Gun Violence 3: Thoughts and Prayers Continue to be Insufficient

[Ozlsn]

2 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

And then you'd be cited for annoyance.

Probably. On the positive side, cited but hopefully not dead.

[GreyhoundFan]

[Ozlsn]

 

 

[Becky]

Where does this guy live and what is he so afraid of that he is threatening to shoot a kid for ringing his doorbell?  Dude - get some help.  

[Ozlsn]

 

[Becky]

According to an article today, the wife is also in custody for helping him evade law enforcement. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I used to work at a TV station. I know it was like 100 years ago, but I can’t imagine someone firing a gun there. 

 

[Ozlsn]

Interesting that the staff didn't react to him banging and shouting until he pulled out the gun - how often is this happening at Fox I wonder? And how often is it "antifa" doing the yelling?

[Ozlsn]

Shopping centre shooting in Allen, Texas.

I haven't seen (and won't watch) the video that is circulating. I hope that change might start, but I'm not confident.

[Ozlsn]

 

 

[Becky]

3 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

 

 

The tweet from StrictlyChristo is the best summary of the situation I have ever read or heard. 

[Xan]

Aren't there any Republicans who will stand up and start talking about stricter gun laws?  This has to stop.  It will take a long time to turn around even if we began now.  There are too many guns out there already and too many crazies who just want to kill people.  But, if we don't start now, it's just going to get worse.

There is no safe place anymore.  We've had shootings in schools, churches, temples, grocery stores, malls, homes, and any place you'd care to name.  We were safer during Covid when people didn't leave their houses.  Now you don't even know if you'll get home safe if you're out shopping for shoes.  I'm beyond disgusted.

This is a good article on when the craziness on gun laws started.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-6-2023

Here's a snippet: 

In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to restrict the sale of “cheap handguns,” but in 1975, as he geared up to challenge President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 presidential nomination, Movement Conservative hero Ronald Reagan took a stand against gun control. In 1980, the Republican platform opposed the federal registration of firearms, and the NRA endorsed a presidential candidate—Reagan—for the first time.

When President Reagan took office, a new American era, dominated by Movement Conservatives, began. And the power of the NRA over American politics grew.

[Xan]

This was posted over on Daily Kos.  (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/6/2167880/-That-Guy-at-the-7-11)

Quote

It’s hard to explain, but something is going on around here. Obviously, it’s crazy gun violence. But it isn’t just gang members shooting it out or drunken rednecks gone off the deep end anymore. It’s crazy stuff now, nonsense just random killings for no good reason.

In Florida, a man calmly got out of his van at the 7-11 and shot another man just sitting in his car. He then walked inside the store and shot and killed a twelve-year-old boy getting ice cream. Then he turned the gun on himself without a word being said.

WTF! It’s like a crazy science fiction film where the society is slowly going mad. In a different part of Florida, a man was beating his girlfriend inside of Walmart when a good Samaritan tried to intervene. The wife beater pulled out a gun and shot the Samaritan in the chest. And as the Samaritan’s girlfriend pleaded for his life, he shot the Samaritan on the floor five more times.

He killed someone in cold blood and will now spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars. He’s has thrown his whole life away, for what? For a fight with his girlfriend? What kind of coiled spring goes off like that?

First, in beating up your girlfriend. But you have to know ahead of time, beating a women in a public place is bound to get you noticed and almost certainly someone would stop to intervene. Sounds a lot like the guy from the 7-11. Just start some shit and wait for some random victim to say, stop it.  

I know it’s the guns, and I’m not arguing that point. I’m asking what’s making them all act so crazy? In another part of Florida, A man brandished a firearm at his neighbor. The neighbor then called the cops and when the cops showed up.

The gunman runs out of his house with a hand gun and the cops tazed him. He stood there stunned for a second, then snatched the electrodes off his body and kept coming. The cop shot him once, and the guy goes down. Just your run of the mill, everyday mental health crisis.

I wouldn’t be a cop in this country for triple the pay. Join the Marines; it’s safer and the benefits are better. You could learn a trade with good retirement plan too. At least with the Marines, you know who is on your side.

Instead of any random wacko with a 357-magnum having a bad day. And stay the hell out of Florida! It would be convenient at this point to blame Ron DeSantis. He’s part of the problem sure, but he isn’t all of it. He just made it easier to get the guns; he didn’t make them all crazy.

Imagine you are a cop in Florida, where everybody can carry a gun no questions asked. Never knowing when someone might pull out a gun while you’re writing them a $10 parking ticket. Kids, adults and gray-haired grannies. In Metro D.C. three youths stormed a school bus and tried to assassinate a middle schooler. The gunman put the gun to the kid’s chest, but the gun jammed. Children killing children over nothing.

What is making them all crazy enough to just kill at random? Say the secret word and they’ll kill you? The next blue car? Wouldn’t an amendment to the Constitution allowing for a right to possess heroin be safer. They’d all be in the house safely medicated. And the rest of us could go on with our lives in safety.

Society is an incubator we can’t disown the products we create. We can’t say, well those crazy fuckers don’t count. What’s making them crazy? Is it violent video games or violent movies? I think it’s more than that. It’s a societal breakdown where they know it’s a crime, but they just don’t seem to care anymore.

Maybe they come from a world so violent; they don’t understand that it’s wrong to kill. If you grow up around violence, you’re bound to be susceptible to it. But social economic status isn’t always a factor. “We didn’t know our son was celebrating Hitler’s birthday.”

