School Gunman Stopped by Unarmed (Awesome) Woman

This is a pretty awesome story! An unlikely happy ending to a tense and awful situation. Due to some quick thinking, and a genuinely warm manner, this lady helped save the day, and very probably several lives, maybe even her own. And she didn't need a gun to do it.

[Excerpt]


Nice Time: Good Guy With A Calm Voice Stops A Bad Guy With A Gun



 Here’s an actual hero: Antoinette Tuff, a clerk at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia, who talked Michael Brandon Hill into laying down his semiautomatic rifle and abandoning his plan to commit suicide by cop yesterday. Hill had come to the school expecting to shoot up the school and then to die in a shootout with police; instead, Tuff talked to him for an hour while teachers, staff, and 870 children waited in the locked-down building. . .

Read more at: Wonkette

And in case you want to see a little more on the story, here's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell's take, which is pretty awesome too.

 

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CPAC? More Like L-PAC (The "L" is for Loser!)

This is just some of them. Laugh or cry?

They say it only happens once per year. But it seems more often, doesn't it?


The stars of the annual CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) shindig are always an eye-roller for most liberals, and this year is no exception. Except that one of the previous speakers--Ann Coulter--predicted the doom of the Republican ticket if Mitt Romney was selected, and she was right. And the keynote is going to be given by said Romney. Throw in Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin, and you've got Loser-PAC. And that's not even mentioning the State of the Union also-rans Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. Stir in a little infighting this year, and it should all be quite entertaining.

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Poll: Voters Less Likely to Vote for Pro-NRA Candidates

Pepe Le Wayne LaPierre, from Talking Points Memo

What'd I tell you about the National Rifle Association turning "the middle" against them?

[Excerpt]

Poll: Plurality Of Voters Less Likely To Support An NRA-Endorsed Candidate
The National Rifle Association has limited sway over the American electorate, according to a survey released Tuesday from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling. . .

Read more at: Talking Points Memo

NRA Head on FOX "News" Sunday. . .Why?

FOX "News" Sunday is the crown jewel of that "news" in the network's name, being the ultimate in newsiness, rather than opinion. After you finish laughing over that whopper, ponder this on: while it was great (and unusual) that host Chris Wallace used a semi-tough line of questioning on NRA head Wayne LaPierre. . .why was LaPierre on in the first place? He's not an elected official, he's not a policy maker, he's not a retired general or a scion of industry. He's a lobbyist. A lobbyist not for the 2nd amendment, or hobbyist (hobbyist lobbyist?) marksmen, or hunters or paranoid "preppers." He's a lobbyist for gun manufacturers. He's the "big guns" version of "big tobacco." And he's batshit crazy to boot! [Story continues below]



So, I don't really see why he's going around on the Sunday shows, or being trotted in front of Congressional panels.  I mean, sure, if the intent is to grill him that's one thing. But he's being used as the point to the Diane Feinstein counterpoint. And that's a false equivalence.

While we're at it, this false equivalence isn't just used in the gun argument, it's all over broadcast and cable news, and it's damned annoying. The one that grinds me the worst is whenever the topic of gay rights is discussed, they drag out somebody from a certified hate group for "balance." Peter Sprigg, Tony Perkins, somebody from a group with "family" in its name, or some ridiculous "ex-gay" closet case (not that any of those listed are mutually exclusive) is treated as though their "side" of the argument is equally valid. It's like booking the KKK Grand Wizard for "balance" when the subject is race relations.  And yet, they keep doing it. Fortunately, Wallace's competition is more consistently tough on them. That doesn't mitigate the fact that they book them in the first place.

President Obama Gets Tough on Guns. . .NRA Pissed

Big surprise (literally) that President Obama actually took fairly dramatic action, with executive orders and other stern recommendations to Congress regarding gun control. Good for him, it's about time. No, none of these things individually will stop all (or most) mass shootings. But chipping away at the likelihood of such events is a good thing, and each measure is a puzzle piece toward the solution. Now, if something in there doesn't work, or turns out to be too restrictive, gun rights activists can calmly put together a reasonable position paper to overturn or repeal. . .oh, forget it, they'll just lose their shit over it. [Story continues below]

This is a particularly disturbing video, in my opinion, and also a very bad analogy.

