I live in a suburb of Rochester, NY, which is a smaller city plagued by gun violence. It has gotten so bad here, and recently a 12 year old child was shot to death, which was the last straw for all of us, I think. The governor has asked the Justice Dept. for assistance in getting the situation under control. People are getting gunned down every night.
It's the simplest of logic, that when there are guns in people's hands, there will be death by gunfire. And the more guns, the worse it gets. The idiots on the Supreme Court ruled last summer that New York's restrictive gun laws were unconstitutional. Politically motivated misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment is causing deaths all over the country, but conservatives are just fine with that.
I had to walk three blocks of deserted side streets, hit the lonely ATM for cash, and hike a long stretch of Bleecker where yellow crime-scene tape is not unknown near midnight Thanksgiving eve when I got a late start food-shopping. God bless 24-hour Morton-Williams (which NYU, typically, is trying to eradicate). Reverse walk home, sans ATM stop but of course later and heavy-laden. Nothing happened. That used to be the expected every night in this downtown neighborhood of the nation's safest large city. Next time in SCotUS's wannabe-Wild West New York City … ?
As someone who takes pride in not looking over my shoulder, I looked over my shoulder. A couple of street people have told me they like the way I carry myself. I can't imagine how I've earned that high compliment unless by not acting scared all the time. The right to feel safe from gunfire is more sacred to me than any mob's triggerhappy right to bear arms. I truly believe those people get off on mass murder. The more gore, the happier they are. SCotUS is on their team.
As a woman, I learned long ago (based on excellent advice) to walk firmly, look around me as I walk (mostly because I like to see what's going on around me but also so I know what's going on around me), and I *never* look at my phone as I walk. Looking down (phone or not) and hunching shoulders convey weakness. Looking alert and aware is a great deterrent to most who would do one harm. I'm sure the compliment you've received is based on how you carry yourself and relate to your environment while you walk. This won't necessarily protect anyone from the triggerhappy but helps avoid mugging.
Far, far too many gun deaths in this country. In my state, 80% of firearms deaths are suicides. We just passed one ballot measure (already challenged in court) that will restrict transfer of firearms and magazine capacity. I give it a snowball’s chance in hell of being upheld.
I’ve had the opportunity to be professionally involved in a mass school shooting, murder-suicides, homicides, suicides, menacings, hunting accidents, and homicide of a police officer (who was a dear friend and fellow negotiator.) What I know is this: we have got to do something, or next Thanksgiving (or a not distant future one) will see that “empty seat at Thanksgiving” figure top 1,000.
And as usual, the NRA and its bought members of Congress will wring their hands and say that is a societal problem and now isn’t the time to politicize theses tragedies, etc., etc., and the carnage will continue unabated. Death and destruction continues to be the American way of life in the domestic sphere with its worship of guns, guns, guns, and more guns.
I'm am so tired of those Republicans sending us their hearts and prayers. Since they're responsible for all the guns on the streets, the least they can do is to keep their hearts and prayers to themselves.
Obviously the problem is that people go to parties, schools, grocery stores, clubs, bars and randomly walk the streets. We should ban those so people can keep their guns. In a NY Times article republished the other day the conclusion was that Sandy Hook was the end of the gun debate, because “Americans decided it was acceptable to kill children.”
One wingnut I know (who admits he owns an AR-15 that he assembled himself) continues to insist that the media has it all wrong, because, according to FBI stats, thousands more people are killed each year by knife wounds and ordinary crime-on-crime shootings. We're hysterical, he suggests, over a few hundred deaths. Of course, he wants to keep his semi-automatic weapon, and his handguns. He refuses to acknowledge that we're all feeling a lot less safe walking into a shopping mall, a movie theatre, or god forbid, a school.
Seems to me that your wing-nut friend is, himself, afraid of people with guns. What a hypocrite! Why else would he have an AR-15? Deer hunting? “Target practice?” It’s not a sport when you use a semi automatic. The gun lobby insist that nut jobs are the mass killers, not the guns. There are a variety of motives. By definition, I accept that in some instances, not all, a nutter is the perpetrator. What is the lowest common denominator? THE GUN!
AR-15 type weapons are the problem, the solution is very simple: get rid of them, once and for all. They are military-grade weapons that have no role in civil society.
What alarms me more than anything are the number of people who carry a gun with themselves all the time, as if it’s a necessary part of daily life. And I live in a relatively safe area. I never have and never will understand this mindset.
That’s true to some extent but there’s also this mindset that “I’m in danger at all times and I’m going to make sure I’m protected”. There’s way too much of that. A Wild West mentality.
