What the hell is going on with the recent spate of so-called accidental shootings? The shootings are being called accidental because the victims did something everyone alive has done at least once, and probably more than once: they went to the wrong house or approached the wrong car by accident.
All of this would be prevented by an accurate reading of the second amendment. We are living in chaos “freedom” lacking any aspect of “well-regulated” or “militia”. It’s a distorted reading of rights distorted out of historical context. ENOUGH. when will we march on capitals and demand reasonable regulation, training, and licensing and periodic relicensing.
Correction: Two very good points, Seth. As mentioned in the article the military receive thorough gun safety training before handling weapons, yet any fool including teenagers can walk into a gun store and buy a gun. It makes no sense. Some wind up very well armed. Many mass shooters have large collections of guns, ,they appear to have been obsessed with them. These people are hardly what you'd call militia. But Republicans will never choose to view the second Amendment that way.
how about outlawing the purchase and ownership of guns to anyone without professed need to have one?
Only the military and the cops are in need of a gun. Otherwise we should license and regulate them as well as we do with machine guns, which are not ordinarily available for sale, and which come with tons of prohibitions.
We can also revoke the 2nd Amendment as being hopelessly outdated and not applicable now. This is not the 18th century and an AR 15 is not a musket.
Society. with the help of the media, has already normalized and sterilized mass shootings as well as gun suicides, children playing with loaded, unsecured guns then killing and wounding friends and family members, po-po gunning down POC, male spouses shooting spouses and partners, and so-called hunting accidents. A few more of these mislabeled accidental shootings and they too will join the list.
Stanley Kubrick's, A Clockwork Orange Ludovico technique on Alex was both literal and metaphor as to have eyes wide open to violence. Show the public the graphic unedited crime scene pics pics that once were shown (other than pixelating or blacking out victim's ID). Putting up class photos or pics best suited for a greeting card are NOT in the public interest. It is NOT how their eyes saw the shooter(s) and it is NOT how the shooter(s) saw them. Reality is a gr8 educator.
This is such a good column about the assignment of a word - like "accidental" to an incident. It becomes common parlance, but what does it imply versus what really happened? Since I have never even held a firearm, I appreciate hearing from you who were trained in their care and use in the military. I won't bore everyone with stories of the fearful idiots in my family who insist on having guns around. I just wish we had a buy-back program for all 400 million guns lying around people's homes and in their cars and trucks. Thank you, LKTIV.
Not military, but civilian law enforcement. Not the same type of training, but very similar in its intent.
The school of thought by my agency was: there is no such thing as an accidental discharge of a firearm. There are intentional, unintentional, negligent, and reckless discharge of a firearm.
In these cases, every one of those rounds fired was intentionally fired. Period.
Yes indeed. And not long ago a firearm went missing (officially was "unaccounted for") in one of the local, very-small-town police departments. It resulted in a huge outcry in the local press and elsewhere.
As an ~indigenous~ man aka merciless indian savage have written on gun safety for decades. Safety is part of the actual warrior code as is the word protection of others.
Buyback needs to be funded or else you as a non-owner will be stuck with the bill, no?
America is about money so make it more and more expensive to own firearms by class.
One constitutional method is taxing. One tax used by both the Federal and State is a sin tax as reflected in Alcohol (cap intentional) Tobacco yet not F for Firearms. (ATF]. Next up the very American way of fees, licensing and registration. And would be remiss if the list didn't include renewal fees for both on set schedule. The safety costs would include qualifying on each and every weapon on a schedule, government approves safety storage costs and yes legislation requiring manufacturers to include certain safety features at manufacture and be subject to liability. Lest we forget another American staple, insurance. In this case personal liability measured in the millions.
That revenue will begin the fund buyback programs as well as discourage new purchases and encourage those with a personal armory to whittle down their inventory on their own.
Point being #2A is real. A forced buyback will never pass constitutional muster as long as #2A exists. The idea of one thing would resolve hundreds of years and 400M weapons is not plausible. What is plausible includes working in the pre-existing American framework. That includes going slow whenever a major issue confronts society. Sure there are downsides to going slow however there are more downsides going fast.
Ask SCOTUS and the GOP w/the Dobbs decision of let's get-er-done approach and how it blew up in their faces. Desire a peaceful transition to less and less guns not one that will box people into a corner. Non-hoomans know many ways to escape from a corner. Hoomans more often than not choose the violent option.
