Little tyke didn’t manage to get a good shot off; looks as though his teacher will survive.
Success will take patience: This was apparently his first attempted murder, and I’m sure there will be others. Over time, he will learn proper stance, a steadier hand, etc.
Dad! Ball’s in your court. Beyond the obvious (much more father/son time on the shooting range), you’re going to have to pack multiple weapons in the lunchbox from now on, so that your child is able to choose the most appropriate weapon for any given situation.
No fear: The boy has his whole life ahead of him, and this is America.
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And a final, special message for the teacher: Apparently you caused the whole thing. Instead of letting the boy kill the classmate he was fighting with, you insisted on confiscating the weapon, which angered the boy and forced him to shoot at you. DO NOT – EVER – ATTEMPT TO GET BETWEEN A SIX YEAR OLD AND HIS RUGER. I suppose it didn’t even occur to you that this was probably a Christmas present, and one that he’s probably been begging for since he was three. Now it’s in the hands of the cops, and who knows how long it will be before his parents will be able to replace it with a junior AR-15.
Looks as though, because of you, Richneck Elementary School is going to have to wait some time before it gets its massacre. But all in good time.
At the stroke of midnight, a 62 year old Michigan man drove celebratory bullets from his AR-15 into the bodies of two of his fellow revelers, whose bloody deaths microseconds into 2023 set a new world record for fastest end to a new year.
Police are withholding some details because “we don’t want this to become a trend.”
The Wall Street Journal (!) editorial board goes there. Of course if you’ve been reading University Diaries you already know that a profound resurgence of American anti-intellectualism, coupled with violent infantilism — see our most recent ex-president’s fantasy-super-powers playing cards, or the fixation with loaded, openly carried guns among several congressional Republican nitwits/coup plotters — accounts for much of the cultural degradation the WSJ‘s been noticing.
The establishment Republicans at the paper are dismayed, to be sure; but lurking just below dismay is fear: Not only are the gunny dumdums ungoverning and ungovernable. Quite a few of them are barking mad.
Stupid, crazy, and fully armed.
***************************** PS: Too meshugah even for the Vatican. Trumpies who pose fetuses on church altars lose their collars.
‘Momma told me to give her the gun, so I gave her the gun. Momma shot the cops and momma was shot. Her eyes are open and she is breathing a little bit. Are you going to hurt me? Momma told me people are trying to kill us. Is momma going to be OK?’
Grieve for the two police who had not yet gotten the memo: Every American, including fragile little middle-aged ladies, is likely to be packing heat. And be highly trained in killing multiple people.
And it’s Mississippi. Of course. Might could be it’s time to change police training down there.
U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman is facing pressure to resign from Democrats in his South Carolina congressional district after a string of text messages revealed the Rock Hill Republican called for a military takeover in order to keep then-President Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.
In response to this report in the Post and Currier, as well as to the White House comment, Bates has issued a statement:
You wanna talk “disgusting“? Disgusting is the president of the United States choosing a day sacred to people like me, people unafraid to stand up for the right of all Americans to arm themselves with Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S rifles, on which to attack my patriotism.
It will be my pleasure, as leader of the South Carolina Milisha, to blast the brains of the entire Eggzecutive Branch to a pulp. Just watch me.
He thinks his most favorite thing – martial law, which includes lots of guns to wave at women!!! – is spelled marshall rather than martial, and that’s because Bates is soooooooooper stooooooooooopid and now everyone’s laughing at him.
But that part of this story is, you know, okay. You get what you vote for, and folks in parts of SC like stupid people, and that’s democracy, and democracy is a beautiful thing, and UD will defend it as long as she draws run-on sentences.
Howsomever. Bates’s breathless excitement as he demands from Mark Meadows and the president a military takeover of the United States in the wake of Trump’s defeat is not quite as okay as the right of stupid people to be represented by stupid people:
[W]e are at a point of no return in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!
Bates’s misspellings and errors and exclamations and caps and all tell you he is really excited, really agitated, really in need of calming himself down by exposing his loaded gun to groups of women, or, lacking that, leading a military coup against the United States.
Is Rep. Bates a threat to our country? He will be until we can find some way of dealing with his shpilkes, his inability to calm himself down in the matter of guns. I see two possible ways to go.
Cyproterone Acetate is a chemical castrator whose tranquillizing effect is well-known.
2. A more unorthodox approach would involve penectomy followed by surgical attachment of an NAA Mini-Revolver or other appropriately portioned piece.
Openly carried assault rifles have become an all too common feature of political events around the country and are having a chilling effect on the exercise of political speech… [We must address] the armed intimidation that has become commonplace in public places and the gun culture that makes it possible… [An] obsession with “tactical culture” and rifles like the AR-15 [is] a fringe movement among the 81 million American gun owners, but it is one of several alarming trends that have coincided with the increase in political violence in this country, along with the spread of far-right extremist groups, an explosion of anti-government sentiment and the embrace of deranged conspiracy theories by many Republican politicians.
