The mayor seemed entirely unstartled. It never stops; why should it stop for her press conference?

… a group of American universities where gun massacres coincide with their homecoming festivities. We’ve already covered Grambling’s celebrations; only a few days later, Fort Valley State in Georgia struts its stuff.

Stay tuned! It wouldn’t be homecoming without a spray of flowers and a spray of bullets.

Behind this flat descriptive sentence lie the breathtaking, deathtaking statistics of America’s most murderous state, Louisiana, where shooting, especially among the very young, is happening pretty much all the time, pretty much everywhere. Two fatal shootings within a week on one American university campus – Grambling State, with today’s killing at a homecoming party – tells you how normalized it’s all become. Soon this stuff won’t make the news at all.

Grambling’s not far from Shreveport, if you want to get a quick sense of the world we’re talking about here. Shreveport’s already got among the highest gun violence rates in the nation; this year, they’ve gone UP eleven percent from the city’s rate last year.

Today’s Grambling killing happened at two AM…? The shooter wasn’t a student…? You might say there’s not much one can do about this – but there is, actually. Why in the world would you let your kid go to school at a place where they let campus parties go til two AM; and why, given the riot of gun violence in Louisiana, would the school not check i.d.s and weaponry at campus gatherings?

The school claims it had all sorts of security there. And that tells you that not only is it dumb enough to sponsor large late-night parties in a very dangerous neighborhood, but it’s also incompetent.

Don’t let your kid go to Grambling.

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

Update: You see the … fatal disconnect in the president’s remarks: “Why would someone come to dear old Grambling and commit an act of violence?” Man seems to think he’s in dear old Arcadia rather than dear old murder capital USA. With that degree of denial at the very top, we shouldn’t be surprised at these outcomes.

“As an alumnus, I’m embarrassed,” said Edmond Davis, who was visiting his alma mater with his wife. “Deeply embarrassed. It saddens me.”

Yes. Your school can’t hold a homecoming without a fatal shooting. You should take the school’s president by the shoulders – firmly – and say as directly as possible Grambling is unfortunately located in the heart of the heart of American homicide. If you want the school to survive, you are going to have to make it as much of an armed camp as possible. And by the way, doesn’t the school have trustees? Do they do anything?

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

“We must … accept that the issues we face with gun violence are non-students who come to our great institution and cause harm to students and other non-students who are casually enjoying themselves,” [Grambling’s student government president] wrote. “We must realize that at some point we must stop allowing outside individuals to pass through checkpoints without university clearance.” 

Scandalous that this obvious necessity occurs to students but not university leadership.

She wonders why some people consider this a strange prediction.

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

They’re a little slow down south. They’ll get with the program.

Yet another example of the absolute refusal to name the primary reason Wyoming consistently tops national suicide rankings: All them surefire, convenient, guns lying around absolutely everywhere. This editorial in the Casper Star Tribune offers a full plate of cliches and a plea for better education. You betcha, partner.

At least 173 shots fired in 3-hour span in St. Paul, injuring 7, but that was way back in May, and it doesn’t count because it was three separate incidents; whereas last night in St Paul, in one single incident at a bar, multiple shooters fired – and man, I don’t know, they’re not giving out estimates yet, but the shooters killed one person and injured fourteen and apparently the bambambam just went on and on so I’m thinking

multiple shooters

crowded venue

protracted gunfight, chaos

so okay let’s say conservatively that’s 400-500 shots and maybe many more. Not as many as the Vegas shooter – that was a thousand bullets – but he did massive planning and amassed a vast arsenal in his hotel room. It’s not fair to compare the bullet count in St Paul, which was a spontaneous massacre, to Stephen Paddock’s military-precision atrocity; but on the other hand, especially given its unplanned nature, the St Paul shootout is impressive.

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

Less impressive, though I guess striking in a way, is St Paul’s sheriff predicting the shooting at the Truck Park bar the night before it happened.

“Quite the gathering here at the Truck Park,” [Bob] Fletcher said on his livestream. “Holy mackerel. This is a lot of folks. We’ve never had any shots fired right here. I hope we never do, but this volume at some point it’s gonna happen, right?”

His 16 year old daughter “shot herself with her dad’s handgun in their living room. The gun was kept on the mantle and her father usually took it to bed with him, but had not that night.”

Excellent protection.

‘We’ll figure out where this individual got this gun from,’ Jeff Boshek, special agent in charge of the ATF’s Dallas Field Division, told CNN. ‘Our agents won’t sleep, working with our partners here, to figure out how he got this weapon in his hand to come in this school and cause this tragedy today.’

Heck I reckon the little tyke got it… deep in the heart of Texas!

