I don't care if the shooter was a Martian. We've got a real problem in America with guns that do not belong in the hands of civilians.
So far, thoughts and prayers aren't doing shit for anyone. Another suggestion coming from the thoughts and prayers party is to turn our schools into prisons. Oh boy. Nothing says freedom like gun turrets, walls, and barbed wire at elementary schools.
David Hogg -- we are so lucky to have him helping lead this fight. So terribly sad this worthy cause found him, in the most tragic of circumstances. May he continue to inspire others. As he inspires me.
And, seriously, I hope that there is a real burning Hell awaiting all who have made the journey to the schoolroom frightening for our children.
I here you. I was a murderous radical in the 60's and early 70's but it is still the same problems today that we plotted to overcome back then but we did not see the killing of so many then. Of course none of us could get our hands on m-16s.
We can do this Chris and my fear is that once WE take power via the vote, whether in '24 or '28what will we do if the democrats fail to enact all of our desires?
Do you want to wait 22 more months to elect them out? Knowing most of them come from districts loaded with knucklewalkers who will never vote for a Democrat?
I’m sad a lot. Disappointed and sad. Young people make me more hopeful, though, and I live in a place that is multi-cultural and youthful and full of creative people... and crushing people’s hopes is the enemy’s plan, so I try to stay focused on the long goals.
Well, they don’t have Mad Magazine and “the usual gang of idiots” that helped us survive the time of Cold War nightmares, so I guess one has to feel sorry for ‘em in this time of betrayal and medieval witch-hunts and inquisition.
I could be more forgiving were it not for selfies.
But, yeah, every time I saw a bright flash in the distance I thought it was starting. I did Duck and Cover. I will never forget the cheerfulness of the recordings.
Thanks for saying it. It’s not even confirmed if this person identified as trans. Also, there is so much emotional distress reported by trans folks. And the Queen Wingnut MTGreene says the act is related to psychiatric meds and being trans. If the R-wingnuts think mental health issues cause mass shootings, how does that square with blaming psychotropic meds??
Testosterone is an anabolic steroid that promotes male development. There are no longitudinal studies of the effects of giving it to girls, though there are plenty of indications that it's harmful. It can cause thinning of vaginal walls to the point of perforation.
And it increases aggression. This young woman was already severely depressed, had been recommended for hospitalization. Her father refused, and instead gave her a gun.
Testosterone is not a psychotropic drug. My point is blaming psych meds for a horror like this mass shooting takes away an effective modality gif treating psychiatric illness.
By calling it a steroid I thought I was saying exactly that it is not a psychotropic drug.
A lot of "trans teens" who show up at McGender clinics are on fistfuls of psychiatric medications. "Trans" is just their latest, but everything else—depression, autism, anxiety, eating disorders—are all forgotten and "trans" becomes the answer to everything.
Are you trying to blame this person’s problems on transitioning and not their access to guns and using a gun to murder people? For any reason you can make up that someone was losing their mind, if they couldn’t get a gun then they wouldn’t be able to harm others.
Are you a qualified expert and medically trained in the field of working with trans people? If not this reminds me of all the individuals who say that they are ‘researching’ when they are googling.
No one should be distracted by discussing the percentages of trans versus any other “KIND” of human. The issue is HUMANS WITH GUNS! That’s all. And the GUNS are the fucking problem. No regulations on warfare type guns in the ‘civilian sector’? Really? And of course, where I live, DeDipshit-Santis is about to sign a bill into law that REMOVES licensing and training requirements to acquire a concealed weapon. Yes, the R’s are making this about TRANS...as a distraction. No one should be distracted. At all.
On the trans community in Tennessee. I agree completely that nothing can excuse the actions of the Nashville shooter, regardless of whether or not s/he is trans. But remember that EXPLANATION is not excuse.
In considering that, consider reading--actually reading--Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It goes into heart-rending detail about how Frankenstein's creation became a monster. (I don't know how the movie(s) treat that). And consider whether an already disturbed person faced with both social and legal assaults on their very core of sense of self might react to those assaults.
It was a monster who shot those kids. If trans comes into this at all, consider what factors besides generic "mental illness' might have created the Monster. You don't have to feel sympathy for the act. You should NOT feel sympathy. But you might consider whether blame should be shared, and not only on the issue of gun availability.
