So Today there was a shooting scare at my university

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-48688919

Perhaps a student wanted to re-take an exam?

No idea, I wasn't on campus when it happened, apparently the Fuzz arrived and arrested him promptly - and it wasn't a "viable firearm".

Imagine how this might have gone if we had ready and easy access to legal handguns in the UK.

[rory_20_uk]

Yes, mental illness is a scourge on our society.

Thoughts and prayers.

[Beskar]

Yes, mental illness is a scourge on our society.

A 2004 analysis of more than 60 mass murders in North America, for example, found that just 6% were psychotic at the time of the killings. And when it comes to mass shootings, those with mental illness account for “less than 1% of all yearly gun-related homicides”

BBC Article

[rory_20_uk]

BBC Article

Erm... my lines were the traditional crap that gun nuts say after a massacre.

[Beskar]

Erm... my lines were the traditional crap that gun nuts say after a massacre.

Unfortunately that particular line gets lost on a lot of people. Even the not-gunnuts say it.


Thoughts and prayers.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Another thing that struck me was the scale and speed of the Police response - within just a few minutes seven officers and a dog piled into Amory and nabbed the guy.

[Montmorency]

What an American shooting scare might look like:

[a completely inoffensive name]

Yes, mental illness is a scourge on our society.

Thoughts and prayers.

You forgot the secular equivalent, "Sending Positive Vibes your way"

[Seamus Fermanagh]

BBC Article

60% of gun deaths in the USA are suicide or accidental. Ready access to firearms gives would-be suicides a more easily lethal tool to use.

[Montmorency]

Sorry if hijacking, but this is the most recent relevant thread:

In case our non-American readers missed it, we saw two major mass shootings within hours yesterday. The first in El Paso, Texas, by a white supremacist, ~20 dead. Then hours later in Dayton, Ohio, by a leftist with unknown motive and ~10 dead, including shooter's sister, because he was killed by police within a minute. (Please let it sink I that the shooter killed or wounded three dozen people within a minute - 30 seconds according to some reported police statements.)

This after another less severe shooting earlier in the week in California. The police had also engaged the shooter here within a minute here, for 17 casualties. The motive is technically unknown, as with the Dayton shooter, but the festival he shot up appears to have majority non-white attendants and he sure liked his far-right literature. The El Paso shooter meanwhile survived and has a manifesto; he is adamant that he was trying to stop the Mexican "invasion."

El Paso makes at least three 8chan-linked massacres this year. Yeah, terror is a meme.

Going by this database, just since 2013 there have been at least 85 shootings with 5 or more fatalities, 30 more with fewer than 5 fatalities but at least 10 injuries. Switching to Wiki, from 2010 to 2012 there were 13 such shootings. Between 2000 and 2010, 26 such shootings. In the 1990s, 14 such shootings. In the 1980s there were 13 such, although the two listed with highest fatality count are not actually mass shootings. Before the 1980s (to 20s) there were 19, with many of the ones listed on wiki being gun battles or massacres by soldiers or police rather than the iconic type of massacre by singles or pairs. Terrorism in this country was more diffuse and systematic than a mass shooting comports with. Whatever the effect of Trumpism is, mass shootings are demonstrably accelerating; the numbers are unprecedented, but also the motivations. We are entering a state of affairs not dissimilar to that of internally-conflicted countries experiencing regular sectarian or militant attacks on civilians, like Nigeria or Pakistan...

In response, Trump supporters I know are exulting that whites have had enough of the dark races and will soon rise up, telling wild stories of lazy Latinos and sinister ragheads, of uppity blacks being rude to them and thus deserving summary execution, ultimately devolving into tangents like every single allegation ever of sexual harassment or assault being a lie motivated by personal gain.

I wish I could say I feel fury, but I don't really, never do. Only intellectualized confidence in my mental model of the world. The social order is warping in real-time. Who doesn't believe we're on the eve of destruction?

