UD‘s beloved DeLillo stars in the New Yorker’s account of the YouTube killings.

There will be a temptation to read the attack as a dark parable of the attention economy — the story of someone so hungry for views that she took a handgun to those who, in her belief, had limited them. But the truer story is that going berserk with guns has become a way of American life.

Correct. Guns are now the way America’s berserk turn down the bed and turn out the lights.

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

… playbook, the host mother of a fully-weaponized 18-year-old exchange student decided – on hearing that the police wanted to visit the arsenal he’d build up in her house – to gather up his guns and ammo and give them to a friend – for safekeeping, I guess. Keep it all safe until the visit from the authorities – triggered by a wee threat the exchange student made to slaughter everyone in his school – was over. Begone, 9 MM Glock and the 1600 rounds of ammunition! (The ammo was not merely for the Glock, but for an AK-47, an AR-15, and a shotgun).

UD is starting to enjoy recurrent features of the infinitely recurrent crazed-baby-with-an-arsenal story. Her favorite thing of all is the standard response of legal counsel to the wittle one’s situation.

Every one of them finds herself in the position of issuing public assurances that unstable children who make threats and accumulate

a military-style ballistic vest, crossbow with scope and light, 20 rounds of 9mm ammunition, military ski mask, ammunition clip loader, a strangulation apparatus known as a garrote, and other equipment

— plus a Glock and ammo not merely for the Glock but for the AK-47 he was in the process of assembling for himself, plus a shotgun — are sweet tow-headed exemplary lads trying to get a head start on their life-saving careers as policemen.

[This is] an affable, precocious student with no discipline or antisocial tendencies. The young man’s parents have flown in from Taiwan and fully support their child. Our investigation reveals that there was no intention to terrorize or otherwise commit any criminal act. The family is concerned by the rising level of rhetoric that is being transmitted to the news media and hopes that the public will keep an open mind as all the facts and circumstances are brought forward.” [The threat-issuer is simply] interested in a law-enforcement career and [is] planning to major in criminal justice at a university, [says his former attorney].

Back off, baby! Terroristic threats and extensive personal arsenals, collected at age 17, demonstrate affability and prosocial tendencies.

And how about this: His parents love him! And look out cuz they don’t like your rhetoric and there’s no telling what people in this family will do when they’re pissed off.

Plus good going undermining his intellectual development as he scopes out a new home for his arsenal: a dormitory.

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

A boy and his toys. Awwwwwww.

Taking off from Patek Philippe’s iconic slogan, University Diaries continues its special series on fathers, and sons, and guns.

Violent, mentally disturbed daddy had his gun taken away from him – twice – but this is America, and after awhile they gave it back! So I guess to celebrate he “returned home from work [last year] and went to bed, leaving his duty Glock 19 [He’s a parole officer! I ain’t making this up.] loaded and unsecured on a living room desk.”

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

Now we all know how easy and popular it is, when you kinda feel blue, to grab the domestic firearm that’s just sitting there on the living room desk, the Glock that’s murmuring to you how quickly and painlessly it’ll make your blues go away… We all know that tons of our fellow citizens, every single day, pick up America’s most abundant and convenient home appliance and have at their cortex with it. Little 18 year old William Han Manstrom-Greening is – was – one of those fellow Americans, and he has his father to thank for his early exit.

But now dad’s un p’tit peu up shit’s creek, as is the parole office which figured rearming a guy who repeatedly “harassed and threatened violence against co-workers and his wife,” and who also had a “history of mental health diagnoses, including severe depression and bipolar disorder,” made sense. Cuz they’re both being sued by the kid’s estate for wrongful death.

One final detail: “After the 18-year-old’s death, the county took no disciplinary action against” the father, which UD assumes means, among other things, that he’s still packing and still leaving his loaded Glock lying around the house. Wonder if he has any other kids.

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

Why did Greening – does Greening – keep getting guns? Because this is a man’s world. And that is what Isabelle Robinson has had to learn.

A year after I was assaulted by Mr. Cruz, I was assigned to tutor him through my school’s peer counseling program. Being a peer counselor was the first real responsibility I had ever had, my first glimpse of adulthood, and I took it very seriously.

Despite my discomfort, I sat down with him, alone. I was forced to endure his cursing me out and ogling my chest until the hourlong session ended. When I was done, I felt a surge of pride for having organized his binder and helped him with his homework.

Looking back, I am horrified. I now understand that I was left, unassisted, with a student who had a known history of rage and brutality.

Why was that? Why was Cruz still in Robinson’s high school at that late date, and why was that high school leaving her alone with him?