The blame I am talking about is more subtle than "blame mental illness." It looks at how constant vilification of something that you feel is the core of your being can drive you into the level of mental illness that turns you into a Monster. It is not blaming a plunge into murderous mental interest: it is blaming what CAUSED that plunge.
What vilification are you talking about? People are bending over backwards to say that "trans" kids are "just being themselves" when that explanation only applies to about one in a thousand. The great majority of those claiming to be "trans" are just going along with a fad because it gets them attention. And a lot of them are mentally ill.
They didn't become mentally ill because some conservatives say "hurtful" things about them. They claim to be "trans" because they are already mentally ill in a variety of other ways and "trans" is just one more.
My sympathy is reserved for the ones who actually are transgender. Of which there are about 5000 in the whole country.
you don't think laws attacking either trans or other sexualities are vilification? Sermons? Pundits who say trans people should be eradicated? The "people falling over backwards" aren't the ones who are behind passing those laws.
Mental Illness isn't a single thing like chickenpox. Violent mental illness is quite rare in comparison to non-violent. But non-violent makes you vulnerable. Even clinical level depression could morph into violence under the right societal factors.
I agree that few people are ACTUALLY trans. I also agree that a lot of kids nowadays, (and young adults) are "trying on" things like choice of pronoun and other forms of gender fluidity. But they are not the ones being attacked by the current spate of laws because they are not actively seeking medical treatment. Adolescence is pretty much congruent with "trying on" things the elders won't like. Can you remember the outrage about the length of the Beatles' hair? Or hippiedom in general? But as far as I can recall, no one passed laws about hair length and no one treated hippies as less than human.
And to get medical help, even without these laws, you can't just go into see an ethical doctor and say "I feel I am really male: can I have some hormones or surgery?" It's a question the doctor looks into deeply before moving forward. I suppose there are some unethical doctors, as have spurred opioid addiction. But I am not aware of any push by pharmaceutical companies to freely supply their hormone products for minor reasons as happened with opioids.
As to "sympathy". As I said in my original post, understanding WHY someone might become monstrous does not EXCUSE them when they then become so. I feel no "sympathy" for the Nashville shooter--any more that I think Son of Sam's delusion about God talking through his dog excused his actions. I just can see how if she really did feel deep gender dysphoria that that attacks on that idea could set her off. Or even if she wondered.
Of course we don't know that she DID experience such deep dysphoria. She could have had all sorts of gripes with the Christian school she had gone to. In which case, of course, all the stuff about her being "trans" is irrelevant. All my comment tried to point out is that vilification--and it is all over, you are in a bubble if you've missed it--has real world consequences on the vulnerable among use, no matter why or how they are vulnerable.
Did you use the wrong word somewhere? Because that doesn't make sense at all.
The "good guy with a gun" thing is bullshit. As the number of firearms in circulation has risen, so have the mass shootings, suicides, and everything else bad coming from firearms. There are over 400 million guns in a country of 330 million n people, 53% of whom don't own even one. When exactly do you think we'll reach that tipping point where more guns make us safer? 600 million? A billion?
Having as many insane people in the population, I say that solution is to repeal the Second Amendment completely. Owning an unlicensed gun becomes a life-in-prison offense. Yeah criminals will have guns. Not for long.
H.R. 1 of the 2017 GOP majority was a bill to make sure the mentally ill could maintain their 2nd amendment rights to gun ownership.
Thank goodness not every bill becomes a law as this died in the Senate.
Yeah, crazy people with guns & a "well regulated militia".
We used to have common sense and at least used the "regulated" part but the SCOTUS and wingnut GOPs are termiting their way through our Constitution and having the king Wingnut achieve the WH once and not get indicted swiftly is most certainly the worst case of justice delayed is justice denied.
I most certainly fear for our future but will continue to support the the fight.
I was complaining to my therapist about being forced to wear dresses when I was little at parochial school. I saw the children coming out of school, the boys in khaki shorts and golf shirts while the girls were all wearing ugly skirts. At least one was wearing leggings so I'm sure they didn't like it. The killer's parents were very religious and wanted her to dress like a woman. I'm not trans but I love dressing in comfortable "menswear". My mental health takes a hit every time this happens.
