“They just kept coming, more and more gunshots – just wouldn’t stop,” Lynch said, adding the gunman then “just sort of walked or skipped off the bus.”
(Probably stopped because he ran out of bullets.)
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So here are some details. Apparently he didn’t even know the people he killed. He acted strangely throughout the trip and reportedly muttered crazy shit about video games as he shot up the bus.
So… sorry, but here you have clear evidence of concealed ownership of guns (weep for the people on that bus – no one thought it worthwhile to tell them they were traveling with someone who had a criminal past with guns), plus serious madness (his father knew he was a gun-toting angry paranoid and did nothing).
But of course it all went down in America, and you know how that goes.
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UPDATE: Wednesday’s [court] hearing also revealed that Jones was charged and convicted of a reckless driving and hit and run in 2021 and had a concealed weapons charge the same year. He received suspended sentences for all of the offenses.
Every country has mentally ill people. Only America arms them, as Adam Gopnik writes.
The father of the UVa killer knew his son was ‘really paranoid’; he almost certainly also knew he had guns. (How many guns does the father own?) How many other people knew the killer was going nuts? UVa knew he told people he had guns on campus; the school knew as well that he’d been arrested for gun violations. No one did shit as an armed paranoid stalked the campus, and now a significant portion of the school’s football team is dead, in critical condition, or in recovery.
Here’s a close parallel: The sister of Phillip Adams knew he was, in her words, “aggressively” mentally ill – paranoid. He also had shitloads of guns.
Pretty much everyone knew Adams was right round the bend, but no one did shit.
“Going berserk with guns has become an American way of life,” writes Nathan Heller.
Like the UVa killer, Adams had been a college football player — at South Carolina State, which even after his mass murder of an entire family, including toddlers, maintains his hero page. Good ol’ Phil! He did it his way.
Another country might look at CTE ravaged paranoids with guns and restrict their access to weapons. Another country might find a way to commit them to long-term hospital care. America looks at them and says BRING ON MORE GUNS.
[The shooter] had been investigated by campus officials in September after someone reported [he] made a comment about owning a gun…
[The shooter] was also involved in a hazing investigation on campus …
[A spokesman further noted the university] learned of a prior criminal incident involving a concealed weapon violation that occurred outside the city of Charlottesville in February of 2021…
[The shooter] was required to report that to the University, but he never did. The University’s judicial council took over the case and the results are still pending.
Blah blah this and that this and that and we’re kinda still kinda looking into it. Told people about his weaponry; involved in hazing; criminal incident involving concealment lalalalala….
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This is what happens when guns are absolutely everywhere. When there are practically four hundred million civilian-owned guns in your country, you’re unlikely to give the issue your, uh, full attention. For many Americans, guns seem to have about the status of a household appliance. I mean, who cares.
UVa remains sheltered in place; a football recruit killed three and injured two. UD will go ahead and guess that this was some sort of weekend party/drunken fight that got crazy, but it’s of course too soon to know much.
[Update: The shooting took place in an on-campus parking garage, so the motive might have been a dispute between drivers. Road rage…?]
The Idaho details suggest the shooter (if this was about shooting; it certainly sounds like it, though a different weapon might have been used) is dead at the scene. (The Virginia killer is at large and since he’s heavily armed, with his photo in every paper, and everyone in the world is looking for him, UD’s gonna guess he’ll kill himself.) This one sounds more personal – a nutty vindictive ex-lover? – but we’ll see. Someone reported seeing an unconscious person and called the police, which maybe means at least one of the bodies was outside the off-campus house. Trying to flee? Or the body of the killer?
Both events could be as simple as someone turned away from a party, pissed about it, and returning with one of his big ol’ guns.
My blog post title comes from NPR‘s coverage. It’s America, so we have to bundle these stories.
Brian Nelson reported in the bankruptcy filing that he grossed $4,510 in income in 2019, while his wife had no income.
They had $8,803 in assets, including eight guns worth $1,850 in the home: five pistols valued at $1,600; a .22-caliber rifle worth $100, and two shotguns worth $150.
You wouldn’t want to sell that chunk of your assets to make your situation a bit less desperate. Better to hold onto it in case you need to kill your wife and six kids.
Might want to use more than one gun before burning the place down and killing yourself?
The one thing missing in the latest fifteen year old mass killer’s parents’ statement was the only thing that matters: How many and what type of guns in the house?
Such lovely names in that lovely Raleigh neighborhood: Greenway; Osprey Cove; Bay Harbor. You can just see the place – “single family homes and golf courses.”
As for seeing its mass shooter, here’s a description from a witness:
‘He looked like a baby. I just don’t even have the words to explain. This is not OK.’
Enjoy the police chief’s rollicking explanation for this event.
‘I think people are on edge coming out of a pandemic,’ she said.
‘I think we have mental health issues that are also contributing to that. I believe also too what we’re facing as a nation: the war in Ukraine, inflation, gas prices.
‘All those things coupled together, I think results in people wanting to solve their disputes or their issues with gun violence rather than just maybe taking a pause, stepping back, and then re-approaching the situation.’
