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Showing posts with label #Loserswithguns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Loserswithguns. Show all posts

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Friday, January 01, 2016

Looking Back At A Great Year

At least 265 people were accidentally shot by children in 2015.

That works out to be an average of about 5 a week. Here's how most of the stories go...

On Monday, three days after Christmas, the four-year-old son of an Alaska state trooper had just returned home from sledding. He was playing by himself in the living room. His mom and grandmother were not far away, in the kitchen, the Alaska Dispatch News reports. But somehow the boy, William Anderson, found a gun belonging to his father. 

The gun went off and killed William.

What the Gun Cult fails to grasp is that society is filled with irresponsible people who end up falling through the cracks of loose gun laws. That's why we need the entire country to adopt the law that is already in effect in 28 states and hold gun owners criminally liable if children have access to their guns.

Research shows that these laws work. A 2005 study found that child access prevention (CAP) laws in 10 states prevented 829 injuries in 2001, saving $37 million in medical costs. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2004 found that CAP laws prevented 333 teen suicides between 1989 and 2001. Clearly, this should be a federal law.

I have a great deal of hope for 2016 in terms of gun safety. The president is going to be issuing an executive order on background checks next week. We'll find get to see how well open carry works in Texas...not that any facts or data will change the mind of the Gun Cult but at least the rest of America will. The NRA is raising their membership fee for the first time in 20 years which tells me that they are hurting for cash and expect a tougher than usual fight in this year's election.

And every single time there is a mass shooting, the levee continues to erode for the Gun Cult. We've given them a long leash (largely due to fear and emotions) but its clear that leash is shrinking.

Monday, November 02, 2015

Why He Quit The NRA (Good Words)

Reprinted in its entirety because it's just that fucking good.

I was a member of the National Rifle Association for more than 50 years. In 2012, I decided not to renew my membership.
My NRA was all about marksmanship, safety and responsibly. But the NRA today is off the rails. It’s being irresponsible, and it has been for years. NRA leaders should be sponsoring responsible gun laws instead of opposing them, in my opinion.
In 2006 my daughter was one of the victims in thes hooting at the Jewish Federation in Seattle, where a shooter killed one and inured five. My daughter survived, barely. After she recovered, she wanted to put the tragedy behind her, but she found that it was too life-changing. She started telling her story, and she began advocating for more effective gun-control laws in Washington.
I’ve always enjoyed shooting sports. As a Boy Scout and an Explorer Scout, I joined the NRA in high school. I then spent 20 years in the Navy, where I qualified as an expert in both rifles and pistols. I still own guns: four modern firearms and two old-fashioned pistols that are more than 100 years old.
But I strongly believe that being a responsible gun owner means supporting sensible laws to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. This belief was cemented by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. The shooting in Oregon last week was another tragic reminder.
I feel that four things can help prevent such tragedies in the future. Requiring background checks on the state and federal level is the sensible first step. In addition, there should be penalties for officials of city, state and county governments who fail to enter people’s names in the database when they’re judged to be mentally ill, or a danger to themselves or others, or have convictions that would make them no longer eligible to own firearms.
Another safety precaution would be to make sure that when a protection order is issued by a judge, that person’s guns are confiscated until the order is lifted. Finally, no one needs high-capacity magazines, firearms capable of holding more than 10 rounds, for target shooting, hunting for personal protection. Not only should they not be sold, but their possession should also be illegal.
Many NRA members would agree that we need more common-sense gun laws: A 2013 survey found that about 75% of members support stronger restrictions on guns. The NRA leaders should listen to the members and do more to make sure that gun ownership goes hand-in-hand with responsibility and safety.
Gun-rights advocates often make the argument: “Guns don’t kill people; people do.” But the reality is: People with guns kill people. And there’s a lot more we can do to stop them.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Sting Them!

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, the sting videos on Planned Parenthood have had an impact. The federal government might shut down because of them. Even though the videos are essentially false, abortion is back to being an issue again for the time being. So, here's a thought....

Let's do the same fucking thing for the Gun Cult.

Whether it's the NRA or some sort of gun blogger convention, it's way past time that some activists got up in their shit and fucked it all up. I think the American people would love to see what these people think about guns, violence, and little children being slaughtered every day because they need to feel empowered by a dick substitute.

Why hasn't it happened yet?

Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Sunday, August 02, 2015

The Price of Admission is Bullets

Unwittingly, I became a member of a club no one wants to belong to early on a chilly Friday morning, December 14, 2012. I had never even heard of this club. There is no formal name for this group and we don't have a clubhouse. The members are from across the country, all races, ages and genders. We live in urban areas, the suburbs and rural communities. Yet we all met the memberships' one criterion, a life taken by gun violence. The price of admission to this club is bullets. 

The price of my admission was my sister Mary Sherlach.

---Jane Dougherty, sister of Mary Sherlach, killed at Sandy Hook on December 12, 2012. 

Monday, July 27, 2015

Good Words

Now it’s routine for gun lobby commentators and politicians to blame mass shootings on the existence of so-called “gun-free zones.” This is a red herring, pushed by the gun lobby to advance a “guns everywhere” agenda, which insults the dead and mocks the living by reducing tragedy to a mere trope. 

