Jonathan Gottschall talks with Sam Harris.

It’s all over but the rhetoric.

Unfortunately, hosting families there is also over, at least for awhile. There’s something about mass shootings, rapes on the beach, and the confiscation of large numbers of fire arms that seems to put families off.

I hate it, but I’ll say it. It’s time for us to bring the madness of Panama City Spring Break to a halt by staying away. Parents, if you allow your children to go into that snake pit then you are simply contributing to the problem.

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“Shame on Panama City Beach for letting itself devolve into what it has become,” said Nicki E. Grossman, now president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau.

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“We’re in chaos right now,” says resident Wes Pittman. “This Spring Break and the way it has evolved over the last couple years has become a blight on the entire community.”

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UD finds it fascinating in a Lord of the Flies way. Allow certain ingredients to be put together in a concentrated way in a specific location, and you can actually destroy civilized life.

Hey – you’re not gonna fuck with our gun rights, are you? Guns and spring break go together like lilacs and crocuses.

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Panama City Beach Mayor Gayle Oberst said business owners informed the council that banning alcohol from the beach, where tens of thousands of revelers gather, would devastate business.

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Having multiple college student gunshot victims in your town can make the locals petulant. Panama City, site of the latest mass shooting, called an emergency town council session.

The meeting was contentious almost from the beginning, with [one council member] asking [another] what was the purpose of an emergency meeting and [getting the reply], “We have blood on our hands, and so do you….”

Later, after [a council member] said he didn’t want to see knee-jerk reactions to a shooting that “surprised” everyone, [another] challenged that statement.

“The shooting last night was a surprise to you, sir? … Can you honestly say that?”

“Of course it was a surprise; I was not aware of it until this morning,” [he] answered.

…. “We’re dealing with some of the worst of the worst of the worst [elements] in all of the U.S.,” [one townsperson] said. Some of it can be fixed, but the difficulty in solving the problem is “amplified by the fact that y’all hate each other.”

Here’s the deal, Panama City Beach-wise: What’s good for getting kids shot up is also, as it happens, good for business. You take the good with the bad in life.

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Shoot and the world shoots with you.

Saturday’s shooting was the sixth firearm-related call of the night, authorities said.

… and sooner.

A gunman last night in the Florida State University library injures three people, leaves the building, and gets killed by campus police when he points his gun at them.

The library was full of students, presumably studying for finals.

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Were the shootings targeted? (Probably not.)

Was it a crazed student? Are non-students able to get into the library? Did the shooter shoot his way in?

Why did the shooter stop shooting and leave the library? Why did the shooter not keep shooting until police closed in and then kill himself?

This blog has followed America’s gun-totin’-est university trustee (and executive committee member of the National Turkey Federation) ever since Ron Prestage done took his loaded 9mm Ruger handgun right smack into the heart of the evil federal gummit.

Evil federal police up and arrested Ron, who explained to the judge that he’s got so many guns he plum forgot about the itty bitty Ruger.

He’s been let off with a 30-day suspended sentence. He returns to his duties overseeing the higher education of students at North Carolina State University.

Rate My Professors got there before UD did.

It’s very dangerous, teaching chemistry in Pocatello, and you’ve got to pack heat.

America suffers a paranoia deficit, and the gun industry tanks.

Now that everyone knows about the emerging nine-year-old girl market, however, one industry solution is pretty obvious: Redesign fully automatic weapons for the pre-teen demographic.

A shooting range instructor in Arizona was accidentally shot and killed by a 9-year-old girl who was learning how to shoot an Uzi, authorities said on Tuesday.

… is that you’re an elitist hypocrite. As such, you make it easy for people to attack you. Even people on the wrong side of an issue. Like the NRA.

You probably should have thought of this problem when you, for instance, “land[ed]” one of your “many helicopters at a heliport on the east side that’s conveniently located closest to [your] townhouse. Sure, there are antiquated ‘rules’ closing the landing pad on weekends, and some ungrateful area peons have been whining about the noise…”

How was he supposed to know — yes, the chart handed to all helicopter pilots lists the heliport as closed on weekends, but he’s the mayor, not a helicopter pilot. Oh, wait. [He is a helicopter pilot.]

A local reporter interviews a gun guy about Peter Steinmetz:

Me: Do you need to be toting around an AR-15 on your shoulder in a busy airport?

Korwin: “Lots of people ask ‘Do you need this kind of gun?’ That’s the Marxist model. Do you need 10 pairs of shoes and somebody’s supposed to be in charge and decide whether you need things or not and whether you can have them or not.”

Me, trying again: Do you have a concern that a guy can freely and legally walk through the terminals of a busy airport with an AR-15 on his shoulder?

Korwin: “Let’s frame the question differently. Can he walk anywhere with an AR-15?”

Me, one last time. Do we need these things in an airport?

“There you go, back to need. That’s Marxism again. Each according to his need. Do you need 10 pairs of shoes? Do you need a refrigerator the size of a closet? And in America we’re starting to ask, do we need something and who’s in charge of deciding what you need? Do you need 10 pairs of shoes when there are people with no shoes? You don’t need 10 pairs of shoes and you’re asking me questions about need and in America, that’s not how we do things. That’s not how a free country operates.”

A director of ours name of Peter
Likes to whip out and point his big heater.
Hip hip hip hooray
He so blows us away
We decided to make him our leader.

Of course now that we all know Barrow’s (named after Clyde, I presume) neuroengineering director likes to take semiautomatic rifles off his shoulder at the airport and point them at people, the place has had to drop him like a hot AR-15.

But where’s the NRA? They’ve got plenty of money to defend Second Amendment martyrs (“[H]e’s putting his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on the line for his beliefs…”). Why the silence?

… and other responses to America’s open carry movement.

… And who will be this week’s university-affiliated shithead with a gun? The University of Arizona’s Peter Steinmetz insists that “he only came to the airport to buy a cup of coffee” the way all of us drive to our city’s international airport to get a cup of coffee, so what’s the big deal? The loaded AR-15 on his shoulder? Would you go to the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport for a cup of coffee without a loaded AR-15 on your shoulder? And you know how when you’re juggling a hot cup of coffee and an AR-15 it can kind of look to some people maybe like you’re aiming your rifle at them? Maybe especially in an airport people might feel uncomfortable with your rifle pointed at them…

But this story is about education. People need to learn the meaning of open carry and not overreact like these silly women.

Steinmetz allegedly removed the rifle from his shoulder, causing the muzzle to face a mother and her 17-year-old daughter. They told police they feared for their lives.

Silly women!

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Scenes from the arraignment:

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN [JUDGE, MARICOPA SUPERIOR COURT]: You are not to possess any weapons.

JUDGE: It means no weapons.

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Background on the trustee.

Enlarge the photo to see one of your most prominent trustees in action! Ever vigilant, Ronald Prestage scopes out the US Senate for you as he completes a surveillance mission for future loaded-Ruger-toting NCSU visitors to the nation’s capitol. Can you get away with it? Apparently, no. Trustee Prestage has also teased out, as a kind of bonus, the information that you need a permit to carry a gun.

Because UD feels that this martyr to the cause of bringing “a magazine with six rounds of ammunition and one round in the chamber” to the very heart of the American government will have much of value to say to the press, she will follow his story closely. For now, this is all you need to know: Prestage is Pretrial.