#raise the age for purchasing all guns and not just handguns to 25
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If I see one more liberal call for a revolution immediately after calling for a ban on "military style weapons" I'm gonna fucking lose it and start digging a tunnel
Every single jackass who posts that AR-15 versus predator drone meme then posts a picture of Wonder Woman with a sword and says that's how they're gonna defend the right to abortion is a brain dead imbecile
Every single comment about common sense regulations I see is about extra laws that would empower police to decimate inner cities and would never actually get semiautomatic weaponry out of the hands of disillusioned and violent young men. I see no one talking about weapon storage or ways to empower schools to actually get help for these men and I just see people talking about magazine restrictions and banning AR-15s which aren't even the most powerful or most high capacity guns on the market. They're just what's currently ubiquitous because of the military industrial complex and they're about to get replaced by the new SIG 6.8mm rifles. Nobody wants to ban AK-47s even though they're just as easy to acquire and higher caliber. Everyone dismisses gang violence in these conversations like young Black men don't deserve a chance to get out of that hell.
I have so many ideas for policies and regulations for just the firearms side (not even talking UBI and universal healthcare) that would actually solve these massacres and I'm too fucking angry at my friends to even say them because they have to share their stupid fucking Star Wars and Discworld memes to make sure everyone knows how sad they are about another batch of kids dying before they go back to consuming endless streams of Disney content and voting for Democrats who won't lift a finger on this issue.
I have a friend who's not allowed to legally own firearms for a few more years because she was forcibly hospitalized after crashing her car into a tree at night during a suicide attempt that she regretted before the hit happened, and meanwhile her brother has never been hospitalized and still can legally use guns despite ranting and raving in a manic fugue state in his front yard and threatening to kill people while the cops stood there laughing. How the fuck are you going to get every AR-15 off the streets when this is our normal? When cops just let any man light enough keep their guns even against department policy? When schools repeatedly report problem kids and get ignored until after the problem kid has finally shot everyone up? How are you going to stop shootings by banning the sale of only one style of semiautomatic rifle and not doing anything about any other type of gun, or working on any sort of training minimum requirements? Are we gonna talk about how ICE was waiting at the school to arrest any undocumented parents, and how ICE has been implicated in multiple firearms smuggling schemes while using even the slightest suggestion of illegal activity as an excuse to kill any Latino on site, and how undocumented Latino workers often have unregistered firearms because they know cops will not protect them?
23 people are dead. Two adults, 19 kids, and the shooter himself, an 18 year old who was a week away from graduation if his grades were good enough for that. We need a solution, not useless platitudes, and banning exactly one type of gun then calling for a revolution like you have emptily for the past five years is a useless platitude. These are people who hid at home during the BLM protests who think they're gonna change something.
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE YOUR REVOLUTION WITHOUT WEAPONS?
#raid mom's safe#buy right before the shooting#there are so many things we could do#raise the age for purchasing all guns and not just handguns to 25#raise that for joining the military too#require safes and create a licensure framework that involves a free but extensive class on both the mechanical and use side of firearms#and on force usage de-escalation legal and moral frameworks and ethics#make testing requirements with a minimum of five years between tests for renewal and make it so taking the test is mandatory time off#make voting that too#all gun stores and ranges and police stations must provide a free and easy to use firearm lockup with no questions asked#domestic violence is an automatic no ownership offense and dv convicts must face tests that are much more thorough than other felons#to get their rights back#and must submit to yearly inspections#part of licensure should frankly be safe storage inspections by non-police legal professionals#safe storage is part of self defense and I'm tired of the 2a community pretending it isn't#i would only accept at home ammo storage restrictions if there was a price cap on ammunition just like there should be for gas#that way it's not a burden to buy a small amount to practice with at the range#and frankly ammo restrictions feel against the idea of labor being armed ala marx#so im still working on that concept#perhaps community ammo banks become a thing#this kid blew fucking $2000 minimum on two daniel defense rifles and 370 rounds of .223 then killed his grandma and shot up a school so#perhaps just restricting the amount you can get in one purchase (again with a price cap) is the way to go#we do occasionally see stockpiler shooters but thats very rare compared to or#from either stores or straw buyers
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Guns in Missouri
So, I’m from a decent sized suburban town in Missouri and as I was driving back to my house today, I saw a sign at a tactical shop that said “Build an AR-15″ and I thought to myself, “I bet people from other countries would think this was really weird,” so I decided to make this post to kind of explain some gun culture here in America. Keep in mind that I’m living in a red state (Republican state, so it’s fairly conservative), so in some areas of the country it’s a little different, but this is just gun culture around where I was raised.