Do you know how many high school basketball/football games end in gun fights in this country?
Lots; and the numbers are growing. Now watch as the phenom – utterly predictable as all of America resolves tiffs with one of the four hundred million guns available – moves to the college sports scene.
… makes sure its universities share fully in this bounty. Its two highest-profile campuses – U New Mexico, and New Mexico State – are POP POP POP POPPIN away with healthy rivalry, on the basketball court and off! (For the long glorious sports history – there isn’t any other history – of both schools, go here.) Now that both schools’ teams are literally engaged in an ongoing shooting war, the basketball coaches have, uh, started to issue statements and shit.
When your schools are dumpsters instead of colleges, and when your basketball teams are gangs (with the coaching staff apparently part of the gangs), instead of basketball teams, you should…
Oh I dunno. You’re down there with your guns and your gangs, leading your best life now, living out loud, standing in your truth, letting a smile be your umbrella, and ain’t no place of mine to look at the carnage and say one damn word.
About 45,000 people in a central North Carolina county [full of retirees] remained without electricity Sunday afternoon after two electric substations were damaged by gunfire…
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“T’aint nothin,” said Evelina Stanton, 95, a Moore County native, as she packed up a few belongings and moved to an emergency shelter for the week or more it will probably take to get the power back. “I liked to fool around with guns when I was young; we all did. No big deal.”
Indeed a spot poll among county residents showed a majority agreed with the statement GUNS SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN OUT OF THE HANDS OF DOMESTIC TERRORISTS.
Since Lake Charles is just about the most dangerous place in the country, itty bitty clubs like the VVS1 Hooka Lounge have EIGHT security guards. Eight! How many people can be in a hooka club on a Tuesday? Thirty? But so many of them carry guns and shoot em off that a itty bitty club on a Tuesday night has 8 – count ’em – 8 – armed guards.
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Now, even though they say right there on their website that they have outdoor as well as indoor spaces, in the harsh light of last week’s mass shooting there, the owner seems surprised that
That’s what I mean by can-do. You close off one avenue, we’ll find another. Then we’ll kill everybody.
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One more thing about can-do. The club owner will be paying out millions in damages. The city can in principle shut the abattoir down. The owner could close the place. But the place won’t close!
Lake Charles Strong. We’ll come back from this tragedy better armed, with much bigger guns in the hands of younger and more insane people, courtesy of gun-friendly Louisiana.
Did I say gun-friendly? We can do better than that! Louisiana has the highest murder rate of any state in America. VVS1 can’t shut down. We have a record to uphold.
… killing is something this blog has followed for a long time. (Feast your eyes.) Usually it’s guns, but sometimes students (see the marching band) just beat the shit out of people until they die.
“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t surprised. [E]very time you turn around, there’s a shootout,” notes a person who lives across the street from the school. FAMU in particular, and Tallahassee in general, is just a mad wild ongoing BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG lately — guns galore, and they’re going off all the time and killing everybody. And hey lookit all they’re doing about it! Everything but anything about guns. Guns are sacred, and such a fine thing for our young people. Florida is WAY gun-friendly.
It’s a strange way, thinks UD, to go to college; but that is just your clueless elitist eastern seaboard dumdum speaking, isn’t it. I’m sure everything’s fine down there.
Due to the [two] shootings that have occurred at my apartment complex, as well as the on-campus shooting, I am saddened to say that I will be leaving the University of New Mexico. My family and I feel this is the best decision for me and my safety. I will be entering the transfer portal …
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[Brooke] Berry’s mother, Amy Berry, told Ken Sickenger from the Albuquerque Journal that Saturday’s incident was “the last straw.”
“Brooke really likes the basketball team, and she wanted to stick it out, but she was scared,” she said. “She called us Sunday morning crying and said, ‘I want to come home,’ so her dad and I drove down 14 hours to get her. If something happened to her, we’d never forgive ourselves.”
Berry arrived in New Mexico from Billings, Mont. She lived at Lobo Village, a student-housing complex just west of the UNM basketball arena, otherwise known as The Pit. The two previous incidents happened close enough to Berry for her to be concerned for her safety.
“Brooke called when a shooting was happening, and she was hiding in the bathtub,” the mother told the Journal. “I was thinking, ‘This is crazy.'”
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The university has released a statement.
Brooke’s being a real GIRL about this… Everyone at UNM has hidden in a bathtub during a gunfight outside their room! BFD! What a baby.
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The traditional New Mexico State/University of New Mexico men’s basketball rivalry game has been cancelled. The latest dorm killing was between members of the rival teams, and since NMSU killed a UNM guy the rivalry’s been settled: NMSU wins.
The two schools are working out a new money-saving arrangement in which the big game will not take place at all anymore. The schools will share the cost of weapons and ammo and let the guys work out the rivalry by killing each other every year at this time.
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
