Trigger warning — this spot is almost too effective…
Seriously good work by the Sandy Hook Promise people — I learned about it from a spot on the local news, and I suspect it’s going viral on the airwaves as well as in social media.
On a technical level, this is an incredibly well-made PSA with riveting performances. On an emotional level, this is a devastating take on school shootings that ends so disturbingly, I had to text my 20 yr old kid to make sure she was okay. She is… And yet I’m still crying. https://t.co/cN86XiIyqH
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) September 18, 2019
rikyrah
it is SO powerful. I hope that they air it nationally.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: The Today Show showed it yesterday or the day before and also spoke with someone from the Sandy Hook Promise group. I don’t remember her name.
The Moar You Know
I saw this yesterday and it’s amazing. The end scene in particular will rip your heart out.
It won’t change one mind.
dlwchico
I was expecting a gun shot sound at the end, after it went black.
I wonder if they tried an edit where that was in.
West of the Rockies
Jesus Christ.
I hope McConnell and Trump and the NRA enjoy a fitting afterlife.
Rob
@The Moar You Know:
Which is most unfortunate. This video is very powerful.
laura
Wow, that is powerful, and that it was made at all is the shame of this nation.
If we are made to bow down to the gun, we should force to the public to see exactly what a mass shooting does. Then let them defend their right to possess weapons of war.
Kay
I’m torn about this. I’m on a school committee and we talk about the school safety shooting stuff every month and I think we ARE scaring kids, but OTOH I think the people who are saying shootings are rare (true) are just completely misunderstanding the issue. It just doesn’t matter that they’re rare. The COST is so unimaginably high that people feel they have to do something.
I mean, that was the chant in Ohio after the last round of shootings. People were literally chanting “do something!”
Telling them shootings are rare is just not responsive. It doesn’t matter.
I DO think it’s effective as an ad and I generally think advocates have a lot of leeway to approach these things how they want, so I guess on balance I’m okay with it.
Leto
@rikyrah: NBC news did last night, almost in it’s entirety. They spoke to one of the women who leads the group, who lost her son in the shootings. Like you said, it’s extremely powerful, and yes, I was crying at the end. The fact that the gun humpers would rather let children/people continue to be murdered rather than give up their penis extensions is emblematic of what’s wrong with this country as a whole. It’s admitting that they fucked up, that their actions lead to this outcome, and continuing to doubling/tripling down on their path to destruction. Madness and insanity wrapped together.
Jamey
It’s no Chasing Amy or Mallrats, but Kevin Smith might actually be right…
sdhays
@The Moar You Know: On this issue, minds don’t need to be changed. Priorities need to be reset. This kind of thing will harden people’s resolve and weaken NRA supporters’.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
I think they’re hoping to get gun regulation supporters to be as passionate as the other side. I don’t think it’s intended to change minds.
JPL
It was on local news early this morning, so it is getting the attention it deserves.
Eural Joiner
Agree with all the powerful sentiments – but this issue, like all of our real problems right now – are tied to one single solution: we have to obliterate the GOP as a political power. Every GOP person I know is a) not paying attention the least bit to any “news” on the climate, shootings, Trump, etc. and 2) planning on voting party line to stop the libs from taking over. Every.One. of. Them. (including, sadly, my brother and mother).
Until they are wiped from our political system nothing gets fixed.
Leto
@Kay: Airplane crashes are rare, yet we do everything we can to prevent them. Before we take off, you’re given instructions on what to do in the case of an emergency. Masks drop, here’s how to open the doors, use your seat as a flotation device… it doesn’t matter that it’s rare and statistically you’re more likely to be hit with a hammer than to die in a crash. This is an issue we can fix, we can “do something!” about, and make a positive change. But we have the NRA, #MoscowMitch, and the rest of the Rethugs who absolutely refuse to a single thing to stop the carnage.
Some popular whataboutisms that I’ve seen: What about Philadelphia, why haven’t you done anything to stop the violence there? (This is the ever popular Chicago of my area)/ What about hand guns? They kill more people!/ What about “shall not be infringed” don’t you understand?
I hate all of those people. Full stop. They’re not rational, they’re not looking to help, and they’re destructive to our nation.
Tom Levenson
Sweet Jeebus but that ad takes no prisoners. I’m shaking.
