Sing it.

An AR-15, peaches and cream,
Hair that sparkles and shines.
You’re nineteen, you’re lunatic, and it’s fine.

High velocity disintegrates me
Now I’m your angel divine
You’re nineteen, you’re lunatic, and it’s fine.

Dan Hodges’ verdict on Sandy Hook covers the latest child massacre.

NRA darling Marco Rubio gushes at this country’s amazing gun technology, and our amazing ability to put that technology in the hands of insane teenagers.

It’ll be even more amazing to see how much carnage a gang of insane teenagers will carry out. Hold onto your hats!

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

Now 17 high-school kids and teachers are dead in Rubio’s backyard. And the man who has taken more than any other Florida politico from the NRA — $3.3 million as of this past October — still doesn’t want to talk about what he’s going to do about it. That’s because he’s going to do jack fucking nothing, which is exactly what the NRA pays for him to do.

A response to all the prayers.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This tyke’s AR-15
Is aimed right at you

… when she sees scathe-worthy writing, she rises to the occasion.

Here’s the SEC commissioner trying to get Mississippi university leaders riled up against the overwhelming passage, in that state’s House, of legislation clearly paving the way for conceal carry folk to bring their guns to football games. He intervened in the very same way when Arkansas tried to get guns in the hands of football fans; now he’s sticking his nose in the business of the good people of Mississippi. Here’s what he wrote to the chancellor of the University of Mississippi.

Given the intense atmosphere surrounding athletic events, adding weapons increases meaningful safety concerns and is expected to negatively impact the intercollegiate athletics programs at your universities in several ways… If HB1083 is adopted to permit weapons in college sports venues, it is likely that competitors will decline opportunities to play in Oxford and Starkville, game officials will decline assignments, personal safety concerns will be used against Mississippi’s universities during the recruiting process and fan attendance will be negatively impacted.

Yes, SOS hears you. ‘SEC Commissioner’ describes a position of dignity and gravitas. The SEC Commissioner is not in a position to say

I’m shitting bricks thinking about your wasted frat boys whipping out their AR-15s and blowing everyone away.

But he could still have done a better job of writing to the chancellor. Let’s consider how he could have issued his warning more eloquently.

There’s a stiff bureaucratic feel to the whole thing, isn’t there? And given that he wants above all to convey a sense of urgency, dead language of this sort does the opposite. Notice that he begins all bass-ackward, backing up to his point rather than stating it right out.

Given the intense atmosphere…

No. Start right off with guns. Guns make football games more dangerous, and they’re already somewhat dangerous. In other words, the whole intense atmosphere thing begs for clarification.

I mean, having for a long time read coaches and fans talk about university football games, UD would have thought ‘intensity’ in their regard referred simply to wholesome fellowship and partisan fun! No? Ok, then don’t leave me hanging: Is there something else intense going on at football games?

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

Well, think about it, UD. Look around an SEC stadium during a game. Did you ever see so many police? Why do you think they’re there?

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

But of course the commissioner doesn’t want to specify the nature of pre-addition-of-weaponry football game intensity, because there’s a large athletics industry supporting him and his family, and that’s nothing to fuck with.

So, along the same lines, he goes for the unbearably ugly negatively impact to try to delicately gingerly ever so lightly skip around …

Skip around what? Good writing is more direct than this. You’d have to be insane to add guns to crowds of drunk agitated immature males.

And now for the windup, which of course features a second use of negatively impact. Finds it so nice he uses it twice.

… it is likely that competitors will decline opportunities to play in Oxford and Starkville, game officials will decline assignments, personal safety concerns will be used against Mississippi’s universities during the recruiting process and fan attendance will be negatively impacted.

I wonder why football players, specially in the south, might not be happy to play in front of tens of thousands of Mississippi university students with big ol’ guns at the ready??? Hm. Hm. That’s a real poser.

But anyway… Let’s redo this final clause, shall we?

Pads and helmets can only do so much. Bad enough you’re concussing your head. You’re also putting yourself out there in a huge open shooting gallery with armed angry drunk southern males. Ditto for sitting-duck game officials. People get real angry at officials. In the pre-technological world of high school sports, you have to get up, run onto the field, and beat officials to death with your own fists. With guns, it’s a piece of cake.

Georgia will not hesitate to tell recruits trying to decide where to play that they definitely could get their asses blown off in Mississippi. As for your fan base: Though the lads’ aim might be wobbly from a few hundred feet, they’re for sure not going to miss the nice broad back of the guy two rows ahead who just called them a motherfucker. So your attendance numbers aren’t going to be enhanced. Unless you add all the new fans who are there to shoot off their guns.

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

Yes, yes, SOS knows that she has slipped into the sort of language incommensurate with the moral stature of an SEC commissioner. Sorry.

Guns at the University of Louisville.

Aw. That happened to me when I was twelve too. We’ve all been there.

Ya, so a nineteen year old Virginia Tech freshman was arrested for possession of an AR-15; he was also looking to buy 5,000 rounds of ammunition, and had already bought “a former police vehicle outfitted with special bumpers.” Plus he was “researching bulletproof vests.” But the university is fine with it, fine! No need to alert the campus. Let’s all calm down, people. The guy represents absolutely no threat. And it’s not as if VT has any particular cause to worry about this sort of thing…

… brings down another one.

