November 3rd, 2023
Whaddaya think they’re for?

A gun shop in Osseo [Minnesota] is under fire for an email it sent out promoting ammunition for customers’ “trip to the hood.”

The Osseo Gun Club and Pro Shop sent out the email last week that said “Remember we have 30 rnd mags for your trip to the hood.”

November 2nd, 2023
The Robert Card Memorial…

gift offer!

November 2nd, 2023
And while you’re vacationing in …

Albuquerque, don’t forget to visit Flix Brewhouse!

October 31st, 2023
Sing it

Just a baby’s gun at twilight
That dad forgot to stow
Her baby years have ended here
With the gun she found at twilight

Dad’s sad to know
His precious little tot
Picked up his gun and shot

After saying “Goodnight, Mama”
She climbed upstairs
Quite unaware
And said her prayer:

“Oh, kindly tell my daddy that he must take care”

That’s a baby’s prayer at twilight
From up in heav’n somewhere

October 30th, 2023
“People have other irrational fears, like a fear of guns,” he said. “Dealing with that is a job for mental health professionals and not for me.”

There’ll always be a Montana.

October 30th, 2023
But he’s an American! This is worse than the death penalty.

The conditions for the “bind-over” order include abstaining from possessing firearms and ammunition for 24 months.

October 27th, 2023
It’s the sort of thing that happens in the most murderous state in America.

A university football player in Louisiana is shot to death, so traumatizing his team that the coach calls off the rest of the season and then resigns.

The thing about constant gun deaths is that eventually everything around them gets shut down. As we speak, Lewiston Maine is shut down; all of its citizens are crouching inside their houses. People in bloody Albuquerque routinely avoid public places. And Louisiana! Don’t get no bloodier than Louisiana.

Not hard to see that in a few years what UD calls Munitions Migration will occur on a large scale here. Of course individuals have always moved away from bullet-riddled neighborhoods in search of safety; I’m talking about a large social trend involving massive flight from fully gunned-up landscapes.

October 27th, 2023
‘States with the weakest gun safety laws saw the rate of gun suicides jump 39% over the past two decades – from about 8 gun suicides for every 100,000 people in 1999 to nearly 12 in 2022… But in states with the strongest gun safety laws, gun suicide rates decreased slightly over that time — down from 3.6 to 3.4 gun suicides for every 100,000 people.’

Scroll down for the fantastic state by state graphic, which so dramatically gives Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska pride of place!

Good on ya, gunny states! You’ve got ’em dropping like flies.

October 27th, 2023
Suicide in America

[T]he U.S. Supreme Court has been rolling back weapons restrictions, in effect turning the 2nd Amendment into a national suicide pact. Next month, the court will hear arguments in a case challenging a federal law barring a person under a domestic violence restraining order from possessing firearms. The case will concern the court’s bizarre dictate that no restriction is valid if it doesn’t have an 18th century precedent.

Domestic abusers are one of the few categories of people who experience tells us are more likely to commit gun violence. If we can no longer protect ourselves even from them, we will join the people of Lewiston, locked down in our homes, in fear of guns and the wide variety of our fellow Americans ready to use them against us.

October 26th, 2023
Nothing to see here!

Fugitive Maine shooting suspect Robert Card lived in a ‘compound’ with his gun-fanatic family, according to a local who claimed neighbors tried to avoid the alleged killer. 

Liam Kent, who lives near Card’s home in Bowdoin, told The Messenger the community knew the suspect and his relatives as ‘gun-toting enthusiasts who lived in ‘basically a compound.’

‘They would shoot guns all the time, you could hear them every day after school. It was like clockwork,’ Kent claimed, adding that he once saw Card ‘covered in blood with a gun on his back [and] a giant grin on his face’ after going deer hunting. 

October 25th, 2023
“[E]very country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them.”

Crazed firearms expert with military training still on the loose, killing anything that moves in Lewiston, Maine. Just “discharged from a mental health facility,” but getting hold of high-powered assault-style rifle a piece of cake.

Maybe the genius who discharged him gave him a therapy gun as a goodbye gift.

Maine has “no independent background check system, no red flag law to identify those at extreme risk for gun violence, no requirement that convicted domestic abusers turn in their guns and no permit requirements for concealed weapons.”

October 25th, 2023
Depraved US gunnie/state senator arrogantly carries his weaponry to the local airport (fails to get caught) and then to a country where they actually have gun laws. Bad things ensue.

[Jeff] Wilson faces his next court hearing in Hong Kong on October 30 …

Under Hong Kong’s strict gun control laws, no one is allowed to possess any arms or ammunition unless they have a license from the Commissioner of Police. Licenses are only given to police officers, armed security guard services and operators of exclusive shooting range clubs.

Gun violence is very rare in Hong Kong, unlike in the United States where firearms are now the No. 1 killer of children and teens.

In [Wilson’s] Washington state, open carry is allowed for both long guns and handguns without a license, which means individuals can carry a firearm in many public areas, although private property owners may prohibit firearms on their property.

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

Hold the fucker a long time. Try him in a lengthy, televised, trial. Then put him in prison.

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

The longer they hold him with their absurd laws, the more likely that Wilson becomes a swaggering NRA hero, defending his right to export blood-soaked America (Wow! 22 dead, 50-60 injured so far!!) and its ways to lucky countries all over the world. Hell, it weren’t loaded! Plum forgot it was in there! Deep state’s after him too! FREE JEFF WILSON

October 24th, 2023
What a sweetie! A true ambassador for the American way of life.

[State Sen. Jeff] Wilson was arrested and charged with unlicensed possession of a firearm in Hong Kong on October 21, 2023, after being found with a revolver at the Hong Kong International Airport. The gun is legally licensed in Washington State, but not in Hong Kong. According to Wilson, he discovered the unloaded firearm in his luggage in his carry-on luggage mid-flight. He alerted airport authorities and was subsequently arrested. After his initial court hearing, Wilson and his family had verbal exchanges with reporters at the courthouse, leading to police mediation. Wilson was said to have verbally abused the reporters and asked them to delete any photos taken outside of the courthouse.  He was ordered to surrender his travel documents and not to leave Hong Kong until his next court date.

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

Here’s hoping his next court date is some time in 2028.

October 23rd, 2023
Jest a little feller with a big AR…
Shot that motherfucker into one long line o' cars
Shot it at the Waffle House Decatur Alabam
Got pissed with his buddy and - bang bang bang shazam
Barely outta short pants but God Bless the USA
Packs a AR-15 when he goes out to play

October 18th, 2023
Visit Beautiful Albuquerque

Benjamin Baker, a former police officer who is now policy adviser on public safety to the governor, says the crisis is exemplified by a scene he witnessed in an Albuquerque park in July.

“I had my kid here for football practice — he’s 12,” Baker says. “And people decided to come have a rolling gun-and-stabbing battle within feet of where he was practicing. And it caused a person to be shot. And the ages of those folks were 13, 14 and 15.”

Baker says guns have long been part of everyday life in this Western city, but the nature of the local gun culture is different. He says people now see guns not so much as a tool, but as something “sexy.” And they seem more likely to fire them in anger.

“That should have been a fist fight! At worst!” Baker says of the teenagers in the park. “I cannot recall a time where things were as violent and as bad, and particularly how young the age of the perpetrators has become.”

[One policeman] guesses half the cars in Albuquerque traffic now contain guns, some of which wind up in the hands of felons or children.

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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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