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.
… and now, only a few months later, we get a guilty verdict and a life sentence for his girlfriend, who Adelson apparently paid to put together the conspiracy to murder Florida State University law professor Dan Markel.
Markel had to die because he sought shared custody of his children by Adelson’s sister, and this annoyed Adelson. He allegedly had two thug friends of his girlfriend blast his head off.
Ja, ja, wheels of justice… UD only hopes they nail Adelson (and his mother?) before Markel’s elderly parents die.
When a fifteen year old in America’s jest-about gunniest state takes his parents’ gun (why wasn’t it locked away?) and annihilates three of his siblings and then himself, it generates a lot of interest. National coverage has been extensive because even high up in our mass murder madlands fifteen is remarkably young for such extensively lethal gunplay; and, you know, he killed his sibs and not his high school buds as per usual; and I mean just in terms of the whole leave an entire house a blood-splattered mess thing the killer exhibited noteworthy precociousness.
Now this all went down three days ago, and as this article notes, absolutely nothing has issued forth from the Alaska authorities. Just the bare minimum. No names. No explanation as to why a house full of little kids (a bunch of other sibs in the house survived) featured no parents and a gun.
Why so shy, big guys? The bedlam was discovered by a neighbor, so clearly the family’s identity is known to the neighborhood. Why don’t we know it? Why don’t we know anything about parents who had… seven? … eight?… kids and didn’t think it worth their while to put their gun away? Or did they say to their kinda funky fifteen year old Here’s the gun in case anyone tries to break in while we’re gone?
Here’s a possibility. In these big gunny states there’s a Lookaway Protocol. Nothing to see here. None of your goddamn business. You’re just gonna make a big fucking Thing about it and next thing you know they’ll take away our guns. It was probably a false flag operation, with gun-control fanatics playing the kids. Like at Sandy Hook. Let’s all just shut up about it and move on.
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
