Honestly, I promise I am not glued to my computer. But when it comes to matters of life and death, I'm all ears. And the fact that my opinions still matters is not something I take lightly. Thanks for this forum - it's a stop-gap between my head and a brick wall.
It is probably a step to far to call SCOTUS guilty of unconscionable bias but one of our founders has these words inscribed on his monument in out capital. ""I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." (Hint, it's a relative of Lucian's)
I never thought that I would be writing this, but going into town to run some errands or do some shopping, and suddenly I realize that I'm in the crosshairs of some malevolent wannabe's telescopic gunsight is not something I could have imagined myself in that kind of situation — that's the kind of plot storyboard for movies that I want to avoid. I'm trying to imagine what the present members of the Supreme Court, in particular its six-member conservative majority, could possibly have been thinking regarding their recent decisions on the ability of governments to control the availability of firearms. I'm also trying to imagine what it's like for former members of the armed services, especially former combat or combat support troops who suffered through multiple deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other place in the world where their ability to survive depends upon their ability to anticipate and ambush, and take precautions in advance to limit their exposure to hostile gunfire or worse, to be out in public in an American town or city. Just thinking about it must make their skin crawl. Conservatives' off-the-cuff solution seems to be telling us that we all need better mental health care — if we can afford it, and assuming it's available. Tell that to the people who have lived through the horrors of Kabul, Baghdad, or Beirut. Just this week, seven people were shot dead from ambush, and more than 40 people wounded, in Highland Park, Illinois, at a Fourth of July celebratory parade. The perpetrator was a 21-year-old incel with a morbid fascination for blood, gore, murder and mayhem; and he was already on the police radar. Unsurprisingly, no one in his immediate family fessed up to any sort of knowledge about what the kid was up to when he was online with a succession of alt-right websites and chat rooms, and he already had a sizable collection of firearms and edged weapons. It was your typical 'what you see your say in the house, stays in the house'.
This situation is intolerable; and it's been thrust upon us willy-nilly by a corps of fanatical conservatives who, for all of their protestations about being 'pro-life', have shown themselves to be the diametric opposite. So, instead of San Francisco or Sacramento, or some other small town, we have what amounts to be the back lot of some movie studio where they film 'town marshal versus gunslinger' movies, and neither John Wayne, nor Randolph Scott, nor Clint Eastwood is playing a starring role. It's us, on our own, with kids or grandkids, trying to keep them in sight and out of traffic. The men (and one woman) who allowed this to happen are not wearing black hats, but they are wearing black robes that they demand that we respect. How can we respect such stupidity and inability to for see the probable consequences of their scatterbrained decision making. This nonsense idea that firearm possession is a constitutionally sanctioned expression of 'freedom' is patently absurd. These judges, and their corrupted colleagues in the Nation's Capitol are nihilists, anarchists; and worse, they are abject cowards in thrall to a clack of cultural warriors whose reality consists of cosplay.
The whole idea of effective government is that government itself has a monopoly on the lawful use of force and civil society. That's been a part of Anglo-American common law since the signing of the Magna Carta and before. Since when does a constitutional provision that speaks to state-created, and state-regulated militias translate into anyone who wants to can carry concealed weapons wherever they damn well please. Who, pray tell, is going to be monitoring the 'exceptions' to the general rule that people have the right to bring along concealed firearms unless specifically prohibited by local law. This is absolutely nuts!
Are you sure about that last comment? My guess is that this Supreme Court would say a young man with a gun has more rights than a clump of cells in a uterus.
OK, we don’t need any mental health checks in any gun law. The mental health of the shooter is not the problem. The WEAPON is the problem! So, here’s the answer. And it’s the only answer.
GET RID OF SEMI-and AUTOMATIC weapons. Yes. I said it! Make it illegal for manufactures to build them. Make it illegal to have them. Require people to turn them in. I know, I know. That won’t make the NRA happy, but under Wayne. LaPierre’s corrupt reign where he stole well-intentioned members’ money, the NRA has lost all credibility.
They want you to think that if "They" come for your automatic weapons, then they will come for all your weapons. That’s their mantra. There is no truth to that.
