Again, as a Vietnam vet, I've seen what an M-16 does. I have been screaming from the mountaintop for 20 years, "no civilian has a legitimate need to own an M-16 (or M4). PERIOD! And regarding Charlie Kirk, I doubt that he or anyone of his ilk has the slightest idea of the destructive power of this weapon of death. There isn't a trace of empathy among these 2nd Amendment children. Thank you for suffering this rant.
One doctor on my Army Advisory Team in Vietnam in 1968 told me that he thought the AR-15/M-16 did such nasty damage that it should be banned by the Geneva Convention. That was in 1968. We were having a pre-dawn coffee together and he showed me x-rays of Vietnamese civilians wounded whom he would have to operate on at the only Province Hospital just that day. Lots of amputations. The Team had one doctor at a time, and that is where they worked. We ran through 7 or 8 of them in my 12 months. They got worn out. They hated that rifle.
I know Rich. It sickens me that the NRA and their pockets full of politicians continue to promote this sick gun culture, and bogus interpretation of the second amendment. Promoting sick and angry people to own and use these weapons of war on our children.
The gun worship and death cult in America, along with the millions who support the orange madman, are clear signs of our mass psychosis as a nation. I wish it were possible for every state and federal legislator who votes for gun promiscuity or against sensible gun laws to be charged with multiple counts of accessory to murder after every single mass shooting in their state. And the mass shootings are only the tip of the iceberg, as you and we who read your Substack already know. Our society's worship of a badly distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment above human lives makes clear that it is a religious psychosis, like the centuries-long persecution of "witches" in Europe and the American colonies. We are not going to persuade the cult members to return to sanity. We have to organize our asses off to get out the vote, and vote them all out, and keep voting them out until the cult dies out.
Can hear the pathos added to your ethos and logos. Said another way your words speak Massachusetts w/o it being parenthetical.
Agree, the vote is the single most powerful voice. So powerful the Framers intentionally restricted it. No surprise today's Rs/cons invoke originalism and textualism which are euphemisms for only the yt-male privileged should vote. And after voting rights were expanded including dropping the age to 18, no corresponding age drop occurred at national office level. Makes no sense. Then Rs/cons wail away on the low turnout for those <25 who can't be represented. Catch22
Well said: “gun worship” and “death cult “. Just articulating the extent of the problem provides a cogent, compelling argument and gives a means of identifying the path forward.
A small correction here: It's not "our society's worship" of the 2nd Amendment. Majorities in almost every demographic favor stronger gun laws. (I'm guessing this doesn't include the demographic of white guys over 50, but I don't know for sure.) And is it really a "religious psychosis"? I don't, not least because it's too easy to understand without recourse to either religion or abnormal psychology. Economics play a part -- the gun industry is making a bundle fanning the flames that encourage people to buy more and more, and more powerful, guns. So does politics: politicians fanning the fear of lawless cities, lawless streets, which often translates into fear of Black people. (Which, incidentally and not coincidentally, is what led to the adoption of the 2nd Amendment in the first place: fear of slave revolts.)
Susanna, of course majorities in most demographics want stronger gun safety laws. Granted. But our society as a whole is still under the control of the gun worshippers because the combination of radicalized Trumpists, the Republicans who will do anything for Trumpists' votes, and a judiciary seeded with right-wing extremist judges courtesy of Leonard Leo et al, have gerrymandered and voter-suppressed their way to having a lock on the legislatures of half the states. And all of us are paying a terrible price for it. I totally agree economics play a part. Plenty of pro-gun-promiscuity actors in this drama are clearly in it mainly for the money, and they are cynical and amoral enough to choose lining their pockets and/or campaign coffers with gun manufacturer and lobbyists money. They wouldn't get any graft from limited guns and saving lives, because that approach doesn't generate any profits for the gun industry. Just look at NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, busted for blowing millions in member donations on fancy suits, fast cars, Cuban cigars, and other personal indulgences. And certainly, the pro-gun politicians fan the fears of the huge cohort of low-information emotion-driven Trumpist voters.
