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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

This really is a full service blog.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

When we show up, we win.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

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You are here: Home / Archives for Gun Issues / Ammosexuals

Ammosexuals

Chilling…

by Tom Levenson|  March 8, 202412:55 pm| 30 Comments

This post is in: Ammosexuals, Gun nuts, Open Threads

The Wall St. Journal tells a happy tale today…if you happen to have your nest egg invested in “an industry leading manufacturer of pistols, revolvers, rifles.”

Chilling...

That would be Smith & Wesson, whose shares are up as almost 28% since the opening today as I write this–on news that year-over-year revenue and per-share earnings are up substantially this quarter.

Well, merchants of death have to make a living too, I suppose, and a simple earnings report like this is depressing, but on its own not a major jolt to my equilibrium.

The grotesque emerges when CEO explains why he things the good times will continue to roll:

Chief Executive Mark Smith said the company believes it gained market share as shipments outpaced the overall firearm market. “We continue to expect the firearm market to experience healthy demand through the 2024 election cycle,” he said.

Let me repeat: “throughout the 2024 election cycle.” What could possibly be the connection between gun nuttery and elections?

Don’t answer that.

The Journal does slip in a hint of editorial comment with their choice of photograph; I don’t think it’s meant to give anyone (except modern Moloch worshippers) the warm and fuzzies. It’s a copyrighted image, so you’ll have to click the link to see what I mean.

But back to Mr. Smith. Does he hear himself? Do any of our “friends”* on the right have any idea how linking home arsenals and voting actually sounds?

Don’t answer that either.

I don’t have a lot more to say on this. Y’all know how I feel about American gun idolatry.  Gun regulation isn’t enough.  Expose the manufacturer’s to all the liability exposure. Charge a society-born cost-of-gun-violence on every firearm and each box of ammo sold. Go for any fissure or crack in the 2A regime that the Supremes have decided we must endure.

Or, more simply, intercourse them orthogonally with an oxidized farm implement.

Open threads, not fire!

*Editor: they are not our friends.”

Image: Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, Trompe l’Oeil with Pistols, 1672

Chilling…Post + Comments (30)

What’s Wrong With This Lede? What’s Wrong With These People?

by Tom Levenson|  April 29, 202312:38 pm| 186 Comments

This post is in: Ammosexuals, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, Open Threads

Here’s the first paragraph from the top story on The Washington Post right now.

A man using an AR-15-style weapon shot and killed five people Friday, including an 8-year-old — an angry response to the neighbors’ request that he stop shooting in his yard while their baby was trying to sleep, Texas authorities said Saturday. The gunman then fled, prompting an ongoing manhunt.

What’s wrong with it?

I’ll tell you.  The reporter actually wrote that a mass murder is “an angry response.”

What's Wrong With This Lede? What's Wrong With These People

An angry response would have been if the gunman had shouted “Fuck you!” back at his neighbors.  Slaughtering a kid and four grownups is not angry. It’s many things–deranged, grotesque, evil, and the work not only of the killer himself, but every malign asshole in our recent history that has chosen to defend American gun madness against all comers.  So yeah–that means just about every elected Republican (and a very few Democrats), the Fox News apparatchiks and all the usual suspects.  They are accessories before and after the fact, never (usually) pulling the trigger, but ensuring that someone will.

But I digress.  “Angry”!?  What the fuck is that.

I’m out of words. Over to you. Open thread.

Image: Peter Paul Rubens, Kindermord, after 1611.*

*PS: it depressed the crap out of me that there’s no search time involved in pulling up a depiction of this scene for any post I do on guns. You’d think we’d get the point of the Biblical passage involved by now.  Hah! Sometimes I crack myself up.

PPS: Also too–Texas. It’s time to recognize that GOP led states have installed a state religion. Not Christianity, though they’re trying to impose a twisted version of same on the rest of us.  No. What’s already in place can only be described as Moloch worship.