The right to own an automatic or semi-automatic weapon is NOT in the Constitution. It’s NOT in the second amendment. They have twisted the words to make it seem so.
And really, sportsmen (sports folks), do you really need an automatic weapon to go hunting. I don’t think so. What kind of sport is that? A cowardly sport at best. Take up another sport. You can’t kill too many people at once with a golf club and ball.
A person in NYC isn’t allowed to have an alligator in his bathtub. It’s against the law. You can’t open carry a can of risen down the street and fling it into the subway. There are laws. We need to make some laws regarding guns. Some time we are going to have to do it. All the talk about mental illness is just a ruse. If the poor folks who do these mass shootings didn’t have access to an automatic weapon they would kill far fewer people. Can’t anyone see that? (Oh, but they might kill with a knife or a frypan, they say!
Please!)
We fought a war over pretend weapons of mass destruction. But here we allow them on our streets, willy nilly, and nobody will do a thing. Come on!
Highland Park, IL, has a large Jewish population. I’ve read that the shooter is an enthusiast of right-wing extremism, so I wonder if the FBI investigation of his on-line presence will reveal him as an anti-Semitic white supremist. We already know he’s a t-Rump worshiper. What a surprise!
I'll be 68 this month. This is not the country i grew up in .
The only thing that matters now is winning the elections in November. If we show up in huge numbers and we win, we can keep this cancer from metastasizing further.
Vote! Get like-minded friends, family, and neighbors to vote, help register the unregistered. It's a matter of life and death.
Violence like this can embolden other troubled people to similar actions. And we do have a lot of troubled people whose needs and issues are not being addressed. This mass murder comes just days after a Supreme Court decision that finds a right for everyone to walk around with a firearm. I can'r get my head around this. Are we nuts?
As one recent meme reads, the only exercise I get these days is shaking my head from left to right. Who would have imagined a bunch of teenaged boys with AR 15s would wreak levels of terrorism to rival Isis in 2022.
I, too, live in a small town in Maine. We have been spared a lot of the agony many towns have been going through, but I'm afraid that now there's a gun shop within 500 yards from the local high school that might change.
I work in the drug store right across the street from that high school, and just up the road from the new gun shop.
It's always been a lurking fear in the back of my mind ever since I went to work for this company if someday someone armed with an AR 15 will come into the store to demand drugs and money.
We all have had video training on an 'active shooter' scenario, but I don't think the creators of those videos have ever seen a real mass shooting because I can guarantee you that most people would probably be dead before they had a chance to react 'correctly'.
That's how fast an assault weapon can kill people.
No, we are not safe. The only people who are sit on the bench in the Supreme Court-they have armed protection 24/7/365, and I sincerely doubt they'll ever be involved in a situation as we've seen.
They're far deemed more important than the people who they're issuing rulings for.
I live in a small town on the largest island off the coast of Massachusetts. Monday afternoon I marched in the Fourth of July parade in the next town over, helping carry the banner for the island's Democratic Council. Some of us wore black armbands that said ROE on them. Others carried signs that said JANUARY 6: REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER. The Democratic candidate for Cape & Islands DA and his family marched with us. (If you vote in our region, remember his name: Rob Galibois.) We danced and sang along to an awesome soundtrack created by one of our members -- belting out the words to the Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers" was especially satisfying.
Just ahead of us was the "best in show" float for a local horse farm, packed with tie-dye-shirted kids tossing candy to the spectators (a local tradition). Behind us was the Vineyard Peace Council, with a sign that said "War is still not the answer." According to one of the local papers, more than a thousand people were in the parade and an estimated 25,000 crowded the sidewalks, porches, and balconies to see us pass by. The weather was perfect.
It was our first Fourth of July parade since the beginning of Covid-19. It was the last where no one thought for a minute that a shooter might cut loose with a high-powered semiautomatic rifle.
Honestly, I promise I am not glued to my computer. But when it comes to matters of life and death, I'm all ears. And the fact that my opinions still matters is not something I take lightly. Thanks for this forum - it's a stop-gap between my head and a brick wall.