[Tuuvi]

The social order is warping in real-time. Who doesn't believe we're on the eve of destruction?

I've been thinking the same thing myself, the recent uptick in mass shootings is a sign that something is deeply wrong with our society. When you combine the modern rise of nihilistic fascist terror with the impending environmental catastrophes the ruling class refuses to do anything about the future looks very dark indeed.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

First, as shocking as these shootings are I wonder if this may just be a horrible, horrible co-incidence. I remember a few years back another instance where I think we saw three in the US in a week.

It's worth noting that since the 1990's up until last year the UK, then Australia and now New Zealand, simple banned guns in response to major mass-shootings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._Great_Britain

We banned semi-autos in the UK after the Hungerford massacre in 1987 - 16 dead, 15 wounded, comparable to to a US shooting. We banned hand guns in 1996 after the Dunblane massacre, 17 dead, 15 wounded - mostly children. Since then there has been only one major shooting, in Cumbria in 2010.

From this we might conclude that what is unique about the US is not the impulse that causes the shootings so much as the failure to just ban gun-ownership. In fact, it seems that mass-shootings are a significant problem in anglophone societies and the only effective solution has been draconian firearms bans.

[Montmorency]

First, as shocking as these shootings are I wonder if this may just be a horrible, horrible co-incidence. I remember a few years back another instance where I think we saw three in the US in a week.

It's worth noting that since the 1990's up until last year the UK, then Australia and now New Zealand, simple banned guns in response to major mass-shootings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._Great_Britain

We banned semi-autos in the UK after the Hungerford massacre in 1987 - 16 dead, 15 wounded, comparable to to a US shooting. We banned hand guns in 1996 after the Dunblane massacre, 17 dead, 15 wounded - mostly children. Since then there has been only one major shooting, in Cumbria in 2010.

From this we might conclude that what is unique about the US is not the impulse that causes the shootings so much as the failure to just ban gun-ownership. In fact, it seems that mass-shootings are a significant problem in anglophone societies and the only effective solution has been draconian firearms bans.

It is a coincidence in that the shooters were not explicitly organized, but with trends under Trump I firmly repeat that the ideological and political component of the violence is an important element in the recent timeframe. Gun availability and gun culture is one thing (and don't forget toxic masculinity), but there is an additional layer in the echoing of 'lone wolves who all happen to believe what the President believes and want the same things.' That's the gap between societal ill and sectarian violence.

Edit: In a pleasing turn if you hate all subtlety, this was one of the photos the El Paso shooter Liked with his Facebook profile. One of the contemporary memes floating around is that the universe needs to fire its writing team, the implicit metaphysics of which you would probably remark on.

[a completely inoffensive name]

It is a coincidence in that the shooters were not explicitly organized, but with trends under Trump I firmly repeat that the ideological and political component of the violence is an important element in the recent timeframe. Gun availability and gun culture is one thing (and don't forget toxic masculinity), but there is an additional layer in the echoing of 'lone wolves who all happen to believe what the President believes and want the same things.' That's the gap between societal ill and sectarian violence.

Edit: In a pleasing turn if you hate all subtlety, this was one of the photos the El Paso shooter Liked with his Facebook profile. One of the contemporary memes floating around is that the universe needs to fire its writing team, the implicit metaphysics of which you would probably remark on.

I'm telling you, it's the meme's. We gotta ban memes.

[Montmorency]

I'm telling you, it's the meme's. We gotta ban memes.

How timely, a piping hot fresh gun meme right off the meme presses.

On August 4th, 2019, musician Jason Isbell tweeted "If you’re on here arguing the definition of “assault weapon” today you are part of the problem. You know what an assault weapon is, and you know you don’t need one."[1] In response, user @WillieMcNabb[2] tweeted "Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?"

If you have a problem with spontaneous raids onto your property by 30-50 feral hogs, build a palisade. PVC will confirm.