Kay
The most chilling part to me is not the video or the sound. It’s the line at the end. “It’s back to school time. You know what that means”
It does mean that, now. The school shootings impact a lot more than the immediate victims. It’s a kind of terrorism. It changes how we think.
I feel like I’m a rational person and I know school shootings are rare. However. When our school kids do their 4 times yearly musical performances up on stage in an old theater with narrow aisles and people in and out, I am slightly uncomfortable that they are on stage. I feel like they’re too exposed. I can’t think my way out of this with the statistics. I don’t obsess on it – the fear- and I don’t want to cancel anything and I attend the performances but I think about it, and I don’t believe I’m the only one.
donnah
I watched it and I cried.
My eldest son, who is a grown man, was five minutes away from being in the Oregon District during the fatal shootings. I know what fear feels like. I know how I felt when my husband broke the news and how my knees turned to jelly.
Knowing that your kids are in danger, no matter what their age, is a terrible feeling. I hate that parents sending their kids to school have to worry in the back of their minds that they could be in danger of a shooter.
So the psa may or may not make a difference, but in my mind, it does. It makes a difference. I wish everyone could see it.
Leto
@Kay: When I came back from Iraq and Afghanistan, it took me a long time to stop looking for items on the side of the road which might be IEDs. To stop scanning my environment looking for threats. To stop randomly moving while I was standing talking to people so that I wasn’t a target.
You’re correct that it’s a form of terrorism, because that’s what it is. And we, as a nation, are being held by terrorists and terrorized. They’re demanding that we accept their way of life, no matter the cost, and they’re willing to let innocent people die so they can have that way of life.
Nobody should be scanning for exit paths at a school function. Nobody should have to worry about sight lines. Yet here we are. We have to change this.
Kay
@Leto:
Not to mention that it’s a flat-out lie that “no one” does anything about shootings in Chicago or Philadelphia. I’m not clear on why all conservatives swallowed this and started reciting it- it isn’t true. People do a lot of things! Have they ever been to Chicago? This is a HUGE issue there. I’m just an occasional visitor and I picked that up.
Leto
@Kay: Racism. Because Chicago and Philadelphia are just filled with gangs, and it’s just the gangs (black in black crime! Another conservative talking point) that are the problem. If we take away law abiding citizens guns, how are they supposed to protect themselves from the roving band of post apocalyptic style gangs that are coming to rape/pillage innocent white Americans?!?!? I blame Eastwood and the Dirty Harry style movies that hyped that bullshit. Also the Death Wish movies which did the same thing. Conservatives eat that shit up and think it’s true. Gah!
Kay
@Leto:
The “arts building” here is this well-loved public theater. They built it in the 30’s and it harkens back to a time when people weren’t so stingy and grim and ungenerous. It’s not a wealthy area yet look what they built just for “arts”! This crazy Greek looking thing! And then they let KIDS in there.
It’s really lovely and it’s this big tradition for the little kids to perform on the stage, which they will then do several times a year thru high school. I sit in the balcony. And scan the room below. I didn’t do that when my oldest was up there on stage and now I do.
Amir Khalid
It will be interesting to see which media outlets dare not show this message.
satby
Destroying the grey zone, as Adam Silverman often reminds us, is a goal of terrorism. The NRA is a terrorist supporting organization. I’m often stunned by how many people in this area home school their children, even though the kids are getting a deficient education in most cases, and a lot of them choose that out of fear and a sense that they can control things and protect their children at home. And that’s a secondary tragedy for this country: the generation of kids growing up fearing for their lives in school, and their agemates not learning how to cope with people and thoughts different from their family’s due to the same fear.
Rileys Enabler
I drive by Santa Fe High School every workday, twice. And every day my heart freezes and I think of my own son in a different high school, so vulnerable.
I hear you saying “school shootings are rare” but they don’t feel rare when you pass the building in which so many kiddos died every damn day.
I am sick through my soul for this deranged country. How does anyone say that the right to own a gun supersedes the rights of those families to have their children breathing.
I can’t even. I want sanity back. I want my child – our children- to be able to go to school without thinking of how to escape a shooter.
I hate this timeline.
Leto
@Kay: I’m sorry that you have to do that. Also I’m glad that you have a wonderful arts building there and that they let the kids in it! I wish we still built buildings like that, for that purpose. Maybe our next president can get a job works bill passed that would enable that to happen. Fingers crossed and all.
