse charges, which might have also factored into his discharge for bad conduct. The history really seemed confusing to me — whether the charges related to his ex-wife or his current wife — but my only point is that it is very rare for a man to spend that much time in jail for a domestic violence related charge. Either the military is stricter, or, what is more likely, the violence was recurring and serious.
Barbara
@Roger Moore: He had a misdemeanor conviction for something, but I think that the military imprisonment is not the result of normal criminal process, so did not technically confer status as a convicted felon. Instead, he was discharged for bad conduct.
Bruuuuce
@Mnemosyne:
There. FTFY
Enhanced Voting Techniques
WWJPD? What Would Jesus Pop to Drop?
Is this not Texas? Is this not a Baptist Church? Are the congregation not REAL Americans (as in white, Baptist Republicans)? Then where were the men’s Sunday Churching guns?
Adria McDowell
@rikyrah: Far be it from me to tell indigenous people how to run their land, but any Native American willing to trust/get in bed with Trump after some of the racist shit he spouted at native people in the Northeast? I just can’t.
Brachiator
@catclub:
Or noisy lawn mowers, or playing music too loud, or raucous partying.
scav
Apparently in Recently Made Great Again America, this incident is clear evidence that the Exceptionally Great System is working exactly as planned, nothing whatsoever can be improved, altered or changed. Bullets flew in both directions! Good guy Volunteer bullets started flying about the general countryside just like in the movies! How much more Made Great Again can things get!?!
Bruuuuce
With the reports that the murderer was found shot, all the ammosexuals are having their Wild West wet dreams of being the hero who blows away the Black Hat and saves the town. Again. Dammit.
bjacques
There was a shooting in Daingerfield, TX, in 1980. Five dead. The shooter was angry because nobody would appear as character witnesses when he was charged with raping his daughter. I remember the shooting (but not the charges) that because I was a freshman in college in ’81 and a guy in my dorm was from there.
Chris
@donnah:
Speaking of that, one of the many problems with our gun laws is that even the laws we have need to be enforced, and that’s not happening nearly as much as it should be. The ATF has both hands tied behind its back – it’s massively underfunded, insufficiently staffed, crippled by red tape, forbidden from maintaining even such basic tools as databases of gun owners, etc. That’s something to keep in mind every time you hear a professional right-winger snigger “oh, sure, like the law is going to stop crime!” For all the bitching and moaning you hear these people do about how police forces are being destroyed by bureaucrats and lawyers who make it impossible to do their jobs, the ATF and gun laws are one case where it’s actually totally true. Largely thanks to them.
Repatriated
@Bruuuuce: According to the hero as interviewed on Good Morning America, he did not in fact shoot the perp. Apparently, he suicided.
Not that this changes the narrative in the gun community, of course.
Just One More Canuck
@MoxieM: seems to be a lot of ‘lone wolves’ out there
Chip Daniels
Ironically, “nothing can be done” appears to be America’s growing approach to terrorism.
I notice how swiftly the truck attack in NY faded from the radar, whereas a decade ago it would have resulted in a dozen bills and executive orders. The Breitbart/ Fox attempts to gin up panic don’t seem to work as effectively as they used to.
I’m not approving of this, nor am I suggesting we freak out a la 9-11.
Just noting that political arguments sometimes have strange side effects.
scav
@Repatriated: Of course not. Heroic gun battle and a car chase? It doesn’t get more classically ‘Mercan Dream than that. Well, just possibly the epic lone man standing up for his rights in a doomed battle against his oppressors, but that can often work in a car chase as well.
raven
The preacher is on yammering about “everything in christ”. Christ.
Chris
@Chip Daniels:
I think that’s just the current teabaggers/Trumpists’ basic incompetence shining through – they don’t know how to pass things, and it sometimes doesn’t occur to them, even in areas where Republicans have traditionally been very activist, that they should.
germy
The governor of texas is wondering
Chip Daniels
@Chris:
I’m thinking more about how the public is reacting.