[a completely inoffensive name]

How timely, a piping hot fresh gun meme right off the meme presses.



If you have a problem with spontaneous raids onto your property by 30-50 feral hogs, build a palisade. PVC will confirm.

Jesus, we really are in the darkest timeline.

[Montmorency]

Good short article on toxic masculinity's role in American gun culture ("the gun makes the man"), which is itself interwoven with far-right ideology about race and nation and social relation.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.

So, who is buying all these guns—and why?

The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.


These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HARD WORK?

When Northland College sociologist Angela Stroud studied applications for licenses to carry concealed firearms in Texas, which exploded after President Obama was elected, she found applicants were overwhelmingly dominated by white men. In interviews, they told her that they wanted to protect themselves and the people they love.

“When men became fathers or got married, they started to feel very vulnerable, like they couldn’t protect families,” she says. “For them, owning a weapon is part of what it means to be a good husband and a good father.” That meaning is “rooted in fear and vulnerability—very motivating emotions.”

But Stroud also discovered another motivation: racial anxiety. “A lot of people talked about how important Obama was to get a concealed-carry license: ‘He’s for free health care, he’s for welfare.’ They were asking, ‘Whatever happened to hard work?’” Obama’s presidency, they feared, would empower minorities to threaten their property and families.

The insight Stroud gained from her interviews is backed up by many, many studies. A 2013 paper by a team of United Kingdom researchers found that a one-point jump in the scale they used to measure racism increased the odds of owning a gun by 50 percent. A 2016 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that racial resentment among whites fueled opposition to gun control. This drives political affiliations: A 2017 study in the Social Studies Quarterly found that gun owners had become 50 percent more likely to vote Republican since 1972—and that gun culture had become strongly associated with explicit racism.

For many conservative men, the gun feels like a force for order in a chaotic world, suggests a study published in December of last year. In a series of three experiments, Steven Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay asked hundreds of liberals and conservatives to imagine holding a handgun—and found that conservatives felt less risk and greater personal control than liberal counterparts.

This wasn’t about familiarity with real-world guns—gun ownership and experience did not affect results. Instead, conservative attachment to guns was based entirely on ideology and emotions.

WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO?

That’s an insight echoed by another study published last year. Baylor University sociologists Paul Froese and F. Carson Mencken created a “gun empowerment scale” designed to measure how a nationally representative sample of almost 600 owners felt about their weapons. Their study found that people at the highest level of their scale—the ones who felt most emotionally and morally attached to their guns—were 78 percent white and 65 percent male.

“We found that white men who have experienced economic setbacks or worry about their economic futures are the group of owners most attached to their guns,” says Froese. “Those with high attachment felt that having a gun made them a better and more respected member of their communities.”

That wasn’t true for women and non-whites. In other words, they may have suffered setbacks—but women and people of color weren’t turning to guns to make themselves feel better. “This suggests that these owners have other sources of meaning and coping when facing hard times,” notes Froese—often, religion. Indeed, Froese and Mencken found that religious faith seemed to put the brakes on white men’s attachment to guns.

For these economically insecure, irreligious white men, “the gun is a ubiquitous symbol of power and independence, two things white males are worried about,” says Froese. “Guns, therefore, provide a way to regain their masculinity, which they perceive has been eroded by increasing economic impotency.”

Both Froese and Stroud found pervasive anti-government sentiments among their study participants. “This is interesting because these men tend to see themselves as devoted patriots, but make a distinction between the federal government and the ‘nation,’ says Froese. “On that point, I expect that many in this group see the ‘nation’ as being white.”

Investing guns with this kind of moral and emotional meaning has many consequences, the researchers say. “Put simply, owners who are more attached to their guns are most likely to believe that guns are a solution to our social ills,” says Froese. “For them, more ‘good’ people with guns would drastically reduce violence and increase civility. Again, it reflects a hero narrative, which many white men long to feel a part of.”