What’s Wrong With This Lede? What’s Wrong With These People?Post + Comments (186)

Late Night Open Thread: All Rep. Massie Wants for Xmas Is More Attention

by Anne Laurie|  December 5, 202111:37 pm| 30 Comments

This post is in: Ammosexuals, GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Sociopaths

3 days after a 15-year-old killed 4 classmates in Michigan and the parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter we have Congressman Massie from Kentucky tweeting this insanity with his family pic.twitter.com/tAmIfVeoIq

— Wu-Tang Is For The Children (@WUTangKids) December 4, 2021

At least we can assume Rep. Massie supervises his offspring around those weapons, because nobody’s dead yet. Of course every young person tends towards a ‘just kill me now’ expression during these holiday photoshoots, but waving the really big boomsticks around like Red Ryder air rifles is not (as I understand it) recommended…

Or maybe it's a CETME? The receiver looks more that way but the handguards look off

Either way something weird is going on with the gun on the left

— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) December 4, 2021

Massie is the guy who was going to object on something important—the first COVID relief I think?—which would have needlessly required all the members to go to DC to vote in person. He’s apparently one of those guys who gets aroused by making everyone hate him.

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) December 4, 2021

Yikes. They'd see what was wrong with it, certainly. https://t.co/jooJn3oBCK

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) December 5, 2021

I mean look, regardless of where you stand politically, everyone with a functioning brain deep down knows that if Omar posed for a picture with her family packing heat like the Massies, it'd be the end of her career, the Democratic Party, and probably both Minnesota and Somalia.

— Starfish Who Just Wants To Grill (@IRHotTakes) December 4, 2021

Late Night Open Thread: All Rep. Massie Wants for Xmas Is More AttentionPost + Comments (30)

The Reality of the Rittenhouse Acquittal Is the Result of Poorly Written/Worded Self Defense & Stand Your Ground Laws

by Adam L Silverman|  November 19, 20217:23 pm| 86 Comments

This post is in: America, Ammosexuals, Crazification Factor, Criminal Justice, Domestic Politics, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, gun safety, Open Threads, Politics, Racial Justice, Silverman on Security

By now everyone has, I’m sure, done a bunch of venting about the outcome of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial today. Whether that’s about the judge and his behavior, the prosecution, the defense, the actual events, or some combination of all of them. The reality though, and I’m sure someone put this in a comment in MisterMix’s post, is that the odds were always in favor of an acquittal. I’ll leave the discussion of whether the local prosecutors in Kenosha overcharged or incorrectly charged Rittenhouse to the our crack team of readers and commenters who are lawyers, especially those who practice in Wisconsin (hint, hint). As for whether the judge’s behavior and rulings were way out of bounds, I’m sure those readers and commenters who are lawyers will be happy to explain that judges, especially those handling criminal cases, are often unique individuals. I’m sure those that do defense work will also explain that the instructions about using terms like victim or perpetrator are actually what every defendant should be getting from judges, but, sadly, all too few ever do. Especially if the accused are people of color.

This is a good thread from a public defender in Louisiana about the judge’s instruction on the language the prosecutors and the defense counsel could and could not use during the trial and how almost all the initial reporting and subsequent commentary got it wrong. Here’s his take on the outcome of the Rittenhouse trial. Here’s Ken White’s, aka Popehat, explainer on Judge Schroeder, his behavior, and why it is all too common.

I want to just briefly focus on why today’s acquittal was always the likely outcome: because the laws on armed self defense and/or stand your ground laws are either sloppily written or are currently interpreted in a very broad manner. I’m most familiar with Florida’s stand your ground expansion of its self defense laws because I was teaching state and local politics* at UF when it was being debated. The bill, commonly referred to as the Baxley Amendment as it was submitted by a state legislator from the greater Orlando area named Dennis Baxley. Baxley didn’t write the bill, it was written by Marion Hammer, who was the then chief lobbyist for both the NRA in Florida and Associated Industries of Florida (the largest business lobby in the state). Hammer is commonly referred to as the Gun Granny. The bill has what is now the usual legislative language about a reasonable person feeling threatened as the determinant for whether standing one’s ground is justified, as well as no duty to retreat. However, it also frames this within the perception regarding whether the person who is claiming stand your ground as a defense is actually facing an imminent threat. When you combine the latter with the no duty to retreat portion of the law, it allows someone to instigate and/or escalate a confrontation, determine they’re being imminently threatened with serious harm and/or death, and therefore use lethal force to stop that perceived threat.

While my understanding of the Rittenhouse case from the reporting and the commentary is that there was no stand your ground law in place in Wisconsin for Rittenhouse’s defense team to invoke, the description of instigating and/or escalating a confrontation determining one is being imminently threatened with serious harm and/or death, and therefore employing lethal force to stop that perceived threat is a pretty good description of Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions on the night he decided to go play shooting medic in Kenosha.