In my town, it’s pretty easy to find guns, and I’m actually from one of the more liberal parts of Missouri (which is about smack in the middle of the US in case you didn’t know). Out of curiosity, I googled it and there are over 40 gun and ammo shops within a 25 mile radius of me, and honestly, I just stopped counting at 40. There’s also quite a few shooting ranges as well. Wanna know how many gun safety courses I found? Four.
Would you like to know what you have to do to be able to buy a gun? Well, you have two options. First option is you walk into a registered shop, they do a background check on you and you have to fill out a form. To buy a hand gun you have to be 21 or older. To buy a shotgun, rifle, or ammunition you just have to be 18. Second option is you buy from a person. In that case you have to do exactly nothing except fork over the money. You’re also supposed to be over 18 if you’re purchasing a handgun, but no one is really checking.
So, who can’t purchase or own a gun? I’ve got the list for you.
-Anyone convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, or are under indictment for a felony crime
-Fugitives
-Drug Abusers/Addicts
-Anyone adjudicated as a mental defective or have been committed to any mental institution
-Illegal aliens
-People discharged dishonorably from the military
-Anyone who has renounced US citizenship
-Anyone subject to a court order restraining the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of the intimate partner
-Anyone who has been convicted of a misdemeanor for domestic violence
So, you might be asking, “Faye, what about after they buy the gun?”. Well, I’ve got answers for you. You DO NOT have to register your gun or apply for a permit to own a gun. In other words, the only way we know you have it is if you bought it in a registered shop.
In Missouri, we have what are called open carry laws, which mean that you can take your gun pretty much wherever in public as long as you have the gun on display unless there are laws against it (like polling places, churches, schools, etc) or private businesses don’t allow them.
Well, surely that’s alright! Right? I mean, at least we know they have them and they’re not hiding them, right?
Wrong.
In the state of Missouri’s infinite wisdom, we got rid of concealed carry permits, which means that as long as you’re over the age of 19, you can carry your gun on you with no one knowing a damn thing about it. And we still don’t know you have the gun unless you bought it at that registered shop!
Oh, and about our friendly registered shop.
THERE ARE NO STATE REGULATIONS ON GUN DEALERS.
Sure, we have the federal regulation, which is that any shop that buys and sells firearms with the motive of making a profit must have a Federal Firearms License.
I’ve had people walk into my work place carrying guns. I’ve seen people out to eat with guns. I know people who keep their gun in their cars or houses. Some of these people just keep it in the bottom of a drawer, or the top of their closets. Some of these people have kids that could get to it. My father and some of his friends like to go hunting. They have conventions occasionally for hunting or just guns and weapons in general. If you live in Missouri, you probably have a gun in your house or you at least know someone who does. Almost all these people are self taught.
So yeah. Guns in Missouri. Lots of them, and few laws. Probably a recipe for disaster.
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Monday, May 31, 2021
More states ease lingering virus rules as vaccine rates rise
(AP) Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, more U.S. cities and states are shrugging off lingering COVID-19 restrictions as vaccination rates rise and the number of infections falls. Massachusetts lifted a mask requirement Saturday, a day after New Jersey dropped its mandate. In New York City and Chicago, officials reopened public beaches, though winds and cool temperatures kept crowds away. It’s one more sign of progress that reflects increasingly positive health data. For businesses nationwide, the improving outlook and long holiday weekend offered a chance to welcome customers back to in-person shopping.
Gun Buying Spiked During the Pandemic
(NYT) Beneath the timeworn political cycle on guns in the United States, the country’s appetite for firearms has only been increasing, with more being bought by more Americans than ever before. While gun sales have been climbing for decades—they often spike in election years and after high-profile crimes—Americans have been on an unusual, prolonged buying spree fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, the protests last summer and the fears they both stoked. In March last year, federal background checks, a rough proxy for purchases, topped one million in a week for the first time since the government began tracking them in 1998. And the buying continued, through the protests in the summer and the election in the fall, until a week this spring broke the record with 1.2 million background checks. “There was a surge in purchasing unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, a gun researcher at the University of California, Davis. “Usually it slows down. But this just kept going.”
Louisiana coast still hurting from storms, bracing for more
(AP) Scores of people in coastal Louisiana are still living in campers on dirt mounds or next to cement slabs where their houses once stood. Unresolved insurance claims and a shortage of supply and labor are stymieing building efforts. And weather forecasters are warning of more possible devastation to come. Nine months after two back-to-back hurricanes hammered their towns, residents are still struggling to recover—even as they brace for another onslaught of storms in the season that starts Tuesday. “We’re scared to death for this next season,” said Clarence Dyson, who is staying with his wife and four kids in a 35-foot-long (11-meter-long) camper with bunk beds while the home they had been renting in Cameron Parish undergoes repairs after Hurricane Laura. The stress of rebuilding and worry about future storms have prompted some to consider moving inland.
