… Kentucky!
Ryan Fournier, one of the founders of Students for Trump, was arrested last Tuesday on assault charges in North Carolina … Fournier, 27, was accused of assaulting a woman identified as his girlfriend, “grabbing her right arm and striking her in the forehead” with a handgun …
Isn’t something like this more or less a rite of passage for this super-Christian demographic? Along with fraud, driving over the speed limit, and drunk driving? (UPDATE: Plus threesomes and rape?) (Oh, I can hear it now: “Don’t judge us by our highest-profile leaders!”) UD’s gonna assume this latest thing happened cuz godly Fournier got hisself way fucked up one night and reached for the nearest household appliance.
That’s a headline you don’t see every day. Which neighbors was it? The couple that just moved here from Singapore?
Whew! Two Cal Poly students basically spent part of an afternoon, last week, strolling the campus and shooting various guns into occupied buildings and at street signs and at anything else that caught their fancy. But in a bit of luck they had not yet started shooting people (their activities were pretty quickly reported to the police), so that’s good! That’s great!
“During a search of the students’ on-campus residences, police located and confiscated additional weapons and ammunition.” Well I mean of course and I’m sure all indications are that the students are NOT amassing an arsenal for an eventual mass slaughter and this is nothing to worry about. Just a coupla kids.
As for professors: UD would have loved to be on the search committee that decided a permanently disbarred thief who packs loaded heat on campus would be just the thing for the students at Santa Rosa Junior College.
… plays out in Walmart (where else) as we contemplate our many blessings. An ordinary mom in ordinary Ohio searches the shelves for Thanksgiving decorations while her two year old sits in the shopping cart figuring out how to shoot the loaded Taurus PT92 9mm stainless pistol he found in her purse.
It’s such classic Americana that it calls to mind the famous Norman Rockwell painting, “The Runaway” (1958), in which the policeman leans over to the runaway to say Fine kid but take my gun with you.

Back to the Walmart: The baby shoots at the ceiling and mom’s pissed cuz that thing cost close to six hundred dollars and the reason she’s shopping at a discount outlet is that she’s bought like five of them plus other more expensive firepower plus ammo ain’t cheap and if the cops get wind of this she stands to lose the guns at least temporarily and she still owes around five thou on them all.
Of course she’s proud the kid took the hint and started sharing the gunny life with mom (“Shootin before he can walk“) and she certainly had a laugh when she saw all the shoppers around her scatter! “HAHA he’s just a baby he don’t got no sense of direction chill out.”
And fuck now they’re arresting her and talkin nuts about child endangerment (he only got a itty bitty head wound for godsake) and … ok you can have the kid but gimme back my guns.
*******************
Of course, this particular scene in Walmart is nothing:
Walmart Speaks Out After Two Mass Shootings Occur at Stores Within 24 Hours
There’s a whole lot more going on in your Walmart every day besides a two year old shooting a Taurus!
Guns: A thousand and one uses!
The town’s “deputy mayor has been sentenced to eight months in federal prison,” onaccounta LOOK AT THEM PICTURES. Vast unregistered arsenal stashed in his basement.
[He] admitted before Rockland Judge Larry Schwartz to two counts each of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon: silencers, assault weapons, and high-capacity magazines...
The District Attorney’s Office said Downey admitted possessing a Colt Carbine semi-automatic rifle and an Aero Precision semi-automatic rifle; Surefire LLC and an Advanced Aramet Coro M4-2000 silencers; and two large-capacity feeding devices: Magpul magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
************************
His comment to the authorities had a nice Dr Strangelove spin:
[He] told … agents he believed he was permitted to modify short-barrel rifles. His reasoning was he was a peace officer…
You know… that scene where President Merkin Muffley says “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”
The biggest bloodbath in the United States isn’t skimping when it comes to the kiddies.
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.”
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
The conditions for the “bind-over” order include abstaining from possessing firearms and ammunition for 24 months.
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