Thoughts and Prayers

Take The Guns Early, Then Go Through Due Process

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAAHAHAHHAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Buyer's remorse yet, gun humpers?

For the record, even though he is saying things I agree with, he's still a terrible president who has failed to defend this nation from within and without.

Right-to-Carry Laws and the Arms Race

The existential angst that gripped the country during the Cold War resulted from the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union and its corollary, Mutually Assured Destruction.

Another arms race, writ small, has been affecting this country for decades now. The result is not just fear, but an actual increase in violent crime.

According to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, states with right-to-carry (RTC) laws experienced higher rates of violent crime after these laws were passed (emphasis added):

The 2004 report of the National Research Council (NRC) on Firearms and Violence recognized that violent crime was higher in the post-passage period (relative to national crime patterns) for states adopting right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws, but because of model dependence the panel was unable to identify the true causal effect of these laws from the then-existing panel data evidence. This study uses 14 additional years of panel data (through 2014) capturing an additional 11 RTC adoptions and new statistical techniques to see if more convincing and robust conclusions can emerge.

Our preferred panel data regression specification (the “DAW model”) and the Brennan Center (BC) model, as well as other statistical models by Lott and Mustard (LM) and Moody and Marvell (MM) that had previously been offered as evidence of crime-reducing RTC laws, now consistently generate estimates showing RTC laws increase overall violent crime and/or murder when run on the most complete data.

We then use the synthetic control approach of Alberto Abadie and Javier Gardeazabal (2003) to generate state-specific estimates of the impact of RTC laws on crime. Our major finding is that under all four specifications (DAW, BC, LM, and MM), RTC laws are associated with higher aggregate violent crime rates, and the size of the deleterious effects that are associated with the passage of RTC laws climbs over time. Ten years after the adoption of RTC laws, violent crime is estimated to be 13-15% percent higher than it would have been without the RTC law.

The arms race analogy explains this perfectly. If a criminal thinks his victims will be armed, he will arm himself. He will attack first and more forcefully if expects armed resistance. Criminals are using more powerful weapons, like high-capacity magazines and the AR-15, requiring cops to get better armor and more powerful weapons. Criminals in turn get armor piercing bullets. SWAT teams start driving around in tanks. It's a never-ending cycle.

Worse, the more guns there are, the more opportunities there are for burglars and robbers to steal them. When there are more guns in circulation, cops are afraid that any interaction with the public will get them shot, so they're more apprehensive and ready to shoot, resulting in the deaths of innocent people like Justine Ruszczyk-Damond. People stop trusting the police. Everyone is afraid, and the fabric of society breaks down.

What did we do to reduce the tensions caused by the Cold War? Over many decades both Democratic and Republican presidents worked on arms reduction treaties, such as Nixon's ABM Treaty, Carter's SALT II Treaty, Reagan's INF Treaty, the START treaty (worked on by the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton administrations), etc.

These treaties reduced the number of nuclear warheads held by each country. Thousands of Russian missiles were decommissioned and uranium contained in their warheads was even sent to the United States, where it was used to fuel American power plants.

Unfortunately, nuclear tensions are being ratcheted up again, with North Korea's nuclear program, Trump's obliviously casual talk of using nuclear weapons and plans to develop small tactical nukes, and Putin's recent announcements that Russia is developing similar small nuclear weapons, and will retaliate instantly against anyone who uses nuclear weapons against Russia or their allies. This rhetoric is presumably aimed at Donald Trump, who has toyed with the idea of nuking North Korea and Iran.

More nuclear weapons do not make us safer. The more nuclear warheads there are, the more likely it is that one will be detonated accidentally, or intentionally based on faulty intelligence, fear, spite or naked aggression. And, as Putin has stated, any nuclear attack would solicit "instant retaliation."

Which means that any nuclear attack from any side will quickly escalate to the annihilation of modern civilization.

Clearly, the only solution is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, especially in the hands of rogue actors like North Korea.