2 dead, 20 to 25 people shot after 3 suspects open fire on crowd
(GMA) At least two people have been killed and an estimated 20 to 25 people have been shot after three suspects with assault rifles and handguns exited a vehicle and began shooting at a crowd of people. The incident occurred at some point between midnight and 1 a.m. in Miami-Dade County in Florida when a white Nissan Pathfinder drove up to a location that was being rented for a concert, exited the vehicle and began unloading their firearms on the crowd, according to Miami-Dade police director Alfredo Ramirez.
In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
(AP) The notoriously violent Jalisco cartel has responded to Mexico’s “hugs, not bullets” policy with a policy of its own: The cartel kidnapped several members of an elite police force in the state of Guanajuato, tortured them to obtain names and addresses of fellow officers and is now hunting down and killing police at their homes, on their days off, in front of their families. It is a type of direct attack on officers seldom seen outside of the most gang-plagued nations of Central America and poses the most direct challenge yet to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of avoiding violence and rejecting any war on the cartels. But the cartel has already declared war on the government, aiming to eradicate an elite state force known as the Tactical Group which the gang accuses of treating its members unfairly. “If you want war, you’ll get a war. We have already shown that we know where you are. We are coming for all of you,” reads a professionally printed banner signed by the cartel and hung on a building in Guanajuato in May.
Boris Johnson, fiancée Carrie Symonds wed in London
(AP) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds married Saturday in a small private ceremony in London, U.K. newspapers reported. Johnson, 56, and 33-year-old Symonds, an environmental campaigner, announced their engagement in February 2020 and have a son together, 1-year-old Wilfred. The marriage would be Symonds’ first and Johnson’s third. He has at least five other children from previous relationships. The last British prime minister to marry in office was Lord Liverpool in 1822.
The pandemic-stressed compete for the ultimate chill
(Washington Post) Organizers of South Korea’s annual competition to be the best at doing nothing—seriously, nothing—needed just the right spot for the work-from-home parents, remote-learning students and others weary of the pandemic. So what could be better than a “healing forest” on the southern island of Jeju? The woodlands are known as a site for other therapeutic programs. Twenty-eight pandemic-battered competitors gathered under the leafy canopy Wednesday for the Space Out Competition. The premise is simply: zone out for 90 minutes, with the winner having the lowest and most stable heart rate. South Korean artist Woopsyang created Space Out in 2014 as a pushback against South Korea’s fast-paced and high-pressure society. It has since spread to other places such as Hong Kong and the Netherlands. “The pandemic-hit world needs Space Out more than ever,” said Woopsyang, who goes by one name. “We have a lot of downtime at our homes but we spend that time stressing over the virus and feeling anxious.” Experts say the pandemic pressures can put the body and mind into a virtual “survival mode.” “Facing unprecedented threats of the virus, people find it hard to stay still and keep worrying about what action to take next,” said Shin Dong-won, a clinical psychiatrist at Seoul’s Kangbuk Samsung Hospital.
They Call It ‘Insane’: Where Myanmar Sends Political Prisoners
(NYT) The prison was already packed, its population more than double its 5,000-person capacity. Recent prisoners include two American journalists and an Australian economic adviser. Hundreds of pro-democracy protesters have also been crammed in, some with fresh gunshot wounds. For 134 years, Insein Prison has stood as a monument to brutality and authoritarian rule in Myanmar. Built by British colonizers to help subjugate the population, the pizza-shaped penitentiary became infamous for its harsh conditions and the torture of prisoners during a half-century of military dictatorship. Now, with the Myanmar military back in control after a Feb. 1 coup, the aging prison has become a central part of the continuing crackdown against the pro-democracy movement in the Southeast Asian nation. The junta has detained more than 4,300 people since February, according to a rights group. The primary destination has been Insein, the most prominent of 56 penitentiaries. Perhaps fittingly, its name is pronounced “insane.” In interviews with The New York Times, a retired Insein prison guard and 10 former prisoners painted a portrait of appalling conditions and human misery at the notorious institution. Many say they fear that a new generation of political prisoners will be forced to endure the same horrific treatment if the military is allowed to remain in charge.
