This is what you get when you type 'alt-F5' on a computer at Salon...
There was another mass shooting in America last night – this time in my home state of Louisiana. John Houser, a drifter from Alabama, walked into a crowded theatre in Lafayette, Louisiana, and unloaded 13 rounds. We don’t yet know why this theatre and this man, but we know this: two innocent people are dead because they were shot in the dark by a stranger.
A sickness has swept over our country: angry men with guns are discharging their nihilism on our children, our neighbors, our churches, and our communities. And we won’t do a damn thing about it. We know this because what happened in Lafayette last night has already happened in Chattanooga, in Charleston, in Aurora, in Washington D.C., in Connecticut, in Texas, in Virginia, and on and on and on.
Nothing changes. Some bodies are filled with holes, politicians and the media descend, the news cycle passes, and we carry on. Our streets are studded with guns and no one is willing to do anything about it. We’re told in the aftermath of these events that politics is in bad taste; that we ought simply to offer prayers to the victims. Such was the reaction of our absentee governor, Bobby Jindal, who reminded us that “Now is the time for prayer, now is the time for healing. As far as the political spectrum, this isn’t the time.” Now is precisely the time for action – as it always is when mass shootings occur. You guys are worse than grave robbers. Digging up the dead for your personal pleasure.
People don’t need prayers, governor; they need to live without fear of being shot. They need sane gun laws. But we can’t have an honest conversation about guns because the NRA and cowards like Jindal (who opposes restrictions on gun purchases and whose state leads the nation in gun deaths) won’t let us. As Bob Mann noted in the Times-Picayune this morning, after the massacre in Charleston, Jindal attacked Obama for suggesting that a national discussion about guns is needed: “I think it was completely shameful,” Jindal said, “Within 24 hours we’ve got the president trying to score cheap political points.” There’s nothing “cheap” about addressing gun laws after nine people were gunned down in a church. The same is true in the wake of the Lafayette shooting. But reflexive posturing of this kind occurs every time something like this happens. Look in the mirror for an example of "reflexive posturing", Sean.
Sean fails to mention that the NRA endorsed the tightening of gun laws last fall that was s'posed to prevent the shooter from getting a gun. The shooter did it anyway. He also fails to mention the many thousands of gun laws that very few people willingly obey, nor does he mention that pesky "consent of the governed" admonition with respect to legislation, including gun legislation. More gun laws are an abject marker of a failing republic to rein it its own worst excesses, including the steady diminishing of civil and personal liberties attendant with "sane gun laws".
The Second Amendment fanatics will surely remind us that guns are quintessentially American. That’s true, of course: the Second Amendment exists. But that’s not the end of the conversation. That something is written in the constitution doesn’t mean it’s sacrosanct. The document, after all, enshrined slavery and denied full personhood to black people. You knew that was coming...
At any rate, contrary to the disastrous Supreme Court ruling in 2008, the Second Amendment protects militias, not the individual’s right to carry a pistol in a supermarket or a theatre. So we should just disobey the Supreme Court unless it's enshrining a right like abortion or same-sex marriage...
It wasn’t until the NRA bought the Republican Party (Jindal included) and began pushing for a reinterpretation of the amendment that it came to mean something other than it does. Liberals such as Sean use the former plight of black folks like a gay man uses a condom in a glory hole.
I respect the rights of hunters to hunt ...another trope by which he dismisses us...
and the need for self-defense is very real, but we’ve got to be honest about the costs of allowing so many guns on the street. How about letting minorities defend themselves? How about letting a woman defend herself?
The NRA says the “only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” and that’s not as stupid as some suggest, but perhaps more laws and fewer guns is even better. Because if we have more laws then criminals will put down their guns. Happens everywhere it's been tried...
And the people who say we can’t get rid of guns are lying or ignorant or both. In Australia, a country governed by adults, radical new gun laws were imposed after a mass shooting, which included a mandatory buy-back program. The laws, by any measure, were a tremendous success. It’s possible to do something about guns, in other words – difficult, but possible. In case you haven't noticed, America isn't, nor will it ever be Australia. Mandatory anything by any government, federal state or local is a gross violation of civil liberties. A good example is Obamacare. Another are the series of federal gun control acts starting in 1933, each successively adding more and more gun laws, which, as I have pointed out, only points to the fact that this former republic will not continue on until civil liberties are gone, starting with guns.
The fervor with which Americans defend guns feels pathological at this point. So if you disagree with the writer you're sick. I suppose that's better than being insane or evil...
In what other developed country are people so obsessed with guns? In what other developed country do you need a pistol in your pocket to feel safe? South Africa?
What is it about America that we can’t get on without being awash with guns? There’s this notion that somehow freedom will be extinguished if we can’t get our hands on a gun. Do the idiots in the Michigan Militia really believe they’re going to beat back the U.S. military should it decide to invade Detroit? This is the stuff of deranged fantasies, believed by culturally isolated Guns & Ammo readers. I would be willing to bet that a massive percentage of Guns & Ammo readers are willing for others -- not them -- to part with their guns. They are Sean's ideological allies in that they are willing to sell their souls, as well as the souls of their children for just an addition measure of security, courtesy of that state, and that includes guns. And as to the "pathological fervor" for guns? Not for nothing this nation is called the arsenal of democracy. And for the Michigan Militia engaging trained US troops, which you would gladly send against your own citizens? You're right. They probably can't win in a standup fight, but they can sure as hell gun down every political fascist who sent them. You can bank on that. Google "Hundred Heads Insurance" for a hint of what could happen.