But I still maintain that the whole massive, blood-soaked edifice of pro-gun institutions and individuals who worship of guns as sacred symbols and totems, and the extremist interpretation of the Second Amendment as their Holy Writ, and the corrupt priesthood of NRA operatives and Republican pro-gun politicians functions like a religion where they believe, or pretend to believe (same difference) that theirs is the sacred way of freedom, and anyone who disagrees with or questions them in any way is an evil communist (likes Black people) heretic (does not believe guns = freedom) whom they are entitled to dominate any way they can. How is this not just like a religious cult whose believers revere huckster leaders with bullshit doctrines designed to fleece their followers (Jim Jones or Scientology, anyone?)?
Thinking of it as a cult and its devotees as worshippers is tempting, but it also ignores too much history. The affinity of some USians for firearms long predates both Trump and the rise of Wayne LaPierre in the NRA. Carol Anderson in THE SECOND makes a persuasive case that the motivation behind the adoption of the 2nd Amendment, and its reference to the "militia," was rooted in the need of southern slaveholders to prevent and put down slave revolts. She then traces that thread up to the present day: white southern Democrats made a mass exodus for the GOP after the Dems under LBJ passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-'60s, then the Reagan reaction (which we're still struggling to get over and undo), and finally the election of Barack Obama as president, which seems to have catalyzed a boom in firearms sales -- and also a boom in "dark money" pouring into GOP coffers (see Jane Mayer's book on this).
The other book I recommend is Ryan Busse's GUNFIGHT: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America (PublicAffairs, 2021). Busse has been a gun owner and hunter since youth, and he was a gun company exec for some two decades. He saw the transformation of the NRA from the inside, and he takes us places most of us would never be admitted.
In short, the love of (and/or addiction to) guns may function as a religion, but thinking of it as *only* a religion is pretty much a dead end if you want to do anything about it. Factor in the politics, the economics, and the history -- recognize the connection to white supremacy and, to at least some extent, male supremacy -- and roads for active opposition open up.
The gun lobby and cult are experts at propaganda. And it's no accident that the origin of the word "propaganda" lies in the organization founded by the Catholic Church to spread Catholic doctrine all over the world:
The History of Propaganda
Propaganda is today most often used in reference to political statements, but the word comes to our language through its use in a religious context. The Congregatio de propaganda fide (“Congregation for propagating the faith”) was an organization established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV as a means of furthering Catholic missionary activity. The word propaganda is from the ablative singular feminine of propogandus, which is the gerundive of the Latin propagare, meaning “to propagate.” The first use of the word propaganda (without the rest of the Latin title) in English was in reference to this Catholic organization. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it began to be used as a term denoting ideas or information that are of questionable accuracy as a means of advancing a cause.
I guess Crazy Town is always and forever gonna be eating at the edges, as long as there are humans around. The "reality" these folks see is just SO bizarre.
The idea of more guns and armed teachers at our elementary schools is not just pure obvious insanity and the poster frame of dystopia, it is just plain wrong. More guns will make it worse. News today, a teenage girl drove mistakingly into the wrong driveway and the armed homeowner reacted in fear and killed the sweet girl. Take away guns and there isn't even the possibility. Of any deaths by guns.
““A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The first 13 words serve as a rationale for the right. Observe the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights: none has a preamble, a raison d’étre. The Founders saw fit to put that only on the Second. And what of the well regulated militia? A well regulated militia presupposes a regulating authority. What of the term “bear arms?” In the 18th century that did not mean packing your six-shooter in a saloon or Wal-Mart, it meant serving in a military unit. Those “originalists” on SCOTUS have chosen to ignore the intent of the originators.
I'd argue that it's actually much worse than that: Heller was the very deliberate result of decades of slow-pitch 2nd Amendment cases carefully selected, tailored and nursed through the federal court system to make it possible for a bent supreme court to divine a private right to gun ownership from a statute that neither says nor implies -- and manifestly was not intended to mean -- any such thing. It's a combination of bad law and bad history, written in bad faith and on purpose by a guy who knew better, and it's serving as it was intended to as precedent for the worse cases that have followed and will continue to follow. Without some dramatic change this will only get worse, and worse.
It will not happen in my lifetime, but the only rational defense against this distortion of the original meaning of the Constitution is to repeal the 2nd Amendment completely..... Or Biden could muster the courage to expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices, so that each US District Court has one justice on SCOTUS as an overseer..... Yes, it would piss off the Republicans - having ANY Democrats in the government pisses off the Republicans.....