Iran-backed militias turn to drone attacks, alarming U.S. forces in Iraq
(Washington Post) U.S. military officials in Iraq have grown increasingly alarmed over attacks by Iran-backed militias using drones to evade detection systems around military bases and diplomatic facilities. In place of rockets, militiamen have turned at times to small, fixed-wing drones that fly too low to be picked up by defensive systems, military officials and diplomats say. An official with the U.S.-led coalition described the evolving drone threat as the military mission’s biggest concern in Iraq. In April, a drone strike targeted a CIA hangar inside the airport complex in the northern city of Irbil, according to officials familiar with the matter. The drone’s remains were partially recovered, and preliminary analysis suggested it was made in Iran, a coalition official said. The attack deeply concerned White House and Pentagon officials because of the covert nature of the facility and the sophistication of the strike. A similar drone attack in May on the sprawling Ain al-Asad air base raised similar concerns among coalition commanders about how militias are adapting their tactics.
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Sensor Sweep: 9/30/2019
Weapons (Ammoland): On the Internet, and in print, many people claim that pistols lack efficacy in defending against bear attacks. Here is an example that occurred on freerepublic.com: “Actually, there are legions of people who have been badly mauled after using a handgun on a bear. Even some of the vaunted magnums.”
OK, give us a few examples. As you claim “legions”, it should not be too hard. I never received a response.
Fiction (Walker’s Retreat): As the book just went live in paperback, product linking will take a few days, but both versions are meant to be linked. I’ve set it such that any paperback purchase gets you the ebook for free. The same applies to other features such as Look Inside.
BACKERS! I’ve ordered your copies. They’re due to arrive at my house between the 8th and the 16th. I will begin turning around and sending them to you as soon as they arrive.
RPG (RPG Pundit): Lion & Dragon contains a bestiary chapter, which has 40 different entries for creatures (not counting 13 animals and a bunch of entries for human NPCs; and also not counting Demons which have their own section in the “Summoning” rules of the magic chapter, alongside the homunculus and the golem). Many of these monsters have names that you would see in any number of OSR/D&D monster manuals, but their version in L&D is very different, being based on medieval lore and styling.
Fiction (Cirsova): The idea is that wars on Earth created a race of albino Khan Noonien Singh-esque Mutant supermen whose intellect and self-determination put them at odds with a socialist global superstate, so said superstate booted them and other non-Mutant freethinkers off to the moons of Jupiter. The societies and states on the moons of Jupiter have a nominal perpetual peace, except they’re actually in a state of perpetual strife and intrigue acted out via agents.
Comic Books (Paint Monk): It’s the same group who thought Avengers: No Road Home and Savage Avengers were good ideas. Editorial is a milkmaid and Conan is the cow.
I feel like I’m beating the same old drum. Conan the Barbarian is a terrible comic. Jason Aaron’s prose is just abysmal. Mahmud Asrar’s art is merely serviceable in that for every brilliant panel there are two or three he must have drawn while sleepwalking.
Ian Fleming (M Porcius): One of the issues one might raise about some of the first four 007 novels is that Fleming didn’t do much to flesh out the lead villains. For example, we spend very little time with the Spangs, the twin brothers who head an American crime family in Diamonds Are Forever before Bond sends them to hell with his .25 caliber Beretta or a handy 40mm anti-aircraft gun.
RPG (RPG Confessions): These vocabulary words are useful in that they summarize complicated concepts, and that leads to greater communication. But we live in a time where everyone skims, and no one is very good at reading for context anymore, and subtlety is gone and nuance is out the window, and…I guess what I’m saying is, “Sandbox” and “Railroad” are positioned in our current lexicon of geek patois as Yin and Yang, a positive and a negative, one to emulate and the other to assiduously avoid at all cost.
History (Swords Sorcery): During the French and Indian War (1754-63), the French capture of Fort Oswego on the shore of Lake Ontario opened the rich farmland of the valley and the homes of the British-allied Mohawk nation to military threat. The valley survived the war mostly intact. It was a very different story twelve years later in the American Revolution.
Book Review (Everyday Should be Tuesday): If it wasn’t entirely clear after Cold Iron that Cameron is writing an Epic Fantasy with a capital-E and capital-F, it certainly isn’t now. This is also definitely Flintlock Fantasy—early modern guns play a much more significant role in Dark Forge than they did in Cold Iron.
Cinema (Postmodern Pulps): Last Blood, on the other hand, appears to have been conceived for the sole purpose of getting to the last 20 minutes of the film, and no one gave any real thought or care as to how the film got there. In order to talk about this, I’m going to have to deal with some extensive plot spoilers, so now is your chance to bail now if you don’t want this.
Fiction (Hi Lo Brow): Sixty-five years ago, the following 10 adventures — selected from my Best Nineteen-Fifties (1954–1963) Adventure list — were first serialized or published in book form. They’re my favorite adventures published that year.