Let's push for whatever improvement we can make within the framework of the present law. Buybacks aren't in the cards for the current political alignment - LaPierre and his gang of "movement conservatives" succeeded all too well in organizing a single-issue voting block and delivering it to the GOP. But even Scalia wasn't crazy enough to say "anything goes", so the questions of who, what, where, and when to carry weapons is still with us. Controls on the manufacture and sale of arms, rather than possession, is the better path forward.
The first rule of holes applies here: When you're in one, stop digging.
What can one say? All of this is so true. The culture of paranoia is pervasive and makes us less safe in a lovely little rural village then we are on NYC streets or subways. At least in the city, we know where we shouldn’t go! Not to say we’re totally safe, but we would all be safer if Fix Noise stopped scaring the daylights out of people, and Congress members stopped having their pockets lined by the NRA! I’ll bet ND Gov Noem isn’t the only one with a 2 year old grandchild with guns. Appalling!
Saw a snippet of an interview with the KC shooter's grandson. Said as he matured, he formed his own opinions that were contrary to what he was raised with. Grandpa, on the other hand, went down the Fox rabbit hole of fear and paranoia. Big effing surprise there
Interviews I've heard with the grandson really explain it all, and i'd guess apply in every one of these cases: Fox and similar right-wing tv poisoned the shooter's mind with warped nonstop be-very-afraid crime noise. Republicans' favorite explanation for mass murders is mental illness, not guns. If they want to extend that to front-porch assaults, can they avoid blaming their propaganda department?
My Dad always had a couple of rifles in the house. He liked to hunt sometimes. We were taught from the toddler stage to respect guns and always consider them loaded. I shot at the rifle range when I was ten (I'm a girl). There was never any weirdness about guns. No fondling or worship of guns. Guns were guns and they do what they do and you have to treat them with respect. We had no fear. My husband recently sold all of our several guns because he decided that we didn't need any potential accidents. He is a rational man with no fear.
Exactly this!!! I could almost repeat your comment, word for word. My Dad hunted to put protein on the table. We ALWAYS had a couple of rifles in the house and we were taught to respect them and consider them loaded at all times. Back in bygone days, when the NRA actually taught hunter and gun safety (fifty-three years ago!), I took their course and fired shotguns, a pistol and a rifle and received a 'safe hunter patch'...and around here that safety certification was a big deal--many hunters had those patches sewn right onto their red and black buffalo plaid wool jackets. Even the notion of doing that would be laughable to the current crop of crazed gun nuts.
As someone like you Lucian that was trained by the Army in the use of these weapons, and indeed fought in a war using them, hunted with them and competed at the national level with insanely accurate versions of single shot pistols, I find this news to be dispiriting, in fact that's how almost all news feels. If convicted each of those shooters needs to go to prison for a very long time, it will give them something to think about as the days of their wasted lives pass slowly by. These "stand your ground", "open and concealed carry" laws, are an invitation to the events we are witnessing, with an uneducated and untrained public the results are predictable. Who knows how many people that are walking around today who will be dead before year's end, it will be more than 1, I can confidently predict, even 1 is too many. The level of factual ignorance in our country is horrifying, all actions have consequences that can reverberate for decades, just because you have the money to buy one of these things doesn't mean you should own one.
Even in the military there is unfortunately gun violence. The week before I arrived at Camp Hovey in Korea in 1962, a young trooper shot his sergeant as he came out of the orderly room, and then calmly went to the arms room and turned his weapon in. Then half the company jumped on him. Another young soldier went up in the hills with a rifle and ammo and shot at anything that moved until he ran out of ammo. Didn't hit anybody, thankfully, but even training can't always work.
Alec Baldwin taught us a tad about how " Treat all guns as if they are Loaded" ...
If you shoot a human you are likely on your way to trial for a felony unless you can persuade the police and States Attorney that you had no choice. This event was reasonably seen as an imminent threat on your life or family. We live where American gun ownership is in the millions. The danger is that if your only tool is a hammer - every problem is a Nail. So too with guns. Years of trouble for unwise use of a firearm.
In a split second your life has changed.
If you want to buy one, keep it locked up. That is what I do...