Texas had a state election about 7 months after Uvalde. The gun supporters got more votes in that election than in the previous election. Florida turned further right after Parkland. Tennessee re-elected our open carry governor in a landslide. As long as we keep voting for these people, innocent lives will continue to be sacrificed.
It is extremely appalling that we have people like Charlie Kirk thinking the way they do. The biggest lobbyist is the NRA and they should be banned for life from entering the halls of Congress. Legitimate reporters need to lean heavily on those in Congress like Mitt Romney and ask why he accepts $14 mil from this organization? He’s a father of many and a grandfather of even more. Does he want to protect them or not? ENOUGH! We are all traumatized from these events over and over and over again. I say we send up smoke signals to tourists everywhere that we are not a nation to visit because neo-Nazis are everywhere and they wouldn’t be safe. Next, we must demand that these guns be tracked and confiscated by our government agencies. They can be either melted down or given to Ukrainians for their defense. Not one person needs these weapons of mass destruction...not ONE! Perhaps WE, The People, are going to have to stage our own intervention with the crazies in Washington. I don’t know, Lucian. You have any thoughts?
And in Kentucky, the gunman's weapons may not be destroyed by police. They must be sold at auction to licensed gun dealers, where you can be sure they will find their way into the wrong hands again. The Republican Party, aka the Republican Death Cult, will never allow the country to get off the merry-go-round of murder and suicide.
Exactly right. We have now terrorized more than a generation of schoolchildren who face the possibility of carnage in their schools every day, and the right's only answer is "more guns" and more guards with guns. It didn’t help the children at Parkland or Uvalde that there were armed guards present at their schools. This is sheer insanity, and one of our two major political parties is committed to doing nothing about it.
A child of mine has 300+ weapons, in two guns safes in his garage. He has so much ammunition in his garage that if it were to catch fire I hesitate to think what could happen. His 10 year old and 6 year old are enrolled in a private Christian school and they had a threat where all the kids had to hide in closets. The 10 year told me how traumatized that she will never forget the prospect that her school could be the next victim of a mass shooting. My son has a private carry permit in California and is tasked with protecting his pastor of a Southern Baptist church. He carries it on his hip with a holster that can be seen by all. My daughter also has a private carry permit, she lives in Colorado.. I have only asked them to at least consider the most vanilla of gun laws, and they believe I am nuts. If those things don't change your mind, I don't know what can. I am at a loss.
I think families have divides now that were unimaginable a few years ago, Teri. I hope you can find some other things to get your mind off the dilemma, take walks—you know. It's spring! You deserve better, but you may have to make better happen, hard as that is if the people who should be helping are causing the problem.
Just what sort of sermons does that pastor preach that he needs armed "protection"?
I live in a state where hunting is fairly important (and a big source of tourist dollars) and nearly every household has at least one or two guns (usually a 30-06 and a 22...) and not one minister or pastor around here needs a body guard armed to the teeth--not that I have ever heard of, anyway. Geez.
I'm so sorry, Teri. It must be incredibly painful and discouraging to see your own children sucked in by the gun cult's propaganda. I hope something causes them to reconsider that entire belief system.
A PS to the Louisville tragedy that is an unfortunate common thread in many such events: the shooter was said to have been depressed. Why, oh why do these unbalanced people feel the need to take other people with them? I have no idea. You?
Margo, my understanding is that he had been an athlete in high school and college and suffered quite a few concussions. So this really beings up yet another question about these severe injuries that occur with those who play contact sports. Not trying to say that’s the issue of his depression, but maybe it is.
I thought I heard on the news that he was not doing very well at his banking job and was about to be fired...another contribution to the chaotic stew that may have been simmering in the shooter's concussed brain...and another reason to be depressed.
I just spent a half hour writing how much I agreed with you Lucian and then somehow it disappeared, poof, gone WTF? this has happened way more than once with Substack. We need to ban the goddamn things, pay a bounty for them and then put in prison anyone that insists on owning one a year after the ban goes into effect. We have to be as serious about ridding ourselves of this pestilence as we are disturbed by its presence in our communities. Nowhere is safe, and we have to make that stop. We owe it to the lives of the innocent we have already lost.