You know who is radicalizing people? The MAGA Republicans!!!! They have turned this retired senior citizen who minds her own business (most of the time) with her little hobbies of cooking, reading and gardening and a bit of tweeting into a HAIR ON FIRE, FLAME BREATHING, VULGARITY SPEWING, RAGING LIBTARD WARRIOR WHO IS GOING TO BLAST THEM WITH MY TWEETS UNTIL THEY WITHER. There...I got it out.
They have to held accountable for the degrading, insulting accusations they hurl while the rest of us were trying to grapple, once again, with a tragedy. Ever since I stumbled into Donald J Trump Jr.'s tweet about the trans population being the source of our school shootings I have been plotting vengeful evil thought fantasies where he and his folk and family are dragged through the streets in a cart in their MAGA hats with the populace pummeling them with rotten dairy and produce and maggot infested ground beef. At the end of the day they are put in the village square with hands and neck in the stocks until they show genuine contrition. Then make room to do the same the the majority party in the US House for more of the same. None of the Rs are calling out this shameful behavior or the complete silence from the elders. There can be absolutely no justification for how the Republican party is allowed to pick out a subset of us and use them as their whipping boy. The indecency of it all has ground our sense of civil dignity into dust.
The rest are fakes, just looking for attention. And that is 99+% who are fake. There has been a 2000% increase in claims of "trans" since 2006. almost all of the increase in girls. With no childhood onset. At all.
The shooter had maybe one chance in a thousand of being gender dysphoric.
Edit: example source, Black's Medical Dictionary.
Studies range from one in 30,000 to one in 130,000. NONE come anywhere near the one in 65 that the "trans" activists claim, much less the one in 5 mentioned above.
By comparison, gay people are a constant 3-5% over millennia and across cultures. This is an evolutionary equilibrium.
Governor Cooper (D) of North Carolina is outnumbered by republicans. He’s working seriously on gun management but gets policies and even his vetoes overturned along sharply drawn Party lines. The lieutenant governor (R) is running for governor in 2 years when term limits end Gov. Cooper’s time in office. NC is so gerrymandered I expect republicans to overwhelm the state. More than a great sadness - a horror.
The problem is every freak has an obsession with guns and any kook, mentally ill person can get a weapon of mass destruction to act out their grievances.
Hey Jeff, you might have to change the “spider around every corner” analogy to demonstrate irrational fear. There are literally dozens of spiders within a few feet of you anywhere you are in the world at any time of year. Not a joke, this is true and in fact, mind blowing.
A major gun rights bill that includes a controversial repeal of the state’s permit requirement for buying handguns will become law in North Carolina after the GOP-controlled legislature overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.
That move led to complaints about a lack of debate and a Democratic leader apologizing to a group of visiting schoolchildren seated in the House gallery.
Good Lord, but what drives those crazies? I refuse to believe for a second that they are not aware that they are being completely stupid dillholes, and parading their stupidity before hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of residents of this planet. Their parents must be ashamed of them. :/
I do not understand why the Right Wing nutters are so obsessed with the sex lives of others. Who cares? Unless there’s a curiosity to take a walk on the side themselves? Explore their own inner desires? Live and let love.
I don't care if the shooter was a Martian. We've got a real problem in America with guns that do not belong in the hands of civilians.
So far, thoughts and prayers aren't doing shit for anyone. Another suggestion coming from the thoughts and prayers party is to turn our schools into prisons. Oh boy. Nothing says freedom like gun turrets, walls, and barbed wire at elementary schools.
David Hogg -- we are so lucky to have him helping lead this fight. So terribly sad this worthy cause found him, in the most tragic of circumstances. May he continue to inspire others. As he inspires me.
And, seriously, I hope that there is a real burning Hell awaiting all who have made the journey to the schoolroom frightening for our children.
Lauren Boebert should discover hell right here in this life
She, who advocates guns, not condoms. 36 yo GM of the uneducated trailer trash contingent.
Amen
GOP =how stupid became a platform.
There seems to be a theme in many of your responses to these articles Chris.
