Regular readers of this blog will recognize this as another Don DeLillo Death (background here), a death emblematic of our fun-leisure-time, affluent landscape. Postmodern Americans die from bizarre accidents while enjoying luxe activities in five-star settings.

Can we really call this mode of departure “tragic,” the sort of demise Oedipus would recognize? Grievous Golf Cart of Fate…

So far it’s just middling spring stuff – Saturday night fights/shootings, killing one or two, injuring ten or twenty – but come July the gunfire’s gonna be SIZZLING.

Not just on the weekends, and much more productive body bag work – that’s what I’m talking about.

Bring the kids, bring granny – you’re never too old or too young to run screaming for your life and the lives of your loved ones while hundreds of gunshots pierce the balmy air. Get ready.

[O]ne [new high school lacrosse player] was taken [by older teammates] to a remote area in the county when people appeared from the woods, dressed in black and armed with what appeared to be at least one handgun and at least one knife…

[They] put a pillowcase over that student’s head, then tied him up and threw him in the trunk of a car before he was left in a wooded area in the southern part of the county…

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At least five new recruits were tortured.

Not only did the high school cancel this season’s lacrosse; the district attorney insists on prosecuting! Boooooooooo

WASHINGTON—In a dramatic reversal of recent polls showing a decline in the president’s approval ratings during his first 100 days in office, new surveys confirmed Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s support was surging after he pointed a gun at all 340 million Americans. “Ever since Trump pulled out a loaded handgun and menacingly swept its muzzle across the entire American populace, he’s seen a massive bump in favorability on everything from his handling of the economy to his views on immigration,” said Gallup polling analyst Eric Waltman, adding that Trump’s numbers had seen a particularly sharp spike after he fired a shot into the air to show that “he means business.”

Where even the drinks say Hakluyt (her place of work).

… is pleased to see that Jonathan Chait compares Trumpy America to Hungary throughout this essay.

[T]he parallels to Hungary are striking. Orbán’s economy has suffered a brain drain as the regime’s cronyism drives its great minds to work in freer societies. Trump’s policies have shown early signs of producing a similar outcome, as would-be international students must now consider whether pursuing an American degree is worth risking getting detained by ICE or having their visa revoked abruptly over minor legal infractions.

The University of Minnesota has tried; Lord, how it has tried. But vicious and self-serving theft of other peoples’ work (background here) makes lots of people angry, see, and they speak up and speak up until even cynical administrators who try – insanely, stupidly – to dismiss blatant extensive repeated plagiarism as an ‘honest mistake’ (a phrase destined to haunt the UM school of public health for years to come) have to face the consequences.

Which are: The local public radio station won’t let this disgusting tale of institutional corruption go. Eventually a legitimate scholar/administrator at UM will have to step up and admit the cover-up. Some of the cover-uppers should be fired.

… here, celebrating Hakluyt’s thirtieth anniversary with her colleagues. UD is seriously envious.

“Just seeing people hit the ground and taking cover and, I took cover and balled up like a hamster, so fearing for my safety but thankful I’m still alive and okay,” [a beachgoer] said.

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The reasons why.

Read my blog’s intermittent coverage of bloody Myrtle Beach to get a sense of its astounding gun violence. Even if it doesn’t end in your curling up like a hamster, the action on the beachfront features lots of large, dangerous, fights.

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Some people like a challenge:

“There’s trouble all over the world, we can’t control that. So we just have to come and not let fear spoil our vacation. We still come here to enjoy the sights, enjoy the views, so I don’t feel threatened at all,” [one visitor] said. “I’ve been coming here for years. I’ll still come.”

Hey, if that’s how he feels, he should vacation in Haiti – much cheaper, and spectacular scenery.

We hear also from a local politician:

“It’s very unfortunate that people feel they need to solve their problems with guns but it’s an isolated incident and not indicative of the reality that most Myrtle Beach visitors encounter.”

Hon, ‘isolated’ don’t earn you Fifth Deadliest Beach …

It does this old Baltimorean’s heart good to read articles touting the reemergence of the city of her birth (Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1953), and here’s hoping it’s true and holds true. It was always a great city underneath its gun violence, and apparently having serious gun control laws that make your bangbang shit increasingly unlikely/unpleasant has made a real difference.