Just as clearly, more guns do not make us safer. The only solution to the arms race taking place in American society is to reduce the number of weapons, especially in the hands of rogue actors like Nikolas Cruz, Dylann Roof, and Stephen Paddock.

Chaos at Trump's Panama Property

What the hell is going on at the Trump Ocean Club in Panama?

Police in helmets and bulletproof vests on Wednesday entered and then left the Trump luxury hotel in Panama that has been at the center of a management dispute and the scene of brawls.

The owners of the hotel/condo are trying to oust the Trump Organization, which has been managing the property. The Trump people refuse to leave.

For months there have been accusations that the building has been used to launder money from drug trafficking and the Russian mafia:

In the interview, Ventura [the man who handled advance sales for the property] admitted that some of his brokers and clients who bought and sold units in the Trump Ocean Club were connected to the Russian mafia and other organized-crime groups, including a convicted money launderer who moved cash for drug cartels.

This is exactly why any reasonable president would never want to have business entanglements, especially in foreign countries. He doesn't really have any control over what goes on there, and when crap like this goes down, he will be tainted by the criminal activities taking place in a building bearing his name.

Donald Trump's refusal to divest from these properties and release his tax returns make it look like he's trying to cover up illegal activities.

I don't think Trump is involved in drug dealing. But he is profiting from drug dealing indirectly by laundering their money through his properties.

Trump has a long history of knowingly dealing with organized crime -- especially the Russian mob, which ran operations out of Trump Tower for years. He has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property to Russian mobsters in New York and Florida. He has been involved in numerous projects with Russian-linked mobsters and crooked government officials in countries like Canada and Azerbaijan, in a deal that was linked to Iran.

The crazy thing is that the Panama debacle is not an isolated incident. Pretty much every Trump deal has a shady history -- from the casinos, to Trump University, to Miss Universe. It baffles me how Republicans can continue to defend a such an obvious crook and liar.

Conspiracy theorists on the right, as well as Fox News, are always trying to discredit Hillary Clinton and the Democrats with the most tenuous associations to non-existent crimes, like Pizzagate. But when there are literally dozens of widely known and irrefutable connections between Donald Trump and Russian mobsters, they just ignore them.

Hope Abandons the White House

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, reads the inscription over the gates of Dante's hell.

Now Hope (Hicks) has abandoned the White House, which has become Hell on Earth:

Her resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

At least one person in the Trump administration appears to have a conscience, but that person is leaving.

Turnover in the White House and the Trump administration has been phenomenally high, and it appears that it will be accelerating.

Jared Kushner and several other White House aides have just been denied top-secret clearances, which means they can't do their current jobs. Which means they serve no useful purpose and should be fired.

Ben Carson is under fire for spending tens of thousands of dollars on dining room furniture for his office. For some reason, Carson's wife -- who has no official position at the Department of Housing and Urban development -- demanded that staff violate federal law to spend $31,000 on a table. Incredibly, this was Carson's reaction:

Mr. Carson “didn’t know the table had been purchased,” but does not believe the cost was too steep and does not intend to return it, said Raffi Williams, a HUD spokesman.

$31,000 is more than most people spend on their cars, and is more than the starting teacher salary in Montana, South Dakota and Missouri!

Other Trump administration officials are under investigation for flying first class or using private jets at taxpayers' expense.

Trump has resumed badgering his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, on Twitter, presumably an attempt to get Sessions to resign so that Trump can appoint a new attorney general who will fire Robert Mueller and stop the Russia investigation.

During Hicks' testimony before Intelligence Committee she refused to answer any questions about what happened during the transition and Trump's first year in office, specifically, what happened when Trump crafted multiple mendacious statements about the Trump Tower meeting Don Jr., Kushner and Paul Manafort held with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

When Robert Mueller comes calling, Hicks will no longer be able to demur. But at least she will have escaped from Hell.

And this Is What Happens When Teachers Have Guns...

Donald Trump thinks guns should be in the hands of teachers in schools. This is already the case in some states, and guess what happened:

A North Georgia teacher, known as the longtime radio voice of Dalton High School football and basketball, is in custody after he fired at least one shot inside a classroom Wednesday, police said.