Much will be said of the Lafayette shooter’s background in the coming days. It’s already been reported, for instance, that he was a member of the Tea Party. I’ll leave it to others to speculate about that. Whatever the ideology of the shooter turns out to be, the fact remains: There will always be terrible people willing to do terrible things in defense of terrible ideas. Why not make it more difficult for them to access a gun? Why not do everything possible to reduce the number of guns on the street? Explain how you get the gang-bangers, drug dealers and general low-lifes to surrender their weapons without turning our country into a police state. If you can come up with something I'd listen politely...
How many people have to die before we decide blind allegiance to a misinterpreted amendment isn’t worth the cost?
#1
Then I officially write this Republic off as DEAD.
Swing open the borders, import Islamic Jihadis from the 8th century in the middle of two wars you lost while nationalizing the Police to make them not respond?
No Inspectors Generals, no accountability, arming up POS un-elected Bureaucrats to collar opposition?
Why don't you look at yourselves in the mirror, and imagine yourselves fucking yourselves in front of that mirror.
#15
I've read a number of times that shooters were on some kind of meds. Perhaps we should be looking closer at that sort of thing when they do gun checks.
I've also read in a number of places that shooters are looking for a bit of fame on the cable news when they decide to suicide by shooting spree. Perhaps the cable news could do us all a favor and tone down some of the coverage. Add the words worthless-piece-of-crap to the coverage as well and suggest that pissing on the corpse of a mass-shooter should be enshrined in law. That sort of thing.
h/t House of Eratosthenes
...While the framers of the U.S. Constitution didn't give much forethought to the development of political parties, a political party need not be anathema to our Constitution so long as it abides by what one might call the representative model. A representative party is one in which elected officials carry out some close approximation of the desires of the people they claim to represent. The party serves to aggregate the most articulate individuals from a group of people who share some common interests. Those individuals may be innovative to some degree, but they should not drag their constituents in directions that they would not naturally go. Representative are just that -- representatives. They are not, in principle, the public's masters. While the framers did set up a system that allowed considerable scope for the talents of individual officeholders, such people were either directly elected by the people or appointed by legislators who were, in turn, subject to elections. Thus, in principle, all decisions made by government were made with the consent of the governed. Of course, the system never quite lived up to this ideal, but as long as the public understood and jealously guarded the broad outlines of the framers' intent, at least a majority of the people enjoyed some meaningful state of control over the nation's course. As long as the system itself was seen as sacred, there were limits to the amount of mischief any narrow elite could accomplish.
The representative model is now defunct, destroyed in somewhat different ways by the two political parties.
#1
There's a logic to elitism? What is it other than:
1. Gimme all your stuff so that I/we can redistribute it to those who get in line and vote for me.
2. Justice is now referred to as social justice, that is justice is going to be meted out according to the various oppressed groups. What are the oppressed groups? They are victims of old, white, men or otherwise whomever we say and whomever might vote for us.
Now be a good little dhimmi and bend over, shut up and take it like a good little dhimmi.
Mighty Daniel Greenfield steps to the plate and slugs yet another one out of the park in this fisking...
Paul Mason, a former music teacher and Trotskyist, would like to explain to you that capitalism is dying because of computers. Mason, understands economics and computers about as well as you expect a former music teacher to, but since someone at some point made him a respected journalist in the UK, he has many Guardian thoughts he would like to share on the coming post-capitalist world in which we'll all live in computer communes trading labor... because that hasn't been tried before.
"As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started."
A new kind of human being!
Adding 'post' to a term should set off nonsense alarms. Following that up by promising a new kind of human being gives off a nonsense klaxon. So what is post-capitalism? Wikipedia, of course, the model for everyone promising a new internet age since 2001. More at the link
accepting of unlimited numbers of refugees everywhere
neutral atheist however willing to tolerate sharia if those unlimited refugees wish to marry 10-year-olds, keep slaves or kill apostates.
anti-racist (translation: anti-anything that supports the old idea of a nation state with borders and a rule of law)
pro-environment (translation: anti-capitalist, anti-oil and coal, pro-solar panel and wind turbine manufacture in China with no environmental safeguards)
[DAWN] ONLY two names now remain on the list: Afghanistan and Pakistain. Nigeria is the latest country to exit the ignominious company of countries where polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... is considered endemic.
No new polio cases have been reported there for the last one year, and while it has some time to go before officially being declared polio-free, it should be really proud given the odds it once faced.
A decade or so ago, Moslemholy mans in Nigeria declared war on the anti-polio campaigners. These holy mans, quite like their counterparts in Pakistain, had decried the vaccination drive as an attempt to sterilise young Moslem girls.
In more recent times, the hardcore murderous Moslem group Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... went after polio workers in Nigeria earlier this year, killing nine of them. But the anti-polio battle had enough momentum to bring the global front against the crippling disease victory after years of committed, relentless effort.
Nigeria and the world must celebrate the moment. According to figures available in media reports, only 27 years ago -- in 1988 -- there were 128 countries staked by endemic polio.
This is what makes the indictment for the two countries that are still not clear of polio easier and stronger.
There has been a drop in the number of cases of late, but with 28 reported cases in Pakistain this year as against five in Afghanistan, Pakistain has to be the most serious challenge for the anti-polio coalition.
Nigeria's example tells us that it has to be cohesive, efficient process involving everyone from the government health machinery to the NGOs to political parties and social motivators, including the holy mans.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/27/2015 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
