Spring Break, Virginia Beach!

These [latest gun] arrests contribute to the significant amount of criminal activity that occurred during a 48-hour time span over Spring Break weekend, as confirmed by Virginia Beach police.

On April 28, Virginia Beach police said 53 people were arrested over the course of Spring Break weekend. This resulted in nearly 200 criminal charges being issued.

A non-comprehensive list of the arrests made was released by the department. Of the 38 people on the list, most are adults in their late teens or early twenties. Those on the list range in age from 14 to 53, and everyone except the 14-year-old are adults.

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

Noncomprehensive because they know there are far more.

“Large capacity magazines are used in the overwhelming majority of mass shootings, and reducing the toll of these senseless killings is vitally important.”

Guntards remain in a rage about Washington State’s low gun-murder rate, and its latest state supreme court decision will really have them coughing up blood. Like Hawaii, Washington significantly trails the rest of the country in mass shootings. Both states can expect continued pressure to give child-slaughterers more firepower.

Pope Leo: Single-handedly putting to bed the whole…

monolingual Americans thing.

He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese, and … can read German and Latin.

Don’t rightly know why, but this one’s got …

Bonnie and Clyde vibes.

 On Saturday evening, deputies got a 911 call about someone shooting [an AR-15] from the window of a black Mustang at a deer …

The same car was reported to be recklessly driving in the area, doing burnouts in the middle of the road and racing through the streets …

Deputies … observed the Mustang pass them doing 117 MPH …

As deputies searched for the car, dispatch got another 911 call about the black Mustang’s involvement in a hit-and-run, where it side swiped a 2018 Mercedes and left the area.

 … William Franklin, 19, from Oklahoma, surrendered to deputies. The second passenger Mason Guidry, 20, of Louisiana and driver Justin Franklin, 36, of Oklahoma, and father of William Franklin, were found in a nearby field where they were trying to hide.

Mason surrendered, while Justin refused to cooperate, according to the sheriff. Justin Franklin was taken into custody after being bit by the K9.

‘I just feel like that person shouldn’t have been able to even be around a school.’

Father/son massacrists were on the FBI’s radar, but they just let it happen. They just watched as the son enrolled in a new killing field and let it rip, with the AR-15 style rifle his father gave this 14-year-old as a gift.

You don’t get these outcomes unless your country wants massacres.

A trailer in the 100 block of Bobcat Ct in Lothian MD will cost you around $50,000. A Diamondback Arms Model DB15 AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle will cost you around $1,000.

Christopher Edward Jones, 34, may not be able to afford much house, but when it comes to his gun the sky’s the limit.

And what’s he supposed to do, having shot that wad on a gun he turns out to have virtually no opportunity to use? Any one of us would have done what he did: Get plastered and start shooting it off in the community.

I told Mr UD about Mr Jones and he said “I’d like to know what kind of car he has.”

“Easy,” said UD. “A $50,000 Ford F-150. I’d like to know how many other thousand dollar guns he has.”

Pullback

Like Myrtle Beach and Panama City Beach, Ocean City (where, devoted readers know, UD‘s family has deep roots) has long put its fiscal faith in any and all forms of scummy behavior. This commitment to pandering to the worst has worked out beautifully at all of these resorts for decades; but a problem has lately arisen related to the ownership of guns by increasing numbers of the people who go to these places. They’re shooting them off on the major thoroughfares, and they’re scaring away a lot of vacationers who don’t want to die.

What to do when large stretches of your resort are designed to appeal to people who get in fights that turn into public gun battles? Where do you start changing that?

Point One: You don’t. There are tons of shooting ranges within an easy drive of Ocean City, and they’re expressly designed for visiting gunnies looking for a place to go bangbangbang. Carrying and shooting guns is in the DNA of places like Ocean City.

Not to mention all the cheesy hotels, bars, and restaurants whose livelihood depends on lowlifes. Much of the place depends on encouraging gross noisy dangerous behavior.

Point Two: One modest place to start shifting from gang- to family-friendly, if you do want to try that, would be the tee shirts for sale along the boardwalk, catching the eye not only of gross people, but also of non-gross people. And indeed OC is looking into this right now:

 Ocean City Council plans to pass a new ordinance that … would limit the display of obscene material and language on merchandise on the boardwalk.

Gross porny shirt merchants are understandably upset: One of them points out that Brass Balls saloon and many other porny establishments abound, but they’re not getting shut down.

This is a good argument: Lots of commercial OC is explicitly violent/smutty in one way or another; and even when the city has tried to shut down America’s most disgusting events, they’ve failed to do so. They’re kind of locked in to being the host city for H20i, for instance.

OC has chickened out of going after obscene merchandise this year. They’ll chicken out next year too. Place has gotta make a living.

Leisure Activity in Super-Expensive Sugar Land TX

Some resident was simply repeatedly shooting his gun into the ground when obnoxious anti-Second Amendment neighbors called the police. The police told him to stop but he didn’t so they shot him and he’s in the hospital.

What has happened to this country when a man can’t take his weapon in a heavily populated suburb and repeatedly shoot it into the ground?

UD knows it’s a small point, but…

… they’re misspelling my uncle’s last name. It’s Mario Loiederman.

And how proud he’d be to know his namesake school has achieved all-American status!

Fayetteville, the Pride of Gunny NC…

… rides the wave of the state’s future:

According to quarterly crime data provided by Fayetteville police, homicides in the city are up 366% so far this year compared to the previous one, with 14 incidents reported so far this year.

For comparison, Raleigh has reported 11 incidents this period, up 22% from 2024 over the same time period.

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

At the Fayetteville Dogwood Festival on April 26, attendees were shocked as they heard gunfire nearby and were swiftly evacuated by police, who discovered a car just yards from the festival grounds with gunshots through it. 

The only thing shocking is the shock.

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

With Fayetteville their role model, Raleigh and the rest of the state will find their own gun footing, and can expect similar, if not superior, carnage.

This is how we do it!

More than 31,000 Americans died by firearms in 2024. Among the victims, 250 were children younger than 11. More than 1,000 were between 12 and 17.

Seventy-five were police officers.

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

The guy citing these numbers points out – uncontroversially, obviously – that almost no one in this country gives a shit. But UD has been proposing something else: Americans like it. They like watching it. They like doing it. As a country, we say: This is how we do it.

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

And if you don’t let us do it – the way Hawaii isn’t letting us do it – we are gonna gang up on you and fucking FORCE you to let us do it. We’re gonna put you in legal HELL and make you pay to try to defend your low murder rate until you are fucking bankrupt.

The Ultimate American Girl Dad!

For Show Kindness week at her elementary school, he gave her this hat to wear —

— and when the school told her to take it off (gun massacre at a nearby school not long ago) he filed free speech court cases all over the place! His appeals keep getting unanimously rejected, but I’m sure he’s planning to take it to the Supreme Court. What a dad!

Foster child of silence and slow…

time, the Herculaneum scroll haltingly gives up its words. And we get to sit back and be amazed at the technology that finds them.

Off to Rehoboth Beach…

… where blogging continues.

“This happens commonly. These days, everybody got a gun. I’ve seen 14, 13-year-olds with guns. You can’t even have an argument with somebody — they’ll pull a gun on you.”
Zippity doo dah
Zippity day
My oh my
What a fine Houston day
Sixteen are injured, one passed away
Zippity doo dah
Zippity day
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte