Mass shootings and gun violence are happening way too often

[kacarlton]

Re: Kelly Ann: but it was okay last week for Trump to immediately call for the death penalty and talk about ending an immigration program due to one bad guy who killed 8 people? Right. Got it.

You know what's disrespectful to the dead? Ignoring exactly what caused them to be dead in the first place: A fucking assault rifle, that could freely be bought by an awful shitstain human being, who could then do with it what he bloody well pleased. And we're talking about innocent people, and children, for fuck's sake, little children!
I wonder, Kellywise Conjob, if you would be spouting this drivel if it were your loved ones who were shot dead by a white idiot with a gun. If it were your husband, your parents, your children, what would you say then? Methinks you would be singing a totally different tune.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I love you. That is all. [emoji813]️

[fraurosena]

Want to know what the cost of all the gun violence is? Mother Jones did some investigating and found out. 

 

Just imagine what it would be like if that kind of money was spent on healthcare... 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

9 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Just imagine what it would be like if that kind of money was spent on healthcare...

They would immediately demand to cut all that excessive spending cos increasing deficit.

[GreyhoundFan]

I am with George:

[onekidanddone]

47 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I am with George:

Ryan's presidunce said this was a mental illness problem not a gun problem. No fuck face the blood is on your hands when you lifted the ban on the mentally ill buy guns.

[samurai_sarah]

Can we finally crown George Takei as king of the world?

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Air Force says it failed to follow procedures, allowing Texas church shooter to obtain firearms"

Spoiler

The Air Force says it failed to follow policies for alerting federal law enforcement about Devin P. Kelley’s violent past, enabling the former service member, who killed at least 26 churchgoers Sunday in Sutherland Springs, Tex., to obtain firearms before the shooting rampage.

Kelley should have been barred from purchasing firearms and body armor because of his domestic violence conviction in 2014 while serving at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Kelley was sentenced to a year in prison and kicked out of the military with a bad conduct discharge following two counts of domestic abuse against his wife and a child, according to Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek.

“Initial information indicates that Kelley’s domestic violence offense was not entered into the National Criminal Information Center database,” Stefanek said in a statement released Monday. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein have directed an investigation of Kelley’s case and “relevant policies and procedures,” she said

Firearms retailer Academy Sports also confirmed Monday that Kelley purchased two weapons from its stores after passing federal background checks this year and last. It remains unclear whether those were the same weapons used in Sunday’s massacre, but his ability to purchase guns at all highlights the Air Force’s failure to follow Pentagon guidelines for ensuring certain violent offenses are reported to the FBI.

While military law does not classify crimes as felonies or misdemeanors, Kelley’s sentence was a functional felony conviction, said Geoffrey Corn, a former Army lawyer and professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. A separate law prohibits violent offenders from purchasing body armor, which Kelley was seen wearing during the rampage.

Authorities say Kelley, dressed in all black and wearing a tactical vest, entered the Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church and opened fire with a Ruger semiautomatic rifle. The AR-556 Kelley used is patterned on the ubiquitous AR-15.

Corn said it appears there is confusion within the Air Force, and other military branches, about only reporting violent crimes that result in dishonorable discharges, which are more severe punishments under military law than the bad conduct discharge Kelley received.

“Either the Department of Defense is reporting these convictions, or they’re not,” Corn said. “How is the federal statute going to be effectively implemented if they aren’t reporting these convictions?”

Texas state officials had said previously that Kelley did not meet the requirements for obtaining a concealed handgun license, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle. Kelley also claimed he had no criminal background that would have precluded him from buying firearms, the newspaper reported.

In the initial aftermath of Sunday’s tragedy, officials were searching for answers about how Kelley obtained his weapons.

“By all of the facts that we seem to know, he was not supposed to have access to a gun, so how did this happen?” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in an interview Monday morning on CNN.

Sky Gerrond, a former Air Force security operations officer who spent seven years in military law enforcement, said a dishonorable discharge may have been a more appropriate punishment for the severity of Kelley’s crime. Had the Air Force court system handed down that punishment, Gerrond said, it is more likely the details of Kelley’s conviction would have reached the FBI’s database.

The Air Force does not operate prisons and instead sends troops convicted of crimes to Army or Navy jails. Kelley served his sentence at a Navy brig in San Diego. Navy regulations do not require a fingerprint card and conviction summary to be forwarded to the FBI following inmate in-processing.

Corn said inmates are briefed on the specific restrictions they face upon returning to society. Gun ownership, he said, would be at the top of the list for Kelley.

“What do we tell guys like him when they leave?” Corn said.

 

2 minutes ago, samurai_sarah said:

Can we finally crown George Takei as king of the world?

I'm so excited -- in a couple of months, I'll be on a cruise that he is hosting. I've always wanted to meet him.