Thank you so much for this column. I've been reading, seeing and hearing about this, and I sincerely believe that Fox News (or what it thinks is news) is 50% responsible for these shootings-in the case of Ralph Yarl, almost 90% because the man who shot him was described by his nephew as "“spent considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume," and also "his grandfather had frequently made anti-Black, anti-gay, and anti-immigrant remarks, and that he become estranged from his grandfather when Lester began spouting right-wing conspiracy theories. "
Now, where else would an 84 year old man be getting this kind of reinforcement of his racism? Fox, who are also scaring him to death with their reporting of whites "being replaced" and shit like that.
He should not have had a gun, and I have no pity for him.
The fear is from the GOP and 'conservative outlets' making everyone convinced that the boogeyman is out to get them, and they'd best be armed to fend the hordes of illegal immigrants coming in to replace them in their jobs.
Which is why Fox should have gone through that trial, but they knew instinctively that if they did, their hypocritical stance on everything would be exposed for the world to see and that would never have done.
So they paid off Dominion, and they'll pay off the rest of them. They can afford to.
But they should not be able to repeat lies day after day without being held to account for them.
I do miss the "Fairness Doctrine" insomuch as it kept the garbage being spewed during elections to a small dumpster fire instead of having garbage throwing during debates.
This just isn't the same country I was born in and I'm despairing of it ever changing to one that has regained its' sanity.
Because the Republicans don't want that-they want everyone scared shitless.
when there was a Fairness Doctrine, there was no such thing as "Right Wing Media. there were individual crazy guys with radio shows, but not the huge industry we have now. I've read many times that there is a definite link between the two things.
the more "Liberal" media has been continuing top share Warren Burger's video clip about the current interpretation of the Second Amendment being a fraud. it's just about the only good thing I can say about Burger, who was considered to be an idiot.
this was an excellent piece, and I wish to hell the phrase "accidental shooting" would stop being used. isn't pretty much anybody who's just shot somebody and suddenly realized maybe it wasn't a great idea going to say it was an "accident?"
Each and every time a Republican states I am a Reagan Republican I cross them off the list of potential reasonable people while deducing they never read Stuart Steven's It Was All A lie and/or listened to him since 2015. Many tried to reason with him before then to no avail.
Not easy to admit an entire career was built on lie after lie. Seems harder for his contemporaries to make the same admission, publicly that is.
Same info in Borowitz' book "Profiles in Ignorance". Reagan is featured front and center as one of our three most ignorant Presidents (tied with tfg and Dubya). What is interesting is the lengths the Republican party officials went to to disguise Reagan's ignorance and stupidity. On the other hand, Dubya seemed almost proud of his ignorance and as for tfg--he CELEBRATES his stupidity.
In the post-Ike era Republicans and conservatives embraced the 4Horsemen of Calumny: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear. In conjunction with those the Republicans and conservatives embarked on a narrative based approach. One that was crafted to sound good while lacking all soundness. These manifested in decades of 3word buzz phrases and framing anything as a binary choice (the fallacy of either/or). Both remain the backbone of their messaging to this day.
They didn't stop there. Rs/cons went out of their way to turn the words Democrat, liberal, left, and more recently progressive. into pejoratives that needed to be spit out with disdain. That birthed all sorts of insulting and offensive derivatives for those words. No person should be surprised they are employing the exact same tactic with the word woke.
That all falls under the cynical approach of taking an opponent's positive or strength and turn it into a negative and a weakness simply by the use of words. Not by any facts or evidence. Then concoct a false tale to further muddy the character of the opponent aka Swift boating.
What followed was predictable. Rather than a mere opponent Rs/cons took to demonizing right through dehumanizing. That was accomplished both through words and visuals including embracing the tabloid trick of shading, enlarging/shrinking, etc.
These are my fellow countrymen and wimmin. They have no shame and they have no honor. The exceptions are so few to be considered a rounding error. And it is one of the reasons I will NOT willingly give up my guns. My ancestors made that fatal mistake even after coming to the same conclusion albeit in a different era. Said another way I will continue to wear the term merciless ____ savage as a badge of Honor until it is withdrawn. Words do matter. As do actions.
We get upset when people are killed by guns. Those injured/ wounded are forgotten about. How badly they are wounded is rarely mentioned. I saw a news clip about one of the little girls who survived the Uvalde school shooting. Her hand is a scary sight, even after all of the surgeries to repair the damage, and will stay that way, adding to the rest of her trauma and her other physical injuries.