Yes, and it's exacerbated by the gun violence already happening. But guns are so easy to get, and they're the linchpin in a culture of anger and grievance, clutched in one hand while a bible is clutched in the other. However, there is a huge illegal gun trade in this country that's flourishing by supplying teenagers, gangs and convicted felons.
I have not yet encountered one of these heavily and openly armed types, but if I did, I wonder if I could resist “poking the snake:” that is, taunting the guy in as obscene and inflammatory a way as I could think of, just to see what he’d do……
In the club, Q shooting, there would’ve been a lot more deaths and wounded were not for the unarmed, former Army major who went into combat mode and took down the shooter. So why do we not hear more sane politicians and the media calling out the absolute bullshit response by the GOP to mass shootings which has ranged from the idiocy of arm the teachers to more guns make us safer. That’s what’s wrong here. The myth continues and will persist .
There are newspapers and mainstream news programs doing exactly that. The problem is that the centrists and left-of-center wing does not own a politicized propaganda echo chamber to reply and amplify that angle of news.
Half the country and half our representatives don't care. They would rather live with these statistics than give up their guns or at the very least increase gun controls. They claim to be proud Americans who respect the Constitution. What's the answer?
Excellent recitation of the mayhem in our country. It’s easy to become numb to what this body count represents. I don’t see how we can put this in our rear view mirror and be happy about anything.
The one in Virginia Beach hit home for me. Not only because a close friend lives there (and I was terrified that she was in it,) but that I work in Walgreens, and such a thing is a possibility that lurks near the top of my mind every day I work.
The circumstances of that shooting are particularly unsettling, because the shooter was management and the victims were his staff.
The shooting took place in a secure location (nearly every single breakroom in any big store is, designed to be a haven of safety during an 'incident') and nobody knew this was going to happen.
Today, of all days, I was required to take some computer based learning required by corporate and one of the modules was that of what to do with an active shooter scenario. The immaculate timing was perfect. No escaping reality for me!
Now, I know only a few people who would understand the terror this kind of situation brings, (Lucien, who is very much aware of what guns, gunfire and violence looks like very well) and it is terrifying to think that someday I or someone I know could be in that kind of situation by no fault of their own.
It is one of the main reasons I put in for my retirement the other day, effective 12/31/22.
It's too damn dangerous out there and the only reason we have it is because the NRA owns a gutless Congress, and most state legislatures. This should not even be happening, but gun nuts and people who have no business taking sides in this debate have decreed it must be so.
The ongoing slaughter is the only one in the world where even the Onion has a standard template that states, "No way to prevent this" Says Only Nation Where This Happens".
Because we allow it to, and we're all gutless wonders. Every single one of us-for allowing it to continue and kill more innocent people.
Is there a cure? I think so, but it would require brains and bravery to take on the gun nuts, the 2nd Amendment nuts and those who think that it only happens to someone else.
We fought a couple of wars, and think we have the best political system in the world.
No, we don't, when we allow ourselves to be blown away by people who hear voices every single week.
I put in for retirement 23 years ago when Columbine happened. I was on the faculty of a large community college. We had had a few incidents with students carrying weapons on campus - to protect themselves they said - and I had had a very scary incident with a student in one of my courses. The following academic year, after I retired, there was a shooting scenario there as I had feared. Again, this was 1999. It is now 2022, and we still live with this horror.
Thoughts, the annual mass shootings and the localized accounts you detailed for the month of November do not coincide with the “right’s” contention that all the violence in the country resides in blue majority democratic cities and towns. Just something I noticed. Also, it’s almost as if the US needs an international body - Amnesty International? - to help us sort ourselves. I know that’s nonsensical thinking when the response to school shootings has historically been for gun owners to rush out and buy more. But what IS the answer? (Rhetorical.)
Your last two paragraphs are just heartbreakingly bitter, Lucian, and heartbreakingly apt. I am starting to question my assumption of safety as I tootle about my very small town.
Guns are everywhere and so are angry and touchy people with guns.
The list you gave us of shootings and killings this month contained incidents of violence in mundane settings and that is terrible. It wasn't that long ago when going to school or going shopping was not a risk to one's life.
I live in a suburb of Rochester, NY, which is a smaller city plagued by gun violence. It has gotten so bad here, and recently a 12 year old child was shot to death, which was the last straw for all of us, I think. The governor has asked the Justice Dept. for assistance in getting the situation under control. People are getting gunned down every night.
It's the simplest of logic, that when there are guns in people's hands, there will be death by gunfire. And the more guns, the worse it gets. The idiots on the Supreme Court ruled last summer that New York's restrictive gun laws were unconstitutional. Politically motivated misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment is causing deaths all over the country, but conservatives are just fine with that.