Stroud’s work echoes this conclusion. “They tell themselves all kinds of stories about criminals and criminal victimization,” she says. “But the story isn’t just about criminals. It’s about the good guy—and that’s how they see themselves: ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and there are people who aren’t like that.’ When we tell stories about the Other, we’re really telling stories about ourselves.”

HOW TO SAVE A WHITE MAN’S LIFE

Unfortunately, the people most likely to be killed by the guns of white men aren’t the “bad guys,” presumably criminals or terrorists. It’s themselves—and their families.

White men aren’t just the Americans most likely to own guns; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they’re also the people most likely to put them in their own mouths and pull the trigger, especially when they’re in some kind of economic distress. A white man is three times more likely to shoot himself than a black man—while the chances that a white man will be killed by a black man are extremely slight. Most murders and shoot-outs don’t happen between strangers. They unfold within social networks, among people of the same race.

A gun in the home is far more likely to kill or wound the people who live there than is a burglar or serial killer. Most of the time, according to every single study that’s ever been done about interpersonal gun violence, the dead and wounded know the people who shot them. A gun in the home makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed by her husband. Every week in America, 136 children and teenagers are shot—and more often than not, it’s a sibling, friend, parent, or relative who holds the gun. For every homicide deemed justified by the police, guns are used in 78 suicides. As a new study published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine once again shows us, restrictive gun laws don’t prevent white men from defending themselves and their families. Instead, those laws stop them from shooting themselves and each other.

What are the solutions? That and many other studies suggest that restricting the flow of guns and ammunition would certainly save lives. But no law can address the absence of meaning and purpose that many white men appear to feel, which they might be able to gain through social connection to people who never expected to have the economic security and social power that white men once enjoyed.

“Ridicule of working-class white people is not helpful,” says Angela Stroud. “We need to push the ‘good guys’ to have a deeper connection to other people. We need to reimagine who we are in relation to each other.”

The fact that something like up to half of gun owners in America appear to be pistol owners who have them for self-defense speaks to the successful promulgation of far-right gun ideology in this country. Deprogramming has to go hand in hand with putting guns back in their place, which starts with sharply curtailing their material presence. The most straigthforward means available to us is an extreme one: a moratorium on all firearm and ammunition manufacturing and a near-freeze on imports and exports. Every year many millions of firearms are manufactured. and a smaller number (<10%?) imported; even the most fantastical and tyrannical program of confiscation matters little with new guns flooding the market. My proposals are extreme measures that are hypothetically relatively easy to implement for rapid results, as compared to demand-side interventions such as licensing, buybacks and public awareness campaigns (let alone the certainly-illegal confiscation contingency). That is, they would begin to have an impact even without any of the familiar demand-side measures being implemented.

And remember that a small minority of Americans own almost all the hundreds of millions of privately-held guns; the project of curtailing the nexus between far-right ideology and gun ideology will implicate a lot of current and former police and military, by the way. We have to stop worshiping those professions; people in the 19th century had a much healthier and more realistic appraisal of the armed professions.

It is self-evident that a production moratorium could leave manufacturers insolvent over time, or in a very short time if government contracts are also affected. To the extent that it is desirable for any part of the domestic gun manufacturing industry to survive, it should just be nationalized outright. Economic stimulus for the unemployed from adjacent careers such as vendors/dealers will be necessary. The industry isn't huge, representing total economic activity in the low tens of billions, up to half of which I expect is rooted in public sector contracts anyway, and jobs in the tens of thousands. There's a shitload of gun stores in the country, but I don't envision any special restrictions on those for commerce in the existing or certified national stock, thus preserving many of those jobs. Ultimately for the state to buy out and operate/liquidate manufacturing firms would cost just a few billion dollars, a pittance. Of course we would need to devise some sort of flanking rules to directly or indirectly prevent new private manufacturers from rising to fill the gap left in the market in the long-term.