Yet the so called centrist media went all in about the Kansas shooter being scared. He opened the heavy main door and shot a child through the glass door. Had his hand on the handle, it is obvious with the bullets going through the door that it wasn’t open so hand on the handle is suspect. Then he shot him again.
Then no one would help him.
It wasn’t fear it was hate.
Fox uses fear to generate hate. This man wasn’t fearful he was a racist hater.
He is not in jail for shooting a child while everyone says democrats let criminals out on bail.
Point of order, LKT IV: There are accidental shootings, as shown by the recent news about how the SIG Sauer P320 pistol firies without the trigger being pulled (link to WaPo article on this below). Though some 80 people have been, yes, accidentally shot by these pistols, no one has died yet. If/when that does happen, it would disprove the inane old gun nut saw about how guns don't kill people, people do.
Buying, owning and using this apparently faulty weapon is not an accident. Last time I was in a local deli and paid for a sandwich, pulling out my wallet and putting down a credit card was done on purpose.
You're referring to an accidental discharge due to a manufacturer's design or mfg. defect that resulted in some being wounded. Are there accidental shootings? Well, one can make the case a 3yr old shooting her/his 5yr old sibling was accidental yet foreseeable. FTR: 60 Minutes did a piece or a specific rifle known to discharge for no known cause.
Lucian restricted his words to the incidents in the news. And as he added in a reply to you, the purchaser has a chitload of responsibility before they make a purchase even more so when the purchase is designed to kill, wound and maim.
If you say so, Mr. Patterson. Have long taken to include tongue-in-cheek to alert readers of the intent.
FTR: am not a dude, am an ~indigenous~ man deserving the same respect as any other here.
FTR: am the son of ________________ of the people of _______________. Hardly cartoonish although generations of yts tried to make us so.
Gun shootings of innocents are a multiplier. Gun shot victims, victims family, friends, relatives, co-workers, and to a degree, witnesses inc. bystanders, ME, LE, bear the physical, mental and emotional scars for life. Find nothing funny or ironic in shootings to include negligent discharges (As Seen on YOUTUBE for example) nor in rape including prison or jailhouse rape.
A couple of months ago, I went to the car wash. I had a lot on my mind. The car was being dried and detailed on one of the first nice days in March. I was zoned out when I saw “my car” driven out of the facility for me to pick up. I jauntily walked to it and was about to get in when a voice behind me said “excuse me?” It was the very similar looking to my car’s owner. I was embarrassed and apologetic all at once. Thankfully he wasn’t a gun nut and was very nice about it. Honest mistake. Honest apology. My car came out two minutes later and I was off. I thought about the worst that could have happened the entire way home. What a sad place we all must live in these days. It was the type of thing that was humorous but it was overshadowed by fear.
The other day after telling someone I'll be traveling in the UK this summer, they asked me if I wasn't afraid to be "overseas". Sadly, the answer is "NO" - I feel much safer in the UK or EU where I know there aren't 400 million guns hanging around!
Wow. Afraid to be in the UK? It is truly sad how ignorant people are. How did we get to be this way? I have never, never been afraid anywhere in Europe. People there are mostly rational human beings. I wish I were there right now, eating a croissant.
Agreed. I've never felt "threatened" anywhere in the UK or EU. People who've never had the opportunity (or desire) to travel outside the US can have a very distorted view of reality.
All of this would be prevented by an accurate reading of the second amendment. We are living in chaos “freedom” lacking any aspect of “well-regulated” or “militia”. It’s a distorted reading of rights distorted out of historical context. ENOUGH. when will we march on capitals and demand reasonable regulation, training, and licensing and periodic relicensing.
Correction: Two very good points, Seth. As mentioned in the article the military receive thorough gun safety training before handling weapons, yet any fool including teenagers can walk into a gun store and buy a gun. It makes no sense. Some wind up very well armed. Many mass shooters have large collections of guns, ,they appear to have been obsessed with them. These people are hardly what you'd call militia. But Republicans will never choose to view the second Amendment that way.
how about outlawing the purchase and ownership of guns to anyone without professed need to have one?
Only the military and the cops are in need of a gun. Otherwise we should license and regulate them as well as we do with machine guns, which are not ordinarily available for sale, and which come with tons of prohibitions.