Yeah I got this thing about bad people continuing to get away with being bad people.
Boebert wants to do away with the Endangered Species Act. Don't hold out for any forgiveness aimed her way.
I here you. I was a murderous radical in the 60's and early 70's but it is still the same problems today that we plotted to overcome back then but we did not see the killing of so many then. Of course none of us could get our hands on m-16s.
We can do this Chris and my fear is that once WE take power via the vote, whether in '24 or '28what will we do if the democrats fail to enact all of our desires?
I've never owned a gun in my life, nor have I ever expected to get everything I want from anyone in power.
You don't want me holding the reins. Once I reach the end of my patience it doesn't come back. One reason I've always turned down management jobs.
It's not that 'power corrupts', it's 'those that seek power, are corruptible'. You pass that test.
I agree with your analysis of yourself.
I for one will always try to change things.
Do you want to wait 22 more months to elect them out? Knowing most of them come from districts loaded with knucklewalkers who will never vote for a Democrat?
I’m sad a lot. Disappointed and sad. Young people make me more hopeful, though, and I live in a place that is multi-cultural and youthful and full of creative people... and crushing people’s hopes is the enemy’s plan, so I try to stay focused on the long goals.
I come from the Psychedelic Generation. We read books, learned musical instruments, had interests.
Kids nowadays smile at their phones and play tappy-tappy games.
Well, they don’t have Mad Magazine and “the usual gang of idiots” that helped us survive the time of Cold War nightmares, so I guess one has to feel sorry for ‘em in this time of betrayal and medieval witch-hunts and inquisition.
I could be more forgiving were it not for selfies.
But, yeah, every time I saw a bright flash in the distance I thought it was starting. I did Duck and Cover. I will never forget the cheerfulness of the recordings.
"The atom bomb can go off at any time!"
Thanks for saying it. It’s not even confirmed if this person identified as trans. Also, there is so much emotional distress reported by trans folks. And the Queen Wingnut MTGreene says the act is related to psychiatric meds and being trans. If the R-wingnuts think mental health issues cause mass shootings, how does that square with blaming psychotropic meds??
Testosterone is an anabolic steroid that promotes male development. There are no longitudinal studies of the effects of giving it to girls, though there are plenty of indications that it's harmful. It can cause thinning of vaginal walls to the point of perforation.
And it increases aggression. This young woman was already severely depressed, had been recommended for hospitalization. Her father refused, and instead gave her a gun.
Testosterone is not a psychotropic drug. My point is blaming psych meds for a horror like this mass shooting takes away an effective modality gif treating psychiatric illness.
By calling it a steroid I thought I was saying exactly that it is not a psychotropic drug.
A lot of "trans teens" who show up at McGender clinics are on fistfuls of psychiatric medications. "Trans" is just their latest, but everything else—depression, autism, anxiety, eating disorders—are all forgotten and "trans" becomes the answer to everything.
And why not? Transitioning is big business!
Are you trying to blame this person’s problems on transitioning and not their access to guns and using a gun to murder people? For any reason you can make up that someone was losing their mind, if they couldn’t get a gun then they wouldn’t be able to harm others.
Are you a qualified expert and medically trained in the field of working with trans people? If not this reminds me of all the individuals who say that they are ‘researching’ when they are googling.
No one should be distracted by discussing the percentages of trans versus any other “KIND” of human. The issue is HUMANS WITH GUNS! That’s all. And the GUNS are the fucking problem. No regulations on warfare type guns in the ‘civilian sector’? Really? And of course, where I live, DeDipshit-Santis is about to sign a bill into law that REMOVES licensing and training requirements to acquire a concealed weapon. Yes, the R’s are making this about TRANS...as a distraction. No one should be distracted. At all.
On the trans community in Tennessee. I agree completely that nothing can excuse the actions of the Nashville shooter, regardless of whether or not s/he is trans. But remember that EXPLANATION is not excuse.
In considering that, consider reading--actually reading--Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It goes into heart-rending detail about how Frankenstein's creation became a monster. (I don't know how the movie(s) treat that). And consider whether an already disturbed person faced with both social and legal assaults on their very core of sense of self might react to those assaults.
