The incredible Gullibility of Trump Supporters/the Right

Idaho white vigilantes.

As I have noted many times, I continue to amazed - shocked might be a better term - at the willingness of Trump supporters, evangelical christians (lower case "c"), and the far right in general to believe every Trump lie and far fetched lie put out by extremist groups or just as likely Russian bots. Fact checking is seemingly an unknown concept to many of these people and they share falsehoods on social media and have near apoplexy over "news stories" that are not even true - often not even legitimate.  I truly do not comprehend a mindset so eager to believe the worse about others or believe any and ever inflammatory lie. Are they simply ignorant and too lazy to fact check, bigots or some mix of the two?  This gullibility and mindlessness was recently illustrated by events in a town in Idaho that were based on a social media myth that bore no relation to reality.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the manner in which armed white vigilantes/residents were played for fools while endangering the rest of the public.  Here are article excerpts:

Protesters had only begun assembling peacefully in Idaho when a Facebook page for retired police officers advised its followers to stay on high alert. “We will protect our neighborhoods,” it vowed.

So when early reports about potential violence surfaced a day later — claiming “ANTIFA agitators” were storming the state this week — scores of residents took to the streets. Armed with military-style assault rifles, they stood guard in places such as Coeur d’Alene, a resort town of 50,000 on a lake in northwest Idaho.

“Enough of us swung into action, and put the word out on social media and elsewhere, that we were able to deploy and meet any violent elements that might come here from out of state,” said Trevor Treller, a sommelier and one of the armed locals. Treller, 48, said he mobilized after hearing from trusted voices that “antifa types” were on the move.It would not prove to be true.

As vigils and protest actions unfolded in Idaho this week, local officials across the state confirmed that not a single participant was known to have defiled a home or storefront in the name of “antifa,” a loose label attributed to far-left activists. Many of the rumors about violent protests originated from dubious Facebook posts, often shared widely and rarely debunked, residents there said.

The raft of myths and misstatements that triggered visceral reactions throughout Idaho illustrates how long-standing grievances have fused with the vast reach of social media during protests that have swept through the country — in big cities and rural towns — after the killing of a black man in the custody of Minneapolis police last week.

As President Trump militarizes the government’s response to the roiling demonstrations, armed civilians across the country are taking matters into their own hands. They have engaged in preemptive acts of escalation, often in response to imaginary threats, raising tensions at demonstrations touched off by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd and intensified by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic collapse, which have disproportionately affected black Americans.

Such actions are particularly visible in Idaho’s Treasure Valley, long a hotbed of the anti-government militia movement and a magnet for disaffected whites fleeing more-diverse and increasingly liberal enclaves, experts said. The mobilization of counterprotesters, these observers said, offers stark evidence that rising calls for racial justice are echoing across the country at the very moment that white resentment is also flaring.

“It’s combustible,” said Todd Shallat, a historian at Boise State University. “The local acts of vigilantism show how a rising population of discontented whites is reacting to the increasingly visible claims of minority groups.”

There’s so much implicit bias about black people’s criminality that some people assume there’s going to be violence or infiltration when we gather,” said Whitney Mestelle, a local activist in Boise who helped organize a peaceful vigil Tuesday. “They may even have good intentions, but it doesn’t make me feel more comfortable to see people open-carry.”

[D]iscussion about antifa has reverberated especially widely across Facebook, including on a page that bills itself as “North Idaho News.” The page acknowledges in fine print that it is “not affiliated with any real news company.” On Monday, though, it claimed to have “credible information that violent rioters, not just peaceful protesters, have plans to come to Coeur d’Alene.” Reached Wednesday via Facebook message, the unidentified operator of North Idaho News declined to comment.

The post quickly gained widespread attention, troubling the likes of Chris Dawson, a retired police officer from Santa Clarita, Calif., and the president of the ex-law-enforcement group on Facebook that put its members on high alert. His Facebook page shared the notice, and Dawson said he had been “given information that antifa would be coming in from Portland or Seattle.” Amplifying their fears was the destruction that marked some demonstrations in neighboring states.

Soon, armed members of local militia groups began patrolling the streets of cities including Coeur d’Alene, said David Hagar, a captain in the city’s police department who described the gatherings as peaceful. Asked whether antifa-affiliated individuals had targeted the city, Hagar said, “Not that we’ve identified.”
“I think a lot of it was fueled by social media,” Hagar said.

Similar rumors gripped Payette County, a rural expanse on Idaho’s western edge. One post shared widely on Facebook said antifa had dispatched a “plane load of people” arriving from Seattle, targeting Idaho’s rural regions. “The sheriff in Payette has already spotted some of them,” the notice continued.

Phone calls soon flooded the sheriff’s office, leaving local law enforcement perplexed.

The false notion continues to have traction with local paramilitary groups, including the far-right Three Percenters, who draw their name from the disputed claim that just 3 percent of American colonists were fighting at any one time during the revolt against the British crown. An Idaho branch said in a Facebook post Sunday that it had “credible intel” about plans for an antifa-induced riot in Boise. No such riot took place.

What is truly frightening is that people this ignorant and bigoted are walking around with military assault style weapons.  They would appear to be a bigger threat to public safety than mythical leftists.