We can also revoke the 2nd Amendment as being hopelessly outdated and not applicable now. This is not the 18th century and an AR 15 is not a musket.
By "revoke" do you mean "repeal the 2nd Amendment"? Do you know what that involves? If not, please read the Constitution.
I meant repeal, and I'm far more familiar with the Constitution than you might think.
Untrained and overly fearful people with loaded weapons. It should come as no surprise when they open fire on innocent people.
Society. with the help of the media, has already normalized and sterilized mass shootings as well as gun suicides, children playing with loaded, unsecured guns then killing and wounding friends and family members, po-po gunning down POC, male spouses shooting spouses and partners, and so-called hunting accidents. A few more of these mislabeled accidental shootings and they too will join the list.
Stanley Kubrick's, A Clockwork Orange Ludovico technique on Alex was both literal and metaphor as to have eyes wide open to violence. Show the public the graphic unedited crime scene pics pics that once were shown (other than pixelating or blacking out victim's ID). Putting up class photos or pics best suited for a greeting card are NOT in the public interest. It is NOT how their eyes saw the shooter(s) and it is NOT how the shooter(s) saw them. Reality is a gr8 educator.
This is such a good column about the assignment of a word - like "accidental" to an incident. It becomes common parlance, but what does it imply versus what really happened? Since I have never even held a firearm, I appreciate hearing from you who were trained in their care and use in the military. I won't bore everyone with stories of the fearful idiots in my family who insist on having guns around. I just wish we had a buy-back program for all 400 million guns lying around people's homes and in their cars and trucks. Thank you, LKTIV.
Not military, but civilian law enforcement. Not the same type of training, but very similar in its intent.
The school of thought by my agency was: there is no such thing as an accidental discharge of a firearm. There are intentional, unintentional, negligent, and reckless discharge of a firearm.
In these cases, every one of those rounds fired was intentionally fired. Period.
Yes indeed. And not long ago a firearm went missing (officially was "unaccounted for") in one of the local, very-small-town police departments. It resulted in a huge outcry in the local press and elsewhere.
As well it should.
As an ~indigenous~ man aka merciless indian savage have written on gun safety for decades. Safety is part of the actual warrior code as is the word protection of others.
Buyback needs to be funded or else you as a non-owner will be stuck with the bill, no?
America is about money so make it more and more expensive to own firearms by class.
One constitutional method is taxing. One tax used by both the Federal and State is a sin tax as reflected in Alcohol (cap intentional) Tobacco yet not F for Firearms. (ATF]. Next up the very American way of fees, licensing and registration. And would be remiss if the list didn't include renewal fees for both on set schedule. The safety costs would include qualifying on each and every weapon on a schedule, government approves safety storage costs and yes legislation requiring manufacturers to include certain safety features at manufacture and be subject to liability. Lest we forget another American staple, insurance. In this case personal liability measured in the millions.
That revenue will begin the fund buyback programs as well as discourage new purchases and encourage those with a personal armory to whittle down their inventory on their own.
Point being #2A is real. A forced buyback will never pass constitutional muster as long as #2A exists. The idea of one thing would resolve hundreds of years and 400M weapons is not plausible. What is plausible includes working in the pre-existing American framework. That includes going slow whenever a major issue confronts society. Sure there are downsides to going slow however there are more downsides going fast.
Ask SCOTUS and the GOP w/the Dobbs decision of let's get-er-done approach and how it blew up in their faces. Desire a peaceful transition to less and less guns not one that will box people into a corner. Non-hoomans know many ways to escape from a corner. Hoomans more often than not choose the violent option.
Let's push for whatever improvement we can make within the framework of the present law. Buybacks aren't in the cards for the current political alignment - LaPierre and his gang of "movement conservatives" succeeded all too well in organizing a single-issue voting block and delivering it to the GOP. But even Scalia wasn't crazy enough to say "anything goes", so the questions of who, what, where, and when to carry weapons is still with us. Controls on the manufacture and sale of arms, rather than possession, is the better path forward.
The first rule of holes applies here: When you're in one, stop digging.