That description, part of which – that Rittenhouse was under attack by three different people as the lead elements of a mob of protestors, demonstrators, and rioters – focused on the imminent threat Rittenhouse was in and his inability to safely retreat, which required him to use lethal force in self defense is what his defense was built around. It was the focus of his direct testimony and it was the focus of his attorneys’ theory of the case. And it was a powerful defense because with the exception of Gage Grosskruetz, the people he shot were not alive to tell their version of events.  And this is what I want to focus on.

The simple reality is that in these armed self defense and/or stand your ground cases, the person who survives and is able to tell their version of events usually has an advantage. For the simple reason that the person or people that they shot and killed are dead and can’t really speak for themselves. The Tampa Bay Times did an extensive investigation into Florida’s stand your ground law and had two major takeaways. The first is that if only one party survived, specifically the party invoking stand your ground, then he or she (though it is usually a he) had a very high chance of either not being charged or of an acquittal because the other party or parties to the shooting were dead. The second was that if the person who was claiming stand your ground was white, the person they shot and killed is a person of color, and/or both they have an exceedingly high chance of either not being charged or of an acquittal. Whether Baxley, or really Marion Hammer, intended Florida’s stand your ground law, which became the model for similar legislation with minor variations in many other states, to actually have a racist effect is both not known and immaterial. Like so many other of our criminal laws, the reality is it produces a serious and significant racial disparity when applied.

This brings us back to Kyle Rittenhouse. The only way today’s outcome would have been different was if Gage Grosskruetz had shot Rittenhouse rather than moving his gun off of Rittenhouse as a target to signal he wasn’t a threat. Rittenhouse ignored that, which makes the acquittal on the charges regarding Grosskruetz’s being shot so egregious, and then claimed self defense because Grosskruetz was actively targeting Rittenhouse, which created an imminent threat of serious bodily harm and/or death.

Grosskruetz’s cardinal mistake was in deciding Rittenhouse was not a threat and, as a result, taking his gun off of Rittenhouse as a target and not shooting. I know that sounds cold and callous. And before someone eventually reads this and thinks I’m calling for Rittenhouse to be shot, I AM NOT CALLING FOR RITTENHOUSE TO BE SHOT!!!! The reality is if you draw your gun for self defense purposes, especially if you have a handgun and the person who is doing the shooting has a rifle, you had better take the shot. Unless you are under secure and impenetrable cover so that no matter what the other person does, you can’t be shot. Because if you don’t, the person who has been doing the shooting will see you, see your gun, and shoot you because you are a threat to him (it is almost always a him).

As I wrote way back when the congressional Republicans’ softball practice was attacked, the first attempted claim of stand your ground was in Philadelphia in the 1790s. The judge determined it was not a valid defense under the US constitution, Pennsylvania’s constitution, or the common law. The local newspaper actually published the write up of the trial as a special pamphlet, which is attached below this post. It is important to remember that the people (okay, white men) who had just come through the Revolution, the founding of the US, and were alive for the debates around both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution did not accept stand your ground as a legitimate defense. That it has been revived over the past twenty years with claims of originalism rooted in the largely created from whole cloth revisionism of the 2nd Amendment’s legislative, constitutional, and legal history is just stupendously amazing.

Open thread!

Duane 1799 – Report of extraordinary transactions at Philadelphia (1)

* When I first got to UF, because I already had a pair of masters degrees and experiencing teaching as an adjunct and as a teaching assistant, I got assigned to septuagenarian member of the faculty who had had a mild stroke from which he’d made an almost complete recovery. The guy rode his bike about 40 miles to and from campus each day! His specialty was state and local politics and, to be frank, he should have retired many years before I got there as time, the discipline, and reality had long passed him by. He was a wonderful person, really cared about the students, and loved teaching. Unfortunately they’d assigned him a 300 student intro to state and local government section. He’d never taught any course with more than 20 or 30 students, including the intro course. My job was to help him deal with this new reality. To this day I’m convinced the department chair at the time assigned him this section in the attempt to either force him to retire or kill him from the stress. Regardless, because I basically ran the course for him – I did the syllabus, handled drafting the tests and quizzes and getting them graded, did all the administration, ran the review sections, etc – we both got through the semester without major incident and as a result it was determined that I was now qualified to teach state and local politics. So every few semesters, I’d get assigned to teach it despite it being well outside of my specialty areas.

