“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.

Israel’s super-icky national security minister is wined and dined by a once-respectable Yale intellectual salon. The Times of Israel offers background on the moral deterioration of this group.

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If a figure as eminent as a rabbi based at Yale can legitimize a viewpoint as extreme as Ben-Gvir’s, well, that adds fuel to [anti-semitic] fire. If a Jewish educator grants a hechsher (the kosher seal of approval) to a Kahanist, then he’s making the job of the Israel haters easy.

Montana’s governor has a new commercial out, directed to Colorado-based gun manufacturers, in which he tells them to move their business from Colorado to his state. Colorado is insane, incredible, obscene, demented, and insane for having recently passed some gun control legislation.

“Move back to America!” shouts the guv; move back to Montana, Real America! “I don’t want to brag,” he enthuses, “but the gun suicide rate up in our magnificent hills is the highest in the country; and some of our counties, like Anaconda, have so many suicides everyone knows someone who’s used a gun to blow his head off!”

It’s true.

‘”This is a norm — people die by suicide,” said [child psychiatrist Kelly Irons,] who moved to Anaconda in 2019. “Everyone has someone in their family here who has died by suicide.“‘ ‘“It’s in the culture,” [says another Montanan]. “If you don’t know someone, you know of someone who has died.”

“Come home to America I say! Just look at this suicide rate-by-state map and compare the pathetic washed out peach color of Colorado to the deep bloodred of Montana! We’re Number One, and every blown off head in the state needs a gun, and you sell guns. Get the picture? Get on over here!”

The governor concludes by singing the national anthem.

“The bullets’ red glare! The brains bursting in air!

More lonely drunk men than you’ll find anywhere!”

… with Minnesota’s law allowing 18-20 year olds to carry guns. Lucky Rosenbloom‘s a firearms instructor, and he has announced that despite the law he himself will not admit that age group into his classes. “These kids are impulsive. They’re not going to think. Some of these kids still think that they’re invincible.”

Panting gunfuckers attacked Rosenbloom for not believing in the Second Amendment. “I’ve been teaching the permit to carry class for over 20 years. I’m not against the Second Amendment,” explained Rosenbloom.

 “There were five deadly shootings Tuesday night, and 13 since April 14. It brings the total to 91 for the year so far... There has been over one homicide a day for the past 10 days.”

… to make them shut up.

“All school shooters in U.S. history had easy access to the firearms they used — even those who were very young or severely mentally ill. Many came from a gun culture where firearms are symbols of affection, bonding, and identity. The weapons were often freely accessible in the shooters’ homes... For many school shooters guns were what they called their ‘only friend’, or ‘the love of their life… There’s not a single school shooting in the US where a shooter had trouble getting a firearm.“

‘You will either change or not. But either way, we will not be silent. You will hear our cries. You will hear our screams. You will hear our shouts. You will hear us.’

O silly FSU massacre-survivor! It hasn’t yet occurred to you – but it will – that the politicians you and your parents voted into office are at home eating popcorn, binge-watching your massacre. “Hon, is that a Glock he’s using?” “Looks more like a long gun.” “Weird. Looks like Jessie Ikner’s kid.” “Fuck it is her kid [munchmunch].” “Want another beer?” “Yeah thanks.”

They’re excited. They’re having fun. They’re not complacent. They’re totally into it.

A Missouri woman finds herself in trouble with the police for having disciplined her children by shooting both of them with a BB gun.

But she’ll be smiling soon. A major publisher has approached her about writing a book with the above suggested title. “We’ll provide a ghostwriter, etc.,” said the head of acquisitions at Penguin Random House. “We’re convinced this is a real child-rearing trend, and we’d like to get out there before the rest of the crowd.”