Please let me know if I’ve missed any adventures from this year that you particularly admire. Enjoy!
D&D (Skulls in the Stars): WG5: Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure (1984), by Robert J. Kuntz and Gary Gygax. This adventure is reeeeeally old school, even though it was published in 1984! The name sounds a bit silly, but don’t let it fool you: this adventure was first written in 1972/1973 by Robert Kuntz in order to challenge the skills of none other than Gary Gygax, who used his wizard Mordenkainen! It is a quite punishing dungeon.
Fiction (Superversive): The Goddess Gambit is the series’ first novel, telling the tale of a post apocalyptic Earth, ravaged by a mysterious event called “The Storm.” Humanity is now primarily concentrated around an immense fortress called the “Zigg,” with the fortunate pure ones living inside in relative luxury, the unfortunate– mutants, aliens, and general undesirables– living in slums clustered around it. (If you’re thinking Final Fantasy VII‘s Midgar, you’re on the right track.)
Storytelling (Wasteland and Sky): What I dislike the most is anything that makes the universe smaller. Any story device that clips the wings of potential from the outset is one I cannot get behind. And, unfortunately, this has happened more and more over the last decade.
There are two examples that are functionally the same thing, but both are very good at making me lose interest in your story.
Gaming (Bell of Lost Souls): Come take a look at some of new rules and changes to existing ones that turn up the newest Warhammer Underworlds season’s competitive heat!
Source: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/09/warhammer-underworlds-beastgraves-seasonal-delights.html
Westerns (Paul Bishop): If I could only choose one Western novel to recommend, it would be The Cowboy and the Cossack. The traditional cattle drive formula is given a refreshing twist when fifteen Montana cowboys sail into Vladivostok, Russia, with a herd of five hundred longhorns. The experienced wranglers are fired up to drive their herd across a thousand miles of Siberian wilderness, but are startled to find a band of Cossacks—Russia’s elite horsemen and warriors—waiting to act as an unwanted escort.
Horror (Too Much Horror Fiction): So within a couple months I’d tracked down Lansdale’s 1987 novel The Nightrunners (Dark Harvest hardcover 1987, paperback by Tor, March 1989). I recall coming home one afternoon from the bookstore I worked at with my brand-new copy, going into my room, locking the door and then reading it in one white-hot unputdownable session. That had never happened to me before; I usually savored my horror fiction over several late nights.
Edgar Rice Burroughs (DMR Books): February 1912 saw the ground-breaking publication of Under the Moons of Mars—later rechristened A Princess of Mars—in All-Story Magazine. Readers clamored for more adventures on Barsoom and Edgar Rice Burroughs gladly obliged. The first installment of The Gods of Mars was published in January of 1913. ERB, no fool, ended TGoM on a cliffhanger. John Carter fans demanded the conclusion to the saga and Burroughs delivered the goods. The Warlord of Mars saw its first publication in All-Story beginning with the December, 1913 issue.
Comic Books (Brian Niemeier): Everybody has a theory of how the American comic book industry died. “It was the early 90s investor boom,” some say. “The glut of variant covers and similar sales gimmicks created a bubble, and when it burst it took out the direct market.”
Others lay the blame on publishers driving out seasoned writers and letting rock star artists run the show.
Detective (Moonlight Detective): An anonymous comment was left on my review of The Fort Terror Murders explaining Van Wych Mason’s long-running Captain Hugh North series has two main periods. The first period covers the fourteen novels published between 1930 and 1940, which have the word “murder” or “murders” in their title and “tend to have elements of the Golden Age detective story,” but the second period moved away from detection towards more spy-oriented intrigue novels – starting with The Rio Casino Intrigue (1941) and ending with The Deadly Orbit Mission (1968).
Dashiell Hammett (Black Gate): Sam Spade, the quintessential tough guy shamus, appeared in a five-part serial of The Maltese Falcon in Black Mask in 1929. Hammett carefully reworked the pieces into novel form for publication by Alfred E. Knopf in 1930 and detective fiction would have a benchmark that has yet to be surpassed. Hammett, who wrote over two dozen stories featuring a detective known as The Continental Op (well worth reading), never intended to write more about Samuel Spade, saying he was “done with him” after completing the book-length tale.
Sensor Sweep: 9/30/2019 published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/
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Cops in Mass Shooting Cases Reflect Gun Control Divide
Daniel Oates calls it “a perverse fraternity”: the group of police chiefs and sheriffs from Aurora, Colorado, to Parkland, Florida, who have had to confront mass shooters, and who know the horror and confusion that follow when a gunman fires into a crowd.