My little sister is now the age that I was when I was left alone with Mr. Cruz, anxious and defenseless. The thought of her being put in the same situation that I was fills me with rage.

Her WHAT… ME? face grins out from her mug shot.

Teacher’s aide Gillian Jeffords is clearly attempting to understand why her clever idea of bringing a loaded 9 mm Ruger to a classroom full of developmentally disabled children, and placing it, accessible to everyone, in her open purse, has upset people. Has gotten her fired. Has moved the “Board of Cooperative Educational Services [to take out] a restraining order against [her], barring her from contact with students, their families and staff and being on board property. She is also prohibited from [all] Clarkstown school district facilities…”

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

I mean, hellooo people are we not overreacting? I brought the gun because

1.) guns have been shown to be very therapeutic for many people; and

2.) if any of my charges misbehave, I can kill them.

REMINGTON FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY

Well lookee all you big strong men
Sandy Hook sued your ass again
They got your guns in a terrible jam
Made you stop going bam bam bam
So pay off your debt and put down your gun
Gonna have a whole lotta fun

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
First goal your weaponry
Next goal insolvency

And it’s five, six, ‘leven
Now declaring bankruptcy
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Remy! your gun’s gonna die

Yeah come on Wall Street don’t be slow
AR-15 gonna lose you dough
Used to be plenty good money made
Selling Steve Paddock tools of his trade
Now instead of making loot
You got a helluva class action suit

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
First goal’s your weaponry
Next goal insolvency

And it’s five, six, ‘leven
Now declaring bankruptcy
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Remy! your gun’s gonna die

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

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

Wilfred Owen
1917

“Collectively all of these items certainly suggest a specific recipe for large-scale destruction,” said Peter Tyler, Ithaca’s police chief, [about a Cornell student’s pantry stockpile of “an AR-15-style rifle, a shrapnel bomb fashioned from a firework, more than 300 rounds of ammunition for various guns, a bulletproof vest, a homemade silencer, trauma supplies and food rations.”].

Yum! Simple, easy to assemble ingredients, and a real treat for everyone outside your eighth-floor window.

‘Our Generation was Raised Around Schools Being Shot Up,’ Says Stoneman Douglas Survivor.

High above Cayuga’s waters
With its waves of blue
Stands our schizoid Maximilien
Aiming right at you

Lift the rifle, speed it onwards
All his classmates fell
Hail to thee our alma mater
Hail all hail Cornell

Sing it.

Put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun!

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we shooting for?
Don’t ask me – we’ve run out of time.
Next stop is Columbine.

And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Everyone’s all ooh wow ooh about St Thomas University’s CFO resigning her position at that way-Catholic school rather than leave the board of AR-15-mad Smith and Wesson. (She was given an ultimatum from the school.) Everyone’s like: Look! She chose assault weapons over a church school!

But read the fine print, kiddies. Smith and Wesson (they’ve given themselves some new all-natural name… who knows why? … it’s like… can’t remember but it’s like Gentle Valley Breezes…) pays people willing to be associated with it upwards of $100,000 a year — and you and I know what service on a corporate board entails: Two free trips to Hawaii to sit in a room for a half hour and get excited about how much shit (here, AR-15s) the corporation’s selling.

If you had to choose between actually working – as a chief financial officer – and sitting on your ass all year and still pulling in a hundred thou, what would you do? Plus you get all the free AR-15s you want.

Around 3 a.m., a [Stetson University] security guard noticed a car with a blown tire pull into a handicap parking spot in front of a dormitory. The guard approached the driver, and 20-year-old Preston Barrow told the man that he had just smoked marijuana and had a rifle in his car, according to police.

Police responded and found an unloaded rifle, scope and 27 rounds of ammunition scattered throughout the car.

He’s got the cutest little baby face!

Sing it, sister!

You know what that sound is, right, kiddies? RUN FOR IT.

HAHA. Just kidding. It’s popcorn!

But if you want to make that other popping sound, c’mon over to RKGuns!

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

It’s all happening at Stephen Foster Elementary School.

Stephen Foster!

Sing it:

Beautiful semi-, come unto me,
All of my classmates are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the bump stock heard in the day,
Teachers and students have all pass’d away!

Beautiful semi-, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life’s busy throng,—
Beautiful semi-, awake unto me!
Beautiful semi-, awake unto me!

Tonight’s carnage: Three terrified women, health care workers, shot to pieces by a madman with a high-powered rifle.

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

But are we downhearted? Sing it!

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

Are we downhearted?
NO!

While we have guns upon the sea,
And guns upon the land, we need not fret.
It’s a long, long way to armageddon,
But we’re not downhearted yet!