Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

yep, it's them concern trolling and little else. whatever will take the heat off of them.

All the talk about mental health services is just a stalling tactic by gun advocates until the heat dies down.

well it would be nice at least for dems to call their bluff and ask them to sign, like, a bipartisan £20B public safety and mental health recovery act of 2023 with provisions for opioid treatment

Sure, but they would mumble excuses about how you can't rush these things and in a month no one would care when the whole issue sinks from view again.

well i would!

there should be better controlled entrances and exits to schools. but this school already had that!

don't worry, now they're all blaming a teacher that propped a door open

oh and also the School Resource Officer that had the confrontation with the shooter and failed to stop him....actually failed to stop him because he was never there to begin with. fuckin' liars.

the 'arm teachers' movement is going to gain steam because conservatives know the average teacher will resign rather than do that, and be replaced with a Christ-fearing, kneejerk conservative loony who will teach the agenda they want.

they know it wouldn't stop the fucking shootings.

I've been wondering about the details of that. It says that he was able to enter an unlocked back door. Did they have security entrances (i.e. doorbells, cameras, intercoms) on the other doors?

xp

even if we turn these schools into impregnable fortresses with a single entrance and Vietnam Vets hiding inside every other locker it still wouldn't change much, since these violent psychos will just decide to shoot up a shopping mall, or a parade, or a grocery store, or a day care instead. it's like the "sell your home and move" solution to climate change. of course there's no purpose in pointing this out, cuz it's not like they really care about fixing this in the first place. just another thing to be mad about.

we can either

make guns more difficult to acquire

or

turn schools into prisons where kids actually have anxiety attacks attending it

Behind the firewall, but Goldberg is worth reading if you like doom posting before a holiday weekend.

The horrifying irony, the hideous ratchet, is that the more America is besieged by senseless violence, the more the paramilitary wing of the American right is strengthened. Gun sales tend to rise after mass shootings. Republicans responded to the massacre in Uvalde by doubling down on calls to arm teachers and “harden” schools. An article in The Federalist argued that parents must home-school so that kids can learn “in a controlled environment where guns can be safely carried for self-defense or locked away when not in use.” It’s a vision of a society — if you can call it that — where every family is a fortress.

Guns are now the leading cause of death for American children. Many conservatives consider this a price worth paying for their version of freedom. Our institutions give these conservatives disproportionate power whether or not they win elections. The filibuster renders the Senate largely impotent. Trump, a president who lost the popular vote, was able to appoint Supreme Court justices who are poised to help overturn a New York state law restricting the carrying of concealed weapons. It’s increasingly hard to see a path to small-d democratic reform.

And so among liberals, there’s an overwhelming feeling of despair. Even as people learn the names of all those murdered children, the most common sentiment is not “never again,” but a bitter acknowledgment that nothing is going to change. America is too sick, too broken. It is perhaps beyond repair.

Two years ago, David French, an anti-Trump conservative, published a book, “Divided We Fall,” warning of the possible crackup of the United States. It included two chapters imagining scenarios for how the dissolution of the country might happen. One involved a mass shooting at a school in California, to which the state’s people reacted “with white-hot rage.” French envisioned furious state politicians defying the Second Amendment, leading to a nullification crisis and blue-state secession.

He meant it as a cautionary tale, but rereading the chapter after Uvalde, it feels less bleak than our reality.

the conservative media war on doors is hilarious. too many doors. pls can someone tell them doors don’t kill people

Student calls to 911:
12:03—whispered she's in room 112
12:10—said multiple dead
12:13—called again
12:16—says 8-9 students alive
12:19—student calls from room 111
12:21—3 shots heard on call
12:36—another call
12:43—asks for police
12:47—asks for policehttps://t.co/CzkuF1llq1

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) May 27, 2022

what the fuck

I know shit never changes but it might be nice for news orgs to highlight the fact that the most overfunded and trigger-happy police force on the planet would rather let children die than engage an active shooter

xpost

Alfred looks like an interesting counterpoint between the French book and the one by Barbara Walter that I just posted the review of in the civil war thread. Actually there may be considerable overlap if the other main scenario French envisions is a more successful rerun of 1/6.

the cops also said they didn't go in because they thought everyone in the classroom was dead. Those phone calls must have been coming from some jokers. Some real punks.

i shouldn't be surprised because it's an expected consequence of these assholes being used getting away with lies but (1) why would they assume that and (2) even if they did wouldn't it be a good idea to see if they were wrong and someone in there is in urgent need of medical attention? it just blows my mind that they thought this was a good explanation. so they don't have to admit they were scared.

