“Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California,” [Gavin] Newsom wrote [in response]. “Its murder rate is ranked third in the entire country. Stick to football, bro.”
NIMBY’s a bitch, ain’t it? Here’s a bunch of Idaho farmers – presumably some of America’s keenest gunnies (see the impressive Everytown writeup in my headline) – who’ve decided they DON’T want a “massive” gun range in their backyard.
Now the county they’re in – Bingham – went to the trouble of declaring itself a Protected Second Amendment County just in case the feds try in any way to fuck with their weapons, see, and that’s how gun gonzo they are! But now they’re boohooing cuz their county’s probably going to approve the range cuz why wouldn’t it. It’s Idaho, land of the worst guns laws in America. Land of militias. Land of Trump won by seventy percent. C’mon, people! You made your bed — lie in it! Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas! Take what you want but pay for it! Get the picture?
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Croyez moi, as a degenerate east coaster, my heart goes out to you guys! I wouldn’t want a massive gun range, with “rotating outsiders” (whatever that is) all over the place. But then I don’t like guns. YOU do. Enjoy the bangbangbangbangbangbangbang.
Excitedly, the young reporter warns us that some of the images we’re about to see “are disturbing.” He then shows them to us twice – the gape-mouthed woman in the foreground, the anxious policeman pushing her away from danger, a man standing over a dead body, the repeated sound of gunfire, and (the Don DeLillo Death touch), the glitzy background of the Bellagio at night.
Postmodern deaths happen while people are having fun.
You Tubes are now available showing closeups of the dead lying along the Las Vegas Strip. As Walter Benjamin, quoted in my title, noted many decades ago, our own destruction has become a thing recorded and delectated. Our own close to 50,000 gun deaths a year yield plenty of shared footage — especially when it’s mass murder, as in the 2017 slaughter of sixty people two miles down from the Bellagio.
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Here’s an even better one! Clearly shows the shooter doing his thing.
Bonus point: Since it’s night, we can see his gun shoot off sparks. Coooooool
And listen. Shooter’s a social media personality. Ya gotta assume he got a friend to film him shooting. Fantastic upload.
[T]he gunmen positioned themselves on elevated ground in a wooded area and fired down at the crowd. Some partygoers returned fire, which may have prevented further injuries.
The police chief can come out with all the horseshit he likes about isolated incident/no threat to the neighborhood, but groups of armed teenagers hiding behind cars while gunfighting on your street – and don’t matter none if your street is a hoitsy toitsy historic district – is A THREAT TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD. Any idiot knows that.
And isolated? Like, don’t worry cuz it won’t happen again?
Let’s see. Elmwood Park SC has twenty Airbnbs, one of which hosted this mass shooting. Neighbors have tried hard to rid the place of short term rentals, but SC seem to like these as much as it likes guns.
Guns, guns, guns. Among the best states in the union to stockpile and shoot ’em. Jest about the best state to kill/die from ’em. Tykes can strut around openly carrying ’em on their way to kiddie party shootouts. It’s a fuckin way of life.
Now yall wanna add that the long hot summer is upon us, which brings out much more bangbang.
“No motive is known at this time” lolololol. Motive. You’d think the cops would have some knowledge of the phenom.
Twenty years old, spectacularly armed, with a long criminal history featuring repeated apparent efforts to kill lots of people gathered in public spaces, he was apparently one of the treetop snipers in Hickory NC who shot into a large house party. He’s so young, so precociously accomplished, and he lives in such a gun-lovin’ state, that UD sees far more slaughter from this li’l guy. His kill rate remains poor, true; but each outing teaches him something, and I’m sure he’s got far more murder in him. Best of all, he’s a team player — doesn’t go anywhere without fellow shooters.
Right. UD was amazed to read, in an earlier article about a North Carolina mass shooting, that shooters were apparently positioned in nearby trees. She had trouble believing this ambush scenario, since virtually all paid-admission, bullet-riddled, house parties generate the bullets from inside the houses, as drunk guests get into gunfights.