It was a monster who shot those kids. If trans comes into this at all, consider what factors besides generic "mental illness' might have created the Monster. You don't have to feel sympathy for the act. You should NOT feel sympathy. But you might consider whether blame should be shared, and not only on the issue of gun availability.
Too many are talking blame.
The gun enabled the massacre.
The mental illness, including the "trans" nonsense, inspired it.
Both were required.
The blame I am talking about is more subtle than "blame mental illness." It looks at how constant vilification of something that you feel is the core of your being can drive you into the level of mental illness that turns you into a Monster. It is not blaming a plunge into murderous mental interest: it is blaming what CAUSED that plunge.
What vilification are you talking about? People are bending over backwards to say that "trans" kids are "just being themselves" when that explanation only applies to about one in a thousand. The great majority of those claiming to be "trans" are just going along with a fad because it gets them attention. And a lot of them are mentally ill.
They didn't become mentally ill because some conservatives say "hurtful" things about them. They claim to be "trans" because they are already mentally ill in a variety of other ways and "trans" is just one more.
My sympathy is reserved for the ones who actually are transgender. Of which there are about 5000 in the whole country.
you don't think laws attacking either trans or other sexualities are vilification? Sermons? Pundits who say trans people should be eradicated? The "people falling over backwards" aren't the ones who are behind passing those laws.
Mental Illness isn't a single thing like chickenpox. Violent mental illness is quite rare in comparison to non-violent. But non-violent makes you vulnerable. Even clinical level depression could morph into violence under the right societal factors.
I agree that few people are ACTUALLY trans. I also agree that a lot of kids nowadays, (and young adults) are "trying on" things like choice of pronoun and other forms of gender fluidity. But they are not the ones being attacked by the current spate of laws because they are not actively seeking medical treatment. Adolescence is pretty much congruent with "trying on" things the elders won't like. Can you remember the outrage about the length of the Beatles' hair? Or hippiedom in general? But as far as I can recall, no one passed laws about hair length and no one treated hippies as less than human.
And to get medical help, even without these laws, you can't just go into see an ethical doctor and say "I feel I am really male: can I have some hormones or surgery?" It's a question the doctor looks into deeply before moving forward. I suppose there are some unethical doctors, as have spurred opioid addiction. But I am not aware of any push by pharmaceutical companies to freely supply their hormone products for minor reasons as happened with opioids.
As to "sympathy". As I said in my original post, understanding WHY someone might become monstrous does not EXCUSE them when they then become so. I feel no "sympathy" for the Nashville shooter--any more that I think Son of Sam's delusion about God talking through his dog excused his actions. I just can see how if she really did feel deep gender dysphoria that that attacks on that idea could set her off. Or even if she wondered.
Of course we don't know that she DID experience such deep dysphoria. She could have had all sorts of gripes with the Christian school she had gone to. In which case, of course, all the stuff about her being "trans" is irrelevant. All my comment tried to point out is that vilification--and it is all over, you are in a bubble if you've missed it--has real world consequences on the vulnerable among use, no matter why or how they are vulnerable.
The real Blame lies with the voters who continue to elect anti- gun politicians it seems to me.
Even this Blame is not plausible since many pols say that over 70% of all Americans want something done regarding weapon ownership.
Did you use the wrong word somewhere? Because that doesn't make sense at all.
The "good guy with a gun" thing is bullshit. As the number of firearms in circulation has risen, so have the mass shootings, suicides, and everything else bad coming from firearms. There are over 400 million guns in a country of 330 million n people, 53% of whom don't own even one. When exactly do you think we'll reach that tipping point where more guns make us safer? 600 million? A billion?
Having as many insane people in the population, I say that solution is to repeal the Second Amendment completely. Owning an unlicensed gun becomes a life-in-prison offense. Yeah criminals will have guns. Not for long.
H.R. 1 of the 2017 GOP majority was a bill to make sure the mentally ill could maintain their 2nd amendment rights to gun ownership.
Thank goodness not every bill becomes a law as this died in the Senate.
Yeah, crazy people with guns & a "well regulated militia".
We used to have common sense and at least used the "regulated" part but the SCOTUS and wingnut GOPs are termiting their way through our Constitution and having the king Wingnut achieve the WH once and not get indicted swiftly is most certainly the worst case of justice delayed is justice denied.