It’s past time to lay this fallacy to rest.

So-called “gun-free zones” are not the problem, and victim-blaming is not a solution. Dangerous people’s continued access to guns is the problem, largely due to the gun lobby’s extreme agenda which harms everyone, including law-abiding gun owners, military members, and law enforcement. So let’s work on the real problem, together. 

The solution is to strengthen our common-sense gun violence prevention laws, like legislation pending in Congress right now to ensure background checks occur on all gun sales. It won’t prevent every tragedy – nothing will – but it would go a long way toward making Americans safer.

--Peter Read, Ex-Air Force officer: Gun laws, not ‘gun-free zones,’ are the real problem.

Agreed. And thank you for your service.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Take Down Future John Housers

Here are a couple of reports (#1 and #2) that detail John Houser's all too familiar ideology.

Educated in accounting and law, he owned bars in Georgia — including one where he flew a Nazi banner out front as an anti-government statement. He tried real estate in Phenix City. But Houser's own resume, posted online, says what he really loved to do was make provocative statements at local board meetings and in the media.

Anti government...posted online

On an NBC television affiliate's call-in show in the 1990s, Houser encouraged violent responses to abortion and condemned working women, host Calvin Floyd recalled. He was an "angry man" who spoke opposite a Democrat and really lit up the phones, he added.

Anti women and anti abortion...

In recent years, Houser turned to right-wing extremist Internet message boards, where he praised Adolf Hitler, and advised people not to underestimate "the power of the lone wolf," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose hate-group watchdogs spotted Houser registering to meet with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 2005.

Right wing extremist message boards...

The man Bone once knew as a church-going neighbor had grown into someone better known by neighbors and colleagues as an angry provocateur. Police say his anger culminated Thursday night in a slaughter at The Grand 16 theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, leaving two women dead and nine other people hurt.

Angry provocateur...

It was then that he regularly appeared on a local television show, appearing opposite a Democrat as a radical Republican railing against women in the workplace and calling for violence against abortion providers.“He made a lot of wild accusations,” said Calvin Floyd, who hosted the show on WLTZ-TV in Columbus for more than two decades. “He could make the phones ring.”

Violence against abortion providers...

Houser sums up the conservative base today. They are a very angry, hate and fear filled lot who are a direct threat to our country's security. Their support of continued gun violence makes them even more of a threat to national security as they are responsible for thousands of deaths every year. You can add the victims of John Houser to the list.

It's time we started taking these fuckers out and by out, I mean prison. And I don't mean a minimum security place. Perhaps since we can't get Gitmo closed, we send some of them down there for awhile. That should chill their American Taliban asses out and send a message to those individuals out there who wish to perpetuate continued attacks on our country.

I say we start with Clive Bundy and his followers...

Friday, July 24, 2015

Another Right Wing Nut Job

AP News is reporting that John Houser, the shooter at the theater in Louisiana, was a right wing nut job.

In the 1990s, he frequently appeared on a local television call-in show, advocating violence against people involved in abortions, said Calvin Floyd, who hosted the morning show on WLTZ-TV in Columbus, Georgia. Houser also espoused other radical views, including his opposition to women in the workplace. Floyd described Houser as an "angry man" who made "wild accusations" about all sorts of topics, and said he put him on to counter a Democratic voice because "he could make the phones ring."

I could have seen that one coming from a mile away. As soon as I heard "white man in his late 50s," his ideology was obvious. The question is...why was it so easy for him to still own a gun? Given the failure of Manchin Toomey to pass and the relaxed gun laws in the South, he clearly didn't have any trouble figuring out some sort of loophole.

Ilooks like his wife hid his guns and his family had him committed at one point. I'm calling on all wives of Gun Cultists to do the same. You never know when your husband might snap.




Another Shooting...Oh Well

We had yet another mass shooting last night and another one in a movie theater. The location was the Grand Theater in Lafayette, Louisiana and the shooter was named John Houser, an older white male who has been described as a drifter. He stood up about twenty minutes into the film "Trainwreck" and started firing. He killed two people, wounded nine and then killed himself.

At this point we don't know much about the circumstances behind the shooting. We do know, however, that Louisiana is an open carry state that does not require a license to own a firearm. Their laws are very lax in terms of gun ownership. Before the shooting, the president gave an interview with the BBC and had this to say about gun violence in the United States.

"That is an area where …I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied," he said. "It is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings."

He added: "If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands. And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing. But it is not something that I intend to stop working on in the remaining 18 months."

At this point, it's getting hard to keep track of the regularly occurring mass shootings. It's simply stunning to me that we have now accepted this as part of our culture with shrugs, oh wells, and don't take my fucking guns!!! I've stated previously that the only way things are going to change is if the Gun Cult is affected personally and has some sort of tragedy of gun violence within their community. Yet Chris Mooney and his Republican Brain research shows me otherwise.