Some pro-gun people on the left (typically anarchists) warn that the demand for guns will necessarily be filled somehow regardless of regulation. This is wrong, as is any comparison to drugs. For most gun owners owning or firing guns does not fit the physiological pattern of drug use, and indeed guns and narcotic have uses as disparate from one another as leafblowers and cake. I see no indication demand for guns is elastic in the way it is for drugs. Supply itself is a leading factor that drives demand, both individually and culturally - which as I said then reciprocates in a loop amplifying supply. Then there is the speculation that gun fanatics will somehow begin mass-machining Sten guns in their garages and handloading bullets, to which I say "lol let them try." Sounds like a relatively good problem to have, implying that preexisting weapons have all but vanished from accessible legal or illegal markets - a wildly optimistic premise ironically. Again, since most gun owners are not at this time die-hard ideologues, stigmatizing weapon excess and making some types of guns variably accessible and therefore variably convenient, will naturally have a great effect on patterns of usage and acquisition at scale.

There are a heck of a lot of dirty and/or far-right cops, so I'm sure we'll increasingly see rackets pop up out of police armories. Hopefully we can begin seriously confronting all the aspects of police incompetence, corruption, and malfeasance in conjunction with the gun programs. There is a possibility that Mexican cartels will eventually see an opening for re-exporting the many guns with which WE have flooded Latin America, someone might suggest. It's possible, but restricting the domestic production and circulation of firearms on the proposed scale in the US should seriously impinge on the cartels' capacity to carry out their normal operations and conflicts, as well as their arms trade as a pillar of their business model. More likely the native gun hoarders in the United States will corner the black-market and legal private sale market, or become runners themselves. I will continue to be more worried about the ongoing drain of military-grade equipment from the Mexican military and security forces into the hands of the cartels.

The one real scary prospect is that of armed insurrection - as few as one in a thousand militating against the government makes for a full-blown insurgency - but this is overdetermined for the fascist right regardless of what policies we undertake. It has to come to a head eventually, and scattered as the wingnuts are throughout the country - considering too the inferiority of their ardor and organization - they shouldn't be able to get far without full cooptation by the Republican Party. In which case, well, these things have to play out one way or another, no getting around it.

As a word of reassurance for gun owners:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'm not interested in erecting arbitrary barriers whose only function is to create bureaucratic headaches and make life difficult.

Most revolvers, shotguns, and bolt-action rifles should remain available on the state-supplied market, and the prices of ammunition should not be unduly inflated to disincentive usage.

Any adjacent or ancillary demand-side regulations, such as background checks and licensing or storage requirements, should be rationally set and administered. If someone completes the requirements and meets the criteria I want them to be able to get their gun as fast as possible.

Regulated dealing and private sales of discontinued firearms as extant should not be restricted. It is desirable to retain a relatively open and visible system of exchange for the tens of millions of privately held semiautomatics, "assault" weapons, or whatever the targeted designation.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

How timely, a piping hot fresh gun meme right off the meme presses.



If you have a problem with spontaneous raids onto your property by 30-50 feral hogs, build a palisade. PVC will confirm.

Well, a ditch and a bank and a three foot stout fence. Given that your average AR-15 only feeds reliably with a 30-round mag if you're facing 30-50 hogs I'd say your AR-15 isn't going to be enough. Frankly, I'm not sure 5.56 NATO would stop a charging pig.

On the subject of "assault weapons" - they aren't real, they don't exist. It was basically a gimmick designed to avoid banning semi-automatic centrefire rifles, which is what the nutters mostly use in spree shootings. Actual assault rifles have been mostly illegal in the US for decades because an assault rifle is usually defined as being select-fire and full-auto rifles are (almost) completely banned in the US.

Whether you have a bayonet lug, or a flash-hider etc. isn't really relevant. They key thing is - does the rifle go bang every time you pull the trigger and is the recoil low enough that a child can handle it?

Eugene Stoner's AR-15 gives you that, semi-auto, controllable, easy to use.