If you want to continue to participate in armed warfare, there are many fun alternatives to Baltimore. I’d recommend New Orleans.

Myrtle Beach SC. SC! Murdaughland! Guns à Gogo!

[M]ultiple people were injured and one … killed [last night on a main boardwalk thoroughfare]. … [P]eople described taking shelter in their hotel rooms and inside businesses during the shooting and after.

Myrtle Beach Police observed a disturbance involving multiple people in the 900 block of North Ocean Boulevard … During the altercation, one person began firing a weapon. [A police officer] responded by discharging their firearm…

Exchange of fire! Rumble! Melee in Myrtle! Run for your life!

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This is how you get “one of the highest rates of gun homicides in the nation.”

A year later, while I was a grad student in California, I learned that the student had shot himself. I felt terrible. So I swore that I’d never again ignore a potential suicide. 

George Chang, a Berkeley prof, recalling his student days at Princeton, wishes he’d said something to someone when a fellow student turned out to have a closet full of guns. That he felt compelled to show people.

The thing is, whether you think this behavior betokens suicide or not (most of us wouldn’t read it that way – maybe we’d want to see it as some form of boasting? intimidation?), you might very well consider it evidence of some mental disturbance… It’s pretty effing weird for an undergraduate to stuff his dorm closet full of almost certainly illegal guns and invite his friends to see them. Like almost asking someone to do something.

This was decades ago, long before scads of campuses became mass murder sites; these days, someone would have screamed about it.

But anyway — with the likely suicide of another Princeton student in the news, there is indeed the question whether anyone noticed anything lethally wrong with Lauren Blackburn. This photo of him, taken I think shortly before his disappearance, shows him with a desperate expression on his face… But it’s almost always asking too much for people to intuit the worst in ordinary daily encounters with people they know. Respect for privacy, the knowledge that almost everyone experiences some depressive episodes and gets over them, a larger American (and campus) culture in which personal freedom matters a lot, maybe a certain fear of a person exhibiting extreme emotions — these and other motives persuade us to stay silent. And of course even if we speak up to the person or to a school authority, there’s no guarantee anything will happen.

And Blackburn was a junior; although seriously out of his element at an east coast Ivy, he got as far as his junior year. If he’d been a freshman, his sudden desperation probably would have set off alarms about his failing to fit in; but he got through three years. He was close to graduation.

Anderson County SC’s suicide rate is suddenly amazing:

Suicide numbers in Anderson County are rising fast and have tripled compared to this time last year. According to the Anderson County Coroner’s Office, there have been 24 suicide-related deaths so far in 2025, which is a 300% increase from the eight suicide deaths in the first quarter of 2024. 

Why? Why? Why? asks the reporter, who seeks the answer solely from the pastor of PowerHouse Christian Church, who quotes a bit of scripture and tells everyone to buck up. SC’s ridiculous gun laws, which blanket everyone in weaponry, don’t come up at all, even though we know that the gunniest states have the highest rates (big winners: Montana, Alaska, Wyoming). Anderson’s suicides were overwhelmingly male, and it’s likely all or most of the men used guns to kill themselves. How many of their families and friends knew or suspected they were in crisis? How many were willing or able to do anything to keep them away from guns until the crisis subsided?

Answer: It’s effing South Carolina — look at SC’s first family, the Murdaughs, if you want to know about SC and guns, babe. The idea of doing anything in the gun lock or gun take away line is… It ain’t even an idea, hon! Let’s say you’re even a reporter for a respectable outlet tasked with writing about — well did you know SC state suicide rates have gone up 43% in the last twenty years? Wouldn’t you want to look at this picture – county level, state level – and consult guns rather than God?

…to take three of our old family portraits to the Museum of Noble Tradition in Poland, where there will apparently be a Soltan room.

They’re searching a local lake for him. There’s no evidence he was drunk; his last reported location was the library.

Watching this local news report about him when he was still home in Indiana deepens the sadness.

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Update: His body has been found in the lake.