Parking lots outside stadiums and other major event spaces represent prime hunting ground for gun-hungry thieves, who can weave through cars trying door handles until they find one that’s unlocked.

A 26-year-old woman reportedly pulled a loaded handgun from her pocket Tuesday when her Front Range Community College instructor confronted her about cheating on a test.

Fort Collins police said student Brittany Schoonover reportedly pulled the gun from her pocket and “racked the slide” — the process of moving a round into the chamber of a semi-automatic handgun manually — when her instructor confronted her outside a classroom, arrest records show.

… The instructor told police he feared for his life and the lives of other students, but he was able to disarm Schoonover and call for help, according to arrest documents. Other specific information about how the instructor disarmed her was not available Wednesday.

Mandatory faculty workshops in how to disarm students threatening you with semi-automatic handguns are on their way. Training will also feature helpful hints, such as: Never walk away from a student until she gives you permission to do so.

It’s an academic bloodbath down there. If you’re looking for the heavy-hitters, look no further than Texas Tech, where a wee freshman of nineteen years just blew a campus cop away – shot the guy to death in cold blood, holding the gun inches from his face.

This is one of the few guns-on-Texas-campuses stories that rose to national attention. The threats, the gun play, the fraternity weaponry — these are so routine as to pass unnoticed.

If you really want to get noticed – a student with a gun on a campus in Texas – you have to have a very big gun, you have to be on the football or basketball team, you have to threaten to kill multiple people, you have to have drugs on you, you have to be part of a conspiracy, you have to flee the police, you have to ditch the gun… You have to do a lot of shit to be worth paying attention to if you’re a college student with your gun out at a Texas university.

So props to Zaycoven Henderson, one of our Sacred Aggies, for accomplishing all of that, and getting all the press attention he and his gun-mad school so richly deserve.

Just a few hours earlier, Henderson was honored at the A&M team football banquet.

You don’t want the recent history of A&M. Trust me. You don’t want the background on A&M.

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

You know, when a few Texas professors, disgusted by the state-wide gun-love, resign or take jobs in safer states, they’re called pussies or whatever. But in Texas, the shits really are trying to kill us. And they’ve got amazing, amazing, guns. And they’re our students.

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

Here’s Zaycoven’s hagiographic page at Texas A&M. In the first photograph, he’s doing the classic WHERE’S MY RIFLE? TOSS IT DOWN TO ME. play.

Take the page down?

Nah.

It’s Texas A&M.

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

Have to go to the local paper for local responses. From a comment thread. Parenthetical remarks from UD:

rippy Dec 11, 2017 5:33am
Welcome to Aggieland Jimbo!

[That’s the new greedy coach they just hired for a zillion dollars.]

pragmatist Dec 11, 2017 5:51am
It is a big challenge to operate a successful program when you depend on young folks who have grown up with little or no guidance in terms of right vs wrong. Don’t know this guy’s history, but it is a safe bet his only male leadership came from football coaches. Coaches, at their best, can do very little to point an 8th grader in the right direction and once the kid gets off course, it is hard to self-correct. It takes a real Dad and a real Mom.

Tragic and far too common but there is no room for this guy at A&M.

[Sad little “pragmatist” hasn’t bothered to check that Zaycoven comes equipped with a father and a mother. And pragmatically speaking, I wonder why Aggie coaches recruit people like Zaycoven. The commenter fails to speculate about why many … questionable people end up on his football team. Do they show up and push themselves forward? Or are they feverishly sought?

“No room for this guy at A&M.” UD always finds this a touchingly delusional sentiment. Our pure school – where Johnny Manziel was so recently God – shudders and passes on morally impure people like Zaycoven.]

Dec 11, 2017 7:00am
Would you look at that. I’ll be willing to bet this kid was recruited solely for his athletic ability and not his character. Another legacy of Sumlin …that goes with the washed up Heisman winner [Manziel] and a new field. Neither of which spells National Champion.

[Implicitly, this commenter expresses the pathetic faith-in-the-new-coach thing. Bad old coach (Sumlin) did this; he was responsible for the now-embarrassing Manziel too. But new god Jimbo will make everything beautiful again.]

Well but this is America, and if all you’ve been doing is shooting off bullets left and right in preparation for your mass killing, be our guest.

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

Cristal Caravez, who lives across a ravine from the road where [the killer] and his first victims lived, said she and others heard constant gunfire but couldn’t say for sure it was him firing.

“You could hear the yelling. He’d go off the hinges,” she said. The shooting “would be during the day, during the night, I mean, it didn’t matter.”

She and her father, who is president of the homeowners association, said neighbors would complain to the sheriff’s department, which referred the complaints back to the homeowners association.

“The sheriff wouldn’t do anything about it,” Juan Caravez said.

What kind of a neighborhood is this? A mentally ill person in and out of jail for assault who constantly shoots off his guns – and no one does anything?

When everybody’s got a gun
Every day is lots of fun!