May 8th, 2025
‘I just feel like that person shouldn’t have been able to even be around a school.’

Father/son massacrists were on the FBI’s radar, but they just let it happen. They just watched as the son enrolled in a new killing field and let it rip, with the AR-15 style rifle his father gave this 14-year-old as a gift.

You don’t get these outcomes unless your country wants massacres.

May 8th, 2025
A trailer in the 100 block of Bobcat Ct in Lothian MD will cost you around $50,000. A Diamondback Arms Model DB15 AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle will cost you around $1,000.

Christopher Edward Jones, 34, may not be able to afford much house, but when it comes to his gun the sky’s the limit.

And what’s he supposed to do, having shot that wad on a gun he turns out to have virtually no opportunity to use? Any one of us would have done what he did: Get plastered and start shooting it off in the community.

I told Mr UD about Mr Jones and he said “I’d like to know what kind of car he has.”

“Easy,” said UD. “A $50,000 Ford F-150. I’d like to know how many other thousand dollar guns he has.”

May 7th, 2025
Leisure Activity in Super-Expensive Sugar Land TX

Some resident was simply repeatedly shooting his gun into the ground when obnoxious anti-Second Amendment neighbors called the police. The police told him to stop but he didn’t so they shot him and he’s in the hospital.

What has happened to this country when a man can’t take his weapon in a heavily populated suburb and repeatedly shoot it into the ground?

May 6th, 2025
Fayetteville, the Pride of Gunny NC…

… rides the wave of the state’s future:

According to quarterly crime data provided by Fayetteville police, homicides in the city are up 366% so far this year compared to the previous one, with 14 incidents reported so far this year.

For comparison, Raleigh has reported 11 incidents this period, up 22% from 2024 over the same time period.

********************

At the Fayetteville Dogwood Festival on April 26, attendees were shocked as they heard gunfire nearby and were swiftly evacuated by police, who discovered a car just yards from the festival grounds with gunshots through it. 

The only thing shocking is the shock.

********************

With Fayetteville their role model, Raleigh and the rest of the state will find their own gun footing, and can expect similar, if not superior, carnage.

May 6th, 2025
This is how we do it!

More than 31,000 Americans died by firearms in 2024. Among the victims, 250 were children younger than 11. More than 1,000 were between 12 and 17.

Seventy-five were police officers.

*************************************

The guy citing these numbers points out – uncontroversially, obviously – that almost no one in this country gives a shit. But UD has been proposing something else: Americans like it. They like watching it. They like doing it. As a country, we say: This is how we do it.

*****************

And if you don’t let us do it – the way Hawaii isn’t letting us do it – we are gonna gang up on you and fucking FORCE you to let us do it. We’re gonna put you in legal HELL and make you pay to try to defend your low murder rate until you are fucking bankrupt.

May 6th, 2025
The Ultimate American Girl Dad!

For Show Kindness week at her elementary school, he gave her this hat to wear —

— and when the school told her to take it off (gun massacre at a nearby school not long ago) he filed free speech court cases all over the place! His appeals keep getting unanimously rejected, but I’m sure he’s planning to take it to the Supreme Court. What a dad!

May 4th, 2025
“This happens commonly. These days, everybody got a gun. I’ve seen 14, 13-year-olds with guns. You can’t even have an argument with somebody — they’ll pull a gun on you.”
Zippity doo dah
Zippity day
My oh my
What a fine Houston day
Sixteen are injured, one passed away
Zippity doo dah
Zippity day
May 4th, 2025
Parade’s End

Guns represent many things. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century they are emerging as emblematic of the end of public events.

Festive parades and civic gatherings die when there’s always a respectable chance someone will shoot at the people gathered, or (just as demoralizing) a group of people nearby will be shooting at each other. The headlines are reserved for American parades where happy families are mowed down by nuts with guns, but you’re no doubt missing the smaller, quite frequent, stories of gatherings suddenly reduced to panicked stampedes by multiple gunshots. Something along these lines happens many weekend nights all over the country, the most recent last Friday in Tallahassee.

A large crowd gathered in the FAMU Way Playground near Railroad Square became a scene of chaos and gunfire the night of May 2.