She forgot to mention an uptick in breast cancer cases in Asian women aged 45-65.
Proud that the US makes international news so often. In this case, it took seconds for the foreign press to pick up on the four-year-old with a loaded handgun at his elementary school in Texas.
Of course Texas doesn’t have any lower age limit on gun possession,** so it’s fine; and in fact his parents are the talk of Corpus Christi for proactively arming their kid as he sets out on his first week of class!
‘[W]e do not believe that students and staff were in any kind of imminent danger,’ wrote the principal to parents, and god why did he even need to say that, since a loaded gun floating around an elementary school is safety personified.
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** Along with fetal personhood bills, some states (Texas is one of them) are now looking into the legal/technical viability of so-called Fetal Firearm legislation, in which as soon as arm buds appear on embryos, tiny guns are implanted in the amniotic sac, ready for the fetus to clasp and, if need be, use to defend itself against an impending abortion. Advocates point out that this procedure – if practicable – would have the further advantage of accustoming the unborn to safe and responsible gun ownership.
It’s great to see PBS focus on Wyoming, guns, and suicide; and the report is very moving.
However, what they needed to include and did not is the powerful, and vocal, other side. That is, they talked to no one who said we utterly reject any restrictions of any kind on our guns, including any form of safe storage rules.
And we reject asking gun ranges to scrutinize to the extent possible the mental state of people coming to shoot, and encouraging the ranges to reject the business of people who seem depressed or agitated.
Plus we totally reject coming down hard on parents whose tykes kill themselves and murder their sibs cuz the folks leave guns lying all over the house. NO to all of this, Wyomingites will tell you. They will also say:
You gonna restrict bridges too? Cliffs? Rope? Suicide methods are all around us; if you don’t use a gun you’ll use something else. Guns are part of our life blood, our very being, out here, and you’ll have, well, quite a bloody revolt if you try to tell us ANYTHING about guns. Full stop.
The humongous lawsuit everyone’s been anticipating against – among others – the people who make and market the military weapon which that teenager used to obliterate twenty one elementary school kids and teachers in Uvalde is announced ($27 billion, if you were wondering).
Daniel Defense is famous for this adorable ad:
I mean the one on the left. Paranoid, fully militarized variations of the one on the right are used by most gun makers, who typically target violent unstable teenagers with them. As Ryan Busse, a former gun executive, notes in my headline, manufacturers don’t even bother playing along with the protection/hunting bullshit anymore. Daniel Defense’s factory address is 101 War Fighter Way.
The ad on the left stands out because it doesn’t just go after insane eighteen year olds like the Uvalde guy; and it doesn’t just go after babies (what age is the babe in the photo? three? four?) but itsanctifiesthe AK-47 wielding toddler with a Biblical verse and a praying hands emoji. It adds Jesus to the mix.
The president of Daniel Defense sits on the corporate advisory board at Georgia Southern University but UD‘s thinking he’s desperately seeking his own consultants this morning.
I’m pretty sure I know what Bain or whoever is telling him. The suit won’t go anywhere but the whole thing’s gonna cost you a shitload of money. The good news is the NRA will pay it all.
Smith&Wesson blasts back at deep state harassment over its kid-friendly/shooter game ad campaigns for human-pulverizing toys. Wee1 must also be pissed:
Not to mention BabyGun or whatever its called:
A little known fact is that rather than featuring in romper room play, most guns are simply used to kill yourself. Self-slaughter holds a vast majority over any other use. Guns are largely about blowing your brains out with one hundred percent certainty (other methods fall short of this standard), and in some states (Alaska, Wyoming, Montana) they’re scooping wildcatters and cowboys off the floor pretty much 24/7.
For instance, Utah, another gunny he-man state, boasts this remarkable statistic:
Utah has one of the highest death by suicide rates in the country, currently ranked sixth. According to the Utah Department of Health, suicide rates in the tricounty area [northeast Utah: Daggett, Uintah and Duchesne Counties] are 58% higher than the rest of the state.
Got that? The state’s already comfortably in the top ten; but the tricounty area is 58% higher than the state’s rate!
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So one thing UD has never understood is why gun makers don’t feature ease and certainty of suicide in their advertising, since this happens to be the gun’s calling card, its claim to fame, the primary reason tens of thousands of owners own guns. One obvious campaign would feature pre-death videos solicited from, say, tricounty suicides, in which they explain why choosing a gun to blow their brains out was, well, a no-brainer!
And there’s no reason consumers need to degrade their final act by choosing cheap pistols and smaller arms; in one celebrity spot, manufacturers could feature quarterback Tyler Hilinski’s use of an AR-15 in his suicide. (A Glock will only set you back $500 or so, whereas an AR-15 costs around a thousand. Tag line in this campaign: WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH TO END THE VERY BEST.)
Guns command a vast and growing suicide market; their makers need to exploit this fact. A lot of drunk lonely cowboys are right now sitting on the fence suicide-wise; a strong ad campaign is probably all they need.
Yeah. That one delegate. When you boast the country’s highest gun suicide rate, you need to be ready to blow your head off at a moment’s notice. To keep your first-place ranking.