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

Uh huh, I know what you’re saying. All his buds that what he got in a tiff with this morning in class shoulda been carrying too so we’d a had one fine fettle of a gunfight. Hell, there’d a been time for someone to record it and all.

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

Memory lane! SOOOOO many to choose from. Here’s one that kinda stays with me.

… BOOM!

BOOM BOOM BOOOOOOOMM!!!!

LOL. Waaaall now I don’t know, the campus of Colorado State Pueblo is a notorious killing field, and Robert Killis (helluva name) maybe needed these weapons – and, as it turns out, many, many more – in his car and apartment to stay safe. Plus he “liked to kill people” and “wanted to kill President Biden” and thought he might use “pipe bombs … to create an explosion in the courtyard where the ROTC students ate and took breaks. Killis would also talk about setting the pipe bombs off in the courtyard so when students ran, he could shoot them as they ran.”

Funny thing is if he just kept his trap shut and kept all that shit unloaded he’d probably have been fine. Colorado and Utah are America’s most gun friendly states, and their universities reflect that. But Bob’s a people person, and he just couldn’t help sharing and someone got scared and told the cops.

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This blog has covered quite a few Killises – wee lads who come to college outfitted à la Stephen Paddock because they want to kill everybody. Only a matter of time before one of them gets his wish.

UD’s been compiling, during this Suicide Prevention Month, the many forms of writing out of Wyoming about that state’s appalling suicide rate that never mention guns.

Though firearms are the third-most common method for attempting suicide, they are responsible for the largest share of suicide deaths because they are so lethal. Nationally, nearly two-thirds of all deaths by firearm are due to suicide, and Wyoming has had the highest rate of suicide by firearm of any state over the last 15 years. Studies have linked higher rates of gun ownership with increased risk of suicide death, but in Wyoming, which also has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country, this is an unpopular topic. As Tom Morton of the Casper Star-Tribune put it in a series of articles about Wyoming’s suicide epidemic, guns and suicide are the “third rail of Wyoming culture.”

So for instance a University of Wyoming news page yesterday touted the work on Wyoming suicides of one of their psychology professors. Let’s take a look.

‘[Carolyn] Pepper’s research team at UW’s Stress and Mood Lab is using nationally collected health data to understand what factors are specific to the Mountain West’s suicide rate. The stoic, individualistic Western mindset is one possible explanation… The Stress and Mood Lab initially studied demographic factors such as age, race, urbanization level and gender. Although all of these were elevated factors in the Mountain West, they did not explain why suicide rates are so high. The research team is now shifting focus to the cultural factors of living in a state with a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality.’

Hm yes that bootstraps thing… You see it in ‘Deer Hunter’ states like Pennsylvania too, but they have strikingly fewer guns and less suicide than Wyoming…

‘“I kept thinking someday I should study suicide, but I was sure that someone was already doing this research,” Pepper says. “I waited and waited, but no psychologist was looking at suicide in Wyoming.”’

She was sure cuz… you know… when they’re dropping like flies in your state… when some counties in your state – like Platte – are just stupendously suicidal… you figure the best social scientists around are hard at work on it. But that third rail! Why bother? Just keep ignoring the Uberti in the room and you won’t piss off anyone.

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Let’s pile on. When you add to all of this Wyoming’s insanely low covid vaccination rate, with the sort of death rate that goes along with that, you have to conclude that the whole state’s got a death wish.

Here’s a typical article, and believe me UD has read many of them. Not a word about taking guns away from troubled friends and relatives, or at least securing them more responsibly, or something… State by state, suicide rates track closely with gun ownership, and Wyoming also leads the nation (at the moment it trails Montana – also Suicide Central – by a bit) in gun ownership… So you’d think experts and commentators there would have what to say about all those instant death appliances lying around the house, beckoning…

But the state of Wyoming seems to consider it rude to mention that guns in that state are FAR more about suicide than self-protection or homicide. Just bad form.

Here I stand head in hand
But hey they’ve rationed care
I’m bleeding from a gunshot wound
Treatment rooms nowhere

Number One for gunshot death
Alaska — my great state
I can’t seem to catch my breath
Doc says four-week wait

Hey, you’ve got to hide your guns away
Hey, you’ve got to hide your guns away

When it comes to suicide
We’re ranked Number Two
If you tried and you need help
Nothing you can do

How could Mike say to me
Masks are not the way
Gather ’round all you clowns
Let me hear you say

Hey, you’ve got to hide your guns away
Hey, you’ve got to hide your guns away

… USA.

Lawyers for Remington Arms, the now-bankrupt gun-maker being sued by nine families of those killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., have subpoenaed the academic, attendance and disciplinary records for five slain students.