“… Fewer people own guns, but the people who own them own more of them—a lot more—and the reason they most often cite for owning them is no longer hunting (56 percent) or even target shooting (70 percent), both activities one can imagine normal people engaging in, but “protection against crime” (88 percent). For all but a small subset of people, owning guns for protection against crime is not normal. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. It’s paranoid and unhealthy and very, very dangerous.

People used to own guns to kill animals. Now they own guns to kill people. And enough of them are emotionally unbalanced enough to cause serious trouble…

Everything unkind that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama ever said about this group (“basket of deplorables,” “cling to guns or religion”) is true, easily confirmed by even the most cursory review of polling data. Because of the unrepresentative nature of the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate, this minority’s opposition to gun control is sufficient to block any and all legislation intended to address the problem…

A majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws, but 80 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners do not, and that’s enough to prevent anything from happening…

How many more children will die before things change? It’s my duty to inform you, future victims, that 185 isn’t going to be enough. Your blood will have to be spilled as well. You probably won’t have to wait very long. The next school massacre is likely only a month or two away.”

[This] is happening, over and over, because certain people who very obviously have the power to try to stop it are refusing to do so and letting it happen. That isn’t random…

[This] is tolerated by Republicans and the right wing. This tolerance of such high levels of violence makes it, in essence, sanctioned by the state, or perhaps in this case, the states…

[Republicans] find this level and type of violence acceptable, and choose, over and over, not to do anything about it. And that is the fact that unites these otherwise unrelated acts of violence: The Republican Party makes excuses every time for why this or that act couldn’t have been prevented, and we must therefore do nothing. That makes the Republican Party responsible for this carnage…

… Am I saying that individual Republicans want individual schoolchildren to die? Of course not. I am saying that these same Republicans in general venerate a level of violence in our society that the majority of us find intolerable and appalling, and they understand intuitively how that violence advances their agenda, by giving their rabid base something to rally around. Mass-shooting violence used to be random in this country. But at this point, with it happening so frequently, and with the fanatical veneration of guns and the violence they reap so deeply knitted into the American right’s worldview, this violence ceased to be random some years ago.

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

From The New Republic newsletter, ‘Fighting Words,’ by Michael Tomasky. (No link available.)

No announcement has yet been made, but apparently every single act has pulled out.

But… Dead Kennedys to the rescue! Well-sourced rumors indicate that DK will take over the entire concert, which will consist of an hour-long performance of their classic, I Kill Children.

I fell on the [bodies] of those already murdered…. During the first moments I couldn’t grasp anything – either where I was or how I got there. I thought that I had gone mad, but when people started to fall on top of me, I regained consciousness and understood everything. I started to feel my arms, legs, stomach, [and] head to make certain that I had not even been wounded. I pretended to be dead.

Miah Cerrillo or Dina Pronicheva? Try to guess!!

The line is taken from the group Rise Up’s song, The Great Die-Off!

And yes, they’ll be there in person to perform it!!

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

UPDATE: And, I mean, they better be, cuz yet MORE traitors to this great blood-soaked country are dropping out of performing! Larry Gatlin and Larry Stewart – you’re showing your true colors, you rats.

Luckily, the NRA was able to sign this group at the last minute.

But for some reason Don McLean just ain’t in the mood this year.

And neither is the stinkin’ rich genius who made and marketed the gun Wee Hitler used on all them little kids. Hey fella where’s your sense of fun? What’s with you and McLean?

Better not be any more cancellations. We gonna pah-tyyy!!!

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

Ten minutes later:

Whoops! Plumb forgot the whole Ukraine thing. But I still love assault weapons, specially for teens!

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

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was slated to speak at the convention but his team told news outlets on Tuesday the Republican had notified the NRA he would not be attending because of an “unexpected change in his schedule”…

F-a-a-a-ck… they’re dropping like… And now that pussy Abbott says he ain’t sure he’s going either…

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

Finally some good news! The NRA announces that Motörhead will replace Don McLean and will sing Dancing on Your Grave!

Here’s a thought. Start at the bottom, or the top, which, as always, is Mississippi. Number One for least restrictive gun laws in the country. Number One for gun homicides.

Start there. I don’t say try to change it; Mississippi will always be like this.

But, for once, as a nation, pay attention to Mississippi. Gun-wise, it has the worst of everything. Gun-wise, it is, for states that want to change, that can change, the basest baseline. Ask yourself: What exactly is Mississippi doing? How can we not do that? How can we be better than Mississippi?

Of course we’ll do something. We’ll make Texas’s gun laws even looser.

America, America, God shed his grace on thee. What other country produces killers like this, able to post $100,000 bail! Even our subway shooters are rich here!

Plus America gave him all the guns he could hope to use to murder a wonderful man just trying to get across town to meet his brother for lunch.

But none of this would be possible without rapid parole and bail for people who shouldn’t get bail and an unsecured public transit system. You need all the elements to be in place. New York, New York! If Abdullah can make it there, he can make it anywhere.

Don’t never get tired, ’round these blog-parts, of reading and writing about university football.

Take Texas A&M, jest about the filthiest jock shop in America. Up in that there headline its athletic director is ahuffin and apuffin cuz filthy U Bama coach Nick Saban said tother day Texas A&M was (lawdy!) corrupt. How dare he! We is going to the filthy SEC and making a formal complaint because I never!

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

Saban also badmouthed filthy Jackson State, and their coach (he’s the highest paid person on campus and doesn’t know that the past tense of pay is paid) is also on fire with righteous indignation…

But hold on. Let’s avert our eyes from this latest dust-up and look hard at the home of Jackson State University, cuz that’s where the big news story is, only no one gives a shit about some obscure state capital shooting itself to death.

Did you know that Jackson Miss has the highest gun homicide rate in the entire nation?

In gunny America, that ain’t no story. It’s gotten virtually no coverage. But ol’ UD thinks it a better use of your time to consider why Jackson is shooting itself to death than to follow the mutual insults of a couple of rich old hicks.

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

Not that it’s all that mysterious how Jackson got there. First, lose most of your cops and make it impossible for the ones left to mess with anyone holding a gun. Make sure your court system is backed up to the point of paralysis, and headed by judges who don’t put people away. Encourage absolutely everyone to open carry the most astoundingly powerful weaponry.

Your state has America’s weakest gun laws and – how bout that – its highest gun death rate!

Reduce your civic life to total gun culture, so that even thirteen year olds carry and kill. You start at thirteen, and even if you’re caught you don’t go to jail. Many years of carnage lie ahead of you. Even if you get blown away by, say, 23, that’s still ten years of killing in the streets of Jackson.

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

Why wouldn’t you send your kid to Jackson State?

NYT

We cannot control ideas or speech and should not attempt to do so even if we could. But we could reduce access to the weaponry that converts ideology into atrocity. At least, other advanced countries find themselves able to do so. Almost every country on Earth has citizens filled with vitriol, but no comparably advanced country has a gun-violence epidemic quite like America’s…

[T]he American exception that bathes this country in blood and grief again and again and again is not that we are uniquely susceptible to racism or jihadism or veganism. The American exception is the unique ease of access to weapons.

…Americans die by the gun in such terrible numbers because Americans live by the gun with such reckless disregard.

… that, but the Pennsylvania Republican slate can also purchase guns.

Scroll down for all the footage!

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

“This should be a bigger story.”

But the Buffalo supermarket massacre -18 year old; semi-automatic – just wiped it off the map!

“‘Damn, look at him, a young boy,’ [an] onlooker … comments on one of the bodies.”