Because this is America, that’s why. Arming murderous maniacs is just the way we roll.
A Supermarket in California!
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What thoughts I have of you tonight
Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg
As I scan the parking lot
Of the Walmart in Waukegan
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Two strangers in SUVs met
On that fruited plain
They blew each other away
With their Glocks
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As one they shot; as one staggered
Into their SUVs
As one staggered
Into the local emergency room
As one were arrested
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O Whitman, O Ginsberg! O Walmart Waukegan parking lot!
I stagger beside you, dreaming of the lost America of love
Past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage
More depressed drunk dudes with forty guns in their house blast their heads off in Wyoming than in any other American state, and the state aims to keep it that way. A pathetic suicide hotline, virtually no psychiatrists, guns up the wazoo, stoic lonely cowboy culture, no interest even in talking about it – Wyoming has refined the suicide brew to the point where its national blasted-head dominance is unquestioned. Rates in the US are around 13 suicides per 100,000 people; it’s not unusual to find counties in Wyoming where rates are over 50 per 100,000.
So here’s a typical (rare) article about suicide in Wyoming. The graphic shows the one demographic least likely to do the deed – a white woman. The article itself fails to put guns front and center, even though it’s clear to the densest idiot that suicide rates are way higher in states where gun ownership is highest, and lowest where ownership is lowest.
But of course Wyoming doesn’t want to go there; it doesn’t want to say anything negative about our bestest bud Mr Beretta.
This is what you call highly fertile University Diaries territory, and ol’ UD has been firing up her keyboard fingers, with special attention to the little fucker who left the fun to go to his car and take his gun out of his glove compartment.
UD was further fired up at the thought of letting it rip in regard to Leonid Brezhnev, WVU’s Director of Fraternal Values and Leadership, and his priceless comment on the event:
[W]e’re viewing this as an opportunity for us to collaborate and prevent it from happening again.
(I may have his name wrong.)
But then she went and checked out Garrett Boehme’s social media pages, and this took the wind out of her sails or the fire out of her fingers or whatever. She had such things planned for the shooter! She was going to do a whole riff on Garrett being a direct descendant of the great mystic Jakob Böhme who influenced Coleridge and Yeats and all and from whose Wikipedia page I took the following image, which reminds me so much of the work of my late friend Paul Laffoley:
But there was long-limbed, nature-loving Garrett grinning out from his Instagram, sharing his love of flowers and white water rafting and the National Guard.
I’m serious – if we can – armamentally – train him up in the difference between Taliban militants celebrating their takeover of the Panjshir Valley, and American soldiers targeting Osama Bin Laden, Garrett will be a crucial part of the homeland defense infrastructure that allows UD to sit securely in her bedroom, gazing at flowers.
The parents have pleaded not guilty to four counts of involuntary manslaughter and remain in jail, each unable to post a $500,000 bond. They face as many as 15 years in prison on each count.
Joyce Vance reviews the charges against the parents of one of our hundreds of school shooters; she devoutly hopes both parents get thrown in the slammer for a very long time.
UD‘s not sure she agrees with Vance that jailing depraved parents will discourage other depraved parents from arming their psychotic little ones. Depraved is depraved: If you love love love guns and violence and gore you’re going to do your thing with your kiddies whatever the cost. Think of Nancy Lanza. Her adoration of large and powerful weaponry all over the house rivaled even that of her mad murderer. I don’t think she would have been put off by some jail time.
However, in terms of sheer justice, let’s all hope the shooter’s disgusting parents are found guilty.
It’s rare that wee UD gets an actual scoop, but she can report here that in the wake of last night’s hookah club bloodbath, and with the memory of campus gun massacres past still fresh, just-retired General McKenzie has agreed to take over command of the Virginia Tech sector.
“The Tech front is particularly challenging,” McKenzie said in his first public statement as incoming commander. “Virginia Beach is also a hot zone, but a decision has been made to position our defensive forces here in Blacksburg at this time. We want students and their parents to be assured that we have established a machine gun perimeter circling the campus, with snipers positioned at vulnerable locations inside Blacksburg itself. Defensive training and equipment will now be standard for all students, faculty, and administrators. I pledge to make the campus and its surroundings a truly hard target. Go Hokies!!“
How could any adult American, let alone a school superintendent, say this? Little kids take out their ghost guns and execute each other on the sidewalk in front of your school, and you tell your community it’s hard to understand the “incident”?
No event could be more pedestrian, more transparent, and more expected. It happens very, very frequently – more and more frequently – in the junior high schools and high schools of the United States. (I’m afraid this list is not up to date, but it will have to do.) Happened a few days ago at a high school nine miles from my house.