"Pro-Life" Texas Representative Threatens to Kill O’Rourke With an AR-15

I am not an advocate of abortion and believe it should be safe and rare,  That said, I have no use for most of the "pro-life" crowd which seemingly worships fetuses and loses all interest in children the moment they exit the birth canal.  How else to explain the manner in which these "conservatives" and right wing "Christians" routinely oppose funding for programs for the poor - often children - and support the Republican agenda that would shred the social safety net that many, including the elderly, need to survive.   These programs are assuredly "pro-life" in a different form but they are anathema to the "godly folk."  But the hypocrisy and ugliness goes goes even further:  these folks demonize those with differing views and are not adverse to using violence against their political and culture war opponents as was demonstrated by a self-style "pro-life" Texas Republican who threatened to use an AR-15 on Beto O'Rourke after he proposed a common sense confiscation of assault weapons in civilian hands.  Here are highlights of this disturbing but all too typical story:

It might seem surprising that Briscoe Cain, the Texas state representative who proudly told Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke that his automatic rifle was “waiting for” him, considers himself ardently “pro-life,” but of course it’s not.

Hopping on Twitter last night during the Democratic debate, after O’Rourke had given a stirring answer about seizing high-capacity weapons from citizens if he was elected president, Cain decided to threaten his fellow Texan with his own automatic rifle — also calling him “Robert Francis,” deliberately eschewing O’Rourke’s Spanish nickname “Beto.”

Per an O’Rourke spokesperson, Cain has been reported to the FBI for his violent speech, which you might think would fly in the face of the “sanctity of life”–type rhetoric he uses as an anti-choice legislator in the Texas legislature. Earlier this year, Cain was an architect of the draconian heartbeat bill, which failed in the Texas House in May, that sought to ban abortion at six weeks, before most women even realize they’re pregnant. When introducing it, he said in a statement, “When you have a heartbeat you have a life and we should honor that life at all cost.” So zealous is he in these views that, just this week, he took the bold stance of wanting to abolish the city of Austin, after it voted to provide $150,000 to help women retain access to abortion care.

The twin conservative principles of protecting both fetuses at the very moment of conception and the right to buy the kinds of guns that can (and have) murdered dozens of fully grown children in just a few minutes is a well-worn contradiction, a hypocrisy even older than the many Republican men who have been caught railing against abortion in public, then quietly paying for them in private. Restricting women’s autonomy over their own bodies is a cornerstone of the Republican Party’s ongoing national project, which is to consolidate power among the white and wealthy over the most vulnerable Americans.

People like Cain are disgusting not to mention complete hypocrites in their wailing about being "pro-life."  They are anything but pro-life and constitute a threat to the lives and well-being of countless Americans.

Let's Talk Honestly About America's Gun Crisis

As regular readers know, I am a strong advocate of drastic changes to America's insane gun laws.  No other advanced nation has the number of guns in civilian hands and no other advanced nation has the gun violence and carnage seen regularly in America.  America is exceptional alright, and not in a good way. Indeed, America's inundation with guns is nothing less than a public health crisis which requires drastic action to address.  While in Charlottesville recently, Beto O'Rourke (family members met him) spoke honestly about the extent of the problem and what needs to be done to address it.  A column in the New York Times looks at O'Rourke's statements and the need to implement actions that will challenge the lies disseminated by the NRA and gun manufacturers and the politicians - mainly Republicans - who parrot the lies.  Here are column excerpts:

Beto O’Rourke has easily emerged as my favorite presidential candidate on the issue of gun control. 

I long ago tired of hearing politicians who are supposed to be in favor of smarter gun laws and reducing American gun deaths and injuries pull their punches so as not to upset the gun lobby and gun lobbyists.

Among other things, O’Rourke’s “gun safety” plan includes declaring gun violence a public health emergency, creating a national gun licensing system and registry, requiring universal background checks, implementing red flag laws and banning “the manufacturing, sale and possession of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

Other candidates agree with some of these proposals, and others have additional ones, but I like the full-throated way O’Rourke responds to being challenged on this front.

This week in Charlottesville, a reporter asked O’Rourke, “How do you address the fears that the government is going to take away those assault rifles — if you are talking about buybacks and banning?”

O’Rourke didn’t skip a beat: “I want to be really clear, that that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government. We’re not going to allow them to stay on our streets, to show up in our communities.”

This was not the first time O’Rourke’s buyback plan has been challenged. Two weeks ago, the USA Today editorial board complained, “Anything smacking of confiscation would breathe life and energy into the not-from-my-cold-dead-hands crowd, endangering law enforcement and likely putting a full stop to any further gun safety measures.”

When asked this week on CNN about that criticism, O’Rourke responded, “This triangulation, calculation, poll-testing every move — that’s what got us here in the first place.”

Finally, a breath of fresh air. . . . we have to start taking deliberate and thoughtful action to deal with this problem. For instance, a mandatory buyback could be met with a constitutional challenge. A voluntary buyback might be most doable.

The scope of the problem is enormous.

According to a Washington Post report in 2018: “There are more than 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the United States, or enough for every man, woman and child to own one and still have 67 million guns left over.”

Furthermore, The New York Times reported in December:

“There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before. Nearly two-thirds were suicides. It was the largest yearly total on record in the C.D.C.’s electronic database, which goes back 50 years, and reflects the sheer number of lives lost.”

We must reduce the overall number of guns in the population, especially those considered weapons of war; we must shrink the market desire for new weapons; and we must set a course to not only pass a new law in a moment but build in the expectation that federal legislation around guns will be the never-ending, ever-adjusting reality.

People interested in reducing gun violence in America have to stop lying about what that would require. Opponents of new gun legislation will accuse its supporters of seeking the worse no matter what they do.

The point is to see a reduction in all shootings. And that argument actually reinforces a need to aggressively fund studies to figure out which measures would work best.

They are right when they say that restrictions on new purchases would place a burden on responsible gun owners — the overwhelming majority of gun owners — when only a tiny fraction participate in shootings. To that I say: AND?! Nearly 40,000 people in 2017 were killed by guns in this country. If a reduction in that number comes with more red tape for you, then so be it.