Kay
@Leto:
It’s a kind of mental WORK you’re doing and it doesn’t seem to spring from “rational”- it springs from something older. I can do both things- I can be thinking about the odds (really, really low) while the other part is still scanning :)
glory b
Also, as a percentage of population, Philadelphia and Chicago aren’t even in the top 30, according to neighborhood scout.com.
Some that are there, Pine Bluffs AR, Fairbanks AK, .Huntington WV.
WereBear
@satby: All part of the theocratic plan. Just keep shifting money to the religious schools until they become the “public” schools and apostates can homeschool. Or not.
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know: Seriously doubt it won’t change one mind. It’ll move lots of folks off the fence and into action.
I’ve been responding to FB friends who post it with “This is the reality, though. Now what shall we do about it?” I know the majority of them (like the majority of this country) are ready for changes in a number of areas:
– universal background checks
– assault weapons bans
– red flag laws
– less focus on lock-down drills (including a better understanding of how these are stressing out our kids unnecessarily )
Kay
@Rileys Enabler:
And to say that to people who run schools is just not helpful. Of course it’s rare. But the COST. Unbearable. Not to be borne. On their watch. You can’t ask than not to do something. If they’re any good at the job their whole thing is taking care of kids. Those are the people we want in schools, right? The people who feel a duty to protect them?
Jeffro
@sdhays: Agreed@Kay: Agreed
Jeffro
Btw breaking news: Colt is ending production of AR-15s for the domestic market, citing ‘low demand’ and ‘surplus capacity’
(Narrator: also ‘nearly endless lawsuit liability’)
Just Chuck
ISWYDT
Just Chuck
@Jeffro: They’ll just sell off Bushmaster to some other company who will continue to churn them out as long as it’s legal for them to do so.
Raven
@Leto: I was sitting next to a recent returnee in Hartsfleid when one of the self-compacting trash cans activated, he was not amused. Hypervigilance really doesn’t go away does it?
Leto
@Kay: This is something common in vets coming back from war zones. It takes a while to feel safe again. It takes a while to “come down” from being at 100% alert, every waking moment. The point I was trying to make is that you’re doing things that we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Same thing Vietnam vets did. You shouldn’t be doing that, at all. The gun humpers are enabling a mentality that you only see in war zones (constantly assessing your environment for threats). It has to stop.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: (Narrator: ‘also we can always ratchet production back up once a Democrat is in the White House, as usual)
japa21
The interesting thing about this PSA is that it is obviously anti-gun but nowhere is that mentioned. In fact, it is more about learning the warning signs, how to tell that someone is at risk of turning into a shooter. That was very smart. They get the emotional gut wrenching response w/o lecturing about guns.
This allows even some 2nd Amendment advocates to get behind the message without realizing they are then halfway to advocating more restrictions, not fewer.
Leto
@Raven: I was laughed at by some teenagers recently for visibly jumping when some loud noise went off while walking my dog. I wanted to go over and ask them wtf they thought was so funny, to explain to them why I had jumped.
It’s been almost ten years since I was in theater, yet things like that still trigger an involuntary response. At least I’ve stopped scanning the roads.
Martin
Libtards discriminating against me. I need my 31 AR-15s to help me write my manifesto – it’s my first amendment right.
Leto
@Jeffro: Yeah, that’s the biggest rub. NRA spent the most money in its history on backing Trumpov ($30M in rubles) and the outcome was guns are safe, so demand goes down. Of course guns were also safe during Obama’s admin, but “oogy-boogy scary Mooslim is coming fur yur gunzzzzz!!!”
@japa21: that’s a good point.
Fenix
@Kay:
I think it has cease to matter that they are, technically, rare. The fear and anxiety are now more and more commonplace. That’s terrorism, right?
Last week, I was walking through downtown Houston at night with a bunch of people around after a big stadium event, toward a train station. For the first time in my 50 years, I found myself really nervous, and checking out balconies and such. It was very unsettling.
raven
@Leto: Try 50!
Martin
@Jeffro: That’s not really that helpful, though. Public has overwhelming support for these things, so it’s not a matter of getting people on board – everyone is on board. People need to stop voting for Republicans until they start passing these things that the public supports. You don’t need to convince them to become Democrats, just tell them to temporarily change their votes – vote independent if they want, write in a candidate, etc. until the change happens.