Have you noticed as well, that the general public seems much less freaked out by attacks like this, and the NY truck attack?
Part of me is deeply saddened that we seem to be numbed, but another part welcomes the lack of hysteria.
I honestly don’t know whether this is leading to a good place or not.
Roger Moore
@donnah:
One of the really odd things about the mass shooting phenomenon is that mass shootings, and certainly mass shootings with very high casualties, have been rapidly increasing even as the overall gun murder rate has been falling. That makes me think we need to start viewing mass shootings as a phenomenon separate from gun violence overall. I can think of two big things that might cause an increase in mass shootings even as gun violence overall declines:
1) Increasing availability of guns designed to facilitate mass killing. For a long time, most guns were designed for hunting or reasonable self defense, and thus had a limited ammunition capacity and frequently integral magazines that made them slow to reload. Those guns could be used in mass shootings, but their features slowed the murderers down and gave victims more chance to flee or fight back. Most recent mass shootings involved guns with high capacity removable magazines that let the murderer reload and kill as rapidly as possible. I think that’s made a qualitative difference in enabling mass shootings possible.
2) Attention on mass shootings has made them into a separate sociological phenomenon. Everyone these days knows that if you manage to kill enough people, you’ll get your 15 minutes of fame. Your mug will be on TV and your motives will be endlessly discussed. If you leave any kind of ideological statement, it will be broadcast to the world. For a certain kind of person, that has to make a mass shooting an attractive way of going out in a blaze of “glory”. Every time the phenomenon repeats, it sends the message to would-be mass killers that a shooting spree is their way to immortality.
Repatriated
@Chris: They can’t take action because doing something is an admission of prior failure to act or that prior acts were ineffective.
Brachiator
@Chip Daniels:
Apart from that “kick ’em out and keep ’em out” thing that Trump keeps pushing.
Frank McCormick
@Elizabelle: Unfortunately, “sole fide” is very much a thing amongst evangelical and fundamentalist sects.
Barbara
@Chip Daniels: It’s horrifying that we become numb to this level of violence. On the other hand, I believe the hysteria surrounding the DC sniper almost certainly contributed to the receptivity to invade Iraq. The level of paranoia was high, stoking the desire to hurt someone to alleviate the stress. So hysteria in general is bad, whatever it relates to. Like any pathology, drug abuse or even something like compulsive shopping or eating, you do eventually get to a place where you realize that the person with the problem has to want to do something. In this case, of course, the “person” with the problem is the U.S. generally, and we need a consensus of citizens who not only want gun restrictions but want them enough to vote for legislators who will enact them. Refusal to become hysterical is healthier in that sense.
Elie
@Elizabelle:
YAY ! — You go girl!
Vote — Everyone vote tomorrow! Its such an important action to take and it makes a difference IF WE DO IT! Vote, Vote, Vote —-
Chyron HR
@The Moar You Know:
“We gave them two years to fix America! WE CAN COUNT TO SIXTY REEEEEEEEE!!”
The Moar You Know
@Chip Daniels: We were taught by the Cheney administration that if you listen and panic, it will cost you three trillion dollars (and counting).
And those GOP fuckers beat that horse into pulp; remember color-coded terror alerts? All-terror all the time Fox? They kept yelling to keep themselves in office, and it worked for quite a while. It has started to not work so well, because Americans are finally tired of hearing it.
FWIW, this is not in any way a positive development. It’s one thing to not take heed because the problem is manufactured, it’s another thing entirely to just stop paying attention to problems because they’ve been shoved in your face for decades, and it’s now just part of your mental landscape.
Matt McIrvin
@Chip Daniels:
If Kay’s love vs. fear dichotomy applies, and I think it does, this might actually be good. I guess it depends on whether people are tuning it out or just marinating in death all the time.