What can one say? All of this is so true. The culture of paranoia is pervasive and makes us less safe in a lovely little rural village then we are on NYC streets or subways. At least in the city, we know where we shouldn’t go! Not to say we’re totally safe, but we would all be safer if Fix Noise stopped scaring the daylights out of people, and Congress members stopped having their pockets lined by the NRA! I’ll bet ND Gov Noem isn’t the only one with a 2 year old grandchild with guns. Appalling!
Saw a snippet of an interview with the KC shooter's grandson. Said as he matured, he formed his own opinions that were contrary to what he was raised with. Grandpa, on the other hand, went down the Fox rabbit hole of fear and paranoia. Big effing surprise there
Interviews I've heard with the grandson really explain it all, and i'd guess apply in every one of these cases: Fox and similar right-wing tv poisoned the shooter's mind with warped nonstop be-very-afraid crime noise. Republicans' favorite explanation for mass murders is mental illness, not guns. If they want to extend that to front-porch assaults, can they avoid blaming their propaganda department?
Oh…yeah…real surprise. Duh!
My Dad always had a couple of rifles in the house. He liked to hunt sometimes. We were taught from the toddler stage to respect guns and always consider them loaded. I shot at the rifle range when I was ten (I'm a girl). There was never any weirdness about guns. No fondling or worship of guns. Guns were guns and they do what they do and you have to treat them with respect. We had no fear. My husband recently sold all of our several guns because he decided that we didn't need any potential accidents. He is a rational man with no fear.
I sold mine when my son was diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum.
well-said
Exactly this!!! I could almost repeat your comment, word for word. My Dad hunted to put protein on the table. We ALWAYS had a couple of rifles in the house and we were taught to respect them and consider them loaded at all times. Back in bygone days, when the NRA actually taught hunter and gun safety (fifty-three years ago!), I took their course and fired shotguns, a pistol and a rifle and received a 'safe hunter patch'...and around here that safety certification was a big deal--many hunters had those patches sewn right onto their red and black buffalo plaid wool jackets. Even the notion of doing that would be laughable to the current crop of crazed gun nuts.
As someone like you Lucian that was trained by the Army in the use of these weapons, and indeed fought in a war using them, hunted with them and competed at the national level with insanely accurate versions of single shot pistols, I find this news to be dispiriting, in fact that's how almost all news feels. If convicted each of those shooters needs to go to prison for a very long time, it will give them something to think about as the days of their wasted lives pass slowly by. These "stand your ground", "open and concealed carry" laws, are an invitation to the events we are witnessing, with an uneducated and untrained public the results are predictable. Who knows how many people that are walking around today who will be dead before year's end, it will be more than 1, I can confidently predict, even 1 is too many. The level of factual ignorance in our country is horrifying, all actions have consequences that can reverberate for decades, just because you have the money to buy one of these things doesn't mean you should own one.
Even in the military there is unfortunately gun violence. The week before I arrived at Camp Hovey in Korea in 1962, a young trooper shot his sergeant as he came out of the orderly room, and then calmly went to the arms room and turned his weapon in. Then half the company jumped on him. Another young soldier went up in the hills with a rifle and ammo and shot at anything that moved until he ran out of ammo. Didn't hit anybody, thankfully, but even training can't always work.
Alec Baldwin taught us a tad about how " Treat all guns as if they are Loaded" ...
If you shoot a human you are likely on your way to trial for a felony unless you can persuade the police and States Attorney that you had no choice. This event was reasonably seen as an imminent threat on your life or family. We live where American gun ownership is in the millions. The danger is that if your only tool is a hammer - every problem is a Nail. So too with guns. Years of trouble for unwise use of a firearm.
In a split second your life has changed.
If you want to buy one, keep it locked up. That is what I do...
In Canada no one worries if their child will come home from school.
You don’t see weapons of war carried in shopping malls. Yet there is plenty of excellent hunting opportunities if that is your desire.
Oh you don’t lose your health coverage when you lose your job either. Dam socialist.
Thank you so much for this column. I've been reading, seeing and hearing about this, and I sincerely believe that Fox News (or what it thinks is news) is 50% responsible for these shootings-in the case of Ralph Yarl, almost 90% because the man who shot him was described by his nephew as "“spent considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume," and also "his grandfather had frequently made anti-Black, anti-gay, and anti-immigrant remarks, and that he become estranged from his grandfather when Lester began spouting right-wing conspiracy theories. "
Now, where else would an 84 year old man be getting this kind of reinforcement of his racism? Fox, who are also scaring him to death with their reporting of whites "being replaced" and shit like that.