We don’t even really need to vote the GOP out. They just need to be convinced they’ll lose unless they support this stuff. Right now they don’t.
BretH
@Leto: And @Kay – what’s crazy on the other side of this is folks who carry in public are obligated to be exactly like this at all times – situationally aware, scanning for threats, mentally and physically ready any instant to react correctly to a threat – and fully committed to killing a person – and I’d bet .001% of them really are. And it’s insane to think that most would be.
patrick II
Kieran Healy wrote about the
Rituals of Childhood and how they are the bindings of civilization. He describes his first communion in Ireland compares it to the ritual children share that binds today — school shooting drills and the fear instilled.
I will add as they gain more knowledge of climate change and the irretrievable damage being done right now and say we are really fucking over the next generation. They should hate those of us that are left when they grow up and figure out what we did.
JPL
The local CBS station covered the ad in depth with feed from a national correspondent, who said that school safety is not a partisan issue. So they had it on both the morning and noon news.
patrick II
@Fenix:
Right, see Kieran Healy at @patrick II: above.
Kay
@Fenix:
It’s weird how you just roll it into your day. We don’t allow guns in the law office- there’s a sign on the door- but some of them are addicts and I sometimes can tell, so know, or suspect, that they have a gun on their person. I get so hot- like a flash of real rage and I have to use all my control to ask them if they brought one in and then tell them to take it outside. I want to scream at them. I can hear myself, that I’m right at the edge of losing it – “did you bring a GUN in here?”
So, so sick of it.
Leto
@raven: I’ll be 50 in a few years. We’ll talk again about it ?
@BretH: what you’re describing is a vigilante/mercenary group, which is what they want. They want to be the hero who stops a criminal, guns a blazing. If they really wanted that, they could join the police force, but instead they wanker around with their weapons, strutting and posturing, causing the rest of us to question their sanity. Because, again, how the F do we tell the good guys with gun from the bad guys with guns? They all look the same. Report them all. See a gun, report a gun.
Martin
@Kay: Right. Americans (probably everyone) have terrible senses for risk/reward calculations. Schools aren’t Walmart. Walmart doesn’t feel a sense of responsibility for the safety of their patrons – to a certain degree, yes, but a mass shooting is pretty far into their ‘act of god’ liability category. Schools have a totally different attitude. We are entrusted with your children, and it is our responsibility to send them back as better people than you sent them to us as. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had instructors stressing to the point of paralysis because they were afraid students might burn themselves on a piece of lab equipment. I’ve dealt with student suicides and even student gun threats against other students and let me tell you, it takes a long time to stop feeling like you’ve failed at life.
At least the rank and file staff at schools will do literally anything to prevent that from happening. The thought someone will come in and shoot up a classroom is unimaginable, so there is no amount of bulletproof glass and badge swipes I wouldn’t pay for to ensure that never happens. My bosses don’t give me that kind of unlimited budget, however, but they do budget a LOT. We have panic buttons and lockdowns in most of our student-centric spaces, new security camera systems not because they think they can prevent a shooting, but so the police can contain one when it happens. We do active shooter drills every 6 months. We now include it as part of orientation. We have begun designing classroom buildings with shelter in place, egress, etc. in mind. If the taxpayers knew how much of their money was subsidizing some asshole’s ability to own an AR-15, they’d revolt. It’d be way cheaper to buy back the AR-15s than continue with this farce.
cain
@Leto:
Actually it’s the entire 80s action movies. Think about it? Those movies always talk about how incompetent govt was, and how it always took a take charge, lone man, to correct the system. Cobra, Dirty Harry, and all that.
The reagan era really fucked our shit up and laid the stage to this culmination of shit that has landed now. It only took 30 years of slow burn to get this point.
cain
@Kay:
That was always my complaint, we never do big things anymore. The 50s and 60s seems to be an era of big ideas, and growth. These asshole MAGA people think about that prosperity and only think white people and giving all their money to rich people. With a 90% tax rate we had funds to do big things and it was good. Today we just seem to be about just keeping money.. I don’t get it.
