… Roger Craver has a nice take on it.

… millipede. As I walked around the garden this morning.

When the Vineyard's most off-putting fogey
Demanded his share of pierogi
The seller said, "Alan,
You're just not my pal, and
I think you should move to Muskogee."

UD covers gun news closely and can assure you that all over America every day men, women, and children walk easily about with small medium and large guns all over them. Of course some of this happens in open carry states, where everyone sees the gun, but no one (cough) responds…

As for the lack of response in midtown Manhattan — the area immediately around the shooter in the plaza is curiously devoid of people, so I’m assuming the response was run away. My response would certainly have been Give this person PLENTY of room.

I would also have called 911, and I’m assuming some people in fact did, but there wouldn’t have been a quick enough response to 911 to stop him.

Psychologically, there may have been denial/disbelief/maybe someone is filming a movie scene here... There may have been, in other words, human all too human tendencies to normalize/vaporize a twilight zone sight in the middle of the day.

Just as more Americans need training in active shooter drills, so more Americans need to be taught to lead their daily public lives with a heightened degree of paranoia.

Introduction, THE SHITS ARE TRYING TO KILL US, PEOPLE. GET IT INTO YOUR HEAD THAT THERE ARE FIVE HUNDRED MILLION GUNS IN THIS COUNTRY. Meets Wednesdays, basement of St Mark’s Episcopal, 7:00. Refreshments served.

Brevard Co.'s Representative Fine
Is so violent and wretched a swine
That even old AIPAC
Takes a startled step way back
When he speaks what is on his foul mind

‘The Hamptons are less a location that’s a beach than a beach that forgot it was a beach. The place has become the rictus grin of the nouveau riche. It’s the Upper East Side’s revenge against urban humidity and decay, a spiritual center of sorts devoted to musing smugly upon your life and how it’s gone so right.‘

Sing it.


Now is the panicle season
Humidity is hell
We're sweating well beyond reason
O hell now sing o hell

Because Nevada has its head up its ass, New Yorkers die.

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

“New York has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation. We banned assault weapons. We strengthened our Red Flag Law. We closed dangerous loopholes. But our laws only go so far when an AR-15 can be obtained in a state with weak gun laws and brought into New York to commit mass murder,” [Gov. Kathy] Hochul said in a statement on Tuesday morning. “Congress must summon the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and finally pass a national assault weapons ban before more innocent lives are stolen.”

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

Nevada permits open carry, whereas New York does not.

Additionally, assault weapons are banned in New York but allowed in Nevada; there are some exceptions to this rule.

Another notable difference is that in New York, local jurisdictions such as cities and counties can enact stricter gun laws than the state.

In Nevada, jurisdictions cannot impose stricter regulations than those established by the state.

Not sure where this incredulity comes from. Multiple mass shootings all over the country are producing volunteers/veterans/victims of more than one theater of war. I saw action in Vegas and in Reno…

UD doesn’t understand much of what real estate super-executive Wesley LePatner is saying here; but then, before LePatner was pulverized by an M4 assault rifle in her building’s lobby yesterday, she moved in a world alien to UD’s.

What UD does understand is that she was way smart (Yale, history), hugely enterprising and ambitious, an art-lover, and a loving wife and mother. She came from generations of accomplished New Yorkers, and embodied the energy, brains, and civic disposition of the sort of people who work inside the city’s most iconic buildings.

An altogether exceptional person. And she was at the height of her powers when a madman who was able to get hold of an assault rifle (this is America, after all) blew her to pieces.

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

And never was Wayne LaPierre’s famous saying (updated by UD) more true:

“The only way to stop a bad guy with an M4 assault rifle is with a good guy with an M4 assault rifle.”

It’s a goddamn shame Wesley LePatner wasn’t carrying an XM7/M7 Battle Rifle yesterday. What’s with New York’s restrictive gun laws?

” … I’m going to kill myself with an M4 assault rifle. But first I want to massacre whoever I encounter in this building.”

Killed five people and injured six in midtown Manhattan.

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

“[E]very country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them.”

So begins the coverage of a suicide on the 13th best grounds – a man with a handgun, of course; and of course we are instructed to call it a tragedy long before we know the circumstances.

In America, all suicides are automatically granted tragedy (“an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe”) status; but this increasingly common event, well on its way to becoming a banality in places like Wyoming, seems to UD to be running out out of gas, tragedy-wise.

Certainly – as UD can attest – when someone near/dear to you does the deed, it’s staggering; but qua daily American newsfeed, qua ye olde quotidian, it’s as impossible to tragedify tens of thousands of bummed guys with guns as it is to get worked up about tens of thousands of bummed guys pointing guns at others.

For guidance on this, UD goes to OK State Sen. Nathan Dahm, who, asked about his state’s astounding suicide rate, said “Everyone dies. That’s life.” When everyone’s got – let’s stick with 13 – guns around the house, including one right there on the nightstand for your convenience during a dark night of the soul (we all get ’em), what do you expect? Eventually the coverage of suicides (if coverage there be) will focus more on the rankings of the golf courses where some of them take place and less on the so-called tragedy of the event.

The suicide itself, in other words, ain’t much of a hook anymore; you’re going to have find another angle.

… Tom Lehrer songs – every single one of them – so it’s hard for her to know which to feature here. But there’s one she sings more than all the others, so…