The incident at the high school, about 91 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta, sent panicked students running through hallways and alarmed parents who were already on edge in the wake of a mass shooting at a Florida high school earlier this month.

About 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, some students tried to get into Randal Davidson’s classroom and he would not let them in, Dalton police spokesman Bruce Frazier said.

They alerted Principal Steve Bartoo. When he came to the door and used his key to try to open it, Davidson forcibly closed it on him, Frazier said.

At that point, Bartoo heard one gunshot. The bullet went through a window and outside, Frazier said. Police have not said what type of gun was used, only that it was a handgun.

No one was shot, but it shoots holes in the NRA's idiotic plan to arm teachers.

This wasn't the first shooting by a teacher in a Georgia school:

In August, Lithia Springs High School closed after a teacher shot himself in his classroom office before students arrived. Jonathan Freeman, 43, fired one round from his own, recently acquired, handgun. He survived the shooting.

Guns have no place in schools. Arming more teachers will simply result in more accidental shootings in schools, more suicide attempts in schools, more angry teacher outbursts involving guns, and eventually students will attack armed teachers and use their weapons to shoot fellow students.

A Sin Tax on Guns

To see how seriously the Trump administration takes school safety, consider this:

Two days before the school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead, the Trump administration proposed cutting millions in federal education programs meant to help prevent crime in schools and assist them in recovery from tragedies.

Funds targeted for reduction or elimination in the Trump administration's fiscal 2019 request have helped pay for counselors in schools and violence prevention programs. Such funds were used for mental health aid for students and teachers in the Newtown, Conn., school district following the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.

These funding cuts would have hit the very mental health programs that Donald Trump now says are needed to stop school shootings. If this isn't evidence of Trump's total cluelessness, what is?

Now Trump and the NRA are proposing training teachers to be armed guards and hardening school facilities and turning them into prisons. Okay, fine. But it'll cost a lot of money. How are we going to pay for all that?

Gun violence is a serious health problem, as deadly as cigarettes, and should be treated as such.

Research has shown that one of the most effective ways of curtailing cigarette and alcohol use (which can also be quite deadly) is to raise taxes on things that cause societal problems -- so-called sin taxes.

Since murder is a cardinal sin, the instruments of death should be highly taxed. If Congress won't ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, then they have to do something to keep them out of the hands of kids.

A hefty sales tax should be levied on all firearms and ammunition to pay for increasing security at schools and other places of business. The deadlier the weapon, the higher the tax. The larger the magazine capacity, the higher the tax.

In addition -- just as there is for cars and other property, including homes -- there should be an annual licensing fee for each weapon owned to recoup the ongoing social costs of so many guns circulating in society.

It's clearly constitutional to tax guns -- we've been doing it for centuries. Now gun owners need to start paying full freight for the social costs of their hobby.

Surprise! Companies Use Tax Cuts to Buy Back Stock!

When Republicans sold the giant tax cut for corporations they promised that all the money would go to workers in the form of raises. I predicted that the tax savings would be almost exclusively used to buy back stock and pay dividends to investors. Guess who was right?

Almost 100 American corporations have trumpeted [plans to buy back shares] in the past month. American companies have announced more than $178 billion in planned buybacks — the largest amount unveiled in a single quarter, according to Birinyi Associates, a market research firm.

A small number of companies have announced plans to increase wages or pay bonuses, with bonuses being preferred because they have no lasting effect -- they're a one-time publicity stunt to make Donald Trump look good.

In effect, bonuses are just donations to Republican political campaigns.

Money going to workers is dwarfed by stock buybacks:

S&P 500 companies have devoted about $5.6 billion to bonuses and wage hikes because of the tax law, according to research from academics Rick Wartzman and William Lazonick as well as the Academic-Industry Research Network. The group added up commitments from the 50 companies in the S&P 500 that had announced plans to reward workers through February 15.

And it's just the beginning:

Bank of America recently predicted that S&P 500 companies will use repatriated foreign profits to buy back about $450 billion of stock.