[samurai_sarah]

2 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm so excited -- in a couple of months, I'll be on a cruise that he is hosting. I've always wanted to meet him

So, so, so jealous! I hope you enjoy your cruise, and that the meeting will be awesome!

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I wonder, Kellywise Conjob, if you would be spouting this drivel if it were your loved ones who were shot dead by a white idiot with a gun. If it were your husband, your parents, your children, what would you say then? Methinks you would be singing a totally different tune.

 I really hope that if Kellyanne suffered such a tragedy that it would change her feelings about guns, but some of these folks are so far gone that even that wouldn't shake their convictions. Steve Scalise got shot at that baseball game, and he's still opposed to any new gun laws:

Quote

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who is still recovering from his wounds after a gunman opened fire on Republican members of Congress in June, told Chuck Todd in an exclusive interview for “Meet the Press” that he still stands behind the unlimited right to bear arms.

“Our Founding Fathers believed strongly in gun rights for citizens," said Scalise, R-La.

Instead of passing new regulations in the wake of the Las Vegas mass shooting, which thrust the country’s lawmakers into the center of the debate over gun control, existing ones should be enforced, he said.

“Don't try to put new laws in place that don't fix these problems," said Scalise, who was gravely wounded on June 14 when a shooter opened fire on the GOP's congressional baseball team as members practiced in Virginia. "They only make it harder for law-abiding citizens to own a gun.”

When asked if he believed the right to bear arms was "unlimited," Scalise said: "It is, it is."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/after-being-shot-rep-steve-scalise-still-opposes-more-gun-n808741

[onekidanddone]

12 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm so excited -- in a couple of months, I'll be on a cruise that he is hosting. I've always wanted to meet him.

OMG OMG OMG... take me with you.  You must post updates to your FJ family. 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

OMG OMG OMG... take me with you.  You must post updates to your FJ family. 

Sure! The last few cabins are on sale or you could stow away in mine!! I will most certainly post updates. Y'all will be sick of hearing about it, just like my co-workers!

[MarblesMom]

7 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

This guy was legally prohibited from buying a gun and yet he managed to buy four.

I dunno if this has been addressed yet, but around here folks buy guns with no forms whatsoever.

I cannot tell you how many yard sales/estate sales I have been to, where guns are for sale, just sitting on card tables, ready to go.

Do we know for sure he bought his guns from an actual dealer and filled out forms?

[RosyDaisy]

Yes. Academy Sports confirmed Kelley purchased guns from them and passed the background check.

[Rachel333]

There's an Onion article, "Nation To Wait For More Facts On Texas Shooting Before Doing Absolutely Nothing About It."

The last sentence:

Quote

At press time, the nation conceded that even if a couple facts remained unknown, that shouldn’t stand in way of a concerted effort to simply wait for the next bloodbath.

[fraurosena]

3 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

There's an Onion article, "Nation To Wait For More Facts On Texas Shooting Before Doing Absolutely Nothin About It."

The last sentence:

Why is this sad fact an Onion article? It’s true...

Another sad fact:

 

[fraurosena]

More on the NRA corruption:

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The Air Force says it failed to follow procedures, allowing Texas church shooter to obtain firearms"

  Hide contents

The Air Force says it failed to follow policies for alerting federal law enforcement about Devin P. Kelley’s violent past, enabling the former service member, who killed at least 26 churchgoers Sunday in Sutherland Springs, Tex., to obtain firearms before the shooting rampage.

The Air Force does not operate prisons and instead sends troops convicted of crimes to Army or Navy jails. Kelley served his sentence at a Navy brig in San Diego. Navy regulations do not require a fingerprint card and conviction summary to be forwarded to the FBI following inmate in-processing.

Corn said inmates are briefed on the specific restrictions they face upon returning to society. Gun ownership, he said, would be at the top of the list for Kelley.

Upon discharge they told a known violent and deranged person that he couldn't own firearms and body armor. But they didn't communicate this to LEOs and nobody was going to enforce this. What could possibly go wrong? Of course gun laws don't work!

[laPapessaGiovanna]

16 hours ago, OtterRuletheWorld said:

He broke the law by lying on the form, by possessing the gun and by using the gun to murder people. He did NOT purchase, possess or murder those people legally and the fact that he lied on the form would show he was at least well aware that he could not purchase or possess a firearm. U assume he is also aware that murdering people is wrong.

WTF? He is a convicted felon, a known violent person that used violence against his family and you  have your pants in a knot over him lying on a form? Did you really expect that he wouldn't lie on a form that is the only way to prevent him from owning an arm? Of course he fucking lied! That's why background checks exist. If only the Air Force or the Navy had bothered to communicate his criminal record. But they had TOLD HIM he couldn't purchase firearms!

And now one wonders how many violent people with a military criminal record are de facto free to buy firearms.