He should not have had a gun, and I have no pity for him.
The fear is from the GOP and 'conservative outlets' making everyone convinced that the boogeyman is out to get them, and they'd best be armed to fend the hordes of illegal immigrants coming in to replace them in their jobs.
Which is why Fox should have gone through that trial, but they knew instinctively that if they did, their hypocritical stance on everything would be exposed for the world to see and that would never have done.
So they paid off Dominion, and they'll pay off the rest of them. They can afford to.
But they should not be able to repeat lies day after day without being held to account for them.
I do miss the "Fairness Doctrine" insomuch as it kept the garbage being spewed during elections to a small dumpster fire instead of having garbage throwing during debates.
This just isn't the same country I was born in and I'm despairing of it ever changing to one that has regained its' sanity.
Because the Republicans don't want that-they want everyone scared shitless.
when there was a Fairness Doctrine, there was no such thing as "Right Wing Media. there were individual crazy guys with radio shows, but not the huge industry we have now. I've read many times that there is a definite link between the two things.
the more "Liberal" media has been continuing top share Warren Burger's video clip about the current interpretation of the Second Amendment being a fraud. it's just about the only good thing I can say about Burger, who was considered to be an idiot.
this was an excellent piece, and I wish to hell the phrase "accidental shooting" would stop being used. isn't pretty much anybody who's just shot somebody and suddenly realized maybe it wasn't a great idea going to say it was an "accident?"
Much Respect for your words.
Each and every time a Republican states I am a Reagan Republican I cross them off the list of potential reasonable people while deducing they never read Stuart Steven's It Was All A lie and/or listened to him since 2015. Many tried to reason with him before then to no avail.
Not easy to admit an entire career was built on lie after lie. Seems harder for his contemporaries to make the same admission, publicly that is.
Same info in Borowitz' book "Profiles in Ignorance". Reagan is featured front and center as one of our three most ignorant Presidents (tied with tfg and Dubya). What is interesting is the lengths the Republican party officials went to to disguise Reagan's ignorance and stupidity. On the other hand, Dubya seemed almost proud of his ignorance and as for tfg--he CELEBRATES his stupidity.
Agree with your words, wording and sentiment.
In the post-Ike era Republicans and conservatives embraced the 4Horsemen of Calumny: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear. In conjunction with those the Republicans and conservatives embarked on a narrative based approach. One that was crafted to sound good while lacking all soundness. These manifested in decades of 3word buzz phrases and framing anything as a binary choice (the fallacy of either/or). Both remain the backbone of their messaging to this day.
They didn't stop there. Rs/cons went out of their way to turn the words Democrat, liberal, left, and more recently progressive. into pejoratives that needed to be spit out with disdain. That birthed all sorts of insulting and offensive derivatives for those words. No person should be surprised they are employing the exact same tactic with the word woke.
That all falls under the cynical approach of taking an opponent's positive or strength and turn it into a negative and a weakness simply by the use of words. Not by any facts or evidence. Then concoct a false tale to further muddy the character of the opponent aka Swift boating.
What followed was predictable. Rather than a mere opponent Rs/cons took to demonizing right through dehumanizing. That was accomplished both through words and visuals including embracing the tabloid trick of shading, enlarging/shrinking, etc.
These are my fellow countrymen and wimmin. They have no shame and they have no honor. The exceptions are so few to be considered a rounding error. And it is one of the reasons I will NOT willingly give up my guns. My ancestors made that fatal mistake even after coming to the same conclusion albeit in a different era. Said another way I will continue to wear the term merciless ____ savage as a badge of Honor until it is withdrawn. Words do matter. As do actions.
We get upset when people are killed by guns. Those injured/ wounded are forgotten about. How badly they are wounded is rarely mentioned. I saw a news clip about one of the little girls who survived the Uvalde school shooting. Her hand is a scary sight, even after all of the surgeries to repair the damage, and will stay that way, adding to the rest of her trauma and her other physical injuries.
We do, indeed, overlook the damage survivors of shootings have to endure-the trauma, physical damage that will last a lifetime.
Millions of people have the same trauma as being in a war zone with bullets criss-crossing over them.
"When everyone has a gun, everything looks like a target."