Because of this sad truth, I think the only way to deal with this ideology is through the only language they understand: force. They have repeatedly demonstrated a complete unwillingness to compromise in the face of repeated violence heaped upon American citizens. They are partly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people and should be held accountable for it.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

#loserswithguns

So, the Gun Cult got themselves the idear that THEY should be the stalwart Murcans to stand watch (and their ground!!) in front of military recruitment centers since Barack Obama and other librals have taken away their right to be idiots. Even though the US Marine Corps asked them to get the fuck out, they are still there.

In a statement Tuesday, the U.S. Marine Corps said, "While we greatly appreciate the support of the American public during this tragedy, we ask that citizens do not stand guard at our recruiting offices. Our continued public trust lies among our trained first responders for the safety of the communities where we live and work."

Not surprisingly, this happened.

Civilian guards ordered to leave shopping center after one accidentally fires rifle

Message to #loserwithguns:

You are overly emotional, irrational, and don't know what the fuck you are doing. 

Go Home.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

So, NOW It's Terror

I guess when a guy named Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez goes on a shooting spree, it's terror. When thousands of other Americans do it, we have either shrugs, oh wells, or fucking crickets. Check out the headline on Fox News

TERROR STRIKES CHATTANOOGA 
 Kuwaiti-born gunman opens fire on Tenn. military centers, kills 4 Marines

And Drudge...

MUHAMMAD SHOOTS UP MARINES IN TENNESSEE; 4 DEAD'MOTIVATED BY ISLAM'

And any of the other right wing sites...

Sense a pattern yet?

Oh, and were there guns at either of the military facilities? Y'know...the whole gun free zone dealio...

If conservatives are serious about stopping guys like Abdulazeez from shooting people, maybe we should refine our gun laws. Once again, another example of someone who not have been allowed to own a gun had we passed Manchin Toomey.

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Study Finds That Guns Don't Deter Crime

A recent study by Harvard Medical study finds that higher firearm ownership does not deter crimes. "We found no support for the hypothesis that owning more guns leads to a drop or a reduction in violent crime," said study researcher Michael Monuteaux, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. "Instead, we found the opposite."

Monuteaux and his colleagues wanted to test whether increased gun ownership had any effect on gun homicides, overall homicides and violent gun crimes. They chose firearm robbery and assault, because those crimes are likely to be reported and recorded in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Report. Along with that FBI data, the researchers gathered gun ownership rates from surveys in the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an ongoing, nationally representative survey in which participants answered questions about gun ownership in 2001, 2002 and 2004.

Using those years and controlling for a slate of demographic factors, from median household income, population density, to age, race and more, the researchers compared crime rates and gun ownership levels state by state. They found no evidence that states with more households with guns led to timid criminals. In fact, firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. Firearm robbery increased with every increase in gun ownership except in the very highest quintile of gun-owning states (the difference in that cluster was not statistically significant).

Firearm homicide was 2.8 times more common in states with the most guns versus states with the least. The researchers were able to test whether criminals were simply trading out other weapons for guns, at least in the case of homicide. They weren't. Overall homicide rates were just over 2 times higher in the most gun-owning states, meaning that gun ownership correlated with higher rates of all homicides, not just homicide with a gun.

Had We Passed Manchin Toomey...

AmericaBlog has a post up regarding the failure of the antiquated background check system which allowed Dylan Roof to get his gun that eventually killed 9 people in Charleston. It turns out that the gun used in the massacre was not, in fact, a gift from his father. Roof purchased the gun himself.

Had we passed the Manchin Toomey bill in 2013, Roof would have been denied the purchase of a gun and those nine people would still be alive today. Here is the full text of the bill which clearly illustrates the streamlining of the background check system. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about how the assholes in the Gun Cult are responsible for thousands of deaths every year. Unlike the relatives of the victims, I am unable to forgive so easily.

They're at fault and should be treated accordingly...like any other fucking criminal.

Sunday, July 05, 2015

What Happens When You Allow Open Carry...

2 dead after shootout at downtown Austin Omni Hotel

This morning, a man with a loaded rifle walked into an Omni Hotel in Austin, causing customers to cry, yell and call 911. Texas law allows the open carry of long guns, but does not require background checks on guns purchased from unlicensed sellers. An Omni Hotels manager said today that the hotel "follows state and local laws," meaning it allows people to open carry long guns inside its hotels.

"Police say they received a 911 call from a patron at 4:48 a.m. saying there was a man in the lobby of the Omni Hotel who was walking around with a gun. Two minutes later, the caller said the man had shot someone."

A profoundly sad example of how we can't really tell the good guys from the bad guys now can we?

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

#Loserswithguns

Tragedy as boy, 3, dies after shooting himself in the head with loaded pistol he found in a closet 

After the death of his son, Brian Holbrook backed the right to bear arms in a Facebook post. He said 'I have nothing wrong with guns, I will still support the Second Amendment [sic]. 'All I ask is that everyone please, please safety first... lock it up and put it out of reach of anyone that has no business being around a gun especially kids. 'Gun safety people! My boy would still be here if it was put away like it should have been.'

But you didn't and he is dead. And YOU should be held accountable. The law should be changed so that every time this happens, the fucking moronic parents are charged with homicide and have to serve a mandatory minimum of 25 years.

These are the #loserswithguns the Gun Cult defends every single day.