Honus
It may not change any minds, but it might wake some up and energize others. While 90% of Americans favor more gun control they don’t have the single-minded zealotry of the gun nuts. I’m cautiously optimistic that that worm may finally be turning
Jeffro
@Martin: That’s what I said…moving people from ‘on board’ to ‘taking action’.
HumboldtBlue
Well just think of the possibilities for cool fashion trends when the kids with the armored backpacks wear these awesome new sweatshirts!
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: Colt is ending AR production as they’ve been chopped off at the knees by foreign competitors who can make one at a tenth the cost. And domestic competitors (Kel-Tec, lookin’ at you) who make them out of cheap, breakable plastic save for the chamber and barrel insert.
Kel-Tec can do this because the consumer product safety laws specifically exempt guns, so if one blows up in your fucking face, it’s your problem.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Leto: Have you read Redeployment by Phil Klay? The first story in that collection is about a soldier who’s just back from Afghanistan or Iraq and is reduced to shaking by a trip to mall. Klay was in the Middle-east. It’s a great book.
cain
@Leto:
Imagine if you were open carrying. Ugh.
Jeffro
OT but looks like the IG gave the House Intelligence Committee nothing today…your ball, Congress.
HalfAssedHomesteader
To say that school shootings are rare you have to believe that they end when the shootings stop. I can assure you Columbine is still happening; Sandy Hook is still happening. Not just for the families who were victimized there but for the nation as a whole.
The Moar You Know
@cain: Forty years since Reagan. And it wasn’t just the action movies. It’s almost ALL the movies from that era. The police, government, et al, are either bungling idiots for comic relief, malign bureaucrats looking to destroy the capitalist system, or jackbooted thugs looking to kill ET.
In the nineties the narrative switched to corruption. All the cops, soldiers, bureaucrats, government lifers, welfare cheats, gangbangers, hell, everyone – all sucking at the taxpayer teat and only one guy can take care of business. Perhaps best epitomized by “Falling Down”.
Leto
@cain: that’s true. All those movies were about the failing of government and the strong white man who comes to avenge/save us all. Ugh. And the new Rambo movie coming out looks like anti-immigrant porn. Smh.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I have! It was the first Iraq war book that I felt captured my experiences. Overall it’s a very good book.
Martin
@cain: We are all Mary Sue.
Professor Bigfoot
I agree. I’m fully in favor of the restrictions proposed (i’m not going to get into a technical argument about “assault weapons,” that shit is tiresome and I could happily live without any of my “modern sporting rifles.”)
But I still don’t go around lots of white people without a firearm on me. I don’t trust y’all.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Roger Moore
@Kay:
That’s never slowed them down before. They buy the argument because it justifies continuing to believe what they want to believe, and that’s far more important than whether it’s supported by facts and evidence.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@The Moar You Know:
To be fair, a lot of what you described, specifically the first paragraph, sounds a lot like a reaction to Americans’ tendency from earlier decades to implicitly trust authority. In the 40s, 50s etc, the government, with popular support, made lists of organizations and people who were considered dangerous/seditious. The Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and Watergate broke that trust. So, I don’t see “jackbooted government thugs trying to kill ET” as an approving right-wing trope but rather as a (justifed) left-wing critique/trope of authority
I suppose it depends on your POV and ideology. I guess I can see how those tropes might appeal to anti-government RWNJs
Yutsano
@Leto:
And what made that happen? EEEEEEEEEEVILLLLLL REGULATION!!! Without the FAA improving air travel after every mistake in the past (which is how most regulations got written) we would not be trusting airplanes nearly as much as we do now. Regulation causes a small amount of inconvenience for a large social benefit*. They’re there because we learned.
Thanks to the NRA and their lackeys the GOP we can’t even LEARN about guns. The one study (I can’t recall the details now) that even tried to talk about what guns do got shouted down so fast it wasn’t funny. We can only nibble on the issue at the edges. It’s time for an ad like this that will shake people out of their torpor. Although a lot of us were there even long before Columbine.
Professor Bigfoot
THIS. If the “conservative” gun nuts were confident in their beliefs, they would be willing to actually *study* the problem.
But it’s more like religious dogma to them. And, of course, the historical need for white Americans to be able to impose their will on the “others” through the barrel of a gun… not, of course, that they would acknowledge this.
ET
I know who will be really triggers, gun nuts.