As she said in the other thread, fear appeals work a lot better for conservatives than they do for liberals. The natural response to a fear appeal isn’t to build a more free and equal society; it’s to get tough, identify the Bad Guys (who are not like us) and have manly men with guns go after them. It’s a bad match for liberalism. I am pretty sure there’s some support for it in psychological experiments–have people fixate on death or scary news and their ideology shifts rightward, even on seemingly unrelated subjects.
Mass shootings and terrorism are of a piece with one another–sometimes they are literally the same thing–considered as a cause of death they’re actually fairly minor, but they have an outsize ability to terrorize and shock the conscience, and nobody wants them happening at all in the society they live in. It may paradoxically make the chances of a reasonable reaction to mass shootings lower if people think they or their loved ones are actually at high risk of getting killed in one, because that fear will drive “identify and eliminate all Bad Guys” responses rather than “address guns rationally as a public-health problem” responses.
Lee
From what I’ve read this was such a small town that they lost around 11% of their population in this one shooting.
TenguPhule
@Cermet:
Not far enough.
We need 6 more liberal justices on the Supreme Court and Roberts frogmarched out of it.
TenguPhule
@catclub:
Depends on how you define a problem.
The NRA’s view was that the problem was not being able to sell them enough guns.
Thanks to Bush Jr’s stolen SC court picks, that insane position is now precedent.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
Incorrect. We had them for about six months, then we lost the Senate super majority needed to get anything actually done. Because we followed the rules and Republicans didn’t.
Lee
I’ve had this thought for awhile. The first step is to start talking about repealing the 2nd Amendment. The NRA & GOP have the needle pegged to the right at ‘more guns make us safer’. We need to start moving that needle to the left.
Any sort of law or regulation that might incrementally make us safer is drowned out by shouts of fealty to the 2nd Amendment. So we start with ‘If we are going to do anything about gun violence the first step has to be repealing the 2nd Amendment’. While this is certainly has about zero chance of actually occurring, if enough people start talking about it we might at least start moving the needle. Maybe we can at least get them to acknowledge that nationwide registration is not actually confiscation.
Karen Potter
I still believe that nothing will be done until one of these wingnuts shoots up a country club; preferable one of dolt’s
TenguPhule
@donnah:
I suspect 10,000 people of color fully armed to the teeth marching lawfully in public would inspire Republicans to pass laws restricting firearms….from non-whites.
laura
@Elizabelle: you’re doing the good hard necessary work my friend. Sturdy shoes!
MCA1
@Roger Moore: I think that’s right – this needs to be treated as a separate phenomenon from simple murder. It also would benefit from being taken completely outside the “terrorism or not terrorism” arguments, which serve only to reinforce existing tribal boundaries. Most of the time, regardless the skin color of the shooter, these events are not actually terrorism. The killer in the Orlando night club was not trying to force political action through scaring people any more than the guy in Vegas was. Neither of them were terrorists, nor is this guy in Texas. They have no agenda; they’re not ISIS. They’re deranged mass killers, and we should call them such, so as to erase any potential romanticized cache they see in being called terrorists.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Adria McDowell: We know how this movie ends. Native folks locate and develop the resources, then white folks (with backing from the federal government) swoop in to claim it as their own, and the natives are forced off the land.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know: The Boy who cried Wolf did not end well, as I recall.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: There’s a lesson here that Democrats still have not learned.
They’d better start learning it.
TenguPhule
@Lee: It would be faster, easier and more effective to just get the NRA branded as a terrorist organization and have it treated accordingly.
catclub
@Chyron HR: It was from August of 2009 – when Al Franken was finally seated, until Feb-Mar 2010 when Scott Brown took over Ted Kennedy’s seat, that there were 60 Democratic votes in the Senate. And that counts Mary Landrieu, Claire McCaskill(?), and Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh as “democratic” votes. [I am am forgetting some of the other very conservative Democrats in the Senate.]