CEOs are judged by the performance of the company's stock, not by the company's performance in the marketplace (they're not the same). CEOs are more frequently compensated by receiving additional stock rather than higher salaries because salaries are taxed at higher rates.

Investing in capital equipment, raising wages and increasing production aren't rewarded by the stock market. Stock prices increase most when there are rumors of acquisitions and moves to reduce expenses (i.e., firing workers). Companies that raise wages are hammered by the market, as witnessed by American Airlines' plan to raise pilots' wages last year.

Thus, the incentives for American companies are perverse and destructive. Even worse, companies whose products mostly waste people's time -- Facebook and Apple -- have sky-high stock prices, while stock prices of companies in sectors that people need to survive -- food, transportation, housing -- are moribund.

The stock market simply does not reflect the real economy, and it's insane that CEOs are compensated based on rumors and fantasy.

Archie Bunker on Gun Control

The above was 45 years ago and supposed to be a parody. Look at what's happened today...

One More Time, with Feeling: Guns are Not Protection

There are reports, as yet still unverified, that more than one Broward County deputy failed to confront the Parkland shooter:

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating allegations that multiple deputies failed to enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., after the shooting rampage there, adding to the mounting internal probes examining the department’s response to the attack and its prior interactions with the suspect.

Donald Trump and others are casting this as cowardice. But what it really does is emphasize the fact that guns are not protection.

These deputies were probably armed with handguns and shotguns. I would wager that they could tell that the shooter was using an AR-15. They knew they would be outgunned, and they were probably waiting for SWAT to show up. SWAT has ballistic armor and weapons like the MP5/10 submachine gun, Colt M4 carbine, sniper rifles, etc.

It should be obvious by now that civilians have no business owning weapons that are more powerful than what the police carry. Civilians should not be allowed to own assault rifles like the AR-15, or ballistic armor, or silencers (which the NRA was still trying put into civilian hands, and into children's hands after the Vegas shooting!).

Gun nuts whine that many hunting rifles can be categorized as assault rifles. Read this article about what the AR-15 does when it goes through a human body.

Any weapon that purees your liver when its bullet goes through your body is a weapon of war. Such firearms should not be in civilian hands, any more than civilians should own machine guns, hand grenades or nuclear weapons.

What the...FUCK?

Guns + Classroom=Epic Fail

Former marine Anthony Swofford wrote an excellent piece on why having firearms in classrooms is really bad idea. Here are some highlights.

The military issue M-16 is the model for the AR-15 assault rifle that the accused shooter used to kill 17 people this month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The shooter bought the weapon lawfully. He received zero hours of mandated training. There is no reason that any civilian, of any age, should possess this rifle.

Yep. Based on the response to this shooting, I think the AR-15s days are numbered. In fact, I think anything beyond a single shot rifle/shotgun and a handgun aren't going to be in civilians hands much longer. If there is one more school shooting between now and the time they try to pass some kind of legislation, they are toast. The people that support them are going to be voted out of office.

This is absurd. More likely, had Mr. Feis been armed, he would not have been able to draw his weapon (a side arm, presumably) quickly enough to stop the shooter, who with an AR-15 would have had the coach outgunned. Even if the coach had been able to draw his weapon — from where? his athletic shorts? — any shots he managed to fire would have risked being errant, possibly injuring or killing additional students. As some studies have shown, even police officers have missed their targets more than 50 percent of the time. In firing a weapon, Mr. Feis would have only added to the carnage and confusion.

I have to wonder what goes through the head of a gun humper when they read this. Here's a guy who was trained with all sorts of weapons speaking the cold and logical truth. A handgun is no match for an AR 15. According to The Shooter's Log, "a properly configured AR-15 is easily capable of good performance at 500+ yards. Good performance means it can hit a 1-foot-square target all the time." Yet, most handguns average out at effective ranges of around 100 yards or less. So, do we arm all teachers with AR 15s?