As the country grapples with the latest school massacre, their uncommon experience gives them a rare perspective on the debate over armed teachers, background checks, concealed guns and whether military-style assault rifles should be available for civilians to purchase.
Mimicking Trump, Local Officials Use 'Fake News' as a Weapon
Three weeks after authorities say 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz shot 17 people to death at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, four members of that fraternity shared their thoughts about how to prevent violence in the United States, where Americans are up to 25 times more likely to die by gunshot than people in other developed countries.
But while they faced the same heartbreak, they reflect the same divisions that have paralyzed Congress, where many Democrats have pushed for gun control and many Republicans have stressed mental health and other issues. The question now is whether Parkland will break the stalemate.
Trump Decries NYT, Says He's 'VERY Happy' With Legal Team
When James Holmes killed 12 people in a movie theater in Aurora, where Oates was then police chief, Holmes was heavily armed. He had a version of an AR-15 rifle and other weapons, he wore body armor, a gas mask and helmet, and the Aurora police officer who found him outside standing by his car later testified he thought Holmes was a fellow officer because of his gear. A movie-goer with a handgun would have been no match in the 2012 bloodbath, Oates said.
“That’s part of the myth that’s put forward from the NRA after these events,” he said.
Trump: North Korea Will Keep Word on Suspended Missile Tests
The National Rifle Association argues, to block gun control, that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” an assertion made by its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, immediately after the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Most research does not back the claim.
Oates, now the police chief in Miami Beach, Florida, would ban AR-15-style rifles, a popular weapon based on the military’s M-16 and the weapon of choice in recent massacres from Newtown to the holiday party in San Bernardino, California, the outdoor concert in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the tiny church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Arming teachers, as proposed by President Donald Trump and seconded by the NRA and other gun control opponents, would just add to the potential for tragedy, he said.
“The infinitely smarter answer is to prevent guns from getting in schools. That would be much easier and safer than training the teacher workforce in the United States to be armed,” Oates said. “I don’t think there’s any place in our society for assault weapons except in the hands of police officers.”
In Wilson County, Texas, which includes Sutherland Springs, Sheriff Joe D. Tackitt Jr. said he expected more teachers, churchgoers and others to carry concealed weapons following the Nov. 5 shooting that left 26 people dead at the First Baptist Church, “because sometimes one person could be in the right position to take out an active shooter.”
Tackitt would ban “bump stocks,” devices that effectively turn semi-automatic weapons into faster-shooting automatic ones, and he supports stricter background checks, though he is not sure how they should be implemented.
Currently, background checks are required only for gun sales by licensed firearm dealers, not for unlicensed sales at gun shows or over the internet. It is a loophole gun-control advocates want closed.
But Tackitt said that anyone who could pass a background check should be able to buy an AR-15.
“I know in our area, you’re not going to be able to go and knock on somebody’s door and say, ‘Hey, I want to see all your weapons,’ because they’re not going to let you see them, they’re not going to give their weapons up,” Tackitt said.
No one in Congress has proposed confiscating guns, but top Democrats want a ban on assault rifles while Republican leaders, like the NRA, are focused on school safety. Trump is seesawing from one position to another and the divide is as rancorous as it typically is.
One narrow proposal with a chance, which comes from a bipartisan group of lawmakers, would improve the National Instant Background Check System by tightening federal and state cooperation.
The police chief of Orlando, Florida, where Omar Mateen killed 49 people inside the Pulse nightclub, is, like Oates, opposed to arming teachers. Police officers receive intensive training and carry their firearms every day, said Chief John Mina, who is running for sheriff of Orange County as an independent. Teachers would not have body armor or extra magazines, might not be prepared for a struggle over a weapon and could become targets themselves, once students learn who has a weapon and who does not, he said. Instead, he would add armed security, single entries, metal detectors and random checks of backpacks and lockers.
“I just don’t think arming our teachers is the right fit, for all jurisdictions,” he said. “They have so many other responsibilities. They’re in charge of keeping students educated. Carrying a gun is hard work.”
Florida's Legislature this week approved a previously unimaginable bill that places new restrictions on firearms in a state that just received an F rating on its gun laws from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The bill was signed by Gov. Rick Scott on Friday.
The measure does not ban assault rifles, as Democrats sought, and it would allow school districts to arm librarians, coaches and other employees though not full-time teachers. But it also raises the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21, prohibits bump stocks and provides millions in funding for schools for safety and mental-health care.
And it allows police to temporarily confiscate guns from people who are involuntarily committed for mental evaluation under Florida's Baker Act, or go to court to remove guns for up to a year from those who poses a threat to themselves or others.
