The weapons Americans buy to protect their loved ones are the weapons that end up being accidentally discharged into a loved one’s leg or chest or head. The weapons Americans buy to protect their young children are years later used for self-harm by their troubled teenagers. Or they are stolen from their car by criminals and used in robberies and murders. Or they are grabbed in rage and pointed at an ex-partner.

… Above all else, guns are used for suicide. In any given year, twice as many Americans die by suicide as by homicide. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among teenagers and young adults, behind only accidents. The good news is that suicide is highly preventable. Most suicide attempts are impulsive, an act of depression or panic. If a person survives an attempt, he or she will almost certainly survive the suicidal impulse altogether. A gun in the house massively raises the likelihood that a suicide attempt will end in death.

… Guns everywhere engender violence everywhere.

… The gun you trust against your fears is itself the thing you should fear. The gun is a lie.

… are SO much more likely to be random assholes shooting each other than a terror incident. With four hundred million guns lying around, you need to get used to a lot of bangbang.

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Story is still developing, but it looks as though someone shot and killed a police officer at the site. Maybe suicide by cop?

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An officer died after being stabbed on Tuesday during a brief outbreak of violence at a transit station outside the Pentagon, on the outskirts of Washington DC, and a suspect in the incident was shot by law enforcement and died at the scene, officials said.

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Chicago recorded 650 murders in 2017. Japan, which has 46 times as many people, had 307 homicides the same year. We’ve simply come to accept a level of violence in this country that much of the rest of the world—from poor, developing countries such as Vietnam to wealthy nations such as the United Kingdom—can’t even imagine. Ignoring that level of human suffering is hardly progressive, and it isn’t hysterical to say so.

… Joshua Koskoff, an attorney for the families, said the [33 million dollar] settlements were offered by two of Remington’s insurers.

“Ironshore and James River … deserve credit for now realizing that promoting the use of AR-15s as weapons of war to civilians is indefensible. Insuring this kind of conduct is an unprofitable and untenable business model,” Koskoff said in a statement.

The years pass, but the Sandy Hook massacre always – to quote from a Philip Larkin poem –

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

At least it destroyed one of the most disgusting gun manufacturers; at least insurers will take a second look at gun manufacturers.

Wyoming, always in a tight race with Alaska, is winner and still champeen.

See? UD‘s Maryland is absolutely pathetic on gun ownership, as are virtually all the other low-suicide states. It’s a comfort to realize that all we have to do to compete with the top of the list is buy a shitload more guns.

As the NRA’s famous line has it: Guns don’t kill people. People with guns kill themselves.

Wyoming, with the most guns and the highest suicide (overwhelmingly by gun) rate in the country, wants the National Rifle Association to relocate to the state.

This idea would create a brilliant synergy, sure to sweep up any suicide-hesitant gun owners into the general NRA-infused enthusiasm for La Vie (or in this case La Mort) Militaire. Just as locating the makers of oxycontin smack dab in the middle of the most addicted part of the US represents an obviously robust business plan, so placing the national headquarters of the NRA, which features a gun museum, a gun cafe, a gun bookstore, a gun movie theater, and just everything gun, in the very center of America’s suicide by gun epidemic, promises to take a real rifle blast to the head of the Depressed Cowboy State.

Ms. Perez told [her son] to re-buckle, but he refused to listen and climbed into the driver’s seat of the vehicle. Then as she turned her head to look out the window towards the gas station (opposite of the location), she heard a loud boom. Ms. Perez looked back at [her son] and noticed his eyes were looking in opposite directions.

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Kids and guns! What are ya gonna do?

UD predicts that in a few years, along with adorable Dog and Baby videos, we’ll have our choice of Gun and Baby videos, where four year olds play Find the Hidden Glock and blow their heads off. Only in America, land of 390 million guns.

Another DeLillo Death (others here) at the neighborhood golf club.

[Yesterday,] a [Massachusetts state] trooper stopped to help two cars pulled over in the breakdown lane. State Police said it appeared the two cars were refueling but the trooper noticed eight-to-10 people in the cars were wearing full military-style uniforms. Some had long rifles, some had pistols, and some had both. The trooper asked for driver’s licenses and proper licensing for the guns, but the group did not provide either.

A McMansion full of toys

All for girls and boys!

2-Year-Old Shoots Both Parents after Finding Gun in Maine Home

Big Sky Country’s proud of its Number One in America suicide ranking, and no federal gun control is getting in the way of that.

Ain’t got no shrinks out here, either!

Nothing stands in the way of our over-65s who’ve had enough booze and loneliness shooting themselves in the head.

YEEHAW!!

Was his doctor (who he shot to death along with most of the doctor’s family) treating him for mental disorders related to the concussions? Was he obviously mentally ill? If so, how did he get the gun? Do they sell guns to mentally ill people in South Carolina?

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There are (according to one source) 21 guns for every individual in South Carolina. Adams had his pick.

His proud alma mater, South Carolina State, hasn’t yet taken down his hero page.

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‘I can say he’s a good kid,’ [Adams’ father said]. ‘I think the football messed him up.’ Football and an entire state sagging under the weight of its weaponry. Football and weaponry and mental illness and I’ll bet Adams was transmitting for some time to a number of people that he was messed up. Nothing like 21 guns per person for the deeply paranoid. Even if people tried keeping him away from guns, in South Carolina that would have been impossible.

I wonder if he issued threats. All of this will come out, and we’ll all read about it, because in a country where heavily armed uninteresting madmen kill dozens of people every week, this killing titillates: a rich prominent doctor; a high body count including children; an NFL football player. South Carolina: Ground zero for Strange brew, see what’s inside of you: Guns, god, football.

And what drugs – prescription, non-prescription – was the shooter on? All of this will come out.

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And as to the shock the local police chief is expressing – “This doesn’t happen here.” – weawy? Depends on what you mean by “here,” don’t it? Here as in the teeny tiny town where it happened, or here as in all over South Carolina, one of the ten most dangerous states in the country.

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His sister confirms that he had been for some time “aggressively” unbalanced. Yet another instance of the truth Nathan Heller not long ago uttered: Going berserk with guns has become a way of American life.

Yeah, Roof was twenty-one years old too – just like our latest massacrist – when he sat in a chair and point blank killed a group of black Bible students. 22-year-old Elliott Rodger didn’t like women, so he shot and killed a bunch of women. Latest guy’s thing was Asians (information is preliminary, but UD‘s going to presume this motive). Mentally unbalanced hate-monger young ‘uns armed to the teeth: What a grand American achievement. Couldn’t have done it without the NRA.

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“Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”

And fortunately for the mass killer, Georgia has no waiting period, no cooling off period, before you can walk out with a gun, so this kid was instantly able to act on his … feeling kinda bad yesterday.

Who would have thought a 21 year old would be impulsive? Now that he’s slaughtered all those women I’ll bet he feels better. Probably the mood passed.

He bought the gun hours before he started ripping people open.

Betty Baucom McConnell said she witnessed the events from her front door.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ she told KODT-TV. 

‘It looked like the wild, wild west. I couldn’t get my phone to work. I tried to go live. 

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ McConnell said. ‘The police did a great job.’

McConnell said she was enjoying a birthday dinner at home when she heard gunshots outside.

‘[I] looked out the front door and there was this lady in front of my house with a gun and she was trying to get in my daughter’s car and my daughter was at the door hollering at her to “get away from my car”,’ McConnell said. 

‘Next thing I knew she pulled out the gun and she got in her stance and she was shooting at the police and police was shooting back at her.’ 

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Details.