The Reality of the Rittenhouse Acquittal Is the Result of Poorly Written/Worded Self Defense & Stand Your Ground LawsPost + Comments (86)

Moloch is Hungry

by Tom Levenson|  June 5, 20216:37 pm| 103 Comments

This post is in: Ammosexuals, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, Open Threads

So a George W. Bush appointed federal judge in California has decided that the state has no compelling interest in banning assault weapons, inter alia declaring that:

“Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment…”

I’ve always found my AR-15 to be the perfect tool for opening beer bottles–just make sure you hit the neck cleanly, and that no one’s behind the bottle for a few hundred yards.

Fuck that judge. Just fuck him. I’m not going to bother fisking his masturbatory 97 (NINETY-SEVEN) page opinion that seems to think that because other states permit weapons of mass murder, California must too. I’m not going to trot out careful arguments or mortality data or international comparisons or suicide numbers or any of that stuff because this is not a reasoned, coherent legal decision.

It’s just guns=good and if the tree of liberty gets watered from time to time, too bad.

Moloch is Hungry

I’m done. Guns wreck civil society. There’s no justification for allowing some asshole who has doubts about his sexual prowess to make life/death decisions whenever and wherever they want. Etc.

And note what I’m reading as a pretty damn clear signal in the quote-fragment above. Californians who are not sworn LEOs or members of the armed forces need “homeland defense equipment”?

That’s coup talk.

Fuck these vicious assholes. The state of gun jurisprudence since Haller is a murder-suicide pact and we have to get rid of it.

That’s all I got.

Open thread.

Image: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Slaughter of the Innocents, between 1308 and 1311.

 

Moloch is HungryPost + Comments (103)

Not Everything Is Terrorism: Boulder, Colorado Mass Shooting Edition

by Adam L Silverman|  March 23, 20219:01 pm| 75 Comments

This post is in: America, Ammosexuals, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, gun safety, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security

While it is early in regards to the investigation into yesterday’s mass shooting in Boulder, it is important to remember that not everything is terrorism. Even if it winds up terrorizing people. Terrorism in general and both domestic and what we call foreign terrorism (also doing business as just terrorism) have very specific definitions. And sometimes some acts technically fit the definitions, but would be better categorized as one of the forms of mass murder, such as serial or spree murders. Ted Kaczynski is probably the best example of this. Kaczynski’s terrorism campaign did have a political objective, however, the whole campaign and the motivations behind it were the result of Kaczynski’s delusions that arose from untreated mental illness. As such, Kaczynski’s behavior was far, far more similar to that of David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam Killer, than to someone like Eric Robert Rudolph. Like Berkowitz, Kaczynski’s beliefs and actions resulted from delusions that were part of their untreated mental illness. Rudolph had clear political and religious/ideological, doctrinal, and dogmatic objectives he wanted to achieve and the motivations to undertake his campaign is rooted in the racialized charismatic evangelicalism of the Christian Identity movement he was raised in.

The now identified shooter in Boulder is alleged by his family members to have been suffering from untreated mental illness. This included paranoid delusions that he was being both physically stalked and cyber stalked because of his Muslim faith. So far nothing reported has indicated any self radicalization into any form of religious or political extremism. Just that he was introverted, had a temper, was bullied in high school, seems to be suffering from paranoid delusions, and, as a result, that his family believes he is mentally ill.

From The Daily Beast:

The motive for the nation’s second major mass shooting in a week remains unknown, but a family member said he believes the alleged shooter—a former high-school wrestler who was born in Syria but raised in Colorado—is mentally ill.

Ali Aliwi Alissa, 34, told The Daily Beast in a phone interview that his brother was paranoid, adding that in high school he would talk about “being chased, someone is behind him, someone is looking for him.”

“When he was having lunch with my sister in a restaurant, he said, ‘People are in the parking lot, they are looking for me.’ She went out, and there was no one. We didn’t know what was going on in his head,” he said.

He said he was sure the shooting was “not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness.”

“The guy used to get bullied a lot in high school. He was like an outgoing kid, but after he went to high school and got bullied a lot, he started becoming anti-social,” the brother said.

In one Facebook post, the suspect appeared to express fears that someone was targeting his phone for Islamophobic reasons.