This is a public health crisis, as O’Rourke points out, and anything we can do to prevent guns from being used in a crime, to prevent a child from accidentally shooting a sibling, to prevent a depressed person from putting a barrel in his or her mouth, must be a consuming priority for all of us.

Even in the radical District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court decision in 2008 that established the right to bear arms as an individual right, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion:

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Guns can be effectively and constitutionally regulated in this country. People who want to do so should be upfront and honest about how far they truly hope to go in that regard.

Can an Anti-Gun Youth Voting Surge Save Us in 2020?

To drive a car, one needs to take both a written test and a test behind the wheel.  Once licensed, at varies periods one has to renew the license and your car must be registered every year.  To practice law or many other professions, one needs to be licensed annually and typically must take a minimum amount of continuing education. Yet, in most states, one can buy a military style assault weapon capable of rapidly killing significant numbers of people without any license or even a background check. Why?  Because of (i) a twisted reading of the 2nd Amendment, and (ii) the lobbying influence of the NRA, a front organization funded by gun manufacturers - and as we learned in 2016, even foreign interests. Meanwhile, mass shootings are on the rise and one literally cannot feel fully safe anywhere. Now, the survivors of the Parkland, Florida mass shooting are pushing for both common sense gun control and a voter registration effort that could wreak havoc on Republicans who prostitute themselves to the NRA and perhaps end the misrule of Donald Trump.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at their effort.  Here are article highlights:

The student activists who crashed the political arena after the mass shooting last year at their high school in Parkland, Fla., are throwing their weight behind a new and ambitious gun-control program that they hope will set the tone for the debate following the most recent mass shootings and headed into the 2020 elections.

The students are speaking out for the first time since 31 people were killed in one weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. They hope their plan — unveiled Wednesday morning — will be considered by President Trump as well as his Democratic presidential rivals and will serve as a catalyst for a surge of youth voters next year.

“You see these shootings on TV every day and very little happening around it. It’s painful to watch. And I think it’s been really hard for me and many of the other students and people that we work with to find hope in this time. . . . “But I think that this plan is something that we can truly — as a country and as Americans united against violence and fighting for peace — can get behind.”

March for Our Lives has been focused on voter registration and outreach across the country over the past year and a half, building a national infrastructure with more than 100 chapters centered on grass-roots organizing. They hope to turn that into droves of voters at the polls next year.

Called “A Peace Plan for a Safer America,” the ambitious platform, which was obtained by The Washington Post, goes much further than the current debate over universal background checks and “red flag” laws, which would apply to people who could be a danger to themselves and others.
 The Peace Plan would create a national licensing and gun registry, long a nonstarter with gun rights advocates; ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; implement a mandatory gun buyback program; and install a “national director of gun violence prevention” who would report directly to the president and coordinate the federal response to what advocates call a national public health emergency.
 It calls for a “multi-step” gun licensing system, overseen by a federal agency, that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day wait before gun purchases are approved. The license would be renewed annually.
 The Peace Plan takes a holistic approach to gun violence by also calling for automatic voter registration when those eligible turn 18, along with the creation of a “Safety Corps,” which the authors compare to a Peace Corps for gun violence prevention. The plan also proposes community-based solutions like mental health services, as well as programs to address and prevent suicide, domestic violence and urban violence.
 The issue of gun violence has recently become a much more dominant concern for the 2020 presidential candidates. Raw emotions have hit many of them as they have met advocates from Moms Demand Action and other groups whose members have been affected by gun violence.
 “My hope is that they focus like a laser on youth turnout,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said of March for Our Lives’s 2020 efforts, after reviewing the proposal. “The election is over the minute young people decide to turn out. The only reason that Trump would get reelected is if young people stay home. The issue of gun violence is one of the only issues that truly motivate young people to shake off their indifference and aversion to voting.”

Democrats, who in the past would at least nod toward gun owners and do photo ops while hunting, are embracing gun control with greater urgency than they have in any election in recent memory, a sign that they are sensing movement among voters. . . . . nearly 70 percent of registered voters said gun policy was “very important” to them, ranking the issue ahead of taxes and immigration, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

March for Our Lives is calling for a mandatory buyback of all assault weapons and a voluntary buyback of handguns and other firearms.

NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter, commenting on the plan, said: “The gun-control community is finally being marginally honest about their true wish list. The simple fact remains their proposals and ideas are out of the mainstream, and most people will understand their real intent goes beyond what they publicly state.”

Hogg called the NRA “the big tobacco of violence in the U.S.” and claimed that “they don’t care about gun owners, like my father.” “The NRA cares as much about gun owners’ safety as the tobacco industry cared about smokers not getting cancer,” Hogg said.

Hogg is 100% correct in his assessment of the NRA.

Guns and America's Deep Sickness

In less than 24 hours, two mass shootings occurred.  One in El Paso, Texas at 10:00 am yesterday morning killing 20, seemingly targeting Hispanics and motivated by hatred and white supremacy beliefs by a shooter enamored with Donald Trump, and the other in Dayton, Ohio at 1:00 am this morning that took 9 lives where details are still emerging.  The common thread: guns capable of rapid fire that no sportsman would need for hunting and that no average person would need for self-defense. No other developed nations has the number of now regular mass shooting - mass murder - for a simple reason.  They have sane gun laws and bar civilians from having military style weapons designed for one purpose only: killing and killing rapidly. Despite this reality, earlier this year at the NRA convention, the Texas Observer reports the governor of Texas made these bullshit statements:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said religion and the Second Amendment are the best ways to curb gun violence and mass shootings.