It is probably a step to far to call SCOTUS guilty of unconscionable bias but one of our founders has these words inscribed on his monument in out capital. ""I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." (Hint, it's a relative of Lucian's)
I never thought that I would be writing this, but going into town to run some errands or do some shopping, and suddenly I realize that I'm in the crosshairs of some malevolent wannabe's telescopic gunsight is not something I could have imagined myself in that kind of situation — that's the kind of plot storyboard for movies that I want to avoid. I'm trying to imagine what the present members of the Supreme Court, in particular its six-member conservative majority, could possibly have been thinking regarding their recent decisions on the ability of governments to control the availability of firearms. I'm also trying to imagine what it's like for former members of the armed services, especially former combat or combat support troops who suffered through multiple deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other place in the world where their ability to survive depends upon their ability to anticipate and ambush, and take precautions in advance to limit their exposure to hostile gunfire or worse, to be out in public in an American town or city. Just thinking about it must make their skin crawl. Conservatives' off-the-cuff solution seems to be telling us that we all need better mental health care — if we can afford it, and assuming it's available. Tell that to the people who have lived through the horrors of Kabul, Baghdad, or Beirut. Just this week, seven people were shot dead from ambush, and more than 40 people wounded, in Highland Park, Illinois, at a Fourth of July celebratory parade. The perpetrator was a 21-year-old incel with a morbid fascination for blood, gore, murder and mayhem; and he was already on the police radar. Unsurprisingly, no one in his immediate family fessed up to any sort of knowledge about what the kid was up to when he was online with a succession of alt-right websites and chat rooms, and he already had a sizable collection of firearms and edged weapons. It was your typical 'what you see your say in the house, stays in the house'.
This situation is intolerable; and it's been thrust upon us willy-nilly by a corps of fanatical conservatives who, for all of their protestations about being 'pro-life', have shown themselves to be the diametric opposite. So, instead of San Francisco or Sacramento, or some other small town, we have what amounts to be the back lot of some movie studio where they film 'town marshal versus gunslinger' movies, and neither John Wayne, nor Randolph Scott, nor Clint Eastwood is playing a starring role. It's us, on our own, with kids or grandkids, trying to keep them in sight and out of traffic. The men (and one woman) who allowed this to happen are not wearing black hats, but they are wearing black robes that they demand that we respect. How can we respect such stupidity and inability to for see the probable consequences of their scatterbrained decision making. This nonsense idea that firearm possession is a constitutionally sanctioned expression of 'freedom' is patently absurd. These judges, and their corrupted colleagues in the Nation's Capitol are nihilists, anarchists; and worse, they are abject cowards in thrall to a clack of cultural warriors whose reality consists of cosplay.
The whole idea of effective government is that government itself has a monopoly on the lawful use of force and civil society. That's been a part of Anglo-American common law since the signing of the Magna Carta and before. Since when does a constitutional provision that speaks to state-created, and state-regulated militias translate into anyone who wants to can carry concealed weapons wherever they damn well please. Who, pray tell, is going to be monitoring the 'exceptions' to the general rule that people have the right to bring along concealed firearms unless specifically prohibited by local law. This is absolutely nuts!
Are you sure about that last comment? My guess is that this Supreme Court would say a young man with a gun has more rights than a clump of cells in a uterus.
OK, we don’t need any mental health checks in any gun law. The mental health of the shooter is not the problem. The WEAPON is the problem! So, here’s the answer. And it’s the only answer.
GET RID OF SEMI-and AUTOMATIC weapons. Yes. I said it! Make it illegal for manufactures to build them. Make it illegal to have them. Require people to turn them in. I know, I know. That won’t make the NRA happy, but under Wayne. LaPierre’s corrupt reign where he stole well-intentioned members’ money, the NRA has lost all credibility.
They want you to think that if "They" come for your automatic weapons, then they will come for all your weapons. That’s their mantra. There is no truth to that.
The right to own an automatic or semi-automatic weapon is NOT in the Constitution. It’s NOT in the second amendment. They have twisted the words to make it seem so.