Here's a handy flow chart for future reference

"Did a cop say it?" ----------> "It was a lie."

Speaking of lies, one of the most infuriating things to me about the last few days (or the last few mass shootings, take your pick) is conservative conspiracy peddling that these events somehow *must* be false flag operations designed to ultimately take their guns away, because they can't possibly conceive that their religion of more guns all the time could possibly lead to the horrible consequences we're seeing.

In this most recent case, I think they're having a hard time deciding between a false flag with crisis actors (phony), or the shooter being a trans illegal immigrant (real).. tough call for conspiracy wackos

So many are dropping out of the NRA conference, looks like Lyin' Ted might have the whole stage to himself.. I hope he has enough material

Same logic that leads them to declare that Covid numbers are being vastly inflated and all precautionary measures are useless BUT we need a border wall because Mexicans are bringing it into the country in droves

Police arrested a 16 year old for making online terror threats to the high school next door to me.

So many are dropping out of the NRA conference, looks like Lyin' Ted might have the whole stage to himself.. I hope he has enough material

Trump will be there, but he'll just be riffing on low-flo shower heads, Hunter's laptop, hamburgers, etc... a greatest hits vamp

There's only one way I want to read anything about Trump on a thread about shooting sprees and that ain't it.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Is there any tangible reason as to why Biden has not issued an executive order in response to Uvalde? Obv an outright ban on automatic weapons would be great, but more realistically, a year-long wait on their purchase to allow for background checks? or a temporary year-long ban? or a ban on military-style armour? or a ban on large magazines? Any thoughts as to why he hasn't done this?

I assume the ban on machine guns is federal - otherwise, a bunch of these states would definitely allow them

Reagan signed a federal ban on new production machine guns for civilians in 1986.

It’s no more likely to come to pass than striking the second amendment completely but putting all semi-auto firearms under the auspices of the NFA (part of the above ban) would be absolutely constitutional*.

*if we didn’t have the Court such as it is.

i remember feeling hopeful last year when he nominated a pretty strident gun control advocate to head the ATF - stonewalled by GOP & eventually withdrawn after like 6 months

An executive order? Basically, he'd need to declare some kind of state of national emergency. He could do it, but the most tangible reason he won't do that is the idea that he'd squander a large amount of 'political capital' while stirring up a hornet's nest of opposition and probably getting swatted down in court, possibly within hours.

i'm not sure 'political capital' is a useful metric at this point. the republicans have shown that if you have the power, you can do whatever you want, no matter how generally unpopular

swatted down in court is certainly relevant tho. also i think we may be getting to the point where the enforcement arm of the executive branch cannot necessarily be counted on to carry out certain executive orders. and if *that* happens, things very rapidly fall apart

I just heard the reporter on the PBS New Hour talking about how many of the surviving children followed their active shooter training and went looking for hiding places: "The children did what they were trained to do... even if the adults did not," she said in a shaky voice.

Pretty damning stuff

i'm not sure 'political capital' is a useful metric at this point.

I tend to agree, but this kind of thinking is still influential among dem leadership, who do not feel like they can safely win power without careful triangulation, unlike the GOP whose power rests firmly on controlling the Senate via the states with small, mostly rural populations.

The dem leadership doesn’t want to do anything to spook the pro-gun and pro-cop republican swing voters they are courting, who might cut the Dem loss of the House from 35 seats to 34.

maybe i'm just tired. all my friends are being doomers and i don't know how to handle it. i mean, if people are starting to notice and starting to care that cops are bad, then awesome. i'm glad to hear it. it's just hard to be patient sometimes.

has something changed? why do people keep acting like something's changed? am _i_ being a doomer for thinking things have always been this shitty but people just haven't wanted to acknowledge it?