“The answer to gun violence is not to take guns away, the answer is to strengthen the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” said Abbott during his brief speech to about 5,000 firearm enthusiasts. “The problem is not guns, it’s hearts without God.”

I'm sorry, but God is not the answer.  The answer is sane gun control laws and the ban and confiscation of all assault weapons in the hands of civilians.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the disturbing sickness of mass shootings in America.  Here are article excerpts (note: since the end of the assault weapon ban in 2004, the number of mass shootings has increased)

The places change, the numbers change, but the choice of weapon remains the same. In the United States, people who want to kill a lot of other people most often do it with guns.

Public mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of the country’s gun deaths, but they are uniquely terrifying because they occur without warning in the most mundane places. Most of the victims are chosen not for what they have done but simply for where they happen to be.

There is no universally accepted definition of a public mass shooting, and this piece defines it narrowly. It looks at the 164 shootings in which four or more people were killed by a lone shooter (two shooters in a few cases). It does not include shootings tied to gang disputes or robberies that went awry, and it does not include domestic shootings that took place exclusively in private homes. A broader definition would yield much higher numbers.

This tally begins Aug. 1, 1966, when a student sniper fired down on passersby from the observation deck of a clock tower at the University of Texas. By the time police killed him, 17 other people were dead or dying. As Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff wrote, the shooting “ushered in the notion that any group of people, anywhere — even walking around a university campus on a summer day — could be killed at random by a stranger.” The people who were killed came from nearly every imaginable race, religion and socioeconomic background. Their ages range from the unborn to the elderly; 189 were children and teenagers. In addition, thousands of survivors were left with devastating injuries, shattered families and psychological scars. Semiautomatic rifles have been used in some of the country’s deadliest shootings, such as those in Newtown, Orlando, San Bernardino and Las Vegas. The AR-15, a lightweight, customizable version of the military’s M16, soared in popularity after a 10-year federal ban on assault weapons expired in 2004. Some of the Las Vegas shooter’s guns had been fitted with legal devices called “bump-fire stocks,” which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire as quickly as automatic ones.

The country’s most popular type of firearm, 9mm semiautomatic handguns, are used by many law enforcement officers. They are generally light and inexpensive, easy to conceal and control, and they fire as quickly as a person can pull the trigger. The gunman who killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech in 2007 used a 9mm semiautomatic Glock 19 (and a .22-caliber Walther P22, another popular caliber). In this data, 9mm semiautomatic handguns show up more than any other weapon. In the 50 years before the Texas tower shooting, there were just 25 public mass shootings in which four or more people were killed, according to author and criminologist Grant Duwe. Since then, the number has risen dramatically, and many of the deadliest shootings have occurred within the past few years.

Australia drastically changed its gun laws in the mid-1990's after a mass shooting occurred.  Since then gun deaths have plummeted. Recently, New Zealand radically changed its gun laws after a deadly mass shooting occurred.  Only in America does the murder of innocent people mean nothing to politicians - mostly Republicans - who put NRA and gun manufacturer money above the lives of their constituents.

Time to Target Pro-NRA Politicians for Defeat

Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans support gun control reform, including but not limited to universal background checks, longer waiting periods, ending the gus show exceptions, and stricter licensing.  In Florida, slight movement for change happened after the Parkland massacre, but in Congress, Republicans have blocked all efforts at reform, fearful of offending the NRA and gun manufacturers who give generously to their campaigns.  Rather that any real change, this politicians mutter bullshit comments of "thoughts and prayers' and obfuscate the real issue  by citing mental illness and every other imaginable excuse other than the obvious one: Americans have too many guns and little is done to seriously impose liability on gun owners and gun manufacturers.  While I do not advocate single issue voting, a politicians stance on gun control needs to be much more important if common sense change is to occur.  A column in the New York Times looks at the issue.  Here are highlights:

The school shooting has become an American motif, a previously unthinkable option for the odd, the alienated and the spurned, a way to find voice through violence.

We had yet another one last week in Santa Fe, Texas, where a student killed 10 people and injured 13 others. After the shooting, Paige Curry, a student at the school, offered a chilling assessment of our current predication.

A television news reporter asked: “Was there a part of you that was like, ‘This isn’t real, this would not happen at my school?’ ” Paige responded, shaking her head, an uncomfortable, reflexive smile on her face that mocked the naïveté of the question: “No, there wasn’t.” The reporter pressed: “Why so?” Paige continued: “It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too.”

Schools across the country are preparing for this morbid eventuality. According to a 2015-16 Crime and Safety Survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, 92 percent of public schools have a written plan describing procedures to be performed in the event of an active shooter . . . 

These preparations — sheltering in place, ducking for cover, running for your life — have become a routine part of our children’s educational experience. This is not normal and must never be accepted as such. Neither are these shootings normal. This is all insanity.

We have too many guns in this country, including too many based on combat weapons, and as a result we have too many shootings and deaths.

Many of us know this. We also know that legislators in Washington, as well as Donald Trump himself, are so beholden to the National Rifle Association that little to nothing will be done to stem the real problem: Guns and their availability.

Instead, politicians talk about tangential issues like the mentally ill, the “hardening” of soft targets like schools, and putting even more guns in people’s hands, like the lunacy of arming teachers.

Trump promised in his inauguration speech to end this “American carnage,” but “gun deaths are up over 12 percent year-over-year. Firearm injuries are up nearly 8 percent. The number of children under the age of 12 shot by a gun has increased by 16 percent . . . . Yes, gun violence is actually on the rise.