Obviously, learning the ten commandments from the walls of the Temple of Karnak doesn’t hurt. But never forget Carrie’s mother was religious. That you can get beat with a Bible just as easy as you can get beat with a belt. Then there’s that mental abuse that only leaves scars on the inside.  People ostracized from society and isolated looking and acting normally but ready to go out in a senseless blaze if someone pisses them off.

In Tehas, a man was just shooting his rifle up into the air just hear it go bang. When the neighbor then asked that he stop. And for that infraction, the gunman killed five people for being asked to cool it. Five innocent people who hadn’t done anything to him.

This one sounds like someone out of their head on meth. We never had this problem with Quaaludes. If you knew where your gun was you probably couldn’t get to it. Even if you could get to it, you probably couldn’t find the person you wanted shoot anyway. Or would forget why you were angry.

We’ve always been crazy, but now it’s in a homicidal way. It’s very reminiscent of the roaring twenties but even those were gang wars. Gunman back from WW1 acting as soldiers for the illegal liquor mob. Fighting for turf and sometimes civilians got the way. Even drive by’s are so ten years ago. Now, it’s right up in your face! Right inside of Walmart or when you walk to your mailbox.

Then you have the three teens in Colorado, who killed a young woman by throwing large stones from cars. Just driving around with nothing better to do than to kill someone. But after killing the woman, they went back to take pictures of her car as a souvenir of their spree.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? How can we fix this? This is about the guns sure. But this also about a degraded human condition that no longer values life, yours, mine, ours or even their own. There is something bad wrong here deep inside of our culture.

As they used to say in the old west, hanging is too good for them but prison is not good enough.  A 99-year prison sentence no longer seems to have the desired deterrent affect.

If you’re going to arm the citizenry with weapons. You had better fix the inadequacies of that society and that will be expensive. Or you are going to have carnage and blood in the streets.  Mental health care is like the weather, everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

Politicians carelessly quick to turn an armed society loose on itself without one ounce of care or consideration for what might happen next. Not much different from that guy at the 7-11. Oh well, whatever happens, happens.

And if thoughts and prayers did any good, the Holocaust never would have occurred. The prayer should rightfully be said, “Oh Lord, please forgive me for doing nothing! I feel real bad about it, just not bad enough to do anything about it.”

“Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Yeah.  Something is going on here in America.  It's just good to hear someone else say it.

[CTRLZero]

1 hour ago, Xan said:

The prayer should rightfully be said, “Oh Lord, please forgive me for doing nothing! I feel real bad about it, just not bad enough to do anything about it.”

I’m going to try to remember this next time I hear the phrase “thoughts and prayers.”  Last time I was in Nashville, there was a school shooting.  I actually heard the ambulances heading to the hospital.  Ribbons and signs went up all over town, but I doubt the populace will do anything proactive about assault weapons.  Sad to value automatic weapon ownership over the potential loss of school children.

Here in Washington state our governor banned the sale of assault weapons last month, but probably too little, too late.  At least I no longer have to clench my teeth at the advertisements for such weapons as I drive past my local gun shop. 

[Ozlsn]

8 hours ago, Xan said:

This was posted over on Daily Kos.  (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/6/2167880/-That-Guy-at-the-7-11)

Yeah.  Something is going on here in America.  It's just good to hear someone else say it.

There is definitely a level of.. not sure how to put it, social disconnect maybe? There's always been people with these tendencies but not as many acting on them. I wonder how much is the changing of things that were seen as absolutes, along with more financial insecurity - and yet there still has to be social breakdown for people to just go and shoot strangers going about their day.

I watched "Contagion" for the first time recently and one thing that really struck me was how most American movies with any kind of disaster include social breakdown and a need for protective weapons as part of the narrative. Covid, in the real world, didn't have looters in the US that I know of (might have missed it) but there is this constant push through media that is almost against community and for rugged individual defence - and I wonder if that does affect things as well even when the majority of disasters have been notable for communities trying to pull together.

(The other thing that really jarred in that movie was they only mentioned social distancing once, even though it would have been a very effective control - way more than for covid - for the fictional pandemic. Also Gwyneth's acting was... patchy.)

[GreyhoundFan]

True

 

[Xan]

The best guess now is that there are about 466 million guns in America.  We have slightly less than 332 million people.  More of those guns are in the red states than in the blue states.  There are more Southerners with guns than Northerners.  

We could do gun buy backs and destroy what we collect but I feel that it's almost too late for that.  There are now at least 20 million assault rifles out there in American hands.  Even if we put strict gun controls in place, we've got so many guns that can be traded, sold, stolen, etc. that I'm not sure it would matter.

I think we have to start shaming the shooters in mass killings.  It would help not to publicize much about them but talk about the shame they brought their families and their communities.  Sorry, but we have to try to find something that works.  We could try to make the firearms companies responsible and make them take out expensive insurance policies.  We could penalize states that refuse to comply with national gun laws.  One idea that I read is that we make ammunition prohibitively expensive.  Yeah, dude.  You've got those guns but every bullet is going to cost you $50.00.  

We need to call the NRA a terrorist organization because that's what they are.  They are promoting policies that terrorize our citizens.  Any politician taking money from the NRA should be forced to return it.  And every governor, senator, and representative who just does that lame "thoughts and prayers" should be forced to resign.  If you can't help solve the problem, get out of the damn way.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Xan

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[Alisamer]

How long before Walmart starts selling kevlar body armor? In kids' sizes? 

I just don't get the obsession with guns, and their insistence that the answer to stopping shootings is more guns. Well, actually, I kinda do - I think for most of them it's that sweet NRA donation money to their campaigns. 

But nobody should have to arm themselves like they are headed into a war zone to go shopping at the mall. That's madness. 

[GreyhoundFan]

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