“It’s a horrific situation, but yes, they always jump to gun control. But 50 years ago, we had much more lax gun laws than we have now. We had actually more guns per family than we do now per household. And so what changed? Why all of a sudden, Sean, in the past couple decades have we seen a rise in this? And you have to ask yourself that, that’s what any rational person would do.
“And you look across the board at things like the fact that, you know, we have the dissolution of the family in so many respects. We have fatherless children on the rise in America. We have the loss of religion in so many aspects of our country, where it was a foundation of our country at one time. You can’t discount the rise of social media and the role that that has played in things like this.” – Lara Trump.
Dreaming Vertebrate • a day ago • edited
This is why many people reject organized religion.
No one in the Trump family is remotely religious – and they are as far away from Xtian values as you can get. Babies in cages? Stealing from charities! Hello! But here they are, wrapping themselves in their religious cloaks to tell the rest of use how to live. Abominable hypocrites! So slappable! 😡
Buford Dreaming Vertebrate • a day ago
More simply, if these assholes honestly believed that our society is chock full of evil, atheistic, violent, game-addicted psychos, why do they also insist that these psychos must be able to legally carry assault weapons?
As usual, taking their nonsense at face value actually makes their argument look even dumber.
So many lies. Families and households are not statistically interchangeable; we’ve always had more guns per family than per household and we always will. The guns we have available have changed over 50 years. Out of wedlock births have been dropping for the last 30 years; fatherless children are not “on the rise”. And religion was nowhere a foundation of this country.
Frank McCormick clay • a day ago
And gun control was not more lax 50 years ago. In fact, after the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations it increased. Reagan signed a new gun control law in California for fear of the Black Panther movement.
After last year’s Texas Lege session, I’m not sure you can characterize Texas, the location of the latest mass shooting, as having ANY gun control.
It looks like the gun fetishers have realized that their usual mantras (like Jesus will save us) aren’t working and have moved on to blatantly lying about recent history as well as implementing more than a dash of whataboutism.
Tacticly, she made a grave mistake in using a 50 year time frame as quite a few of us from that era are still alive, coherent, and not rabid rightwingers. OK Boomer this one assholes!
Lack of Jesus? Seriously? In a mostly Hispanic area, a lack of Jesus? The very definition of your deity says He just sat back and let this happen to innocent children, you stupid cunt.
Two weeks ago Republicans were screaming, “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE INNOCENT CHILDREN” when the Supreme Court protected blastocysts. This week, after 19 children were slaughtered, they’re screaming, “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE INNOCENT GUNS!”
Jesus was like the cops in Uvalde.. he sat back and did nothing.
https://qz.com/2170147/gun-and-ammo-stocks-soar-after-the-uvalde-mass-shooting/amp/
REUTERS/NURI VALLBONAPeople gather at Robb Elementary School, the scene of a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Gun and ammo stocks tend to rise after the most widely-covered mass shootings. Today was no exception. Shares of top gun and ammunition companies soared the morning after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left at least 20 people dead.
Investors anticipate that the violence—and the political rhetoric about gun control that inevitably follows—will prompt more people to buy guns and stock up on ammunition. It’s true gun sales typically rise after a mass shooting as more people arm themselves, ostensibly, to defend themselves against future shooters (although there’s no clear evidence that using a gun in self-defense reduces the likelihood of being injured in an attack). Others rush to buy guns in the belief that lawmakers will soon enact stricter restrictions on gun sales.
The opposite often happens. States with Republican-led legislatures typically loosen gun restrictions after mass shootings; states with Democratic legislatures typically don’t act. In the decade since a mass shooter killed 20 young children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, the US Congress has failed to push through even modest gun control bills that would expand background checks for gun buyers or ban high-capacity gun magazines.
The Buffalo shooting wasn’t a boon for gun and ammo stocks
Not all shootings are such a boon for gun and ammo stocks. The racially-motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, which targeted Black grocery shoppers and left 10 dead, created an initial bump for Smith & Wesson, but by the end of the day gun stocks were down.
During the Trump administration, gun and ammo makers got less of a stock and sales boost from mass shootings, in part because buyers lost their fear that US lawmakers would pass gun control bills and were in less of a rush to buy weapons after each tragedy. The fact that gun stocks are up so high after the Uvalde shooting may be a sign that gun buyers and investors are taking more seriously the possibility that lawmakers will act this time.
In fact, the White House was already preparing to enforce a “ghost gun” rule, banning privately-made firearms weapons and kits without serial numbers that are often used to commit crimes. The lack of serial numbers makes them difficult if not impossible to trace. Last year alone, the Department of Justice reported that about 20,000 suspected ghost guns were recovered in criminal investigations, 10 times more than in 2016. The new regulations will take effect in August.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports:
Photos of an AR-15 style rifle, the type of gun used during Tuesday’s mass school shooting in Uvalde, were reportedly shown at a Fort Worth elementary school on Wednesday during what was supposed to be a career day presentation.