It's all about money and this countries' love of the saga of our wild west. it's sickening.
yes, as it was taught when I was growing up. the myth of manifest destiny and the evil Indians. "Circle the wagons' !
I had to walk three blocks of deserted side streets, hit the lonely ATM for cash, and hike a long stretch of Bleecker where yellow crime-scene tape is not unknown near midnight Thanksgiving eve when I got a late start food-shopping. God bless 24-hour Morton-Williams (which NYU, typically, is trying to eradicate). Reverse walk home, sans ATM stop but of course later and heavy-laden. Nothing happened. That used to be the expected every night in this downtown neighborhood of the nation's safest large city. Next time in SCotUS's wannabe-Wild West New York City … ?
As someone who takes pride in not looking over my shoulder, I looked over my shoulder. A couple of street people have told me they like the way I carry myself. I can't imagine how I've earned that high compliment unless by not acting scared all the time. The right to feel safe from gunfire is more sacred to me than any mob's triggerhappy right to bear arms. I truly believe those people get off on mass murder. The more gore, the happier they are. SCotUS is on their team.
As a woman, I learned long ago (based on excellent advice) to walk firmly, look around me as I walk (mostly because I like to see what's going on around me but also so I know what's going on around me), and I *never* look at my phone as I walk. Looking down (phone or not) and hunching shoulders convey weakness. Looking alert and aware is a great deterrent to most who would do one harm. I'm sure the compliment you've received is based on how you carry yourself and relate to your environment while you walk. This won't necessarily protect anyone from the triggerhappy but helps avoid mugging.
Thanks, Judith. Wise advice, every word.
Far, far too many gun deaths in this country. In my state, 80% of firearms deaths are suicides. We just passed one ballot measure (already challenged in court) that will restrict transfer of firearms and magazine capacity. I give it a snowball’s chance in hell of being upheld.
I’ve had the opportunity to be professionally involved in a mass school shooting, murder-suicides, homicides, suicides, menacings, hunting accidents, and homicide of a police officer (who was a dear friend and fellow negotiator.) What I know is this: we have got to do something, or next Thanksgiving (or a not distant future one) will see that “empty seat at Thanksgiving” figure top 1,000.
And as usual, the NRA and its bought members of Congress will wring their hands and say that is a societal problem and now isn’t the time to politicize theses tragedies, etc., etc., and the carnage will continue unabated. Death and destruction continues to be the American way of life in the domestic sphere with its worship of guns, guns, guns, and more guns.
I'm am so tired of those Republicans sending us their hearts and prayers. Since they're responsible for all the guns on the streets, the least they can do is to keep their hearts and prayers to themselves.
Obviously the problem is that people go to parties, schools, grocery stores, clubs, bars and randomly walk the streets. We should ban those so people can keep their guns. In a NY Times article republished the other day the conclusion was that Sandy Hook was the end of the gun debate, because “Americans decided it was acceptable to kill children.”
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
~ Pogo
One wingnut I know (who admits he owns an AR-15 that he assembled himself) continues to insist that the media has it all wrong, because, according to FBI stats, thousands more people are killed each year by knife wounds and ordinary crime-on-crime shootings. We're hysterical, he suggests, over a few hundred deaths. Of course, he wants to keep his semi-automatic weapon, and his handguns. He refuses to acknowledge that we're all feeling a lot less safe walking into a shopping mall, a movie theatre, or god forbid, a school.
Seems to me that your wing-nut friend is, himself, afraid of people with guns. What a hypocrite! Why else would he have an AR-15? Deer hunting? “Target practice?” It’s not a sport when you use a semi automatic. The gun lobby insist that nut jobs are the mass killers, not the guns. There are a variety of motives. By definition, I accept that in some instances, not all, a nutter is the perpetrator. What is the lowest common denominator? THE GUN!
AR-15 type weapons are the problem, the solution is very simple: get rid of them, once and for all. They are military-grade weapons that have no role in civil society.
What alarms me more than anything are the number of people who carry a gun with themselves all the time, as if it’s a necessary part of daily life. And I live in a relatively safe area. I never have and never will understand this mindset.
Open carry is open political. It's for show-offs who need firearms to feel important.
That’s true to some extent but there’s also this mindset that “I’m in danger at all times and I’m going to make sure I’m protected”. There’s way too much of that. A Wild West mentality.
Yes, and it's exacerbated by the gun violence already happening. But guns are so easy to get, and they're the linchpin in a culture of anger and grievance, clutched in one hand while a bible is clutched in the other. However, there is a huge illegal gun trade in this country that's flourishing by supplying teenagers, gangs and convicted felons.