But as politicians in Washington have made clear that they have no desire to address this issue, no desire to stand up to the N.R.A., no desire to stop treating these deaths as collateral damage, those seeking change must change tactics.

People seeking common sense gun control must become single-issue voters on gun control. Support for more restrictions may not be the only reason to vote for a candidate, but it must be sufficient to vote against one.

We have to stop waiting for politicians to display courage and instead start to instill fear in them.

As an individual voter, you don’t need to have a slate of reforms in mind, you only have to vote consistently for candidates who are committed to reviewing the issue and advancing smart, effective policy.

This is now about the long game. The N.R.A. didn’t amass its clout overnight, and the building of a contingent of politicians committed to gun control also won’t come overnight. But it can, and indeed must, be done.

Students like Paige shouldn’t simply assume that one day a fellow student will show up with a gun and an appetite for death, and that there is nothing Washington is willing to do to prevent it.

Most candidates have websites that will state their positions.  Check them out.  Any candidate that says they are states they are strong advocates of the 2nd Amendment needs to be targeted for defeat. It is really that simple. Oh, and let them know why you will vote for their opponent.  

The Myth That More Guns Could Have Stopped the Parkland Massacre

NRA apologist Marco Rubio confronted by student survivor.

To listen to the NRA and its cheaply bought political whores in the Republican Party (one student survivor said AR-15 should be called Marco Rubio's since both could be cheaply bought) , more individuals armed with guns would have prevented the high school massacre in Florida.  It turns out that there were four (4) Broward County sheriff department deputies on the scene at the high school, none of whom entered the school as the shooter conducted his murderous rampage. One can ponder why trained deputies, one of who was highly decorated, refused to enter the school, but one possible reason was their fear of possible certain death going up against some one armed with an assault weapon while armed only with pistols.  Thus, not only did the assault weapon allow more students to be killed and wounded, but it may have intimidated trained and armed deputies from acting notwithstanding department policies that required them to enter the building.  The easiest way to have prevented the massacre? Take assault weapons out of the equation by banning them and confiscating those in circulation was was done in Australia two decades ago (which ended that nation's mass shooting problem). CNN looks at the deputies' failure to act:

When Coral Springs police officers arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14 in the midst of the school shooting crisis, many officers were surprised to find not only that Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, had not entered the building, but that three other Broward County Sheriff's deputies were also outside the school and had not entered, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. The deputies had their pistols drawn and were behind their vehicles, the sources said, and not one of them had gone into the school.

With direction from the Broward deputies who were outside, Coral Springs police soon entered the building where the shooter was. New Broward County Sheriff's deputies arrived on the scene, and two of those deputies and an officer from Sunrise, Florida, joined the Coral Springs police as they went into the building. Some Coral Springs police were stunned and upset that the four original Broward County Sheriff's deputies who were first on the scene did not appear to join them as they entered the school, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. It's unclear whether the shooter was still in the building when they arrived. The resentment among Coral Springs officials toward Broward County officials about what they perceived to be a dereliction of duty may have reached a boiling point at a vigil the night of February 15, where, in front of dozens of others, Coral Springs City Manager Mike Goodrum confronted Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel. A source familiar with the conversation tells CNN that Goodrum was upset that the Broward deputies had remained outside the school while kids inside could have been bleeding out, among other reasons. The Broward County Sheriff's Office confirmed to CNN that it is investigating the claims that, in addition to Peterson, three other deputies did not try to enter the high school after the shooting began. "What I saw was a deputy arrive ... take up a position and he never went in," Israel said at a news conference. Israel said Peterson should have "went in. Addressed the killer. Killed the killer." Peterson was suspended without pay, after which he resigned.

County Superintendent Robert Runcie said, "I'm in shock and I'm outraged to no end that he could have made a difference in all this. It's really disturbing that we had a law enforcement individual there specifically for this reason, and he did not engage. He did not do his job. It's one of the most unbelievable things I've ever heard."

Israel also announced an investigation into how two other deputies had handled warnings about the gunman prior to the shooting.

No Surprise: NRA Lies About AR-15 Assault Rifles

The NRA holds itself out as a group representing hunters and sportsman.  The truth, of course, is something much different and the NRA receives massive funding from gun manufacturers who have one goal: sell as many weapons as possible and maximize monetary profits.  Any restrictions on gun sales no matter how sensible and appropriate is to be resisted and blocked.  The lives of innocent individuals simply do not matter when weighed against profits.  Now, the NRA is lying about AR-15 assault rifles - the weapon of choice among mass shooters - and claiming that they are "useful for hunting and home defense."  I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone that basically uses a machine gum while dear hunting, duck hunting or skeet shooting. A piece in Slate looks at the truth about AR-15's - M-16 in military parlance - and this latest ridiculous NRA lie.  Here are excerpts: 

