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.

… one of its own.

Marching a loaded Ruger right up to the security police at the Cannon Building. The police are on extra alert because only a few days ago another asshole did the same thing.

‘Course he dint have no pistol license on him neither. Hyuk.

And they say pigs are smart.

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

Oh, and he’s a North Carolina State University trustee! Just the sort of clever boots you want setting policy at a university. He’ll get right back to work on that. As soon as he can get out of jail.

… where, if reports are right, a student at the scene, in an act of great courage, disarmed the gunman.

One student is dead; three others are injured, and one of them is in critical condition.

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

UD thanks Dirk.

Why not open carry them on the campus of UC Santa Barbara? UD is sure you’ll be welcomed as heroes.

Interview with Timothy Delasandro, Republican candidate, Texas House of Representatives.

Q On your website, you offer a chance to win an AR-15 in exchange for a $12 contribution. Even in a culture pretty heavy into guns, isn’t this a little over the top, pretty close to pandering?

A I wouldn’t say pandering, but we do want to put our credentials on the Second Amendment out there. So, yes, we’re trying to make a statement. If you want to talk about Second Amendment issues, I support open carry, which the current incumbent didn’t co-sponsor during the last session. I support campus carry. And while the incumbent did vote for that, since then he’s had a couple statements where he’s been more ambiguous about that and says he wants to listen to the presidents of the universities more. So I wouldn’t say we’re pandering, we’re just trying to make a statement.

Q It’s a pretty wild website of yours, with you firing that AR-15.

A Well, that’s the point. And you’ve got the incumbent who is in Texas Monthly for saying that ping pongs kill more people than guns. We are trying to show there is a difference in records.

Q Are you getting lots of feedback?

A We are getting lots of feedback. We have it on Facebook as well. What we hear the most is, “Is that legal?” If you click on it and look at the small print, you can do an entry by mail for free, so you don’t have to contribute to enter. We gave a 12-gauge shotgun away earlier. One of the Baylor University students won it right before Christmas. It was actually funny. The day he won it, his dad posted on our Facebook page that “This is so cool. My son doesn’t have to figure out what to get me for Christmas now!”

… this one at at Purdue, where a teaching assistant sought out and shot a fellow teaching assistant to death, are unknown. Both worked for an engineering school professor. The killer apparently walked calmly to the classroom where he knew the victim would be, shot him multiple times, and then walked around a bit, waiting to be arrested.

Let us speculate.

The dead man was dating a woman the killer wanted to date.

The dead man was impressing the professor more than the killer was, and this enraged the killer.

The victim had ridiculed or put down the shooter in some way.

The victim and the shooter had had an earlier altercation, and this was payback.

The killer is a psychopath. (Very unlikely. They either kill themselves after they finish killing, or, like Amy Bishop, they drop the gun in a trash bin and proceed to go out to dinner with their husband. Bishop considered herself far too clever ever to be caught.)

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

UPDATE: Hints begin to emerge:

[B]oth a Purdue professor who worked with him and a Purdue student say he could be rude and disliked being told he was wrong…

Purdue Professor Thomas Talavage describes Cousins as intense and aggressive about his projects. He says Cousins “didn’t like to be told he was wrong.”

UD is reminded of another university workplace murder: Annie Le’s killing at Yale. Some of the people who knew her murderer, who worked with Le, “described him as a ‘control freak’ who was competitive in sports, compulsive about his work habits and controlling in his romantic relationships.”

The campus in on lockdown: People report seeing a man with a gun, and the school received word from someone saying that his roommate (it’s unclear whether this means a Yale student) said he planned to come to campus and shoot people.

Here’s the message when you go to yale.edu right now.

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

UPDATE: Things seems to have calmed down, and the lockdown has for the most part been called off. Police are suggesting that sightings of someone with a gun were most likely people seeing first responders to the scene.

It began with the Oct. 24 candidate’s debate at Virginia Tech, the site of the worst mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history. In response to a question, Cuccinelli boasted of his A rating from the NRA.

And then McAuliffe did something surprising: He said he didn’t give a fig about the powerful lobby’s rating. And, oh, by the way, he had earned an F.