I most certainly fear for our future but will continue to support the the fight.
Excellent commentary Susan.
I was complaining to my therapist about being forced to wear dresses when I was little at parochial school. I saw the children coming out of school, the boys in khaki shorts and golf shirts while the girls were all wearing ugly skirts. At least one was wearing leggings so I'm sure they didn't like it. The killer's parents were very religious and wanted her to dress like a woman. I'm not trans but I love dressing in comfortable "menswear". My mental health takes a hit every time this happens.
You know who is radicalizing people? The MAGA Republicans!!!! They have turned this retired senior citizen who minds her own business (most of the time) with her little hobbies of cooking, reading and gardening and a bit of tweeting into a HAIR ON FIRE, FLAME BREATHING, VULGARITY SPEWING, RAGING LIBTARD WARRIOR WHO IS GOING TO BLAST THEM WITH MY TWEETS UNTIL THEY WITHER. There...I got it out.
They have to held accountable for the degrading, insulting accusations they hurl while the rest of us were trying to grapple, once again, with a tragedy. Ever since I stumbled into Donald J Trump Jr.'s tweet about the trans population being the source of our school shootings I have been plotting vengeful evil thought fantasies where he and his folk and family are dragged through the streets in a cart in their MAGA hats with the populace pummeling them with rotten dairy and produce and maggot infested ground beef. At the end of the day they are put in the village square with hands and neck in the stocks until they show genuine contrition. Then make room to do the same the the majority party in the US House for more of the same. None of the Rs are calling out this shameful behavior or the complete silence from the elders. There can be absolutely no justification for how the Republican party is allowed to pick out a subset of us and use them as their whipping boy. The indecency of it all has ground our sense of civil dignity into dust.
Your statistics are way off.
Transgender males: one in 30,000
Transgender females: one in 100,000
Call it one in 65,000. That is 5000 Americans.
And that is 0.001% of the population.
The rest are fakes, just looking for attention. And that is 99+% who are fake. There has been a 2000% increase in claims of "trans" since 2006. almost all of the increase in girls. With no childhood onset. At all.
The shooter had maybe one chance in a thousand of being gender dysphoric.
Edit: example source, Black's Medical Dictionary.
Studies range from one in 30,000 to one in 130,000. NONE come anywhere near the one in 65 that the "trans" activists claim, much less the one in 5 mentioned above.
By comparison, gay people are a constant 3-5% over millennia and across cultures. This is an evolutionary equilibrium.
Republicans are willing to sacrifice OUR children for their careers. IMHO
Governor Cooper (D) of North Carolina is outnumbered by republicans. He’s working seriously on gun management but gets policies and even his vetoes overturned along sharply drawn Party lines. The lieutenant governor (R) is running for governor in 2 years when term limits end Gov. Cooper’s time in office. NC is so gerrymandered I expect republicans to overwhelm the state. More than a great sadness - a horror.
The problem is every freak has an obsession with guns and any kook, mentally ill person can get a weapon of mass destruction to act out their grievances.
Hey Jeff, you might have to change the “spider around every corner” analogy to demonstrate irrational fear. There are literally dozens of spiders within a few feet of you anywhere you are in the world at any time of year. Not a joke, this is true and in fact, mind blowing.
Getchell
True and I have a spider phobia!
Glad for the most part they carry on without notice.
Sad that bugs in general could be 'crashing'.
A major gun rights bill that includes a controversial repeal of the state’s permit requirement for buying handguns will become law in North Carolina after the GOP-controlled legislature overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.
That move led to complaints about a lack of debate and a Democratic leader apologizing to a group of visiting schoolchildren seated in the House gallery.
Good Lord, but what drives those crazies? I refuse to believe for a second that they are not aware that they are being completely stupid dillholes, and parading their stupidity before hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of residents of this planet. Their parents must be ashamed of them. :/
I do not understand why the Right Wing nutters are so obsessed with the sex lives of others. Who cares? Unless there’s a curiosity to take a walk on the side themselves? Explore their own inner desires? Live and let love.
Hey Chris you are more than welcome to your own ideas. You go your way and I will go mine.