[A]n AR-15 rifle was believed to be used in a school shooting Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which at least 17 people were killed. The AR-15 is the same weapon used by Adam Lanza, who killed 26 people, 20 of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. After the Sandy Hook shooting, Justin Peters wrote that “the AR-15 is very good at one thing: engaging the enemy at a rapid rate of fire.” The original piece is reprinted below.
 On Dec. 24, in Webster, New York, an ex-con named William Spengler set fire to his house and then shot and killed two responding firefighters before taking his own life. He shot them with a Bushmaster AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle—the same weapon that Adam Lanza used 10 days earlier when he shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary. James Holmes used an AR-15-style rifle with a detachable 100-round magazine this past summer when he shot up a movie theater in Colorado. Three makes a trend, as we all know, and many people have reacted by suggesting that the federal government should ban the AR-15 and other so-called assault weapons. . . . . NRA president David Keene blasted those critics who “neither understand the nature of the firearms they would ban, their popularity or legitimate uses.” Keene noted there are several valid, non-murderous uses for rifles like the AR-15—among them recreational target shooting, hunting, and home defense . . . .
 I nevertheless find Keene’s arguments disingenuous. It’s odd to cite hunting and home defense as reasons to keep selling a rifle that’s not particularly well suited, and definitely not necessary, for either. Bolt-action rifles and shotguns can also be used for hunting and home defense. Unfortunately, those guns aren’t particularly lucrative for gunmakers. The lobby’s fervent defense of military-style semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 seems motivated primarily by a desire to protect the profits in the rapidly growing “modern sporting rifle” segment of the industry. The AR-15 was designed in 1957 at the behest of the U.S. Army, which asked Armalite to come up with a “high-velocity, full and semi auto fire, 20 shot magazine, 6lbs loaded, able to penetrate both sides of a standard Army helmet at 500 meters rifle,” according to ar15.com. When it entered Army service in the 1960s, it was renamed the M16, . . .
 But the AR-15 is not ideal for the hunting and home-defense uses that the NRA’s Keene cited today. Though it can be used for hunting, the AR-15 isn’t really a hunting rifle. Its standard .223 caliber ammunition doesn’t offer much stopping power for anything other than small game. Hunters themselves find the rifle controversial, . . . As one hunter put it in the comments section of an article on americanhunter.org, “I served in the military and the M16A2/M4 was the weapon I used for 20 years. It is first and foremost designed as an assault weapon platform, no matter what the spin. A hunter does not need a semi-automatic rifle to hunt, if he does he sucks, and should go play video games. In terms of repelling a home invasion—which is what most people mean when they talk about home defense—an AR-15-style rifle is probably less useful than a handgun. The AR-15 is a long gun, and can be tough to maneuver in tight quarters. When you shoot it, it’ll overpenetrate—sending bullets through the walls of your house and possibly into the walls of your neighbor’s house . . .
 AR-15–style rifles are very useful, however, if what you’re trying to do is sell guns. In a recent Forbes article, Abram Brown reported that “gun ownership is at a near 20-year high, generating $4 billion in commercial gun and ammunition sales.” But that money’s not coming from selling shotguns and bolt-action rifles to pheasant hunters. [T]he guns also appeal to another demographic that doesn’t get nearly as much press—paranoid survivalists who worry about having to fend off thieves and trespassers in the event of disaster. In his piece at Human Events, Keene ridiculed the notion that AR-15-style rifles ought to be banned just because “a half dozen [AR-15s] out of more than three million have been misused after illegally falling into the hands of crazed killers.” But the AR-15 is very good at one thing: engaging the enemy at a rapid rate of fire. When someone like Adam Lanza uses it to take out 26 people in a matter of minutes, he’s committing a crime, but he isn’t misusing the rifle. That’s exactly what it was engineered to do. Wednesday’s carnage in Florida illustrates the problem caused by this collective failure to see the existential threat posed by guns to Americans. As long as it remains easy for malicious people to acquire weapons like those used in Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando, or San Bernardino, Americans will die by the dozens.

A pattern has emerged after each mass shooting: gratuitous offering of hopes and prayers, followed by proposals for stricter controls on guns or purchases thereof, followed by lobbying by gun advocates and manufacturers for the scuttling of those proposed controls. The net effect is the same, every damned time: Nothing changes. It is as easy to obtain a semi-automatic military-style rifle today as it was two years ago when Omar Mateen used one to kill 49 at an Orlando nightclub; it remains legal to buy bump stocks today, just as it was four months ago when Stephen Paddock used one to murder 58 in Las Vegas. The thunderous hail of bullets is always followed by the silence of a nation that cannot bring itself to do anything besides offer hopes and prayers.

Perhaps presenting gun violence as a national security threat will finally galvanize America to act. On his way out as director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, Nick Rasmussen mused, “We find ourselves in a more dangerous situation because our population of violent extremists has no difficulty gaining access to weapons that are quite lethal.” He’s right—but the threat does not just come from violent extremists. It comes from Americans like Stephen Paddock and Nikolas Cruz, too—and the time has come for us overcome the powerful people who insist on pretending that threat doesn’t exist.

The reality is that spokesman for the NRA are like Christofascists: if their lips are moving, it's near a 100% likelihood that they are lying. 

Without Changes to America's Gun Laws, "Thoughts and Prayers" Are a Fraud

Each time America witnesses another mass shooting with it seems an ever growing number of people murdered, we hear the same bloviating about "thoughts and prayers" for the dead and their traumatized families and friends. This nauseating refrain comes most often from politicians - especially Republicans - who could reduce future carnage if they but had the balls to say "no" to the gun manufacturer lobby and its front organization, the NRA.   Tellingly, as The Hill is reporting, here in Virginia where we have state wide elections next month, the NRA has delayed running its $1 million political ad campaign attacking Democrats who support gun control and supporting the Republican ticket that wants even looser and more irresponsible gun legislation in Virginia:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has delayed political advertisements in Virginia in the wake of a mass shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 59 people dead and more than 520 injured.

The nation’s largest gun rights organization had originally booked $32,000 in cable television advertising to begin Tuesday, according to Advertising Analytics, a nonpartisan ad-buying firm that keeps tabs on the television market. 

Now, those advertisements will begin on Oct. 10. At the same time, the NRA will devote just more than $1 million to ads airing on broadcast networks in markets around Virginia.  