Here is something I didn’t think about: I did not think about arming myself to protect my students. President Trump on Thursday specified that he wants only certain teachers — “highly adept people, people that understand weaponry” — to be armed. I will immodestly state that among professors in the United States, I am almost certainly one of the best shooters. But I would never bring a weapon into a classroom. The presence of a firearm is always an invitation to violence. Weapons have no place in a learning environment.

No, they do not.

But it's important to note that this debate is a purposeful distraction. The gun humpers are trying to shift the responsibility away from themselves and into a silly argument that will drive their opponents nuts. The focus should stay on voter registration, calling lawmakers out who support the NRA, and finding people to replace them who will change our gun laws forever.

Comparing Maps

Gun Humper Logic With The FBI

So, let me see if I follow this (ahem) logic correctly...

The FBI is to blame for the Florida shooting, not the loose gun laws that allowed Cruz to so easily obtain an AR-15.

The FBI...run by the guy they elected...Donald Trump...

This kinda reminds me of how 9/11 was not Bush's fault but Benghazi was Obama's fault and Hillary's fault.

Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran=Fucking Moron

Like most US citizens, I've been very impressed with the young people from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who have galvanized the nation into acting on gun violence. They are relentless and will not stop until lawmakers like complete fucking moron Richard Corcoran, the Florida Republican House Speaker, are voted out of office. Check out what he said recently.

"All of these shooters have one thing in common — they are abject, absolute cowards,” Corcoran said. “Here’s what a coward doesn’t want to do — stare down a marshal with a gun the second he goes through a door.”

Seriously? What a dumb ass...

Cruz knew there was an armed security guard at the school. He didn't care. He was trying to be all stealth like and shit. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren't stopped at Columbine by an armed guard. Cookie Thornton shot a police officer, took his gun and then proceeded to shoot up Kirkwood City Hall. What kind of fantasy world do these people live in?

People who decide to shoot up a school are NOT RATIONAL. They also aren't cowards because they are NUTS.

I hope that all the new Florida voters will eject this asshat from the capsule come November.

Hypocrisy

I thought I'd beat Mark to the punch.

Time Again to Blame Movies and Games for School Shootings

Instead of blaming the NRA for the glorification of guns, Donald Trump is blaming the Internet, video games and the movies for mass shootings in the United States:

We have to look at the internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds and their minds are being formed, and we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And you go the further step, and that’s the movies. You see these movies, and they’re so violent. And yet a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved, and maybe they have to put a rating system for that.

A rating system? Gee, what a brilliant idea. Why didn't the MPAA (the organization that rates films) think of that? Wait -- they have! If Trump ever went to a movie like a real person, he would have seen the MPAA ad that runs during the previews that explains how the rating system works.

The movie Republicans really enjoy attacking these days is John Wick, a 2014 Keanu Reeves film about a former hitman who hit back at the mobsters who killed his dog. Its MPAA rating is “Rated R for strong and bloody violence throughout, language and brief drug use.”

Video games also have a rating system with the ESRB, something Trump would know if he paid any attention whatsoever to what his son Barron does. How can Trump run a country when he doesn't know anything about anything?

Incidentally, guess who the bad guys are in John Wick? The Russian mob! Imagine that! Republicans are attacking a movie where Russians are the bad guys! Where do Republicans get their talking points from? RT News? Sputnik? Pravda? Izvestia? Vladimir Putin?

The fact of the matter is, Hollywood movies like John Wick make as much overseas in countries like China, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Russia as they do in the United States.

And the entire rest of the world doesn't have weekly school shootings like we do. Because they don't let any random idiot buy guns.

Trump Needs A Cheat Sheet To Be Human

Remember back in those days of Obama, Barack when the right used to foam at the mouth about his teleprompter? Check out Trump's cheat sheet that he had yesterday when he was talking with the families of victims of gun violence.

Really? He needs fucking crib notes to be a human being and say, "I hear you." He can't fucking remember to be a human being?

Completely. Unfit. For. President.

The Obvious Cowardice of Gun Humpers

Every gun humper with a whole bunch of firearms and a dream of being Jack Bauer will tell you that he can save the day should the need arise in a school shooting. President Trump himself has been touting arming schools since the the Florida shooting. Yet I have to wonder if these gun rights folks would actually jump in and save the day or would they just run?

