Racist idiots

By Comrade Misfit

By now you've heard of the Oak Creek Asshat[1], a white-supremacist[2] musician, former Army misfit[3], and heavy drinker who walked into a Sikh temple and murdered people, including a woman and an 85-year old man. He shot up the kitchen of the temple, where women were preparing a meal called the "langar," which is free and open to the public. The Sikhs in the temple would have welcomed the Asshat and fed him. Instead, he shot up the place.

First, let's give credit where it is richly due: The two Oak Creek police officers who did not fall back and wait for the cavalry but who engaged the shooter and killed him. Asshat shot and wounded Lt. Brian Murphy, who was trying to aid one of the victims; Officer Sam Lenda then shot and killed Asshat. Those officers probably reduced the carnage by their actions. They are heroes.

Second, all honor to the president of the temple, a 65-year old man named Satwant Singh Kaleka who, armed with only a dull knife, attacked Asshat and was shot fatally by Asshat. Mr. Kaleka's bravery delayed Asshat, and his attack gave time to the women and children in the temple to flee for their lives. If they gave the Medal of Honor to civilians, he should get one. But they don't, so he should be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Third, remember when the DHS was looking at the domestic terror threat from right-wing extremists and the GOP got all bent out of shape?

Finally, was Asshat's target selection based on deranged thinking such as "Osama bin Ladin wore a turban, bin Ladin was a terrorist, Sikhs wear turbans, so Sikhs are terrorists"?[4] Or was this an attack on the "Other," in which case he could have easily have walked into a mosque, a Buddhist temple, or a synagogue?
___________________
[1] I will not refer to clowns like Asshat by their proper names. It would be nice if the traditional press followed a similar practice.
[2] A term that might as well mean "pale-faced loser."
[3] Asshat was busted in rank and tossed out of the Army on "other than honorable" (OTH) conditions, the lowest grade of administrative discharge. An OTH discharge means that he were fired for being an nonredeemable dirtbag.
[4] Asshat reportedly went to high school in Colorado; they need to do a better job in teaching critical thinking skills.

Domestic terrorism defined

By tmcbpatriot

Reading about the latest massacre by yet another white man with a gun. An ex-soldier no less. Hmmm... why is it that I recall a story about soldiers coming home with itchy trigger fingers. Maybe I imagined it. 

Nope. I didn't.

It's getting to the point where we may be profiling the wrong people at airports. Funny thing, though. This latest slaughter is being called "domestic terrorism." I guess because the shooter killed a bunch of dark-skinned people who looked Muslim? Forget that he was probably too dumb to know the difference between Sikhs and al Qaeda. To him they had skin a few shades in the wrong direction and he had free access to guns. Put those two together and you have good ol' fashioned Americana!

What is different about this latest shooting, though, that puts him in a higher class of killer than that movie theater guy? I mean, fewer people were killed. You would think this latest senseless bloodbath was just like any other. Except, you would be wrong. This massacre was special. Why? Because in America it is important that we classify things in order to make sense of them.

Here, let me lay it out for you:

If a dark skinned Muslim, or somebody who looks Muslim, shoots anybody or anything for any reason, it's domestic terrorism. At the same time, if a white man shoots dark-skinned people, they must look Muslim for him to be a domestic terrorist. This is a key differentiator. Otherwise, he just shot regular black people. That alone does not get you that title.

Now, if you are white and shoot random people of any color, so long as it is mixed and more white people die over any other race, then you are simply a deranged individual who was probably neglected or sexually abused as a chile. Better yet, you may even be autistic. On the other hand, if you are just a run-of-the-mill dark-skinned person and you do not fit the stereotype of a Muslim and you shoot white people, then you are to be jailed immediately and considered the product of the welfare state and discarded.

Still with me? Because we are not quite done.

If you are white and shoot non-Muslim-looking black people, then you are simply a racist. If you are black and shoot other blacks, well, that's just Tuesday.

Lastly, and we want to be all-inclusive here, if you are Asian and you shoot people, then you are pretty much an Apple employee who cracked under the pressure of poor working conditions and low pay. And just to be fair, Indians have been left off the list because I can't recall any cases where they went berserk. Well, maybe this one time. But does that really count?