I propose any easy litmus test for who is sincere in their mealy mouthed statements about "thoughts and prayers" for the dead and their families:  are they accepting money from the NRA or allowing themselves to be backed by the NRA?  If the answer is "yes." then you know that they do not mean a word of their disingenuous statements.  A column in the Chicago Sun Times sums the situation well.  Here are highlights:

Did you see the video? Did you see country music singer Jason Aldean, his guitar slung over shoulders, standing front and center when the gunfire began? He knew that sound, that staccato rip of mass-produced death. He fled for the safety of the back of the stage, and the crowd screamed and people were hit and bled and died, and nobody could be sure where the gunfire was coming from. At last check, 59 people were dead from the bullets that flew during a country music show in Las Vegas. Five-hundred-plus more were injured. By the time you read this, more likely will have died. [W]e know that sound, that ripping of bullets from a single indefensible weapon designed for nothing else. Not for hunting. Not for defending our homes. Not for target practice.

Automatic and semi-automatic guns are designed to kill people by the bunches — and this one on this night did its job superbly.

We are so damn sad. We can’t begin to express our sorrow for all the people who were killed in Las Vegas, even as we slept so soundly in our beds in the Midwest. We are beginning to hear their names, see photos of their faces, and they could be any of us — they are any of us. Nice folks out for a night of music, our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. Dead now. Do we feel survivor’s guilt? We should.

The president offers his condolences. For what it’s worth. And there will be prayers and funeral services. For what they’re worth.

And politicians in the pocket of the gun lobby, tons of them, will stand on the floor of the House and the Senate and say how tragic this shooting was and how something must be done — but don’t punish the law-abiding gun owner because guns are American freedom, guns are apple pie, guns are the flag, guns are the national anthem.

And they won’t tell you that every honest opinion poll for a generation in this country shows Americans are sick to death of the carnage.

The National Rifle Association hates those polls. Guns are money for them. Gun-makers make them rich.

[W]e have called for saner gun laws time and again, only for the gun nuts to twist the message: The crazy liberal media wants to take your guns!

So let’s make two points clear:

• Most of America, to judge by the polls, wants to take illegally obtained guns away from bad people — the drug-dealers and the gang-bangers. Not legally obtained guns from decent people, but illegally obtained guns from bad people. And that means better licensing of gun stores and a ban on the easy sale of weapons at gun shows and garage sales. Seriously: people buy guns in many parts of America, legally, at garage sales.

• Most of America also wants to ban access to semi-automatic and automatic weapons.

The guns that killed in Aurora and at Virginia Tech and Newtown and Umpqua College and San Bernardino and . . .

In June, the Washington Post did the arithmetic and reported that 889 men, women and children have been killed in mass shootings in the United States since Aug. 1, 1966. . . .
 After 50 years, we are closing in on 1,000 deaths from mass shootings. The Las Vegas tally gets us almost there.

Are we properly horrified yet? Will we do something finally? Will we honor the dead in Las Vegas by, at long last, demanding gun sanity?  If we continue to do nothing, all our tears [and thoughts and prayers] are a fraud.

A piece in the Washington Post looks at some of the dead.  Take a good look at the faces and brief bios of those who died.  Then grasp the realize that every politician who has opposed sane gun control laws and a ban on assault weapons played a role in this carnage and has blood on their hands. 

Gun Violence: When Prayer Does Not Suffice

In the wake of the shooting in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday that targeted Congressional Republicans, one once again saw the hypocrisy of politicians who have blocked any form of meaningful gun control - a hearing on lessening restrictions on gun silencers thankfully was postponed - bloviate about sending "thoughts and prayers" to the victims and their families.  Thoughts and prayers do nothing to address the root problem and why gun violence in America exceeds that of any other developed country in the world.  The real solution is strict gun control and a weapons surrender program as occurred in Australia in the mid-1990's after a horrific mass shooting. Decent people ought to view Republicans who have sold their souls and the lives of their constituents to the gun manufacturers with disgust and need to make their disgust loudly and frequently known, especially at the ballot box. Conservative columnist David Frum calls out these hypocrites of the right in a piece in The Atlantic.  Here are column highlights:

The attack on members of Congress at baseball practice in Alexandria this morning is, by one count, the 195th mass shooting of the year. Thankfully, this time it appears that nobody was killed. The same can’t be said, alas, for the gun battle in a Fresno home on June 6, or the workplace eruption in Orlando on June 5, or the shooting in St. Louis on June 2.

Mass-casualty gun violence, like all forms of violence, has declined from its terrible peaks of the early 1990s. Yet it remains prevalent in the United States on a scale that staggers the rest of the civilized world. Earlier this month, we grieved the terrible car and knife terrorist attack on London Bridge. In the United Kingdom, jihadis employ knives precisely because they cannot readily lay hands on guns. The consequence is that committed ideological murderers, operating in teams, inflict fewer fatalities on the rare occasions they strike than do American casual killers every few days.

In only one of all the completed and attempted Islamic terrorist atrocities in the U.K. since 9/11 did the killers even carry a single gun: a 90-year-old Dutch revolver so battered that they never tried to use it.

Yet despite the predictable recurrence of these crimes, Americans have developed a strong taboo against ever discussing or even thinking about them. When the killer strikes, it is “too soon.” The next day, it is “too late”; we have all moved onto the next topic. Then comes the next massacre, and it is “too soon” all over again.

Americans accept periodic plagues as a visitation from the gods, about which nothing can or should be done. The only permitted response is “thoughts and prayers”—certainly never rational action to reduce casualties in future. Even to open the discussion as to whether something might not be done violates the taboos of decency: How dare you politicize this completely unpredictable and uncontrollable event!