And really, sportsmen (sports folks), do you really need an automatic weapon to go hunting. I don’t think so. What kind of sport is that? A cowardly sport at best. Take up another sport. You can’t kill too many people at once with a golf club and ball.
A person in NYC isn’t allowed to have an alligator in his bathtub. It’s against the law. You can’t open carry a can of risen down the street and fling it into the subway. There are laws. We need to make some laws regarding guns. Some time we are going to have to do it. All the talk about mental illness is just a ruse. If the poor folks who do these mass shootings didn’t have access to an automatic weapon they would kill far fewer people. Can’t anyone see that? (Oh, but they might kill with a knife or a frypan, they say!
Please!)
We fought a war over pretend weapons of mass destruction. But here we allow them on our streets, willy nilly, and nobody will do a thing. Come on!
It is horrifying that we live in a country where people are “free to carry” and women are “forced to carry”. Disgusting!
Highland Park, IL, has a large Jewish population. I’ve read that the shooter is an enthusiast of right-wing extremism, so I wonder if the FBI investigation of his on-line presence will reveal him as an anti-Semitic white supremist. We already know he’s a t-Rump worshiper. What a surprise!
I live in a large American city. We are not safe.
As long as you keep writing, I’ll keep reading and learning from you and all your followers here.
It would be fun if we all could get together once a year!
I'll be 68 this month. This is not the country i grew up in .
The only thing that matters now is winning the elections in November. If we show up in huge numbers and we win, we can keep this cancer from metastasizing further.
Vote! Get like-minded friends, family, and neighbors to vote, help register the unregistered. It's a matter of life and death.
Violence like this can embolden other troubled people to similar actions. And we do have a lot of troubled people whose needs and issues are not being addressed. This mass murder comes just days after a Supreme Court decision that finds a right for everyone to walk around with a firearm. I can'r get my head around this. Are we nuts?
As one recent meme reads, the only exercise I get these days is shaking my head from left to right. Who would have imagined a bunch of teenaged boys with AR 15s would wreak levels of terrorism to rival Isis in 2022.
I, too, live in a small town in Maine. We have been spared a lot of the agony many towns have been going through, but I'm afraid that now there's a gun shop within 500 yards from the local high school that might change.
I work in the drug store right across the street from that high school, and just up the road from the new gun shop.
It's always been a lurking fear in the back of my mind ever since I went to work for this company if someday someone armed with an AR 15 will come into the store to demand drugs and money.
We all have had video training on an 'active shooter' scenario, but I don't think the creators of those videos have ever seen a real mass shooting because I can guarantee you that most people would probably be dead before they had a chance to react 'correctly'.
That's how fast an assault weapon can kill people.
No, we are not safe. The only people who are sit on the bench in the Supreme Court-they have armed protection 24/7/365, and I sincerely doubt they'll ever be involved in a situation as we've seen.
They're far deemed more important than the people who they're issuing rulings for.
I live in a small town on the largest island off the coast of Massachusetts. Monday afternoon I marched in the Fourth of July parade in the next town over, helping carry the banner for the island's Democratic Council. Some of us wore black armbands that said ROE on them. Others carried signs that said JANUARY 6: REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER. The Democratic candidate for Cape & Islands DA and his family marched with us. (If you vote in our region, remember his name: Rob Galibois.) We danced and sang along to an awesome soundtrack created by one of our members -- belting out the words to the Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers" was especially satisfying.
Just ahead of us was the "best in show" float for a local horse farm, packed with tie-dye-shirted kids tossing candy to the spectators (a local tradition). Behind us was the Vineyard Peace Council, with a sign that said "War is still not the answer." According to one of the local papers, more than a thousand people were in the parade and an estimated 25,000 crowded the sidewalks, porches, and balconies to see us pass by. The weather was perfect.
It was our first Fourth of July parade since the beginning of Covid-19. It was the last where no one thought for a minute that a shooter might cut loose with a high-powered semiautomatic rifle.
"LIFE, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" - what happened to these fundamental rights?
We are not safe. We need to SHOW UP! SHOW UP TO VOTE! Show up and stop the madness.