Substack has done the same maddening thing to me too often. An alternative is to write your comment in a text editor and paste it into the comment box. A bit laborious, but saves sanity. You just have to resist temptation to start in the comment box.
That's a good idea, I had a lot to say that never got posted, I write stream of consciousness, one thought builds on the one previous with no plan other than to follow my mind and when it's lost I can't just recreate it, like all of us this is a subject that burns close to my heart, and I truly believe that our communicating with each other will be studied decades from now as to how we saved our nation from a fate worse than death. Thanks for your support.
Computers! We all have horror stories, especially anyone who used the first PC software. A text editor built into an app with a larger purpose—like Substack—is still bound to be primitive.
Again, as a Vietnam vet, I've seen what an M-16 does. I have been screaming from the mountaintop for 20 years, "no civilian has a legitimate need to own an M-16 (or M4). PERIOD! And regarding Charlie Kirk, I doubt that he or anyone of his ilk has the slightest idea of the destructive power of this weapon of death. There isn't a trace of empathy among these 2nd Amendment children. Thank you for suffering this rant.
My husband is also a Vietnam Vet. He is enraged. My best to you.
One doctor on my Army Advisory Team in Vietnam in 1968 told me that he thought the AR-15/M-16 did such nasty damage that it should be banned by the Geneva Convention. That was in 1968. We were having a pre-dawn coffee together and he showed me x-rays of Vietnamese civilians wounded whom he would have to operate on at the only Province Hospital just that day. Lots of amputations. The Team had one doctor at a time, and that is where they worked. We ran through 7 or 8 of them in my 12 months. They got worn out. They hated that rifle.
I’m so sorry. I’ve seen a lot and experienced a lot of death and tragedy in 37 years of my nursing
career. But never the atrocities of war
And I never thought I'd see them HERE, IN THE UNITED STATES, adults and children shot with that goddamed rifle.
I know Rich. It sickens me that the NRA and their pockets full of politicians continue to promote this sick gun culture, and bogus interpretation of the second amendment. Promoting sick and angry people to own and use these weapons of war on our children.
On a brighter note, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LUCIAN! Hope Tracy & the cats are treating you in the grand manner!🎂🎊🥂🍾🎈
Birthday? Oh my yes! And many happy ones to come!
Yes! Now you can stop counting! 🎂
The gun worship and death cult in America, along with the millions who support the orange madman, are clear signs of our mass psychosis as a nation. I wish it were possible for every state and federal legislator who votes for gun promiscuity or against sensible gun laws to be charged with multiple counts of accessory to murder after every single mass shooting in their state. And the mass shootings are only the tip of the iceberg, as you and we who read your Substack already know. Our society's worship of a badly distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment above human lives makes clear that it is a religious psychosis, like the centuries-long persecution of "witches" in Europe and the American colonies. We are not going to persuade the cult members to return to sanity. We have to organize our asses off to get out the vote, and vote them all out, and keep voting them out until the cult dies out.
Can hear the pathos added to your ethos and logos. Said another way your words speak Massachusetts w/o it being parenthetical.
Agree, the vote is the single most powerful voice. So powerful the Framers intentionally restricted it. No surprise today's Rs/cons invoke originalism and textualism which are euphemisms for only the yt-male privileged should vote. And after voting rights were expanded including dropping the age to 18, no corresponding age drop occurred at national office level. Makes no sense. Then Rs/cons wail away on the low turnout for those <25 who can't be represented. Catch22
Well said: “gun worship” and “death cult “. Just articulating the extent of the problem provides a cogent, compelling argument and gives a means of identifying the path forward.
A small correction here: It's not "our society's worship" of the 2nd Amendment. Majorities in almost every demographic favor stronger gun laws. (I'm guessing this doesn't include the demographic of white guys over 50, but I don't know for sure.) And is it really a "religious psychosis"? I don't, not least because it's too easy to understand without recourse to either religion or abnormal psychology. Economics play a part -- the gun industry is making a bundle fanning the flames that encourage people to buy more and more, and more powerful, guns. So does politics: politicians fanning the fear of lawless cities, lawless streets, which often translates into fear of Black people. (Which, incidentally and not coincidentally, is what led to the adoption of the 2nd Amendment in the first place: fear of slave revolts.)
