Yes. Wouldn’t want to get into why the dean of Research and Planning at Rio Hondo College not only felt compelled to take a loaded gun to a campus bathroom with him, but why he left the gun in the bathroom, lying atop a magazine (“Meetings Today”) one assumes he was reading in there. We’ve made him resign; could we leave it at that?

But youth wants to know: Was he sticking it up the wazoo while exciting himself with “Meetings Today”? Did he put the gun and the magazine down in a post-orgasmic fog and forget them both?

Amen. Take a step back and ask yourself why you’re being so judgmental toward a Biola University student storing in his dorm room an unregistered AR-15 assault rifle and an unregistered 9mm handgun.

Assuming no concealed weapons on his body, go on up and give him a big hug.

The University of Wyoming’s latest marketing slogan (which UD has cited and … extended a bit … in her headline) is generating controversy.

NOT because cowboys (plus all them guns, natch) have given Wyoming jest ’bout the country’s highest suicide rate, but because the slogan’s offensive.

House-sitting, gunny-style.

“[E]very country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them.“

Was.. He got in the way, today, of one of America’s thousands of thoroughly demented people with big big big guns.

In the matter of the more than ordinarily mysterious suicide of the young (he was only 21) Washington State University hero quarterback, most people are talking about the recent autopsy finding that Hilinski already showed CTE. He had the brain of a sixty-five year old, the doctors said.

Which means scads of university football players in their twenties are probably running around with some degree of CTE. Hilinski after all was a quarterback, a position which typically receives less cerebral punishment than many others.

Et alors? Virtually no one in this country cares; they love football too desperately to give much notice to the early gruesome deaths of their gridiron heroes. People only noticed Hilinski because he wasn’t a mentally eviscerated former pro in his sixties, but still a kid. Same age as Owen Thomas.

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No, ol’ UD is more struck by Hilinski’s father’s comment up there in my headline. Hilinski’s father thinks it’s pretty fucking weird that his kid’s buddies in the dorm had an AR-15 style rifle. Handy, simple, 110% deadly – just the thing for an impulsively self-destructive guy who’d barely hit legal drinking age. (Almost all very young suicides are impulsive.) Hilinski had never handled a gun, but his clueless buddies were happy to give him some pointers, shortly after which he stole the AR-15 and – with this powerful weapon of war – blew his brains out. An incredibly violent bloody suicide, this one.

“We’re always going to have suicide,” [one researcher says,] “and there’s probably not that much to be done for the ones who are determined, who succeed on their 4th or 5th or 25th try. The ones we have a good chance of saving are those who, right now, succeed on their first attempt because of the lethal methods they’ve chosen.” … The element of impulsivity in firearm suicide means that it is a method in which mechanical intervention — or “means restriction” — might work to great effect.

Hilinski’s father’s intuition is absolutely correct; had his son’s demise been more difficult and less absolutely certain than a firearms death, things might have turned out differently.

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It looks as though no one in any way saw Hilinski’s appalling act coming. His suicide note, which will not be released, apparently revealed little or nothing of his motive (UD‘s going to guess that this means its content was pretty short and simple: Goodbye. Sorry.). FWIW, here’s a possible scenario.

Always very strong and healthy, he had begun to experience troubling symptoms: Some mental confusion, maybe some occasional trembling in his hands. Given his lifelong intense devotion to football, this would have panicked and horrified him and made him wonder about his future in the sport, not to mention the future of his general health.

Further, plenty of people who knew him have commented that he exhibited the macho stoicism typical of football guys: If you’re suffering, you don’t tell anyone.

Throwing a convenient big ol’ killing machine into that mix is just asking for it.

… caliber.

Defend the right of insane 23-year-old mass murderers to own Glocks!

Good to know that in Michigan, at least, American parents can throw beer and gun parties for their teenagers and, when one of the kids gets killed, get off scot-free.

Dad swore up and down he “never kept ammunition in the residence and said he didn’t know how a bullet made its way into the home on the night of the fatal shooting” and of course this being America the judge bought it.

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The AMA seems really tired of mopping up all the blood. Though in this case the unlucky issue of just one more American gun nut killed himself with that mysterious bullet instantly, so it was a case for body baggers rather than physicians.

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Message to gunnies about the new mean AMA:

If you disagree with the AMA, you’re welcome to boycott doctors and hospitals. I’m sure YouTube has a video somewhere about how to treat your own gunshot wound.

Kris Kobach, whose official portrait in the state capitol reflects his love of mounting guns, said in an interview today that “Mounting guns is something I do and have done since Pops and I mounted guns together when I was a boy of six.”

Asked to respond to the town of Shawnee’s public apology for having allowed Kobach to take part in its Memorial Day parade mounting a huge gun, Kobach commented: “Guns call out to me to mount them. Mount me… mount me now.”

Around 2 a.m. on May 14, 2017, [16-year-old] Michael T. Dennis shot himself with a .44-caliber Taurus Magnum Raging Bull revolver in the basement of his family home at 9515 N. River Road in Tittabawassee Township, [Michigan]. The property had been the site of a bonfire involving minors and alcohol in the hours preceding Michael’s death.

Police were summoned to the house on receiving reports of a shooting. They found Michael on the basement floor, bleeding from a head wound and with the revolver between his legs. Police found a second gun, a .44-caliber Pietta Colt Army revolver, in a different part of the basement.

The teen’s parents were home at the time of the shooting.

… Four others also faced adult criminal charges, while several minors who were present faced juvenile petitions. David Hubbard, 62, was charged with and later pleaded guilty to furnishing alcohol to minors, receiving a $500 fine.

… Two 17-year-olds faced the same charge as well as counts of minor in possession of alcohol. Connor Brunett, 18, was charged with aiming a firearm at a person without malice and lying to police.

So much fun and no harm done. They’re all drawing itty-bitty misdemeanor charges.

Daddy’s Guns. (Sing it.)

When people ask of me
What would you like to be,
Now that you’re not a kid any more?
I know just what to say,
I answer right away.
There’s just one thing
I’ve been wishing for.

I wanna take Daddy’s guns
I wanna take Daddy’s guns
That’s the most important thing to me.
Cuz when I get Daddy’s guns
When I get Daddy’s guns
I’ll blast the girls who aren’t nice to me.

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Gunny, isn’t it?

Gunny. You’re a land that loves weapons
That’s a peculiar sign
Gunny. You give guns to your children.
Gunny, isn’t it?
Large, and gunny, and mine.

What a remarkable country UD lives in.

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Also great for gramps!

The only part of this story UD doesn’t believe is the part where this guy, shot in the leg by his dog, has his gun safety on.

A person dumb enough to keep his gun on his belly while at home playing with his dog is far too dumb to figure out how a safety works.

Multiply Einstein by millions of Americans and understand how gun daddies are always killing their babies.

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UD thanks dmf.