[Montmorency]

Well, a ditch and a bank and a three foot stout fence. Given that your average AR-15 only feeds reliably with a 30-round mag if you're facing 30-50 hogs I'd say your AR-15 isn't going to be enough. Frankly, I'm not sure 5.56 NATO would stop a charging pig.

On the subject of "assault weapons" - they aren't really, they don't exist. It was basically a gimmick designed to avoid banning semi-automatic centrefire rifles, which is what they nutters mostly use in spree shootings. Actual assault rifles have been mostly illegal in the US for decades because an assault rifle is usually defined as being select-fire and full-auto rifles are (almost) completely banned in the US.

Whether you have a bayonet lug, or a flash-hider etc. isn't really relevant. They key thing is - does the rifle go bang every time you pull the trigger and is the recoil low enough that a child can handle it?

Eugene Stoner's AR-15 gives you that, semi-auto, controllable, easy to use.

It should be noted that high-capacity magazines are common. The Dayton shooter, for example, used this feral hog of a drum (100-round capacity) in the header photo in the link. Another view. Edit: If you can't see the first one:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Trapping pigs en masse sounds great for feeding the village.

The hog meme goes literary:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"Unless they alter their course and there’s no reason why they should, they’ll reach your yard in three to five minutes at the least.”

Leiningen tapped placidly at an iPhone about the size of a corncob and for three to five seconds gazed at Twitter without answering the agitated patrolman. Then looked up from his phone, and leaned three to five degrees forward. With his bristly hair, piggish snout, and porcine eyes, he had the look of a middle-aged human being.

“Decent of you,” he snorted, “driving all this way just to give me the tip. But you’re pulling my leg of course when you say I must do a bunk. Why, even a herd of 40 to 60 feral hogs couldn’t drive me from this ostrich farm of mine.”

The officer threw up lean and lanky arms and clawed the air with wildly distended fingers. “Leiningen!” he shouted. “You’re insane! They’re not creatures you can fight—they’re an elemental—an ‘act of God!’ Five to seven-and-a-half feral hogs long, six to six-and-two-thirds feral hogs wide—30 to 50 feral hogs, nothing but 30 to 50 feral hogs! And every single one of them a fiend from hell; before three to five minutes have passed they’ll run into your yard while your small kids play. I tell you if you don’t clear out at once they’ll steal your eggs!

Leiningen grinned. “Act of God, my eye! Anyway, I’m not a coward; I’m not going to run for it just because 30 to 50 feral hogs are going to run into my yard while my small kids play. And don’t think I’m the kind of fathead who tries to fend off 30 to 50 feral hogs with a rifle either. I reach out to famous alt-country musicians on Twitter, old man. When I began this ostrich farm three to five years ago, I asked those musicians about all that could conceivably run into my yard while my small kids play. And now I’m ready for anything and everything—including 30 to 50 feral hogs.”

The police officer rose heavily to his feet. “I’ve done my best,” he gasped. “Your obstinacy endangers not only yourself, but your mentions. You don’t know these 30 to 50 feral hogs!”

Leiningen accompanied him down the driveway where he’d parked his patrol car. As it backed into the street, the officer stuck his head out the window and began waving his arms frantically. Long after the patrol car had disappeared down the street, Leiningen thought he could still hear that dimming imploring voice, “You don’t know them, I tell you! You don’t know them!”

But the reported 30 to 50 feral hogs were by no means unfamiliar to the ostrich farmer. Before he started work on his ostrich farm, he had lived long enough in Arkansas to see for himself the fearful devastations sometimes wrought by thirty to fifty feral hogs in their campaigns to run into the yard while small kids played. But since then he had planned measures of defense accordingly, and these, he was convinced, were in every way adequate to withstand 30 to 50 feral hogs.