A new rendition on an old adage..
Yet the so called centrist media went all in about the Kansas shooter being scared. He opened the heavy main door and shot a child through the glass door. Had his hand on the handle, it is obvious with the bullets going through the door that it wasn’t open so hand on the handle is suspect. Then he shot him again.
Then no one would help him.
It wasn’t fear it was hate.
Fox uses fear to generate hate. This man wasn’t fearful he was a racist hater.
He is not in jail for shooting a child while everyone says democrats let criminals out on bail.
I take back the part about no one helping him.
It is now known they were told by 911 that there had been a call about an active shooter, when they realized he was the victim they did help him.
They are the ones with legitimate fear. It also shows an other major problem with a heavily armed society.
So well written!!!
Point of order, LKT IV: There are accidental shootings, as shown by the recent news about how the SIG Sauer P320 pistol firies without the trigger being pulled (link to WaPo article on this below). Though some 80 people have been, yes, accidentally shot by these pistols, no one has died yet. If/when that does happen, it would disprove the inane old gun nut saw about how guns don't kill people, people do.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/11/sig-sauer-p320-fires-on-own/
Buying, owning and using this apparently faulty weapon is not an accident. Last time I was in a local deli and paid for a sandwich, pulling out my wallet and putting down a credit card was done on purpose.
Point taken, sir! But you get the irony.
WaPo pat wall
Here is more about it
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/12/03/wounded-officers-sue-sig-sauer-say-gun-goes-off-itself.html
You're referring to an accidental discharge due to a manufacturer's design or mfg. defect that resulted in some being wounded. Are there accidental shootings? Well, one can make the case a 3yr old shooting her/his 5yr old sibling was accidental yet foreseeable. FTR: 60 Minutes did a piece or a specific rifle known to discharge for no known cause.
Lucian restricted his words to the incidents in the news. And as he added in a reply to you, the purchaser has a chitload of responsibility before they make a purchase even more so when the purchase is designed to kill, wound and maim.
Dude, I get all that. It was a bit of snarky irony. Or as Foghorn Leghorn would say, "It was a joke, son!"
If you say so, Mr. Patterson. Have long taken to include tongue-in-cheek to alert readers of the intent.
FTR: am not a dude, am an ~indigenous~ man deserving the same respect as any other here.
FTR: am the son of ________________ of the people of _______________. Hardly cartoonish although generations of yts tried to make us so.
Gun shootings of innocents are a multiplier. Gun shot victims, victims family, friends, relatives, co-workers, and to a degree, witnesses inc. bystanders, ME, LE, bear the physical, mental and emotional scars for life. Find nothing funny or ironic in shootings to include negligent discharges (As Seen on YOUTUBE for example) nor in rape including prison or jailhouse rape.
A couple of months ago, I went to the car wash. I had a lot on my mind. The car was being dried and detailed on one of the first nice days in March. I was zoned out when I saw “my car” driven out of the facility for me to pick up. I jauntily walked to it and was about to get in when a voice behind me said “excuse me?” It was the very similar looking to my car’s owner. I was embarrassed and apologetic all at once. Thankfully he wasn’t a gun nut and was very nice about it. Honest mistake. Honest apology. My car came out two minutes later and I was off. I thought about the worst that could have happened the entire way home. What a sad place we all must live in these days. It was the type of thing that was humorous but it was overshadowed by fear.
This is spot on!
Prepare for it to get worse as "leaders" like Gov DeInsane approve laws that allow concealed carry without any permitting or firearms training needed:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-concealed-carry-no-permit-ron-desantis/
The other day after telling someone I'll be traveling in the UK this summer, they asked me if I wasn't afraid to be "overseas". Sadly, the answer is "NO" - I feel much safer in the UK or EU where I know there aren't 400 million guns hanging around!
Wow. Afraid to be in the UK? It is truly sad how ignorant people are. How did we get to be this way? I have never, never been afraid anywhere in Europe. People there are mostly rational human beings. I wish I were there right now, eating a croissant.
Agreed. I've never felt "threatened" anywhere in the UK or EU. People who've never had the opportunity (or desire) to travel outside the US can have a very distorted view of reality.
Here is another article about this culture of fear promoted by the NRA and its puppets in the GOP:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/20/gun-culture-fear-shooting-yarl-gillis/