Bottom line is, guns don't kill people, nicely categorized races of people kill people. And you know what else? If only those poor Sikhs had had guns, this latest deranged shooter could have been stopped before he got started. Isn't that right, Mr. Nugent?

Or would it be more likely that we would be reading about even more dead people due to their shitty aim and zero experience killing another human being? It makes no difference, though. Just like the nut in Colorado, this too will fade away and we will go on about our business until the next one.

I just hope when it happens again that it is easy to categorize. Otherwise we might have to finally do something about this.

Perish the thought.

(Cross-posted at Take My Country Back.)

The fathers of our dysfunction

By tmcbpatriot

Are we bored yet? These stories of massacres by white kids with heavy weapons always leaves us numb and totally desensitized. It happens so often that we don't even have time to process the previous one. Add to that a non-stop news cycle at break-neck speed and by the weekend we are already looking for the next big story.

In fact, we are already so bored by what happened in Colorado that last week CNN posted a video online of the massacre in 3D, just to remind us. I wish I was kidding. If you click on the link, you are a braver person than I, because, quite frankly, I do not want to see it. Not as a cartoon and not in fu**ing 3D!

But by this week, after all (most?) of the dead are buried and their families and friends are left to deal with their unimaginable loss, we will go back to our lives, the presidential election, the new judge on Idol, and whatever else has not even happened yet. It is what we do. Sure, there will still be stories about gun owners fighting with anti-gun folks over their "rights," Ted Nugent will continue to say stupid sh*t as usual, and anti-gun activists will still be protesting somewhere. But by this week the shock and awe of Aurora will all be over and nothing will have changed, because nothing ever does.

Why? Because our Constitution makes it so. It is as close to the Bible as we have to a religious document while not actually being one. And no matter how convoluted and totally misinterpreted our "right of the people to keep and bear Arms" is, as long as the NRA continues to shape national policy, as long as the gun-and-ammo industry continues making billions off of our collective fear and paranoia and their interest in allowing insane people to use their weapons as viral marketing campaigns to show off their effectiveness, nothing is going to change, ever.

That is to say, nothing except for our fear of yet another place that used to be fun. Where will it be next? Disney World? A Lollapalooza festival? The Taste of Chicago? A baseball game? It is only a matter of time before everything we ever knew as being fun, as a night out, as an afternoon with the kids, turns into bedlam and more bloodshed because of long-dead, power-hungry, war-thirsty, extremists in tight stockings who thought it would be a good idea to write into our Constitution a right to own weapons to protect against an enemy they apparently believed would be around forever.

Well, turns out their foresight and omniscience was spot on because we still do have an enemy. Only, the enemy, it turns out, is ourselves and our ever growing desire to own insane weapons that would have blown the minds of the Founders. Perhaps, if they truly were forward-thinking, as many claim they were, they would have at least have put in some footnote, some caveat to the Second Amendment that said something like: "In the event that weapons one day become so powerful and so deadly on a mass scale as to be used against our own citizens and not in a time of war, than that other thing we said about the right to bear arms, you can just cancel that part."

Seems they forgot to put that in because I looked and it's not in there. It just says over and over again about our right to own weapons. Good thing it said nothing about the right to bear medicine or we would now all be on heroine, bath salts, and LSD during work hours.

Makes me wonder though, how would the "Founding Fathers" feel today knowing how it all turned out? Would they feel remorse, regret, a need to apologize to the future generations who have been put in harm's way and killed just because they went to the movies? Nah. I think they would be, and were, no different than the politicians we know today, except perhaps with less hygiene and a more visible need for a dentist.

Thing is, some things never change -- like the need for votes from ignorant, frightened men and politicians who see the Second Amendment as a sure way to get their support. It is a trick as old as the paper our Constitution is written on and as a result our excuse to be irresponsible and deadly while hiding behind daddy, who said it was okay. But daddy is long gone and he left us to mind the store with no real instruction about how to do it or how to deal with the mounting psychological debt that is piling up faster than we, or they, could have imagined.