Moreover, during his three to five years as an ostrich farmer, Leiningen had met and defeated drought, the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, man-eating Brazilian ants, and all other “acts of God” which had come against him. This unbroken success he attributed solely to the observance of his lifelong motto: The human brain needs only to pester alt-country singer-songwriter Jason Isbell on Twitter to conquer even God himself. Yes, Leiningen had always known how to grapple with life. Even here, in this Arkansan wilderness, his brain had triumphed over every feral hog it had so far encountered. And now he was sure he would prove more than a match for the “irresistible” 30 to 50 feral hogs.

Three to five minutes later, however, Leiningen assembled his small kids. He had no intention of waiting till the news reached their ears from other sources. Most of them had been born Arkansas; the cry “30 to 50 feral hogs are running into the yard in three to five minutes!” was to them an imperative signal for instant, panic-stricken flight, a spring for life itself. But so small were his small kids that they received his orders for the imminent struggle with the calmness with which they were given. They began playing in the yard, unafraid, alert. Thirty to 50 feral hogs were indeed mighty, but not so mighty as their dad. Let them come!

They came in three to five minutes. Their approach was announced by the wild unrest of the ostriches, scenting from afar a vapor instinct with horror, plunging their heads deep into the golden Arkansan sands.

It was announced by a stampede of animals, none of whom appeared to be native to Arkansas, hurtling past each other: jaguars and pumas flashing by nimble stags of the pampas, bulky tapirs, no longer hunters, themselves hunted, outpacing fleet kinkajous, maddened herds of cattle, heads lowered, nostrils snorting, rushing through tribes of loping monkeys, chattering in a dementia of terror; then followed the creeping and springing denizens of bush and steppe, big and little rodents, snakes, billions of man-eating Brazilian ants, and lizards.

Pell-mell the rabble swarmed down the street and into the yard, scattered right and left before the combination jaguar-puma-stag-tapir-kinkajou-cattle-monkey-rodent-snake-ant-and-lizard barrier he had installed in case of exactly this contingency, then sped onwards past the gigantic slingshot and into his neighbor’s yard.

This gigantic slingshot was one of the defense measures which Leiningen had long since prepared against 30 to 50 feral pigs running into the yard within three to five minutes while his small kids played. It towered over the yard like a gigantic slingshot. Twelve feet tall, with a long black rubber band hanging slack between its prongs, it could hardly be described as an obstacle to 30 to 50 feral hogs determined to run into the yard. But halfway along the rubber band was attached an ostrich-sized leather harness, and on the ground, at exactly the spot where the harness sat when Leiningen pulled the rubber band back as far as he could, Leiningen had painted a giant red X, painted an even bigger red arrow pointing to the giant red X, and labeled the other end of the arrow “OSTRICH GOES HERE” in bright red letters large enough to be seen from passing airplanes.

So now, by luring an ostrich onto the X and letting go of the slingshot, Leiningen would be able to fling an infuriated ostrich directly at the 30 to 50 feral pigs, like a trebuchet attacking a medieval city. Unless the 30 to 50 feral hogs were clever enough to construct elaborate fortifications from wood, stone, and ice, they had no hope of surviving a catapulted ostrich, Leiningen concluded.

He stationed his small kids at irregular distances throughout the yard, as bait. Then he lay down in his hammock and asked @gillianwelch just what, exactly, she planned to do about the American health care system, until a small kid came to report that 30 to 50 feral hogs had been sighted, three to five minutes away.

It was a sight one could never forget. Over the distant hills came a porcine tide, ever longer and broader, until its shadow spread across the slope from east to west, then yardwards, yardwards, uncannily swift, and all the peace and quiet of the countryside was shattered as by the squeals of 30 to 50 feral hogs, leaving only a thunderous oinking, rapidly increasing in volume.

When Leiningen’s small kids, playing in the yard, perceived the approach of the long-expected 30 to 50 feral hogs, they gave vent to their suspense in screams and imprecations. But as the distance began to lessen between the 30 to 50 feral hogs and the giant slingshot, they relapsed into silence, realizing they could barely be heard over the chorus of oinks. Before the advance of that awe-inspiring throng, their belief in the powers of their dad began to steadily dwindle.