They will be screaming about how people are using these event to scare people (as if they don’t use the scary browns to scare people) and how it all just so over the top as if their jack booted thugs obsession wasn’t over the top hyperbole. Many of the politicians in the pocket of the gun nuts will just shake their head an ruminate about politics has gotten so crass and offer a few thoughts and prayers with a healthy does of 2nd Amendment code speak.
Soprano2
@Leto: You were able to stop? Because my husband is a Vietnam vet, who was in combat for a year, and he still hasn’t stopped doing some of that stuff. I can tell you in every room we enter where he’ll want to sit – in this or that corner, with his back against the wall, and able to see the door. Always.
Professor Bigfoot
@ET: Too late.
Check out the responses to Sandy Hook Promise’ Twitter post. They are quadrupling down on “good guy with a gun” rhetoric… and not honestly addressing or engaging with the real issue.
I have said for a very long time that if we, as “responsible, law abidin’ gun owners” refuse to engage honestly with people who *simply don’t want kids shot in job lots at school*– that sooner or later that precious 2nd Amendment WILL go by the boards.
Because “fuck yo’ dead kids” is a really shitty campaign slogan.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Totally agree.
Sadly, I think you are right about this, as well.
Leto
@Yutsano: This is the same as the 2012 report that came out from DHS that said that white nationalists were recruiting from the military, specifically for the training that they received. Both active duty, guard, and vets. OMG, the fucking uproar that created… among conservatives because HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST OUR MILITARY MIGHT BE WHITE SUPREMISTS! Even though Atomwaffen, and other shit-hole orgs like that, explicitly state that that’s what they’re doing. And it’s orgs like that that Rethugs play footsie with, as well as just blatantly supporting. And then Trumpov is elected and they disband the organization that was supposed to study/combat this within the DoJ. I mean… they really are trying to kill us all.
@Soprano2:
Some things? Like scanning the road for IEDs. Other things… not so much. Totally understand your husband and the seating issue. I have friends who still do that.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think this is the key thing, though. So much of what we do about school shootings is about trying to prove to the public that we’re doing something than it is about how effective that thing is, and I’m sure a major factor is a defensive desire to be able to say after the fact that they had done the best they knew how. But it’s not at all obvious that the training is helpful, while it is obvious that it’s traumatic for a whole generation.
RobertB
@The Moar You Know: Falling Down was more about a guy going off the deep end than it was about vigilante justice. The protagonist is more of a proto-Trumpoid type, who’s bad day keeps getting worse and he’s not helping. Lethal Weapon 2+ might be a better choice; by that time Riggs and Murtaugh aren’t arresting people anymore, they’re just blowing them away.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
They’re a bunch of Walter Mittys, except that unlike Mitty, who restricted his heroism to imagining the stuff he would do, they’ve gone and armed themselves.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
“Falling Down” is a perfect encapsulation of Trumpism. Trump supporters see themselves as D-FENS and don’t understand that they’re the villains.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Roger Moore:
Well, you know what they say: everyone’s the hero of their own story and nobody ever sees themselves as the bad guy. Even when they are.
Leto
@Roger Moore: We now have a better example:
Rambo: Last Blood; What the critics are saying
laura
Mass shootings at schools may be a rare occurance but the fear of a mass shooting and the resources that are being used to train for such occurance IS A DAILY REMINDER TO STUDENTS, PARENTS AND SCHOOL EMPLOYEES THAT THEY ARE NOT SAFE AT SCHOOL.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Leto:
From the review:
That’s because it probably is. So many conservatives love the myth of liberal Hollywood, but the fact of the matter is, studios make movies aimed at different audiences to make money, and that includes racist reactionaries that eat garbage like Rambo: Last Blood up
Mnemosyne
@satby:
How often do those same kids end up injured or killed because one of those homeschooling parents didn’t bother to secure their weapons?
They’re living in an illusion, but they can’t admit to themselves that the problem is guns. The problem is guns.
trollhattan
@Leto:
I’d thought we got this out of our system with the “Death Wish” revenge porn series of the ’70s and ’80s.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@trollhattan:
Unfortunately not. They recently remade Death Wish, with Bruce Willis in the lead role
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
I’ve seen kids say that one of their most traumatic realizations during a lockdown drill was that their teacher was planning to stay outside of the locked closet where the kids were hiding so the gunman would shoot them first and hopefully not be able to get to the kids.
trollhattan
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Wow, that sure needed redoing. [eyeroll]
Professor Bigfoot
@Mnemosyne: They don’t get paid anywhere near enough.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Probably very rarely. I’m not aware of any news stories about a home school kid being involved in a shooting.