But here you are to envisage an organized little army having climbed neighboring trees (lucky neighbor!) for a clean invisible shot into the party house. Wowsa. “[P]eople attending the party were also armed, and returned fire on the original shooter or shooters.” Wowsa!
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This is an unfolding, evolutionary history that UD has long written about. Whether school or party or lounge shooting, we’re going to see larger and more organized, more planned, mass attacks. We’re going to see return fire (at least eighty shots were released as armed guests hit back), turning these scenarios into protracted skirmishes with greater and greater injury/loss of life/danger to communities. We’re gradually going to realize that Americans consider this activity fun and exciting (an extension of the party, if you like), and that they need no motive beyond this to stage bloody little civil wars in our towns.
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And listen. This ain’t quaint Hatfield/McCoy shit. Look what these sixteen year olds are packing. Look what Americans are packing.
Barbeque in the local park, American-style!
Tens of millions of Americans have been shivering, AR-less, by their hearths, awaiting the court’s critically important decision on whether they can keep stockpiling semi-automatic rifles.
A local reporter chats with frightened, anonymous business owners along the deadliest stretch of Murder Beach. Most cite large numbers of menacing, armed, high teenagers as their least favorite thing about life on the boardwalk. The sense of menace, and the big police presence that scary people draw to the area, more and more discourages folks looking for a relaxed good time with their kids.
What sucks is there’s no solution. South Carolina prides itself on having just about the weakest gun laws in the nation, and I guess the legislature is working every day to make them even weaker. Says here SC also (natch) “suffers one of the highest rates of gun homicides in the nation,” but if it really were suffering it would take a look at laws insisting that every tyke in the state get a big effing gun and tote it around. Maybe it could tweak the laws so that armed teenyboppers stop bopping everybody.
It’s almost always an argument at a large private house party, almost always a paid admission party; and as the gunfights proceed, many bloodied screaming people almost always pour out onto the driveway, the yard, the street, and the neighbors’ yards. If there’s a continued exchange of fire (likely), pedestrians and neighbors had also better run.
When (five minutes later) forty police and emergency vehicles race to the location, many groaning dying bullet-riddled bodies greet them. This week’s mass shooting took place in cute l’il Hickory NC, and at least twelve high school students were shot. UD’s gonna guess the killer was a 17 year old guy.
It’s like a battle scene. It’s also like a movie, since reporters have also arrived, and they are watching and filming.
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Since the people who run the towns, cities, and states of this country know with total assurance that jammed late night paid admission house or boat parties, and of course jammed late night sleazy lounges, are prime mass shooting locations, you might wonder why officials don’t shut down/curtail open-all-night sleazy lounges full of local gun-bearing criminals. You might wonder why they don’t respond to neighbors’ complaints about the parties. Why do they wait for the gunfights and the dead bodies? Once they know what houses are being rented out to crazy gunnies, why don’t they shut down their business?
The answer is obvious. Gunlove in America looks the other way when children are massacred by known madmen with guns at our elementary schools; gunlove looks the other way every bloody Saturday night. Remarkably, most Americans really don’t care.
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Multiple shooters; at least eighty shots fired.
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“[W]e don’t believe that this was random in a circumstance that might endanger the community.”
Also like clockwork, local authorities announce that hundreds of people running through your neighborhood, desperately trying to elude multiple AK-bearing shooters, in no way endangers your community.
Like high school graduations.
“To say it’s not a threat to the community is a big reach,” said [Jeremy] Evans.
I mean, on the most literal level, one or more people shooting wildly into crowds is an obvious threat to any local community; and in this latest case the police haven’t arrested anyone, so the threat remains.
And after all shooting is not uncommon in notorious Myrtle Beach and environs, so a general menace remains. UD can understand the comical tendency of local officials everywhere to declare, after big mass shootings/killings, that yay! our community is safe but yeah we keep getting these isolated, totally not dangerous events… but she’s with Jeremy Evans – a spot of honesty would help.
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Update: They’ve made an arrest. A 19 year old.