Susanna, of course majorities in most demographics want stronger gun safety laws. Granted. But our society as a whole is still under the control of the gun worshippers because the combination of radicalized Trumpists, the Republicans who will do anything for Trumpists' votes, and a judiciary seeded with right-wing extremist judges courtesy of Leonard Leo et al, have gerrymandered and voter-suppressed their way to having a lock on the legislatures of half the states. And all of us are paying a terrible price for it. I totally agree economics play a part. Plenty of pro-gun-promiscuity actors in this drama are clearly in it mainly for the money, and they are cynical and amoral enough to choose lining their pockets and/or campaign coffers with gun manufacturer and lobbyists money. They wouldn't get any graft from limited guns and saving lives, because that approach doesn't generate any profits for the gun industry. Just look at NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, busted for blowing millions in member donations on fancy suits, fast cars, Cuban cigars, and other personal indulgences. And certainly, the pro-gun politicians fan the fears of the huge cohort of low-information emotion-driven Trumpist voters.
But I still maintain that the whole massive, blood-soaked edifice of pro-gun institutions and individuals who worship of guns as sacred symbols and totems, and the extremist interpretation of the Second Amendment as their Holy Writ, and the corrupt priesthood of NRA operatives and Republican pro-gun politicians functions like a religion where they believe, or pretend to believe (same difference) that theirs is the sacred way of freedom, and anyone who disagrees with or questions them in any way is an evil communist (likes Black people) heretic (does not believe guns = freedom) whom they are entitled to dominate any way they can. How is this not just like a religious cult whose believers revere huckster leaders with bullshit doctrines designed to fleece their followers (Jim Jones or Scientology, anyone?)?
Thinking of it as a cult and its devotees as worshippers is tempting, but it also ignores too much history. The affinity of some USians for firearms long predates both Trump and the rise of Wayne LaPierre in the NRA. Carol Anderson in THE SECOND makes a persuasive case that the motivation behind the adoption of the 2nd Amendment, and its reference to the "militia," was rooted in the need of southern slaveholders to prevent and put down slave revolts. She then traces that thread up to the present day: white southern Democrats made a mass exodus for the GOP after the Dems under LBJ passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-'60s, then the Reagan reaction (which we're still struggling to get over and undo), and finally the election of Barack Obama as president, which seems to have catalyzed a boom in firearms sales -- and also a boom in "dark money" pouring into GOP coffers (see Jane Mayer's book on this).
The other book I recommend is Ryan Busse's GUNFIGHT: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America (PublicAffairs, 2021). Busse has been a gun owner and hunter since youth, and he was a gun company exec for some two decades. He saw the transformation of the NRA from the inside, and he takes us places most of us would never be admitted.
In short, the love of (and/or addiction to) guns may function as a religion, but thinking of it as *only* a religion is pretty much a dead end if you want to do anything about it. Factor in the politics, the economics, and the history -- recognize the connection to white supremacy and, to at least some extent, male supremacy -- and roads for active opposition open up.
The gun lobby and cult are experts at propaganda. And it's no accident that the origin of the word "propaganda" lies in the organization founded by the Catholic Church to spread Catholic doctrine all over the world:
The History of Propaganda
Propaganda is today most often used in reference to political statements, but the word comes to our language through its use in a religious context. The Congregatio de propaganda fide (“Congregation for propagating the faith”) was an organization established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV as a means of furthering Catholic missionary activity. The word propaganda is from the ablative singular feminine of propogandus, which is the gerundive of the Latin propagare, meaning “to propagate.” The first use of the word propaganda (without the rest of the Latin title) in English was in reference to this Catholic organization. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it began to be used as a term denoting ideas or information that are of questionable accuracy as a means of advancing a cause.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda
I guess Crazy Town is always and forever gonna be eating at the edges, as long as there are humans around. The "reality" these folks see is just SO bizarre.
The idea of more guns and armed teachers at our elementary schools is not just pure obvious insanity and the poster frame of dystopia, it is just plain wrong. More guns will make it worse. News today, a teenage girl drove mistakingly into the wrong driveway and the armed homeowner reacted in fear and killed the sweet girl. Take away guns and there isn't even the possibility. Of any deaths by guns.