Sorry, wrong tense. They're losing their shit already. Big surprise (sarcastically), the National Rifle Association is mightily pissed, to say the very, very least. Big deal. Suck it up LaPierre. Unless Democrats cower out of reflex, your organization has no real power anymore. The candidates the NRA threw money at in 2012 lost, and lost badly. Almost all of them. So what danger do they represent besides riling their craziest members. Oh wait, that is dangerous. Those people are proving to be psychos. They're confirming our worst suspicions about gun enthusiasts.

[Excerpt]

NRA Slams Obama Gun Control Proposal

Following President Obama's announcement on Wednesday of sweeping measures to help prevent gun violence, the National Rifle Association accused the president of "attacking firearms and ignoring children. . ."

Read more at: Huffington Post

Another Shooting, This Time Pennsylvania

Wayne LaPierre at his bizarro news conference.
Image from NBCNews.

It doesn't ever stop, does it? There are a lot of fruit loops loose in the country, and they all seem to know where to lay their hands on guns. This one happened simultaneously with the presser given by NRA king fruit loop, Wayne LaPierre. Great timing. Ugh.

[Excerpt]

Four dead, three police hurt in Pennsylvania shooting

Four people died on a Pennsylvania highway on Friday when a gunman shot dead three people and later was killed in a shootout with police, authorities said.

Three state troopers were injured in the incident in Frankstown Township, about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh. . .

Read more at: Chicago Tribune

NRA Blames Movies, Video Games, Culture for Mass Shootings

Though I'm known as a liberal, loony, lefty, moon bat. . .the truth is, I used to be a Republican. I won't lie to you and say I was an arch conservative, but I voted for Reagan (1984) and Bush I (in 1988). And though my conservatism wasn't deep, it took me a long while after 1992 (when I voted for Clinton, after the hatefest RNC that year) before I officially became a Democrat.  And in the eight years or so since I officially switched, I've still held on to a few conservative "values":

- English as the default language
- Not anti- but not pro-union
- Gun rights

The older I get, the more neutral I've gotten on even those issues, and as we progress into the Obama era, I'm finding myself losing my Switzerland status on every last conservative issue. I find it impossible to hold on to values that are espoused by jackasses and idiots. It becomes increasingly clear--when you see the people who hold such values, and the meanness with which they present them--that I do not want to align myself with such individuals, even if I have a modicum of sympathy for their ideals. [Story continues below]

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Such is the case with the National Rifle Association. It has become clear that they are less about pro-2nd amendment rights for citizens, and more about unfettered sales opportunities for gun manufacturers.  The NRA was silent on our most recent shooting spree (before today in Pennsylvania, anyway) until Friday. Spokesman Wayne LaPierre finally gave a press conference (with no questions from the press, of course), a ridiculous laundry list of everything that was to blame. . .except for guns. He listed video games and movies from a generation ago, for crying out loud. American Psycho, for instance, is from 2000, and Natural Born Killers from freakin' 1994. The Newtown killer was born in 1992, dumbass!

So, the deeper we get into this, the more I'm on board with guns being on the table as we look for solutions to this problem. The retorts that a) guns don't kill people, people kill people*; b) gun laws only take the guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens; c) more guns are needed to protect us against guns; d) you can't fix this problem, don't even try all sound rather hollow and somewhat paranoid and whiny to me now. I've actually heard that access to guns is a "God given right" in recent days! Really! Chapter and verse, please?

[Excerpt]

NRA blames media, music and more for culture of violence

National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre blamed Hollywood, video games music, the courts and more on Friday for creating a culture of violence in the United States. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said at a Washington press event, adding, “With all the money in the federal budget can’t we afford to put a police officer in every single school? . . .”

Read more at: NBC News


*Incidentally, every time I hear "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!", I think, "No, bullets kill people!"