Mina said he approved making it more difficult for people who are threatening to harm others or themselves from having weapons as the new Florida law does. California, Connecticut, Indiana, Oregon and Washington also have enacted so-called red-flag laws that enable a judge to issue what are known as gun-violence restraining orders to temporarily confiscate weapons.
Mina is in favor of raising the purchase age to 21, expanding background checks and banning bump stocks. As far as a ban on assault rifles, he said it would have little chance of passing.
“Any of that legislation is going to be tough to get passed but I think both sides of this issue need to work a little bit harder and come up with something that’s going to make both sides of the issue a little uncomfortable,” he said. “And I don’t know what that is.”
Mina said that he learned from the 2016 Pulse attack that all police officers need body armor that will stop a rifle round, along with Kevlar helmets. Mateen, who pledged loyalty to the Islamic State, was killed in a shoot-out with law enforcement.
He had been investigated several times by the FBI after making comments about terrorists overseas, and he was abusive toward his wife, Noor Salman, who is now on trial on charges of aiding him before the attack, but the agency found no evidence that he was a threat.
In San Bernardino, California, where Syed Farook, 28, and his 27-year-old wife, Tashfeen Malik, also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said mental-health care needs to be addressed. Police officers can do little with people who lack the ability to take care of themselves, who refuse to take medication or get treatment.
“We are very, very weak on mental-health care,” Burguan said. “We have very, very few resources dedicated to mental-health care. The bottom line is there are a lot of people that are walking the streets and there’s not a lot we can do with them and that’s a very frustrating thing from a law enforcement standpoint.”
Tackitt said his department had not received any warnings about the Sutherland Springs shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, who killed 26 churchgoers, among them little children, at the First Baptist Church. Kelley had escaped from a mental-health hospital, where he was sent after being accused of assaulting his wife and fracturing his baby stepson's skull, but the military failed to enter his domestic-violence case into a database that would have prohibited his purchase of a rifle.
Wilson is a rural county, with at most five patrol deputies at a time, and before officers could arrive, a neighbor confronted Kelley with his own AR-15. Stephen Willeford wounded Kelley, and then, with another man, chased him down and found him dead. Kelley, 26, had shot himself in the head.
“He says, ’I’m not a hero, I did it what anyone else would have done,’ but there was no one else around,” Tackitt said. “He stepped up. The guy could have easily shot him when he was running up there.”
Opponents of gun control have trumpeted Willeford’s training as an NRA instructor to argue against attempts to ban the AR-15, though without acknowledging that the rifle itself, designed to kill quickly and efficiently, made the massacre possible. Officials have said that a videotape of the attack — the church taped its services — shows Kelley pausing only to reload as he shot his victims in the head over about seven minutes. Willeford’s bravery aside, it was the deadliest shooting in Texas history.
One bright spot for Oates and Mina are the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, many of whom are lobbying passionately for gun control and other changes. Students who grew up in the shadow of Columbine, who know to silence cell phones and barricade classrooms when gunmen rampage through the hallways, are infuriated with lawmakers inaction.
“What if the children of America become more powerful than our politicians,” asked Jaclyn Corin, the school’s junior class president, in a videotape produced as part of a series of #WhatIf questions designed to pressure Congress.
Whether they can build a lasting movement could be answered on March 24, when what they are calling a “March for Our Lives” will take place in Washington, D.C., in every state, and a half a dozen cities in Canada.
“They’re articulate as can be,” Oates said. “There are no inhibitions. They’re not particularly beholden to any interest group and their passion and their anger isn’t muffled in any way. And I think it’s very powerful. Yes, that might just make a difference.”
Photo Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Cops in Mass Shooting Cases Reflect Gun Control Divide published first on Miami News
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Armed Teacher of the Year Opens Fire in School
President Trumps proposal to arm teachers seemed nutty enough even before a second former high school teacher of the year was arrested for firing a gun inside his school.
Both teachers were in Georgia, which generally prohibits peoplefrom carrying firearms on school grounds, The first was a star math instructor at Lithia Springs High School, 25 miles from Atlanta. He fired one bullet from a handgun in what may have been a suicide attempt back in August.
The second was on Wednesday, when a star social studies teacher at Dalton High School, 90 miles from Atlanta. He was arrested for barricading himself in his classroom and firing a shot with a handgun for reasons yet to be determined.
In between the two teacher-involved incidents, the mass shooting at a Florida high school prompted President Trump to propose arming educators:
Armed Educators (and trusted people who work within a school) love our students and will protect them. Very smart people. Must be firearms adept & have annual training. Should get yearly bonus. Shootings will not happen again – a big & very inexpensive deterrent. Up to States.