““A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The first 13 words serve as a rationale for the right. Observe the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights: none has a preamble, a raison d’étre. The Founders saw fit to put that only on the Second. And what of the well regulated militia? A well regulated militia presupposes a regulating authority. What of the term “bear arms?” In the 18th century that did not mean packing your six-shooter in a saloon or Wal-Mart, it meant serving in a military unit. Those “originalists” on SCOTUS have chosen to ignore the intent of the originators.
I'd argue that it's actually much worse than that: Heller was the very deliberate result of decades of slow-pitch 2nd Amendment cases carefully selected, tailored and nursed through the federal court system to make it possible for a bent supreme court to divine a private right to gun ownership from a statute that neither says nor implies -- and manifestly was not intended to mean -- any such thing. It's a combination of bad law and bad history, written in bad faith and on purpose by a guy who knew better, and it's serving as it was intended to as precedent for the worse cases that have followed and will continue to follow. Without some dramatic change this will only get worse, and worse.
It will not happen in my lifetime, but the only rational defense against this distortion of the original meaning of the Constitution is to repeal the 2nd Amendment completely..... Or Biden could muster the courage to expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices, so that each US District Court has one justice on SCOTUS as an overseer..... Yes, it would piss off the Republicans - having ANY Democrats in the government pisses off the Republicans.....
Texas had a state election about 7 months after Uvalde. The gun supporters got more votes in that election than in the previous election. Florida turned further right after Parkland. Tennessee re-elected our open carry governor in a landslide. As long as we keep voting for these people, innocent lives will continue to be sacrificed.
😭
It is extremely appalling that we have people like Charlie Kirk thinking the way they do. The biggest lobbyist is the NRA and they should be banned for life from entering the halls of Congress. Legitimate reporters need to lean heavily on those in Congress like Mitt Romney and ask why he accepts $14 mil from this organization? He’s a father of many and a grandfather of even more. Does he want to protect them or not? ENOUGH! We are all traumatized from these events over and over and over again. I say we send up smoke signals to tourists everywhere that we are not a nation to visit because neo-Nazis are everywhere and they wouldn’t be safe. Next, we must demand that these guns be tracked and confiscated by our government agencies. They can be either melted down or given to Ukrainians for their defense. Not one person needs these weapons of mass destruction...not ONE! Perhaps WE, The People, are going to have to stage our own intervention with the crazies in Washington. I don’t know, Lucian. You have any thoughts?
And in Kentucky, the gunman's weapons may not be destroyed by police. They must be sold at auction to licensed gun dealers, where you can be sure they will find their way into the wrong hands again. The Republican Party, aka the Republican Death Cult, will never allow the country to get off the merry-go-round of murder and suicide.
I couldn't believe that could possibly be true when I read it, what evil mind could even come up with that idea??
A right wing Republican well financed by the gun lobby, that's what evil mind.
You'd think the gun lobby would want to sell new guns to make more money. Or is it just that important to them that everyone can be shooting others?
Any automatic weapon owned by a civilian is in the wrong hands.
Exactly right. We have now terrorized more than a generation of schoolchildren who face the possibility of carnage in their schools every day, and the right's only answer is "more guns" and more guards with guns. It didn’t help the children at Parkland or Uvalde that there were armed guards present at their schools. This is sheer insanity, and one of our two major political parties is committed to doing nothing about it.
A child of mine has 300+ weapons, in two guns safes in his garage. He has so much ammunition in his garage that if it were to catch fire I hesitate to think what could happen. His 10 year old and 6 year old are enrolled in a private Christian school and they had a threat where all the kids had to hide in closets. The 10 year told me how traumatized that she will never forget the prospect that her school could be the next victim of a mass shooting. My son has a private carry permit in California and is tasked with protecting his pastor of a Southern Baptist church. He carries it on his hip with a holster that can be seen by all. My daughter also has a private carry permit, she lives in Colorado.. I have only asked them to at least consider the most vanilla of gun laws, and they believe I am nuts. If those things don't change your mind, I don't know what can. I am at a loss.
I think families have divides now that were unimaginable a few years ago, Teri. I hope you can find some other things to get your mind off the dilemma, take walks—you know. It's spring! You deserve better, but you may have to make better happen, hard as that is if the people who should be helping are causing the problem.