The fact that such things do not happen anywhere else with anything approaching the same frequency—that too is the work of some ineffable mystery. Who can say why such things happen so seldom in Canada and Australia and Britain and Germany and France, and so often in the United States? Who would be rude enough even to wonder?

About fires, apparently, it is permitted to use human reason. But not about firearms! Against the much greater toll from those, the only remedy—the only approved response—is to send “thoughts and prayers.”

[P]rayer alone does not lift from human beings the duty to do what they have the power to do. And that’s not my personal opinion. It’s also the opinion, emphatically declared, of the God to whom believers in the Bible address their prayers. In the stately words of the King James translation, Isaiah 1:15: And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

In some ways, yesterday's attack was a case of Republicans reaping what they have sown.  Sadly, I doubt that it will be enough to end the party's self-prostitution to the gun manufacturers who are the true power behind the NRA.  The result will be more avoidable deaths. 

Missouri - A Case Study in Republican Insanity

With gun deaths now exceeding deaths caused by auto accidents, one would think that even those only loosely connected with sanity and objective reality would agree that some sort of focus on increased gun safety is sensible.  Especially among supposedly "pro-life" Republicans.  Sadly, however, such is not the case and the only times Republicans worry about protecting life is before a child is born or when it comes to banning doctor assisted suicide for the terminally ill.  New levels of GOP are now on display in Missouri where the Missouri Republicans have wiped out sane and rational gun safety laws.  Frankly, the GOP has become akin to a pack of rabid dogs, lead by lunatic and scam artist in chief, Donald Trump.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at this latest form of GOP distemper.  Here are highlights:

In an alarming victory for the gun lobby, Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto and enact a wholesale retreat from gun safety in the state.

The law will let citizens carry concealed weapons in public without a state gun permit, criminal background check or firearms training. It strips local law enforcement of its current authority to deny firearms to those guilty of domestic violence and to other high-risk individuals. And it establishes a dangerous “stand your ground” standard that will allow gun owners to shoot and claim self-defense based on their own sense of feeling threatened.

The measure has drawn no great national attention, but it certainly provides further evidence that gun safety cannot be left to state lawmakers beholden to the gun lobby. Democrats opposed to the Missouri bill called it a “perfect storm” of lowered standards for the use of deadly force and an invitation for people to be armed without responsible controls. The measure was enacted by the Republicans, despite strong public opposition and warnings about the threat to public safety from the state Police Chiefs Association. Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the groups fighting the gun lobby, noted that stand-your-ground laws result in disproportionate harm to communities of color.

Mr. Nixon, a Democrat, vetoed the measure in June, saying it would allow individuals with a criminal record to legally carry a concealed firearm even though they had been, or would have been, denied a permit under the old law’s background check. Mayors Sly James of Kansas City and Francis Slay of St. Louis warned against restricting the power of the local police to deny guns to those who commit domestic violence. They cited sharp spikes in domestic violence homicides in their cities, and they noted that the police would be left at greater risk by this bill.

Missouri is joining 10 other states that loosened gun laws to allow concealed firearms in public without the need for a permit. Federal gun controls still require background checks on buyers, but only at federally licensed dealers. Unfortunately, there is a separate and busy uncontrolled market where buyers at gun shows and on the internet do not have to undergo background checks.

In the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has called for extensive gun safety measures, including a ban on the assault weapons favored by mass shooters, closing background-check loopholes, ending the gun industry’s outrageous protection from civil damage suits and denying guns to risky suspects on the government’s no-fly lists.

Yep, America is exceptional alright - exceptional in its stupidity and careless disregard for the lives of law abiding citizens.

 

LA Police Arrest Heavily Armed Man Who Planned To Attend Pride Parade

Fresh on the heels of the murders in Orlando, Los Angeles police have arrested a heavily armed white male who was reportedly planning to attend LA Pride and "harm" the event.  Besides guns and ammunition, the suspect possessed materials that could be used to make pipe bombs.  As already noted, why the f*ck are people allowed to purchase and own assault rifles?  Oh, I forgot - because the GOP had prostituted itself to the NRA and gun manufacturers.  As for the licence to express hatred against the LGBT community - and by extension, to commit acts of violence, look no farther than the pulpit of your nearest Baptist or Catholic church and, of course, Republican politicians like Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Mike Huckabee and a host of other anti-LGBT hate merchants.  Here are highlights from the Los Angeles Times:

Authorities on Sunday were trying to determine the intentions of an Indiana man with a cache of weapons, ammunition and explosive-making materials in his car and apparent plans to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood.

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said on Twitter that the 20-year-old man told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted “to harm Gay Pride event.” But she did not provide any details, and officials said they are still trying to sort out his motives.

Seabrooks identified him as James Howell of Indiana. A Facebook page for someone with the same name in Indiana shows a young man posing next to a white Acura similar to the one found in Santa Monica with the weapons and explosives.

At a news conference Sunday afternoon, police stressed they were still trying to figure out what Howell planned to do with the weapons.

Federal and local law enforcement decided against canceling the annual parade, which went forward Sunday morning under tightened security. Investigators are now trying to piece together what happened but said they don’t believe there is any connection between the incident and the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that killed at least 50 people overnight.

“Gun violence on the LGBTQ family during Pride Month makes me sick,” Horvath said. “The deadliest mass shooting in America happened to LGBTQ people on Latin night. While we mourn this heartbreaking loss, we must also rededicate ourselves to the fight for full equality for all people. No one is equal unless everyone is equal.”  

The next time you hear a fundamentalist preacher or Iman bellowing about gays and those who no longer embrace ignorance and hate, think of Orlando and what this rhetoric leads to.  These individuals and their religions deserve zero deference and need to be considered threats to the peace and lives of others.