“Yeah if these racist islamophobic people would stop hacking my phone and let me have a normal life I probably could,” he posted in July 2019.

He made similar allegations months earlier, accusing his former high school of hacking his phone. He asked Facebook followers for information about laws against phone hacking, and said he suspected someone was starting rumors about him, which “set off” the alleged hacking.

On Facebook, his politics appeared mixed throughout several camps. He shared an article rebuking Donald Trump’s stance on immigration, but also posted about his own opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

A day after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, Alissa had shared a Facebook post from another user that read, “The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter. They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them.”

If – and it is early days in the investigation, so it is a big if – Alissa is in fact mentally ill and the shooting was as a result of his paranoid delusions, even if investigators do get an explanation out of him, it may not make any sense to anyone else. If Alissa is in fact mentally ill and he is put on an appropriate therapy regimen and the paranoid delusions go away, he may still not be able to provide a coherent motive for his actions even as the reality of what he did is able to finally sink in.

Mental illness is a weird thing when it comes to motivating violence. When I was a post-doc at UF one of my colleagues was beaten to death by her foster son who she was in the process of adopting. She’d helped to save him from the foster system and from a life of being largely abandoned by parents that couldn’t take care of him because of their own demons and problems. He loved her fiercely. And yet one day they got into an argument and something was said that triggered all the trauma that he’d endured from his birth parents, in the foster system, from schools and social services not set up to actually resolve these types of problems and he beat her to death with a baseball bat. Apparently he’d been writing about his anger for several days and had confided in his girlfriend, so this wasn’t completely spur of the moment. And he did realize what he did, panicked, tried to cover it up for several days by claiming she was out of town, and he is now in Florida’s maximum security prison where he’ll spend the rest of his life. However, I’m pretty sure that to this day, over fifteen years later, if you asked him what set him off that day or why he did it, he still cannot provided a coherent answer other than she made him angry.* The only real answer, as insufficient as it is,  is that on that day, for a brief, unfortunate moment all of the years of trauma he’d endured came into contact with something that Barb said to him and now two lives were destroyed.

While we wait for more information to come out, it is important to remember that sometimes there aren’t answers. That doesn’t excuse what Alissa did yesterday, nor does it make it right. But it is important to remember in our hyper-politicized, 24/7, chasing the headlines, controversy creates cash news media culture that not everything is terrorism. Sometimes it is just a tragedy. But there are a lot of subject matter experts – both real ones and self promoting charlatans – on social media, as well as a news media that needs controversial content to attract eyeballs across multiple platforms, that has a vested interest in driving the events of yesterday into very specific directions. Not everything is terrorism. Not everything has a nice, neat answer or resolution. That doesn’t mean there may not be a political component to yesterday’s events, such as the ability of someone whose family says has untreated mental illness to be able to easily purchase a firearm. Or the NRA’s, as well as other similar groups’, stupid fight to remove every last reasonable firearms regulation at every level of government aided and abetted by every Republican member of the House and the Senate. All of these people, from the talking heads on TV to “terrorism” experts on twitter to the GOP senators that decided to put on a show during a committee hearing today on gun violence all have a vested interest in this being something that is considered newsworthy. Domestic terrorism, radicalized Islamic terrorism, an excuse for those commie Democrats to grab everyone’s guns, etc. There are two real issues here: untreated mental illness and easy access to firearms by everyone in the US, including those who are mentally ill. That’s where the focus should be. Everything else, unless some startling revelation occurs as to motive, is a sideshow intended to raise people’s visibility – terrorism experts, anchors and pundits, politicians, and special interest groups – and then monetize that visibility.