What happened in Aurora and elsewhere and what will continue to happen all over the country from now till forever, is truly the lasting legacy of the Founders who, from the grave, are still able to wreak havoc and pain upon a weak and fragile constituency that looked to them for guidance but instead got what politicians of any age have been delivering for time immemorial: irresponsible, empty promises in return for power. The future be damned!

(Cross-posted at Take My Country Back.)

Killers aim to kill, guns do the killing, the NRA protects the guns, lawmakers protect the NRA, killers aim to kill.

By Ramona

Suspected Colorado movie theater gunman James Holmes purchased four guns at local shops and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition on the Internet in the past 60 days, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates told a news conference this evening.

"All the ammunition he possessed, he possessed legally, all the weapons he possessed, he possessed legally, all the clips he possessed, he possessed legally," an emotional Oates said.

The chief declined to say whether the weapons were automatic or semi-automatic, but "he could have gotten off 50 to 60 rounds, even if it was semi-automatic, within one minute," Oates said. 

Good Morning America, July 20,2012 

In the wake of the latest mass murder in America, the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting spree, the usual talk about how insanely easy it is to acquire assault weapons and heavy ammo seems to fill every inch of air and space. In the wake of the Columbine shooting -- talk, talk, talk. In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting -- talk, talk, talk. In the wake of the Fort Hood shooting -- talk, talk, talk. In the wake of the Tucson shooting -- talk, talk, talk. The analysis of the dozens of mass shootings in the past 30 years -- talk, talk, talk. The consensus is that it's too easy to stockpile the kind of weaponry crazy people use to massacre innocent human beings whose only deficiency is that they manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Immediately upon hearing the outcry, the National Rifle Association goes into defensive mode, taking their usual stance that guns don't kill people, gunmen kill people, so you can't blame the guns and you can't blame the easy acquisition of those guns. because only a few gunmen are nuts enough to go out and shoot up a bunch of people. (The second most popular NRA stance is that if everyone was armed and ready, things like this couldn't happen.)

Crazy, isn't it? But here's the craziest part: The NRA gets away with it. Every single time. All of America -- or at least those in a position to do something about a runaway gun association -- seems to be terrified of a powerful lobby whose only public position is advocating widespread use of all types of guns and ammo, including repeaters, military-type assault weapons, "cop-killer" bullets, the whole shebang.

So here's more talk -- not that it'll do any more good than the talk before it, but it has become obligatory now. We use it in place of actually doing something about the legality of assault weapons, the obligations of gun owners (and their associations), and the rights of those who fall victim to this irresponsible nuttiness:

• Bill Moyers on Living under the Gun
• Adam Gopnik on One More Massacre 
• Russ Baker:  Did you Hear about the Shooting?
• Michael Tomasky on the Country the NRA Wants to See
• Michael Daly on whether the NRA is Also Culpable
• E.J Dionne on The Gag Rule on Guns
• Daren Samuelsohn on Why Gun Lovers still fear Obama
• Digby on The Horror at Talking about Shooting 

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

The website for the NRA's lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, is here. If you can figure out a way to get them to pay attention to you without having to join the NRA, go for it.

And if you can figure out a way to get our politicians to pay attention this time, here is where you can reach them:

http://www.usa.gov/Agencies.shtml

James Holmes bought four guns and 6,000 rounds of ammunition and went into a movie theater with the sole purpose of mowing people down. He might have had those same thoughts even if he hadn't had access to guns capable of mowing people down as swiftly or efficiently as these did, but a madman with a single-shot rifle or even a six-gun couldn't kill 13 and wound 70 people within a few minutes.

That's what has to stop. That's what the talk is all about. 

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Shrink rap

By Mustang Bobby

David Brooks, the other day, went Dr. Phil on killing sprees:

Looking at guns, looking at video games — that's starting from the wrong perspective. People who commit spree killings are usually suffering from severe mental disorders. The response, and the way to prevent future episodes, has to start with psychiatry, too.

The best way to prevent killing sprees is with relationships — when one person notices that a relative or neighbor is going off the rails and gets that person treatment before the barbarism takes control. But there also has to be a more aggressive system of treatment options, especially for men in their 20s. The truly disturbed have always been with us, but their outbursts are now taking more malevolent forms.

In other words, better gun control won't subdue the demons in the heads of the psychotics. (Maybe not, but like chicken soup for a cold, it couldn't hurt.)