According to a Fort Worth schools employee, a Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office deputy presented during a career day event on Wednesday morning at E.M. Daggett Elementary School. The presentation appeared to include pictures of AR-15 rifles, according to a photo shared with the Star-Telegram.
In the photo, an image of a poster titled “A Liberal’s Guide to the Deadly AR-15” is highlighted on Google Images. The poster describes the different components of the rifle. Also seen in the photo is a tab open to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office’s website.
Read the full article.
The sheriff of Tarrant County, you may recall, sparked outrage in 2019 when he called undocumented migrants “drunks who will run over your children” during a press event at the Trump White House.
Remember: this is fine and totally not indoctrination. Just don’t let teachers make students gay
Nic Peterson Raising_Rlyeh • a day ago
The next presentation was the liberals guide to Klan rallys and how to recognize the Grand Dragon.
Paula Raising_Rlyeh • a day ago
Kill him, but, don’t kiss him.
mikeiver Raising_Rlyeh • a day ago • edited
Better having ammosexuals ploting to shoot their fellow classmates. Wouldn’t want them thinking of others with love in their hearts. Got to make sure none of the prissy boys make it to puberty. What a regressive pile of shit this guy is!
Paula kevway • a day ago • edited
This happened in the late 90s to early 2000s/ Several new companies started manufacturing cheaper AR-15s. Sales took off because the prices went down. And Ar-15 could be purchased for as little as $300 at one time. It had been $1000+.
The rifles he used were Daniel Defense brand. Those were fairly expensive. He had money to be able to buy 2 within a couple of days.
Dan Patrick wants Texas to follow Florida’s example and pass a “Don’t say gay” law, but demonstrations about AR-15s are A-OK.
And I thought it was bad when I went to school we had to hide under a wooden desk to prevent death in case of a nuclear bomb. I guess stupidity hasn’t changed much in 60 years.
2patricius2 Teedofftaxpayer • a day ago • edited
I remember those days. We even had a sign with instructions on our kitchen wall of siren warnings in case of a nuclear attack. Of course, all our practice in ducking and covering would not have kept us safe. Nor would hiding in our basement.
Nor did all the guards at the school or all the practicing the little children did in Uvalde save them.
Gay Fordham Prep Grad 2patricius2 • a day ago
Nor did a retired police officer in Buffalo. You know, the “good guy with a gun.”
Oh, so doing a little grooming on behalf of the NRA with our public schools are we?
Newsweek reports:
A week after saying that he wouldn’t apologize for using homophobic slurs in sermons, Texas pastor Jonathan Shelley, the leader of the anti-gay Stedfast Baptist Church, said in a city council meeting that Pride Month is an “abomination” that shouldn’t be promoted. Shelley addressed the Arlington City Council, where a meeting was being held about acknowledging Pride month, telling them that he’s “horrified and ashamed” that the city decided to “promote and solicit Pride.”
“I don’t understand why we celebrate what used to be a crime not long ago. God has already ruled that murder, adultery, witchcraft, rape, bestiality and homosexuality are crimes worthy of capital punishment.” In March, Shelley’s church got evicted from its building after the pastor said gay people were “worthy of death,” which violated the terms of the lease that said the church should not promote or threaten violence.
Read the full article.
The second clip below was retweeted by Shelley’s church, which somehow still has a Twitter account. Of note, Pastor Shelley only has the gig because his fellow “death to gays” predecessor, Pastor Donnie Romero, was fired by the congregation after he was caught hiring hookers and smoking weed. Which is what Jesus would want. Romero first appeared on JMG when he preached that God should “finish the job” and “kill those queers” hospitalized after the Pulse massacre.
Elagabalus • a day ago • edited
So now they’ve said the quiet part out loud and the cat is out of the bag. Let’s not be under any illusion about the true motive of our enemies – they want us dead.
Todd20036 Elagabalus • a day ago
This is why I roll my eyes when people say the GQP will never truly come after LBGTs
Yeah, and nazis never truly went after Jews
TampaZeke Elagabalus • a day ago
When will we stop pretending that what he is saying isn’t a Christian teaching that has been a Christian teaching as long as there have been Christians? If you’re in the cult you’re part of the problem. You give cover to those who follow the teachings of the textbook of the cult.
They’ve always wanted us dead. Then they won’t have to think about sucking cock anymore.
I wonder what would happen if we started calling right wingers “alternative lifestyle” folk
Elagabalus Sashineb • a day ago
And yet, gluttony is one of the so-called “7 Deadly Sins” that every Christian ought to be aware of even if they can’t recite verses from the Bible. They all give themselves “Mulligans” while casting aspersions on everyone else, like the true hypocrites they are.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:
Twice in recent days Walker has fumbled questions on gun control: In one interview he seemed to suggest monitoring young people’s social media activity, and in another he dodged the question altogether. The topic is sensitive for Walker. Like many Republicans, he is an ardent champion of gun rights. But firearms have also played a big role in his own turbulent personal history.
Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, said he repeatedly held a gun to her head and threatened to blow her “brains out.” A Dallas County judge was worried enough about the possibility of violence that in 2005 he temporarily took away Walker’s guns when he granted Grossman a restraining order. Walker has chalked up the violent episodes to a mental illness he said has now been treated.
The Insider reports:
Walker said the focus should be on the shooters, not guns, and decried “people that’s trying to score political points” by pushing for gun control legislation. “We need to get into what happened to him, why, by putting money in mental health. Have people thought about that?” Walker said.
“People see that it’s a person wielding that weapon, you know, Cain killed Abel,” Walker said. “And that’s the problem that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things.”
“You talk about doing a disinformation,” Walker continued, “what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women, that’s looking at their social media? What about doing that, looking into things like that, and we can stop that that way?”
Politico Magazine does a deep dive into Blake Masters:
Masters’ views, while hard right, are not quite fringe in today’s Republican Party. He’s a harsh critic of Big Tech and says Trump was robbed in 2020. He traffics in the “replacement theory” that Democrats want to change the electorate through a wave of undocumented immigrants.
He opposes aid to Ukraine and the right to an abortion. (He recently faced controversy for criticizing Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized contraceptives nationally.) Masters also clearly likes to get a rise out of people.
He counts Ted Kaczynski as among his intellectual influencers — pointing to the Unabomber’s manifesto as a source of inspiration for his own message of the dystopian techno-present. He told one conservative interviewer that left-wing ideology makes “a pretty good candidate for the Antichrist.”
Read the full article. Masters is a former employee of homocon billionaire Peter Thiel, who has dumped over $13 million into his campaign. There’s a lot more about their history at the link.
Bob’s Your Uncle – BYU • 4 hours ago
There’s no denying that the inmates are running the asylum. The USA has become a gigantic mental institution when large numbers of voters and politicians look up to psychopaths. It makes me sick to my stomach.
Why do i assume theyre saying:
“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
Reuters reports:
Panicked children and teachers placed half a dozen calls to 911 emergency services from the Texas classrooms where a massacre was unfolding, pleading for police to intervene, while roughly 20 officers waited in a hallway for nearly an hour before entering the room, authorities said on Friday.
At least two children called the 911 emergency number from the two connecting classrooms after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, according to Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
NBC News reports:
Police admitted to a stunning string of failures — including driving right by the gunman — in responding to the Texas school shooting while children were being massacred inside, with the head of the state’s Department of Public Safety saying the time for making excuses about the botched response was over.
The Friday news conference came after days of confusion, inconsistencies and a muddled timeline of law enforcement’s response to the rampage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Speaking on the delay in breaching the classroom where the shooter was, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said that “from the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. There’s no excuse for that.”
CNN reports:
Chilling details continue to emerge about Tuesday’s mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
One of the young survivors told CNN that she and her classmates were watching a movie when the shooter entered her room and shot her teacher and many of her friends. According to officials, the shooter was in the school for up to an hour and had barricaded himself inside adjoining classrooms.
As all this was taking place, parents had joined dozens of law enforcement officers outside the school, desperate to know if their children were still alive.
The New York Times reports:
The gunman is believed to have entered the school through a door that had been left propped open by a teacher, according to Mr. McCraw. The gunman went on to fire more than 100 rounds. Over the next 78 minutes, more than half a dozen harrowing 911 calls were made, at least two of them from students, describing unfolding carnage inside classrooms and begging for the police to come.
As many as 19 police officers were in a hallway inside the school shortly after noon, but Mr. McCraw said they made “no effort” to breach the classroom door. Asked what he would say to parents, Mr. McCraw’s response was a mix of defiance and resignation. “What do I say to the parents?” he asked. “I don’t have anything to say to the parents, other than what happened. We are not here to defend what happened, we are here to report the facts.”
The Washington Post reports:
Police were reluctant to immediately engage with the gunman who spent an hour inside the elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., where he killed 19 children and two adults because “they could’ve been shot,” a lieutenant with the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a CNN interview.
“At that point, if they proceeded any further not knowing where the suspect was at, they could’ve been shot, they could’ve been killed, and that gunman would have had an opportunity to kill other people inside that school,” Chris Olivarez said.
They expect teachers to do what their SWAT TEAM was too terrified to do.
That’s common logic amongst law enforcement types… suspects who panic deserve to be beaten or killed because they should have remained calm, but officers who injure or kill a civilian after panicking need to be forgiven because of the stress and danger associated with the job.
Nope.
The Uvalde police department bragged about their “SWAT team” on their Facebook page earlier in the year. They did active shooter drills at local schools. Then when it mattered, they did nothing.
Worth noting… Texas loves to tell the federal govt to leave them the Hell alone when it comes to issues like legislating access to guns, yet when faced with a very real threat from an active shooter, these state and local law enforcement entities decided to stand by and wait for federal CBP forces to take out the shooter.
Most chilling of all is he said that they have to do better next time. Because he knows there’ll be a next time.
Nowhere else. In. The. World.
(Yesterday’s NYT morning newsletter.)
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