[meee]

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Another sad fact:

 

Wikipedia says it's still tied for #10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States

Ugh. I can't wrap my mind around this. WTF is happening to America? :-(

[Howl]

8 hours ago, MarblesMom said:

Do we know for sure he bought his guns from an actual dealer and filled out forms?

One of the early reports said that he bought one automatic rifle at Academy Sports and Outdoors, a big retail chain here in Texas.  He checked the box on the form that indicated he had no criminal history.  

WIKI: "The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Act (the Federal Assault Weapons Ban) was enacted as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The prohibitions expired on September 13, 2004."

Yes, the prohibitions expired and were never renewed.  At this point we were collectively screwed. 

[GreyhoundFan]

An excellent piece by Eugene Robinson: "The blood of innocents is on our hands"

Spoiler

“Thoughts and prayers” are fine. Locking arms “through the tears and the sadness,” as President Trump prescribed, is all well and good. But none of this does a damn thing to stop, or even slow, the carnage.

On Sunday, in Sutherland Springs, Tex., a disturbed and angry man with a military-style semiautomatic assault rifle opened fire at the First Baptist Church during services, killing 26 people. It was the worst church shooting in modern U.S. history. Think about that: We’ve seen enough mass killings at houses of worship that we can rank them in order.

Why did he do it? We may never be certain; the assailant, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, is dead. But we can say with certainty how he did such an unspeakable thing: with a gun designed for warfare, a weapon that has no business in civilian hands.

I’ve written this column before, and I will have tragic occasion to write it again. I don’t care about that. I’ll keep writing it because we cannot become inured to this horrific gun violence. We cannot allow mass killings to become normalized, even though they happen with increasing and numbing frequency. We can accept the loss of life on the battlefield as the price of freedom but not senseless murder in the church pews.

Now begins the sophistry from apologists for the gun lobby. First they will feign outrage that anyone would “politicize” such a tragedy by seeking ways to prevent such a thing from happening again. Then the National Rifle Association’s water carriers will choose some gun- control proposal and crow about how that specific measure could not have prevented this specific massacre. Therefore, they will argue, we must do nothing at all.

If all else fails, the complicit enablers of horrific gun violence — and that’s what they are — will rush to get in front of the discussion and lead it astray, as the NRA did after Las Vegas by encouraging debate about bump stocks. Yes, those accessories allow a gunman to fire more rapidly. But a standard AR-15-style rifle is plenty rapid enough. What kills are the high-speed, large-caliber rounds that tear through flesh, bone and brain as if they were tissue paper. But the NRA doesn’t want us to focus on the gun or the ammunition, because then even strong supporters of the Second Amendment might begin asking inconvenient questions.

Chief among them: Why do we make it easier to amass an arsenal of weapons of war than to get a driver’s license or register to vote?

The guns most often used in these mass shootings are variations on rifles designed for soldiers to carry into combat. They are not optimized for killing rabbits or deer, but for killing people. They have no business in civilian hands.

The gun lobby claims it is impossible to distinguish between assault weapons and other firearms, but that is preposterous. Of course a distinction can be made. Perhaps Kelley would have embarked on his rampage anyway wielding a shotgun, but he would have had to reload frequently and likely would have been able to kill far fewer people.

Large-capacity magazines are also unnecessary for hunting or target shooting. How do you define what’s large-capacity and what isn’t? Just do it. Pick a reasonable number and write it into the law.

It goes without saying that there should be universal background checks for purchasing firearms. But there should also be enforcement mechanisms, with teeth, to make sure that dealers do not sell weapons to individuals banned from obtaining them. And just as there is a mandatory, comprehensive registry of automobiles, there should be such a registry for firearms and ammunition.

To those who spend part of each day scanning the skies for black helicopters, I say relax; the government already knows who you are, where you live, what you drive and how much money you earn. If you’re on Facebook, you’re probably telling the whole world much more. A week ago, Kelley posted a photo of his assault rifle.

I hear you sighing that none of this, realistically, is going to happen. I respond: But it should.

The United States is alone among advanced countries in having gun policies that facilitate, rather than obstruct, deadly rampages such as Kelley’s. The Supreme Court has made clear in its rulings that the Second Amendment permits reasonable gun-control measures. This crisis is political, not constitutional.

You and I have the power to elect leaders who will reduce gun violence. The blood of innocents is on our hands.

 

[fraurosena]

So, someone straight up asked him. 

Of course, he prevaricates, and brings up Chicago, an argument that has been thoroughly debunked before. And just look at his face once he's finished speaking... 

[Ali]

I am so tired of the NRA and hearing about Chicago.

Let's just ignore the fact that the shooter should have never been able to purchase a gun and focus on the one who took him down. Let's ignore the scenario where 26 people could still be alive and focus on the possibility that more could have died. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

58 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

So, someone straight up asked him. 