ETA. And I think home schooling is mostly dumb.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know: Douglas’s character in “Falling Down” was not a heroic savior, neither was Travis Bickle.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
It was largely unsuccessful at the box office.
I had totally forgot about the Rambo movie. I saw one trailer for it and was not interested. I saw one review that called it stupendously racist.
Mnemosyne
@Professor Bigfoot:
Yeah, no shit. Especially the elementary school teachers.
And I don’t actually have a huge problem with people who concealed carry as long as they’re actually, like, TRAINED to do that shit and, ideally, have a background check to get licensed, like in Illinois. It’s the states that let any asshole who sticks a gun in his waistband call it “concealed carry” that scare me.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
Goes to show that the world has changed a lot since the 70s and 80s, for the better in some ways. There’s no longer a mass market for vigilante revenge porn
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
There were four kids who were accidentally shot just this weekend in Texas, where they have the highest rate of accidental child shootings in the country. I guarantee you that some percentage of this year’s child victims are homeschooled, because Texas.
Note that I’m not saying that homeschooled kids are going out and murdering each other (though that does occasionally happen). I’m saying that guns + careless parents + kids is a very bad combination, and the odds of that combination turning into an accidental shooting are higher when the kids are home all day long, as they are with homeschooling.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d813a59e4b0ddcef509dffb/amp
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@trollhattan:
Probably why it flopped
Professor Bigfoot
@Mnemosyne: That makes two of us.
If someone is going to be “licensed” to carry concealed, I’d like to believe that he has at least SOME passing acquaintance with the rules of firearm safety, and his state approved “rules of engagement.”
AT THE VERY LEAST I want them to have THOUGHT about what they’re doing, under what circumstances they would draw, what’s their “doctrine” (among my friends, it’s “get me and mine the fuck out of there, without ever drawing it if i can,” not “I’m gonna be a hero gunslinger” horse shit. And for me it’s “you got my TV, hope you enjoy it, I’m not gonna have your mama’s tears on my conscience over a damn TV.”)
But then, we’re *black,* so we have a somewhat different take on these things.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
“Some percentage” doesn’t say very much, so there is not much point in debating empty speculation. It’s a sad situation, whatever the circumstances. It’s odd that a high number of the Texas shootings were in the Houston area.
In an earlier year, Louisiana led in accidental deaths. I think there are many variables involved in these horrible deaths, and the bottom line of too many guns.
Professor Bigfoot
@Brachiator: I’d say “too few RESPONSIBLE gun owners.”
I am a grandfather. My grandkids are *teenagers* now (sweet jeebus!). They live in another state. There is never an unsupervised child in my home, *ever.*
AND STILL all my shit stays locked away ALL THE TIME.
As Jim Wright says, “It’s a deadly weapon. You own it, you’re responsible, NO EXCUSES.”
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Today we have hyperviolent video games. Progress?
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
One small segment of the video game market. Unless the definition is significantly broadened to wedge in RTS and RPG games.
Brachiator
@Professor Bigfoot:
Fair enough. Still, there are too many guns. Bad things happen despite the best efforts of responsible gun owners.
One of the defenses I hate is the whining about taking guns away from “law abiding citizens.” A good chunk of shooters were law abiding before they decided to start killing innocent people.
But no easy answers and I don’t bash anyone with good intentions or those who do the best they can to do right.
Panurge
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
ISTM that what happened was that the right was able to re-direct just enough Americans’ mistrust of authority in the wake of the ’60s and ’70s to make the difference. If you can turn enough people who’d been marching in the streets in the ’60s yelling DON’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT into people voting Republican because the Republicans framed themselves as the party for people who DON’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT, well, there you go.
elm
Unfortunately, the group is using this to promote some trash.
They have a checklist form to report students who do things that make you nervous.
Some of it is fine, like threats and bigotry.
Some of it asks kids to report bullying victims or students who are poor or sad.
BethanyAnne
David Waldman of Daily Kos keeps track of gun incidents with the hashtag #GunFail.
https://mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/gunfail?lang=en