There are about four hundred million guns in the US, and some of them are in the hands of the parents of the superintendents’ students. They’re all over their living rooms, bedrooms, and kitchens. How many is the superintendent herself hoarding?
Some of these households have fifty guns and more. These are arsenals, and children are growing up around them. Guns, these children come to know, are there to solve problems. And they are ridiculously accessible, either by taking them from one’s home arsenal, ordering a ghost gun and assembling it, or borrowing one from a friend.
Teenage guys fight all the time. One of the most amazing accomplishments of this country is that while until recently they’d deal with these utterly routine “incidents” with their fists or a pair of scissors or something, we’ve now made it that they can pick off a couple of the folks’ Glocks and kill their enemy.
Get with the program, superintendent. People are going to start laughing at you if you keep saying stupid things.
The suspect was not a danger to other students; police determined there was not an ongoing threat. “It wasn’t an active shooter. There was no other threat to the school community.”
Magruder High sits eight miles away from Les UDs, and in the wake of an almost shot to death student found in one of its bathrooms, the authorities comfort the community with the assurance that a seventeen year old asshole (here’s another one – a few years older) shooting a gun off in the halls of a high school “was not a danger.”
Oh – you mean isn’t a danger now cuz he’s in custody until he gets released to his parents and sent back to Magruder High School? You mean he wasn’t a danger all that time he was packing heat before he decided to use it to shoot someone? You mean all the other fuckers carrying guns at Magruder High School are not a danger?
You mean we should feel okay because he wasn’t an ‘active shooter’ – he wasn’t roaming the halls randomly killing everyone in sight… He was, you know, just after this one guy… Take it easy…
“There was no other threat to the school community.”
Doesn’t everyone else who packs a gun into their backpack every morning constitute a threat? Does Magruder have any idea how many guns are in the school? How do guns get into the school? Does Magruder have Bring Your Guns to School days?
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UPDATE: That’s more like it. Principal apologizes for saying no threat. There was plenty of threat. And, this being America, I’d say that the threat level at a bad public school like Magruder remains – will always remain? – reasonably high. Apparently there are violent fights rather often there. Who can be surprised that things eventually escalated to attempted murder with a ghost gun? And who – with any choice, any money, or any capacity to get their kid financial aid – would keep their kid in an environment like Magruder’s?
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ANOTHER UPDATE: Bunch of other people were in the bathroom when the shooting occurred and not one said a word to a teacher, or called the police. Omerta, you know. Far more dangerous to talk than to shut up. Let the kid bleed to death while you go back to class.
And really – you want your kid to go to school there? If you have no options, I understand, and you have my sympathy. But if you have ANY options at all, get the hell out.
Amelia King, 42, told a school board meeting on Thursday, during a discussion of face masks in school, that ‘I will bring every single gun loaded and ready’. On Friday she was charged with making a terror threat, and released on a $5,000 bond. King, a dental hygienist from Luray, Virginia, apologized and insisted she was speaking figuratively.
A man charged for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot had his pretrial release revoked Tuesday after a dramatic arrest for allegedly driving while intoxicated. James Tate Grant was arrested for drunk driving in a Wake County, North Carolina in December. He told the police who flagged him down that he had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6 …
Grant attempted to get away during the arrest… In his car, the cops found an AR-15, 60 rounds of ammunition, and combat fatigues… [H]e awaits trial for allegedly assaulting a police officer on Jan. 6, prohibited firearm possession, excessive drinking, and drug use … He had previously tested positive for amphetamines twice…
In America, it’s one-stop shopping! You can come here with no weapons at all and buy all the guns you want for your terror attack right off the street!
Why kill people in countries where getting weapons is difficult? Why run the risk of transporting them? In America the streets are lined with Glocks.
Hell, we’ve already got widespread civil violence, what with all them guns going off everywhere. Remember the slogan of the NRA:
You went to a lot of trouble and expense to build your arsenal. Might as well use it.
And do we ever take open carry seriously. Look at the poor mayor of America’s current deadliest city, Jackson, Mississippi! Desperate, he tried getting rid of open carry — and the state came down on him like a ton of Glocks.
As for burqas – they’re banned in much of Europe, but babe this is the land of the free! Banish the thought.
… and he can’t remember when he puts a loaded gun in his work bag. But the US House of Representatives has been relying on Jeffrey Allsbrooks to be its Logistics Manager. Your tax dollars at work, mes petites.