J R in WV
@MoxieM:
My understanding was (should be is…) that people with domestic violence convictions are not allowed to own or possess firearms, a federal law. Of course, if you just buy a surplus rifle from a neighbor who wants a different rifle, there’s no background check, no way for the “authorities” to know you have broken a federal law.
Or perhaps I misremember, and those domestic violence rules are state laws, which would mean, “Not in Texas, you liberal assholes!” In Texas even people who cannot control their tendencies to violence can arm up. So it appears. I avoid Texas. Seems to be a good policy so far.
rikyrah
If you or me caused those kinds of injuries in an United States Senator…..would WE be charged with misdemeanors?
Why Is Rand Paul’s Attacker Charged With a Misdemeanor?
by Martin Longman November 6, 2017
prostratedragon
Paul Ryan as maitre d’ Spiro (Brazil) is perfect, especially since Spiro later in the movie appears as the head usher at a none-too solemn requiem, to usher in the storm troopers. (Might need a director’s cut to have that scene.)
Matt McIrvin
@Lee: The problem is that the 2nd is part of the Bill of Rights. That leads to all the others being fair game for repeal. I know far more Americans are for removing protections for the accused and for atheists than are for banning guns.
I’m thinking a more specific Militia Amendment: owning a gun makes you part of the well-regulated militia, and as such, the government has the right to restrict your actions and privileges concerning said weapon, including revocation if you are manifestly incapable of being well-regulated.
Mary G
The woman cyclist who flipped Trump’s motorcade off has been fired from her job.
But the male co-worker who called somebody “a fucking liberal asshole” for caring about Black Lives Matter got a slap on the wrist. Fuckers.
MCA1
@donnah: I’m in favor of aggressively changing the Overton Window, or at least attempting to.
I don’t really need to see all guns banned in America or the 2nd Amendment repealed, but Democrats should start saying those are what needs to happen. Wingnuts already have their dander up just pretending that’s what Democrats are advocating and really want, so what harm would it do? Clearly, as a society we’ve shown that, regardless of the “responsibility” of some individual gun owners, we are not capable of handling firearms ownership in an adult manner. That should be the rhetoric, and any time there’s pushback about if you leave the good guys without guns blah blah blah, the response should be (a) what good guys? and (b) what good has good guys with guns done to stop the 350+/year epidemic in mass shootings? Put the onus on the other side to explain why they think it would be worse with stricter regulation.
The longer term aspect is we need to be more relentless and more hostile and more widespread in using terms like “ammosexual” and “gun humper” and “fucking losers who think firearms make you a real man.” That charges up the resentments, but too bad. This is a longterm thing – they need to be mocked to the point where we’ve established a clear societal disapproval of anyone whose hobby includes collecting killing machines, and it’s treated as incredibly uncool. The good news is that anyone can participate in this effort. We can all concern troll the people in our lives who date someone that spends their Saturday mornings at a gun range, and we can all loudly walk out of a restaurant serving some idiot who walks in strapping, and we can all mock the man children who sit around and play first person shooter video games.
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
Now, deeper into the thread, I see that:
So not even in Texas! Improvement.
Adria McDowell
@rikyrah: Good thing the attacker wasn’t a person of color. They wouldn’t be alive enough to be arrested.
To paraphrase Frangela: smells like booze.
Lee
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m all for a Militia Amendment. But that will never happen unless we start moving the conversation to the left.
@rikyrah:
I read somewhere (uncorroborated) that the neighbor uses a wheelchair. I have not followed it nor do I care that much.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Mary G: I got nothing. Fuck em.
germy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/06/investigators-hunt-for-motive-in-texas-church-shooting-as-the-grieving-spans-generations/?hpid=hp_hp-banner-high_texasshooting-714am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.86a09a457e67
ET
Saying that those people need our prayers is the platitude you say when you don’t intend to do anything. The same thing with the lowering of the flags here in DC today. Other than that along with the “more guns, all the time” this is the extent of anyone trying to do “anything”
I think we should stop calling them victims and start calling them what the NRA and many Americans have made them – martyrs to the 2nd Amendment and martyrs the god of the Holy Gun.