The problem with his solution is that it's really hard for the relative or neighbor to make the kind of judgment as to whether or not to contact someone like the police before someone goes "off the rails." Who's to say that the guy next door just likes a quiet weekend doing the crossword puzzles and catching up on TiVo as opposed to the guy with the secret closet full of high-grade ammunition and pomegranate pits? And now that guns have become so politicized that neither candidate will even bring it up, nothing will be done about assault weapons or, for that matter, Mr. Brooks' suggestion that we keep an eye on quiet loners who max out their credit cards at the sporting goods big box store.

The defenders of the 2nd Amendment rightly note that it is unfair to conflate the gun owner and collector with the mass murderers. (Ironically, a lot of people have no problem conflating gay men with child molesters, but that's another post.) But as long as we avoid the issue; as long as the line in the aftermath of Aurora, Tucson, and Virginia Tech is "Now is not the time to talk about guns..." the more we will find out that the time to talk about it is before it happens. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Romney doesn't quite get his party's uncompromising pro-gun extremism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams, Mitt Romney claimed that James Holmes, the accused Colorado killer, acquired many of his weapons illegally:

Well this person shouldn't have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won't. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people.

You'd think that a guy who's spent so much time and energy sucking up to the far right, shamelessly pandering to his party's base, including on guns (given the hold the NRA has on the Republican Party, and on legislators generally), would have a clue. But... no. As Think Progress notes:

In fact, 24-year-old Holmes legally purchased every firearm, bullet, and piece of tactical gear that he used for the attack, according to local law enforcement. He bought most of it over the Internet. Mentally ill people are barred from purchasing firearms, but Holmes had no previous record of illness, and would not have been flagged in a background check.

Perhaps Romney should pay closer attention to a) the details of a terrible tragedy and dominant news story; b) the pro-gun extremism of his own party; and c) the policy demands of the NRA, notably its opposition to any and all gun control. (Though it does seem from Romney's unclear comment that he opposes changing gun laws and wants instead to change people's hearts, whatever the hell that means and however the hell he'd do that given his plutocratic laissez-fair agenda.)

But maybe he's just been too busy trying to score cheap political points and avoiding meaningful policy discussions by lying about President Obama and taking his bullshit tour beyond America's borders.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Ron Johnson

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, it goes to the junior senator from Wisconsin, the Tea Party Republican who beat incumbent Russ Feingold in 2010 (largely because he got caught up in the Republican wave and because no one knew what he was really about politically, having never run for office before -- and because Wisconsin was crazy, as is frequently the case). From The Raw Story:

Tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) says that the right to own high-capacity ammunitions magazines like the 100-round drum that was used to kill at least a dozen people in Colorado last week is a "basic freedom" that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Johnson why people needed military-grade weapons like the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and large ammunition clips used by the shooter in Aurora, Colorado where at least 12 were killed and 58 were wounded.

"The left always uses the term 'assault rifle,' and they're really talking about semi-automatic weapons that are used in hunting," Johnson explained. "That's what happens in Wisconsin. These are rifles that are used in hunting. Just the fact of the matter is this is really not an issue of guns. This is about sick people doing things you simply can't prevent. It's really an issue of freedom."

Really? Hunters use these weapons? If that's really the case, how insanely fucking ridiculous.

And, really? It's a "basic freedom"? Because the Founders were worried about the defence of a new and vulnerable nation in the late 1700s, that means they approved the private ownership of weapons beyond anything they could have imagined at the time?

"Does something that would limit magazines that can carry 100 rounds, would that infringe on the constitutional right?" Wallace wondered.

"I believe so," Johnson insisted. "There are magazines — 30-round magazines — that are just common all over the place. You simply can't keep these weapons out of the hands of sick, demented individuals that want to do harm."

First, you can't entirely prevent these weapons from getting in the hands of dangerous individuals, but you can certainly make it extremly difficult. But crazy (and crazed) pro-gun absolutists like Johnson are against even that -- against even trying.