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had an SRO (Security Resource Officer) so there was a good guy with a gun on site. Today, he resigned because he never went into the building. SRO's are police officers that are supposed to take bad guys out. He didn't. This was someone who was trained to do this shit and he failed. Do the gun humpers actually expect me to believe that they are going to rush in and save the day where the cops failed?

I don't believe it for a minute. The first thing they would do is likely shit their pants because the only thing they have the courage to do is troll gun grabbers on the internet from the parent's basement. They've never been trained nor do they have the training to take out a live shooter. Playing Call of Duty doesn't count, by the way.

So, yeah...I think they would just run. They wouldn't save anyone but themselves.

And Yet Again: Guns Are Not Protection

Following the NRA's lead, Donald Trump is suggesting that teachers get paid more to carry guns in the classroom. Sharing the NRA's delusion that more guns make people safer, he thinks that armed teachers with Glock 17s in their purses or desk drawers will somehow stop "cowardly sickos" who bring AR-15s into the classroom.

How will Trump explain it when a teacher's gun is stolen and a dozen kids are dead?

Think about it: arming teachers and coaches makes it trivial for school shooters to get guns in schools: all a shooter needs to do is bash a coach with a baseball bat and now he's got a gun provided by Donald Trump and the NRA.

But let's pretend that students will never be able to take the gun from a teacher. Having a weapon does not protect you from gunfire. It just makes you target number one. When a gunman enters a room he will simply put six rounds in the teacher before firing on his ex-girlfriend or the bully who's been picking on him since sixth grade.

Look at Afghanistan. Sure, the Taliban carries out attacks on soft targets like markets and government ministries. But they more frequently attack police stations and military outposts where everyone has guns. A high percentage of school shooters are suicidal and know full well that they'll eventually meet armed resistance from security guards and the police. They are hoping to go down in a blaze of gunfire, glory and blood spatter. That's their endgame.

Armed teachers will not deter these shooters -- the idea of armed teachers may even excite them, making it an even bigger challenge. More shooters will wear Kevlar, something that is easily bought on the Internet because of its great popularity among the gun cult and conservative survivalist "preppers."

At best arming teachers will only reduce the number of victims. The shooter will enter a classroom by stealth, shoot the teacher and twenty or thirty students. If an armed teacher in another classroom hears the attack, he'll fetch his gun and seek out the shooter. Odds are basically 50-50 that the teacher will die, because his handgun will be less powerful and less accurate than the AR-15 the mass murderer is carrying, and the killer may even be wearing ballistic armor, since he came prepared.

For years the NRA has been lobbying for silencers, which will make school shootings even more deadly.

If the shooter has a silencer -- something the NRA has been lobbying actively for for years because they want kids to use them -- the shooter may not be detected for many minutes because no one can hear the gunfire.

Arming teachers will also kill many students who would not have otherwise died: teachers will shoot kids they think have guns, but don't -- cops do this all the time. Kids will take guns from hesitant teachers and shoot them. Shooters will use other students as cover and teachers will shoot innocent bystanders. Ricochets will hit innocents. Kids will be shot accidentally when guns fall out of waistbands in the hall.

This shows the hypocrisy of the NRA. They don't want to stop gun violence, they want to sell more guns and more gun accessories. They want to turn this country into an armed camp, where people live in walled neighborhoods patrolled by armed guards and a machine gun nest on every block. They want schools to be prisons in perpetual lockdown mode, where teachers are armed guards and principals are wardens.

For the NRA school shootings are a marketing opportunity to increase the prevalence of guns in American society. They like school shootings because they can use them to sell the delusion that more guns make us safer.

The NRA opposes any and all gun control measures because, they say, gun control won't stop all shootings, and the bad guys will be able to get guns "somehow." By that same logic, arming teachers is an even bigger waste of time and money, because it can't stop all shootings because bad guys fire first.

Why should the NRA's Second Amendment trump every other American right, including the right to life?