The United States of America: Where we give everyone a gun and then watch what happens.
The focus on 2025 Ocean Boulevard shootings [in Myrtle Beach] began on April 26th when 11 people were sent to the hospital in a police officer involved incident where the juvenile who fired into a crowd was killed.
Several Ocean Boulevard shootings on successive weekends have happened since. Day trippers from towns approximately 100 miles in circumference to Myrtle Beach cause much of the violence … downtown on Ocean Boulevard.
Unsupervised teenagers ranging from 16 to 18 carry guns with them to the beach. Despite the pattern, Myrtle Beach police have yet to come up with a system for dealing with these unsupervised teens before the violence begins.
SC does not have truancy laws enabling MBPD to detain unsupervised juveniles until their parents retrieve them. Even when they identify potential violent teens, their hands are tied until the shootings start.
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Can this really be? A police force can’t detain suspicious people? They have to stand there waiting for them to start shooting?
Well babe see this is Massachusetts and the reason we have among the lowest gun deaths in the nation is because we bar idiots like you from our schools. Conceal carry your gun in Louisiana. You do it here, you’re trespassed from our school.
“[She is barred from attending] the sixth grade breakfast at Oak Ridge School with her daughter, and she asked the committee to allow her to attend.” Boohoo. Move to Shreveport.
“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.