Just what sort of sermons does that pastor preach that he needs armed "protection"?
I live in a state where hunting is fairly important (and a big source of tourist dollars) and nearly every household has at least one or two guns (usually a 30-06 and a 22...) and not one minister or pastor around here needs a body guard armed to the teeth--not that I have ever heard of, anyway. Geez.
I'm so sorry, Teri. It must be incredibly painful and discouraging to see your own children sucked in by the gun cult's propaganda. I hope something causes them to reconsider that entire belief system.
Heartbreaking admission.
Your candour commendable.
I hope others can offer Teri help. Other parents of adults (I'm not one) might have something to add?
Theres no valid reason for the average everyday ordinary american citizen to have an AR-15.
Reminds me of motorcycles with long extended front ends.
Just gripping either is an instant hardon.
I never understand why these folks claim that gun ownership is a “God-given right”. How does that work?
I suspect no one can explain it, much like "woke," but it sounds good to these self-righteous hypocrites.
Alfred Krupp got a prophesy when asked to supply arms to the Kingdom of Prussia.
They are loose thinkers.
At Ferguson the gun nuts lined up behind the police. They actually think they can enforce the law according to their own interpretation.
The whiskey war was put down by George Washington’s troops.
The rebellion to keep slaves was put down by federal troops.
The idea that they own guns to prevent a tyranny is ludicrous.
The maggots came out Jan 6 but left the guns at home because they knew they would be slaughtered.
I believe the second amendment is to protect the first, yet the second amendment nuts don’t believe in the first amendment.
A PS to the Louisville tragedy that is an unfortunate common thread in many such events: the shooter was said to have been depressed. Why, oh why do these unbalanced people feel the need to take other people with them? I have no idea. You?
Margo, my understanding is that he had been an athlete in high school and college and suffered quite a few concussions. So this really beings up yet another question about these severe injuries that occur with those who play contact sports. Not trying to say that’s the issue of his depression, but maybe it is.
I, too, noticed that fact. Like many football players, he suffered brain damage. However ...
most concussed or brain damaged people do not go shoot up a workplace. A terrible convergence.
Very true but they can be violent and irrational. That we do know.
I thought I heard on the news that he was not doing very well at his banking job and was about to be fired...another contribution to the chaotic stew that may have been simmering in the shooter's concussed brain...and another reason to be depressed.
It’s your birthday?? My sister’s also! She turned a feisty 75 today. Happy Birthday, Lucian!🕺🎉🎂💙
My birthday, too! Happy Birthday! ❤️
Happy Birthday, Elaine!
Happy Birthday, to you also, Elaine!🎉🎂
Not only the same birthday, Marlene, born the same day.
They are one year apart. Feisty Aries!
Lol. I'm lucky my arithmetic skills are seldom exposed to the world.
😂😂
I just spent a half hour writing how much I agreed with you Lucian and then somehow it disappeared, poof, gone WTF? this has happened way more than once with Substack. We need to ban the goddamn things, pay a bounty for them and then put in prison anyone that insists on owning one a year after the ban goes into effect. We have to be as serious about ridding ourselves of this pestilence as we are disturbed by its presence in our communities. Nowhere is safe, and we have to make that stop. We owe it to the lives of the innocent we have already lost.
Substack has done the same maddening thing to me too often. An alternative is to write your comment in a text editor and paste it into the comment box. A bit laborious, but saves sanity. You just have to resist temptation to start in the comment box.
That's a good idea, I had a lot to say that never got posted, I write stream of consciousness, one thought builds on the one previous with no plan other than to follow my mind and when it's lost I can't just recreate it, like all of us this is a subject that burns close to my heart, and I truly believe that our communicating with each other will be studied decades from now as to how we saved our nation from a fate worse than death. Thanks for your support.
Dick, I type my longer comments in Word or Google Docs and then “cut/paste” into the Substack comment box.
Computers! We all have horror stories, especially anyone who used the first PC software. A text editor built into an app with a larger purpose—like Substack—is still bound to be primitive.
Yes, Dick, that seems to be happening to me also! Screwy and annoying!
ATTACK WEAPON says it all. It's made to attack humans, nothing else. It's working pretty well.