I don't trust that anything's changed because it felt like that after Sandy Hook but didn't mean anything. But I think the combination of the horror of the massacre and the uselessness of the response is at least something new. It's not just that "evil happens" but that our warrior state is helpless against it. Of course that could motivate people to support all kinds of different things, good or bad.

am _i_ being a doomer for thinking things have always been this shitty but people just haven't wanted to acknowledge it?

short answer - a qualified no.

'people' have been able to acknowledge it for as long as I can recall, but they try to keep hope alive by seeking out every clue or scrap of evidence that things might be getting better, then focusing on that. it's a good coping strategy.

'people' have been able to acknowledge it for as long as I can recall, but they try to keep hope alive by seeking out every clue or scrap of evidence that things might be getting better, then focusing on that. it's a good coping strategy.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

idk, i used to do that and in the long run i just don't feel like it helped me a lot.

like, people i trust and care about just seem really worried about a lot of things and i want to give them the benefit of the doubt but at the end of the day i'm just... i don't feel like "things" are any worse now than they were last week. if people thought the police wouldn't do this kind of thing in response to an active shooter situation, and they're just now finding out otherwise, i'm glad they're finally picking up on it, because their belief that the police wouldn't behave in this sort of manner is a large part of what enables the police to behave in this sort of manner.

the big problem is this like panic that comes with the realization, like "oh my god these people are not accountable to us and there is NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT", i mean, i guess that last bit is true if you believe the only possible power one has is voting? and i guess that's what frustrates me. trying to live in accordance with certain base assumptions we have all had drilled into us (like, perhaps, the idea that "things" get better or worse, like it's the dow jones average or something) is... inevitably going to lead to learned helplessness and despair. maybe taking care of oneself means letting go of those assumptions.

more than anything else i am sorry for being stupid upthread, i just wasn't getting where other people were coming from on this. for me it was more, like, it was more a reminder of the learned helplessness thing, that this sort of law enforcement response _is_ considered normal and acceptable and that i personally don't really have any ability to change that, given that my view is apparently an extreme minoritarian one. i try not to get upset about things i can't change, because when i get upset about things i can't change i sometimes start sounding kind of crazy, and that doesn't really benefit anybody. it's really painful to watch this kind of thing over and over again and this time i guess people actually care? and i guess maybe a couple dozen more massacres like this one where the police actively aid and abet the shooter and i guess more people will start taking the idea of defunding the police seriously.

for me it doesn't really change anything i believe or want or how i'm going to behave, except that it fucking hurts a lot to hear people talking about this everywhere all of a sudden. and to be constantly reminded of this bad shit i don't have a whole lot of personal control over while i'm just trying to live my life. like, i wish it was as easy to be kind and compassionate as it apparently is to be outraged. that's all.

An article in The Federalist argued that parents must home-school so that kids can learn “in a controlled environment where guns can be safely carried for self-defense or locked away when not in use.” It’s a vision of a society — if you can call it that — where every family is a fortress.

Funny how just a half year ago when schools were closed due to the pandemic, these same people thought kids staying home was crippling to their development and we needed to reopen the schools....

I am told this morning that at least 2 parents of children killed in Uvalde are considering having open casket funerals to show the world what happened to their babies, who are now completely unrecognizable.

— Shaun King (@shaunking) May 28, 2022

is shaun king a reliable source on this bc fuck that guy

Who is he?

twitter grifter iirc

more even-handedly: fundraising activist who has failed to shake off persistent accusations of pocketing the cash he's raised

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/authorities-investigating-if-retired-federal-agent-knew-of-buffalo-mass-shooting-plans-in-advance/article_bd408f18-dd39-11ec-be53-df8fdd095d6f.html

Ah, thanks. A normally reliable friend texted me the tweet.

"I am told" is an interesting way of framing a rumor.

So I'm told.