It happened less than an hour after the conclusion of the Square’s monthly “First Friday” event, which celebrates the arts at the opening of each month.

Lt. Robin Abney, a watch commander for the Tallahassee Police Department, told the Democrat that the department was called to the area at about 9:50 p.m. with reports of shots fired. 

… One video of the scene circulating on social media shows a large crowd running after the sound of five rapid-fire gunshots. Another video shows a large fight in the crowd spilling into the street before the shooting, when people start screaming and running for cover.

The gunfire came after the close of the First Friday celebration that draws crowds to the arts district between 6 and 9 p.m.[T]he incident took place in [a] city playground …

Yes, where kiddies play…

The shooting is at least the 22nd serious shooting this year in the capital city and county. 

***************************

At least the 22nd… serious shooting… The number is much higher, but shooting is so common a lot of it isn’t called in. And how serious is serious these days? Does serious mean at least three people hit? More? Does someone have to be in at least critical condition, though not all the way to dead?

And consider the thinking some local arts enthusiast experiences now.

OOH the arts, the arts… What a fucking loser I am to get all excited about THE ARTS when all I get for showing up for THE ARTS is a barrage of bullets. Fuck the arts.

May 4th, 2025
“Think about all the times when the police aren’t even called,” she said. “Because it’s so normalized — normalized to the point of complete insanity — that we’re living in a state where our reaction to any kind of altercation is to brandish a gun.”

Read the whole thing.

New Mexico: Land of Drunk Heavily Armed Idiots

May 3rd, 2025
Wotta shocker! Sleazy prostitution/hookah lounge in bad part of town, late Friday night, GUNSHOTS?

Are you kidding? Now I’ve heard everything.

May 2nd, 2025
“How’d he get a gun? He has paranoid schizophrenia!”
You're never too deranged
To get firepower at a range.
Even if you're totally off
You'll still get a Kalashnikov.
May 1st, 2025
Just 22 years old, and look what he’s collected!

**************************************

He’s planning to kill us all, but today the authorities arrested him before he could do it. Which is great, but even if he gets jail time, he’ll be freed at some point and then he can start accumulating for his killing spree again.

May 1st, 2025
It’s the wackos squirreled away with their illegal high capacity AR-15s in their apartments that American localities need to target.

Props to Vermont for going after a notorious nutcase and making it less likely (but not impossible) that he’ll be the next Robert Card.

It’s crucial for fried-brain gunfuckers to know that the state knows who they are, is watching, and, in the case of this particular guntard, is litigating.

A previously self-professed white nationalist, [a person who played] a central role in the racial harassment of a former Bennington representative, [this POS] has faced several charges in the past, including aggravated domestic assault, a hate crime charge of disorderly conduct and repeated violations of his conditions of release. 

Jury took all of ten minutes to convict him of illegal possession of high-capacity firearm magazines. He probably won’t get jail time, so he still walks among us, I’m afraid. There should be a way for my country to protect itself from armed-to-the-teeth madmen.

April 30th, 2025
Wait til the summer on Murder Beach!

So far it’s just middling spring stuff – Saturday night fights/shootings, killing one or two, injuring ten or twenty – but come July the gunfire’s gonna be SIZZLING.

Not just on the weekends, and much more productive body bag work – that’s what I’m talking about.

Bring the kids, bring granny – you’re never too old or too young to run screaming for your life and the lives of your loved ones while hundreds of gunshots pierce the balmy air. Get ready.

April 29th, 2025
The Onion captures the zeitgeist.

WASHINGTON—In a dramatic reversal of recent polls showing a decline in the president’s approval ratings during his first 100 days in office, new surveys confirmed Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s support was surging after he pointed a gun at all 340 million Americans. “Ever since Trump pulled out a loaded handgun and menacingly swept its muzzle across the entire American populace, he’s seen a massive bump in favorability on everything from his handling of the economy to his views on immigration,” said Gallup polling analyst Eric Waltman, adding that Trump’s numbers had seen a particularly sharp spike after he fired a shot into the air to show that “he means business.”

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

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