A considerable number of the Dalton students who were thrown into an understandable panic by the gunshot on Wednesday were quick to offer their opinion of the notion that Trump shares with the NRA. One who goes by the Twitter handle Chondi tweeted:
@NRA my favorite teacher at Dalton high school just blockaded his door and proceeded to shoot. We had to run out the back of the school in the rain. Students were being trampled and screaming. I dare you to tell me arming teachers will make us safe.
Again, high school teens were making considerably more sense than our president in the wake of a shooting. A classmate, Twitter handle hillary, tweeted:
Im a Dalton High School student. Please dont tell me a damn thing about arming teachers. Please dont tell me that I dont know what the hell Im talking about.
Another Dalton student, Twitter handle Winter, tweeted about the trolls who almost immediately sought to make the shooting appear to be part of a plot to undermine Trump and the NRA and their pals:
What happened at Dalton High School today was very REAL. My classmates were shoved into dark classrooms not knowing if theyre were going to make it out alive and were literally posting their goodbyes on social media. Dont you DARE make this into a conspiracy theory.
The suspect in Wednesdays incident was identified as 53-year-old year-old Randal Davidson, the Dalton High teacher of the year in 2015. The father of five had become a teacher after working as the news and sports guy at a local radio station. He kept a hand in radio and his play-by-play announcing is well known to anybody who listens to Dalton football on Friday nights.
Davidson is the author of the two-volume opus "Catamounts! The Glorious History of Dalton Football. He suggested during one interview about the first volume that he is something of an obsessive.
"That random typo will haunt you for the rest of your life," he told a local reporter. "It's something that will drive you crazy because you put 'an' instead of 'and.' So, I keep doing it and doing it and re-doing it. So, what happens is your brain starts doing autocorrect, but you don't do it on the page."
But by all accounts, Davidson has been a dedicated and popular teacher. He does not seem to have had a criminal record that would have kept him from legally acquiring the handgun he allegedly brought into the school in a computer case on Wednesday morning.
Davidson was in his classroom during a planning period when several students sought to come in. He barred them from entering and they went to the principal.
When the principal tried to open the door with a key, Davidson forced it shut. He then allegedly fired his revolver, putting a bullet through an exterior window, apparently not aiming at anybody.
The shot triggered a schoolwide panic and hundreds of students stampeded from the building. They were no doubt filled with fearful thoughts of the mass murder at the Florida high school on Valentines Day. Their own school had gotten a scare the following week, when a threatening note was found on a classroom floor, briefly resulting in an increased police presence.
When the shot was fired on Wednesday, the cop regularly assigned to the high school happened to be at the junior high school to meet with the follow officer assigned there. Both responded, along with numerous other cops.
There is a barricaded subject in a classroom," the Dalton Police Department tweeted. It is believed to be a teacher.
After a little over half an hour, the police persuaded Davidson to surrender.
The teacher is in custody, the Dalton Police tweeted. No children hurt. No children in danger.
A follow up police tweet noted:
Randal Davidson has been charged with aggravated assault, carrying weapon on school grounds, terroristic threats, reckless conduct, possession of gun during commission of a crime, and disrupting a public school.
Back on August 17, there had been another teacher-related shooting, this involving 43-year-old Jonathan Freeman, the Lithia Springs High School teacher of the year in 2015. He was known to make trigonometry actually enjoyable.
When a gunshot shattered the hush before the students arrived, staff members saw Freeman stagger from an office adjacent to his classroom. He had apparently shot himself with a handgun he had recently purchased legally.
The officer assigned to the school was on the scene in two minutes. Four more officers were there two minutes after that. Freeman was taken to the hospital and he survived his wound.
Then came Wednesdays shooting. A math instructor might well note the numbers: Two teachers of the year in seven months have discharged a firearm in a Georgia high school.
Up in Washington, our president was surprising everybody by suddenly saying he was in favor of several gun control measures the NRA opposes. He spoke of requiring background checks at gun shows. And raising the minimum age for purchasing a rifle from 18 to 21. And worrying about due process after the police take guns away from those who should not have them. And maybe even banning assault weapons.
But he was still saying that we can make kids safe by arming the teachers.
So are we still going to give teachers guns? I'm on the bus evacuating Dalton high school, tweeted the student with the handle Lilly Rio.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-second-teacher-of-the-year-fires-a-gun-inside-his-school
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Concealed Carry News -> House Speaker Paul Ryan Holding Up Concealed Carry Reciprocity, Rep Says
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