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
I was actually under the impression you didn’t need a license to carry a weapon in Texas, so now I’m just confused.
Psych1
This was a suicide. Anger directed first outward then inward. Not that unusual a dynamic except for the high number killed. We should be thankful that so many potentialy homicidal military veterans are quietly suicidal.
Chris
@Repatriated:
Never stopped before. Look at immigration. Every move they make begins with “the system is totally inadequate!” even though “the system” is already littered with their previous attempts to make the law tighter and harsher. All those attempts are swept under the rug. Immigration law is a permanent status quo in which everything is the liberals’ fault and conservatives are the newcomers just beginning to attack the titanic problem.
Chip Daniels
@Matt McIrvin:
This is why I am wary of liberal appeals to fear.
Not that fascism isn’t frightening, but fear is a potent tool that ultimately doesn’t lead to a liberal place.
Liberalism works best by doubling down on our determination to be generous, trusting, kind and engaged with each other.
TenguPhule
@MCA1:
Giving credence to Right wing delusional fantasies makes them more crazy. Killing level crazy.
Chris
@Mary G:
This is yet another long-running double standard. When conservative government workers express their frustrations with liberal presidents (usually coppers or DOD types), it’s taken as proof that the liberal is a failure and a disgrace who can’t even win his own men’s loyalty. When liberal government workers express their frustrations with conservative presidents, it’s a sign that these people are insubordinate, out of control, don’t remember who they’re really working for, and we need to fire them all and drain the swamp before FEMA takes over the country and institutes a dictatorship…
ruemara
@catclub: Which means we never had that much vaunted supermajority so I wish that someone would put a bullet in that lie.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: Rand Paul picked a fight with a disabled person and lost?
Yeah, I could see why he’d want to keep that quiet.
MCA1
@Matt McIrvin: I’m with Lee. The rhetoric should go to the outer bounds and work back, because apologetically asking for “sane, responsible gun regulations” has gotten us nowhere. No one’s actually going to be able to repeal any amendment to the Constitution in the current environment, so the GOP could bleat all it wants about the 4th through 8th in response.
You may know more people who’d be open to repealing one of those, but that’s partly because it’s been considered so taboo to even discuss repealing the 2nd Amendment for the last 40 years.
As an outcome, I wouldn’t be at all opposed to your proposed modification, however. My sense is just that, politically speaking, even that would be dead in the water as an actual proposal since at current neither the Supreme Court nor any Republicans are receptive to the “well-regulated” means you can actually regulate argument. Not when the word “infringe” remains in there. Only once we reset the boundaries of the rhetoric, by saying the whole thing should be repealed, will we possibly get to that point.
J R in WV
@ET:
“Thoughts and Prayers” in these circumstances is very close to having a Southron person tell you “Well, Bless yore Heart!” which translates to “Fuck You Very Much”…
Matt McIrvin
@MCA1: Republicans currently control 32 state legislatures and have the governorship as well in 26. At 38, they could ram through arbitrary Constitutional amendments and rewrite everything. I am not so sure everything’s not up for grabs.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Psych1
As a 20 year navy vet you can F right off with wishing people commit suicide.
Do I wish we had better gun laws? Yes I wish we had Japan’s gun laws.
Do I wish the VA had better and more available PTSD therapy and more doctors and clinics , of course.
Very little of that seems to have anything to do with the asshole shooter in this case.