I have not yet encountered one of these heavily and openly armed types, but if I did, I wonder if I could resist “poking the snake:” that is, taunting the guy in as obscene and inflammatory a way as I could think of, just to see what he’d do……
Considering the number of people who are shot every single day for no reason, I would seriously not do that if I were you.
Of course, you’re right. But it’s a nice fantasy.
Argue with a Trumpster, same result.
I don’t trust myself to argue with a trumpster. I might wind up being arrested for assault!
Not to mention, arguing with a trumpser is a waste of breath and time.
Or to compensate.
Getting gas 2 days ago at Sam's Club, guy next me had a pistol...I amazed myself and said nothing.
The thing that sucks is that they step on our rights.
But to those folks...THEIR rights 'trump' all others. Pun intended.
In the club, Q shooting, there would’ve been a lot more deaths and wounded were not for the unarmed, former Army major who went into combat mode and took down the shooter. So why do we not hear more sane politicians and the media calling out the absolute bullshit response by the GOP to mass shootings which has ranged from the idiocy of arm the teachers to more guns make us safer. That’s what’s wrong here. The myth continues and will persist .
There are newspapers and mainstream news programs doing exactly that. The problem is that the centrists and left-of-center wing does not own a politicized propaganda echo chamber to reply and amplify that angle of news.
Half the country and half our representatives don't care. They would rather live with these statistics than give up their guns or at the very least increase gun controls. They claim to be proud Americans who respect the Constitution. What's the answer?
Here is one proposal by Thom Hartmann. It is not enough but it will be a start. Let’s do it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/a-safe-space-for-a-gun-conversation?r=97ryc&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The body count is mind boggling.
Excellent recitation of the mayhem in our country. It’s easy to become numb to what this body count represents. I don’t see how we can put this in our rear view mirror and be happy about anything.
No it does not. I tend to cry a little every time I hear about one. So tragic and horrible.
The one in Virginia Beach hit home for me. Not only because a close friend lives there (and I was terrified that she was in it,) but that I work in Walgreens, and such a thing is a possibility that lurks near the top of my mind every day I work.
The circumstances of that shooting are particularly unsettling, because the shooter was management and the victims were his staff.
The shooting took place in a secure location (nearly every single breakroom in any big store is, designed to be a haven of safety during an 'incident') and nobody knew this was going to happen.
Today, of all days, I was required to take some computer based learning required by corporate and one of the modules was that of what to do with an active shooter scenario. The immaculate timing was perfect. No escaping reality for me!
Now, I know only a few people who would understand the terror this kind of situation brings, (Lucien, who is very much aware of what guns, gunfire and violence looks like very well) and it is terrifying to think that someday I or someone I know could be in that kind of situation by no fault of their own.
It is one of the main reasons I put in for my retirement the other day, effective 12/31/22.
It's too damn dangerous out there and the only reason we have it is because the NRA owns a gutless Congress, and most state legislatures. This should not even be happening, but gun nuts and people who have no business taking sides in this debate have decreed it must be so.
The ongoing slaughter is the only one in the world where even the Onion has a standard template that states, "No way to prevent this" Says Only Nation Where This Happens".
Because we allow it to, and we're all gutless wonders. Every single one of us-for allowing it to continue and kill more innocent people.
Is there a cure? I think so, but it would require brains and bravery to take on the gun nuts, the 2nd Amendment nuts and those who think that it only happens to someone else.
We fought a couple of wars, and think we have the best political system in the world.
No, we don't, when we allow ourselves to be blown away by people who hear voices every single week.
I put in for retirement 23 years ago when Columbine happened. I was on the faculty of a large community college. We had had a few incidents with students carrying weapons on campus - to protect themselves they said - and I had had a very scary incident with a student in one of my courses. The following academic year, after I retired, there was a shooting scenario there as I had feared. Again, this was 1999. It is now 2022, and we still live with this horror.
Thoughts, the annual mass shootings and the localized accounts you detailed for the month of November do not coincide with the “right’s” contention that all the violence in the country resides in blue majority democratic cities and towns. Just something I noticed. Also, it’s almost as if the US needs an international body - Amnesty International? - to help us sort ourselves. I know that’s nonsensical thinking when the response to school shootings has historically been for gun owners to rush out and buy more. But what IS the answer? (Rhetorical.)
Your last two paragraphs are just heartbreakingly bitter, Lucian, and heartbreakingly apt. I am starting to question my assumption of safety as I tootle about my very small town.
Guns are everywhere and so are angry and touchy people with guns.
The list you gave us of shootings and killings this month contained incidents of violence in mundane settings and that is terrible. It wasn't that long ago when going to school or going shopping was not a risk to one's life.