Just one quick, final note: this tragedy was definitely compounded because Alissa had ready access to a rifle he had purchased on 16 March. In this case, based on the reporting in The Daily Beast, a Ruger AR-556, which is Ruger’s AR pattern rifle. If Alissa had, instead, purchased a different rifle, Ruger or otherwise, it might not have made much difference in the number of casualties. Using a bolt action or lever action rifle would have slowed things down a bit as the rifle would have had to be manually cycled after each shot. But many of these manually loading rifles still come with either detachable box magazines or with integral to the rifle tube magazines. Not every non AR or AK pattern rifle is a single shot rifle. Every single non AR pattern rifle that Ruger sells with one exception – all bolt action – have either an integral tube magazine or a box magazine allowing the rifle to be loaded with between 4 and 10 rounds with the factory magazines. The same is true for the majority of lever action rifles. Getting caught up in a discussion of AR rifles is a rabbit hole. The one definitely confirmed problem here – Alissa’s ability to get a rifle – and the one unconfirmed, but suspected one – that Alissa was suffering from paranoid delusions as a result of untreated mental illness – are the two immediate concerns. Especially in regard to each other provided his family’s speculation’s about his mental health are correct. The issue is not that he purchased an AR 556 rather than the Scout or the Precision or a lever action rifle. The issues are that both his family and some friends suspected he was having mental illness related problems – such as paranoid delusions – nothing was done about that and that he was also able to easily obtain a rifle. And that the American political system has decided that mental illness isn’t really a public health crisis and that the solution to each and every one of these mass murders by mass shootings, regardless of motivation, is to do nothing because doing anything is somehow un-American and unconstitutional, none of which is true.

Open thread!

* If you click through to that article, you’ll see that my description isn’t lining up 100% with the reporters. I knew Barb, she was a friend and a colleague. I knew her foster son, though not well. I’m also the person that went over and packed up her things for her parents, as a favor for the departmental administrative staff, so they could take what they wanted home with them after the crime scene people and the local cops released the apartment and the apartment complex could have the apartment prepared to for a new renter. You’ll notice in the reporting that her son could not articulate an actual coherent reason for why he did what he did when he did it other than “she was holding me back” and he was angry. In reality he was doing well in school, was a successful athlete, and had a lot of potential opportunities he never would have had had he not met Barb. But mental and emotional trauma is a hard thing. And it sometimes leads people to do terrible things. And this was one of those times.

Not Everything Is Terrorism: Boulder, Colorado Mass Shooting EditionPost + Comments (75)

Breaking: Mass Shooting At a Boulder, Colorado King Soopers

by Adam L Silverman|  March 22, 20216:44 pm| 180 Comments

This post is in: America, Ammosexuals, Crazification Factor, Gun Issues, Gun nuts, Silverman on Security

We will continue to tweet updates as we have them. If you live nearby please stay inside for now 2/2 #Bouldershooting

— Boulder Police Dept. (@boulderpolice) March 22, 2021

Here’s the YouTube live feed of KCEN 6’s coverage:

Law enforcement has taken away an individual in hand cuffs, but it is unclear if he is the suspect:

https://twitter.com/DanSnyderFOX25/status/1374112891419435020

Police in Boulder, CO escorting a man in handcuffs after an active shooter was reported at a King Soopers grocery store. pic.twitter.com/n3yZz5X093

— Kyla Galer (@kylagaler) March 22, 2021

There is a video bouncing around from an unidentified live streamer who actually caught some of the shooting on video. This includes several gun shots, several injured or dead people, and one exceedingly nonchalant old guy checking his cell phone and wearing his mask wrong…

I’ve yet to see anything official regarding the number of fatalities, I’ll update once a reliable and confirmable source provides credible and verified information.

Boulder police say situation is still active, ask people to stay away from King Soopers where apparent shooting happened this afternoon. No confirmation on casualties/arrests.

— KOA NewsRadio 850 AM & 94.1 FM (@KOAColorado) March 22, 2021

Here’s Governor Polis’s statement:

Like my fellow Coloradans, I am closely watching unfolding events at King Soopers in Boulder. My prayers are with our fellow Coloradans in this time of sadness and grief as we learn more about the extent of the tragedy.

— Governor Jared Polis (@GovofCO) March 22, 2021

Update at 6:50 PM EDT

Here’s reporting with footage from Reuters on the individual taken out in handcuffs:

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT – Police in Boulder, Colorado, reported an ‘active shooter’ at a King Soopers grocery store, and aerial footage broadcast live from the scene by local media showed one person being placed in an ambulance and a man in handcuffs https://t.co/9j5m64WvXz pic.twitter.com/wREnM43QsH

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 22, 2021

Update at 7:15 PM EDT (via TaMara):

Emergency notification just went out: Boulder police asking people near 17th and Grove to shelter in place while they respond to report of armed, dangerous individual. PD is investigating to determine if this is related to King Soopers shooting.

— Boulder Police Dept. (@boulderpolice) March 22, 2021

Open thread!

Breaking: Mass Shooting At a Boulder, Colorado King SoopersPost + Comments (180)

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