Second, it's too easy to write off what happened as the actions of a "sick, demented" individual. That's not to say that James Holmes isn't sick and demented or was acting as part of some concerted effort, or that he was motivated by specific ideological attachments. No, it's just to say that he didn't act in a vacuum, which is to say, that he acted within a certain culture -- in this case a culture of violence that while not exclusively American is certainly more prevalent in the U.S. than in other Western countries. It's the culture of the Second Amendment, the culture of the NRA, the culture of extremists like Ron Johnson.

There won't be nearly enough examination of that culture and its political underpinnings in response to the shooting in Colorado, largely because the right screams bloody murder whenever it comes under scrutiny, and whenver it looks like there might be momentum towards meaningful gun control, but we won't achieve any meaningful understanding of what happened, and specifically why it happened, until there is.

Could Rep. Louie Gohmert be even more of an idiot if he worked at it?

By Comrade Misfit 

Rep. Gohmert: Did No One Else in Aurora Theater Have a Gun? 

I suspect that if Gohmert was any more of an imbecile, that he'd have his feet in a pot and he'd be watered twice a week.

For the moment, let's set aside Gohmert's babblings about how such things wouldn't happen if people were able to pray more in public. Let's instead look at the situation you'd be faced with if you were at that theater with your concealed pistol.

It's dark. The theater is packed. Some clown comes in from the front, through an emergency exit, lobs a smoke or gas grenade and begins shooting. Pandemonium ensues.

You wouldn't have known that he was wearing body armor. But you'd be trying to shoot a guy dressed head-to-toe in black gear in a very dark room. The clown had a rifle. You'd have a handgun, probably a compact 9mm or a five-shot .38 with open sights. With your heart pounding, adrenaline coursing through your system and your eyes watering from the smoke/gas grenade, you'd have to make the steadiest shot in your life. While he is shooting other people, the noise of his shots are ringing through the theater and people are screaming, dying and pushing to get the hell out of Dodge. And when he didn't go down to a couple of shots to center-of-mass, you'd have to very carefully shoot him in the face while he is trying to kill you with a far better weapon.

And all that assumes that you're maybe fifteen feet away from Asswipe, which is about as far as you probably can be and have a hope in hell of making the shot.

Having said all that, what you'd probably end up doing is hopefully distracting Asswipe long enough so some other people could escape. But for that, you'd pay with your life and probably cost the lives of people around you.

Bottom line: It would be like trying to stop a fully-involved house fire with a garden hose.

Gohmert is an idiot. 

(Cross-posted at Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.)

Gun violence is higher in Republican states

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Richard Florida:

We did find several factors that are associated with firearm deaths at the state level. On the economic front, gun violence was higher in states with lower average incomes. Similarly, gun violence was less likely in states with more college graduates and stronger knowledge-based economies. Gun violence was also higher in states that tend to vote Republican.

Here's the map:

Louie Gohmert may be the craziest, stupidest, most idiotic Republican ever

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm not crazy, I'm a Republican!

It's hardly breaking news that Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas is an idiot. We've called him on it a few times, like here, and he's been awarded our Craziest Republican of the Day (just once, though he deserves it pretty much on a daily basis).

The thing is, he isn't just an idiot and he isn't just crazy. I'm tempted to go with fucking idiot and fucking crazy, but even that isn't enough. Really, he may just be the craziest, stupidest, most idiotic Republican ever. I realize the competition is stiff, though (e.g., Bachmann, Michele), so, at the very least, I think it's fair to say he's near the top of the list.

And he just keeps outdoing himself:

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings that took place in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater hours earlier were a result of "ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs" and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter.

During a radio interview on The Heritage Foundation's "Istook Live!" show, Gohmert was asked why he believes such senseless acts of violence take place. Gohmert responded by talking about the weakening of Christian values in the country.

"You know what really gets me, as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of terror like this takes place," Gohmert said.

*****

Gohmert also said the tragedy could have been lessened if someone else in the movie theater had been carrying a gun and took down the lone shooter. Istook noted that Colorado laws allow people to carry concealed guns.

"It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?" he asked.

Is there any point responding to an ideological madman? In this case, I'd just like to point out that, for all his craziness, stupidity, and idiocy, Gohmert's extremist views on "God" and guns, as on everything else, aren't outside today's Republican mainstream.

And that tells you something about today's Republican Party.