This shooter Devin Kelley had been kicked out of the Air Force for domestic violence against his wife and his child. His mother in law apparently attended the church he attacked. He apparently sent her threats before going to shoot up the church.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-gunman-devin-kelley-in-laws-attended-church-shot-article-1.3614529
MCA1
@TenguPhule: I’m not so sure. Coming right out and publicly addressing their delusions about one world government and FEMA camps and whatnot should be a good thing. The more you get people saying “I don’t know about actually repealing the 2nd Amendment, but some of these gun nuts are delusional” the less they’ll share their blood lust fantasies with others and the less oxygen those ideas will get. We need more shaming, not less. They’ve already shown themselves to be murderously delusional enough times, and part of the anger is that they’re convinced something’s happening but no one else sees it. Fine – now everyone sees it. Say to them: You’re right, Democrats want to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Make a logical argument about why it should stay, in response to the specific points they’ve made arguing for repeal. Not argue with the demons in your head anymore. Step into the light and make a case.
TenguPhule
@ruemara: We did, just long enough to get the ACA done.
But again, we needed 60 because the fucking Republicans broke all the unwritten rules of conduct.
Karen Potter
For what ever pennies it is worth, I don’t believe that change in party will do much good; we need a total attitude towards the ownership of guns and the mindset of killing. The US consistently produces tv shows and movies that make a killer the hero or heroine. Doesn’t matter if who they are killing are suppose to be evil or bad; they are still killing, even “Star Wars” the Jedi aren’t peaceful, they are warriors, killing “machines”
The US worships and enshrines killers, the more deaths they are responsible for the better; look at the statues that grace the US, how many are for someone who tried to bring peace? We put up statue to Generals, they command armies of killers.
Cacti
As they do after every high profile mass shooting, The Onion published their permanent headline:
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
Chris
@Cacti:
Right beneath it was a picture that said “Pope Beatifies God In Important Step Towards Sainthood.” That went at least some way towards making me feel better about the bleak previous headline.
Miss Bianca
@Ridnik Chrome:
You’re nicer than I am. My flying monkeys would be packing heat.
Ruckus
@donnah:
There is a difference.
50 yrs ago the nra was about gun safety, hunting safety. It wasn’t totally successful but it was the aim. You could purchase guns in lots of places. You could hunt in places where you can no longer and that no longer was a while back. You couldn’t buy an assault rife, they didn’t really exist, if you wanted a handgun, you bought a revolver, a six shooter because there weren’t a lot of semi-auto handguns either. But technology and stupidity march on, even in hand held weapons. Now of course the nra is all about gun sales, never about gun usage, especially “safe” gun usage. Because the safest gun is one that doesn’t exist and not having a gun means no gun sales, and no nra. So a campaign to legitimize not just gun sales, but gun usage. That scary guy down the street, he’s coming to get you! Protect yourself. You can’t? Let’s change the laws, including the second amendment so you can buy more guns and gun mfg will pay more for the nra. It’s not a gun issue, it’s a money issue, from grifters, it’s just that their way of grifting gets lots of dead people. Oh well, no one they know. And their income is no longer only from memberships, that’s just a bonus now. Their money comes from gun mfg, and I’d bet the amount of income from each mfg is based upon unit/dollar sales. The entire thing is a marketing ploy, one with a very deadly downside. Kids, church goers for fucks sakes, random people on the street, concert attendees, kids, any one pretty much anytime in fact. It’s an epidermic but because we do little to nothing about mental or general health in this country (yes we were getting quite a bit better there for a very few years) we can’t look at it as an epidemic but look at the numbers and make no mistake this is an epidemic, caused by the gun fetish lobby.
catclub
@TenguPhule: I was probably helping spread that one. And it is unlikely:
oh well, now my batting average is only .999 on truth n accuracy. give or take.
MoxieM
Just to round out the expected picture of this totally predictable asshole, he beat dogs, or at least one dog, document in WaPo,
“The suspect then started beating on the dog with both fists, punching it in the head and chest,” a deputy wrote in the incident report. “He could hear the suspect yelling at the dog and while he was striking it, the dog was yelping and whining. The suspect then picked up the dog by the neck into the air and threw it onto the ground and then drug him away to lot 60.”
Kelley was charged with animal cruelty and the dog was transferred to the Humane Society for a full medical evaluation.”
Fucking monster.