Of course, he prevaricates, and brings up Chicago, an argument that has been thoroughly debunked before. And just look at his face once he's finished speaking... 

What an idiot. If gun laws weren't a joke Kelley wouldn't have had a gun and no need for an armed passer-by to shoot him either.

ETA I realise that gun nuts wet dream came true and the good guy with an arm took down the bad guy with an arm. It's a pity that 26 people had already died and many others were badly wounded, it ruins the picture. /sarcasm

[fraurosena]

I.... I...  I  have no words... 

Today in Conservative Media: The Texas Shooting Victims Were Praying to Be Killed

Quote

On Monday, conservatives responded to Sunday’s shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas—the deadliest such attack on a place of worship in American history. A piece at National Review by David French called prayer “the most rational and effective response” in the face of evil as manifested in mass shootings:

It’s as simple as this: God is sovereign, and every good and perfect gift comes from Him. That includes changed hearts. It includes comfort that only He can provide. It includes the courage to be the “good guy with the gun” who can (and, reports suggest, yesterday did) stop a rampage in its tracks. It includes the clear mind to consider and enact policies that might make a difference.

So, yes, if you’re not praying and thinking in response to mass murders like the attack on the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, your response isn’t as effective as it could be. If there’s one thing that’s clear from the spate of mass killings in the United States, it’s that we need God to move.

But don’t tell this to the angry Twitter Left. Yesterday, as Christians bled and died, the Left’s “thoughts and prayers” brigade immediately and viciously attacked those whose immediate response to the tragedy was the most effective response.

At the Federalist, Hans Fiene wrote a piece titled “When The Saints of First Baptist Church Were Murdered, God Was Answering Their Prayers.” His argument hinged on the words “deliver us from evil,” part of the Lord’s Prayer. “It may seem, on the surface, that God was refusing to give such protection to his Texan children,” he wrote. “But we are also praying that God would deliver us from evil eternally. Through these same words, we are asking God to deliver us out of this evil world and into his heavenly glory, where no violence, persecution, cruelty, or hatred will ever afflict us again.” In an earlier passage, Fiene notes that the Lord’s Prayer was not a part of services at First Baptist.

The Resurgent’s Erick Erickson wrote a piece arguing that the shooting proves that demons are real:

Missionaries to far off places often have similar stories. The natives are stirred to faith by dreams. But as the gospel moves in there in the shadows the missionaries will sometimes encounter the demonic. It may take the form of a witch doctor or a demonic possession. They are not just in the Bible.

[...] There will be more church shootings. There will be more persecution of Christians. There will be more evil, often masked under the guise of progressive enlightenment. It all comes as American society increasingly shoves God aside. We do not know all the details of the shooter in Texas. But we should recognize evil and call it evil. And churches should see what happened in Texas and what is happening to culture as a whole and start preparing their congregations for a harder life in the United States. Actual demons are actually real. They take many forms. But they are all evil and all wish to harm the church.

At the Daily Wire, Matt Walsh wrote that critics of sending “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of mass shootings should “shut up” and countered the notion that those who pray to address tragedy believe prayer alone solves problems. “Only those who never pray and don’t understand prayer feel the need to clarify that prayer should be accompanied by action,” he wrote. “Everyone who prays regularly already comprehends this simple and obvious point. It doesn’t need to be said. It especially doesn’t need to be said over and over, in the shrillest and most condescending manner, and even in the immediate aftermath of the bloodiest church shooting in modern history.”

Another piece in the Resurgent asked readers to contemplate “the one thing you need to think about after the Texas church shooting.” “My humble suggestion is that this time, rather than using this unspeakable horror to spur our deliberations about gun control, concealed carry, security systems, armed guards, and politics, let’s try – just this time – to let it spur our thinking about death,” Peter Hart wrote:

We should be thinking about death and preparing for it far more than our weddings, what movies we’re going to see, the careers we’re going to have, or the retirement we want to enjoy.  We should be obsessing about the preparations needed before death in comparison to the preparations needed before parties, picnics, and promotions.

Not because we are macabre.  But because we wisely recognize what God has told us – the entirety of our existence on earth is merely the beginning of our life.  Only a fool then would fail to think about what happens when the beginning ends.

It ended for 27 precious souls yesterday.  It could end for you today.  Are you ready?

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro criticized the Washington Post for tweeting that mass shooters are universally men with guns. “Soldiers are disproportionately men with guns — should that be the crowd we target?” he asked.

“If the Left saw two men from Sutherland Springs, Texas, both carrying guns,” he continued, “the Left would say that both should be disarmed; the Right would ask who they are, and then leave the shooter weaponless and weapons in the hands of the man who stopped the shooter. It’s this fundamental disconnect regarding human nature that seems to drive so much ire about gun control.”