Even Leiningen himself, who was filling a brightly colored bowl with brightly colored ostrich treats, even he could not free himself from a qualm of malaise. Yonder were 30 to 50 feral hogs bearing down upon him, oinking with yard-lust, and only a suddenly insignificant, gigantic slingshot lay between the 30 to 50 feral hogs and the yard where his small kids were playing.

Hadn’t his brain for once taken on more than it could manage? If 30 to 50 feral hogs decided to rush the slingshot, he’d never catapult enough ostriches at them in time. The ostrich farmer’s chin jutted; thirty to 50 feral hogs hadn’t got him yet, and he’d see to it that they never would. While he could think at all, he’d flout death, the devil, and 30 to 50 feral hogs.

The hostile army was approaching in perfect formation; no human battalions, however well-drilled, could ever hope to rival the precision of the 30 to 50 feral hogs. Along a front that moved forward as uniformly as a straight line, the feral hogs drew nearer and nearer to the yard. Then, when they noticed the slingshot, they came to a halt at the edge of the yard and remained still, quietly oinking with concern. The besieged were therefore able to contemplate at their leisure all thirty to fifty of the feral hogs. Some of the small kids believed they could make out, too, intent on them, the 60 to 100 brilliant, cold eyes, and the 29 to 49 snouts of this host of 30 to 50, one of whom had been born with no snout.

It is not easy for the average person to imagine that a feral hog, not to mention 30 to 50 feral hogs, can think. But now both the big brain of Leiningen and the small brains of his small kids began to stir with the unpleasant foreboding that inside all 30 to 50 of that deluge of 30 to 50 feral hogs dwelt 30 to 50 thoughts, which worked out to one thought per feral hog. And that thought was: Slingshot or no slingshot, we’ll run into your yard!

Leiningen walked calmly to the red X with his bowl of ostrich treats, hoping to restore his small kids by a display of unshakable calm. “Pull 30 to 50 of the ostriches’ heads out of the sand and herd them over toward the slingshot,” he told one of his small kids, as he placed the bowl of treats on the X and pulled the rubber band back as far as he could. “Have them line up single file, in order from smallest to biggest.”

“What the fuck?” his small kid said. “Your big secret plan is to throw ostriches of increasing size at the feral hogs with a catapult? There must be thirty to fifty of them out there!”

“I can’t very well start with the biggest ostriches, now can I?” Leiningen snapped, straining to hold on to the catapult’s harness. “What if the rubber band breaks?”

By now, thirty to fifty ostriches had picked up the scent of the ostrich treats even through several feet of sand, extricated their heads, and were slowly circling Leiningen and the slingshot. “Here, ostrich!” Leiningen said. “Here, ostrich ostrich! Get over here so I can catapult you into the feral hogs, you big dummies!”

“Stop taunting them, you fool!” said another one of his small kids. “You’re only making them angry!”

“Oh, sure, like I’m soooooooo afraid of 30 to 50 angry ostriches,” Leiningen said. “What are they going to do, surround me and attack with their razor-sharp beaks and claws, injuring me so grievously that I fall unconscious and don’t wake up for three to five days, by which point this existential fight between human ingenuity and 30 to 50 feral hogs will have reached its conclusion, been adapted into a short story, gotten published in Esquire, been reprinted in textbooks and anthologies, and been turned into a movie starring Charlton Heston?” But even as the words left his mouth, he heard the soft beating of 60 to 100 terrible, flightless wings drawing near.

Leiningen lay on his bed, his body swathed from head to foot in bandages. With fomentations and salves, they had managed to stop the bleeding, and had dressed his many ostrich bites. Now his small kids thronged around him, one question in every face. Would he recover? “He won’t die,” said the patrolman, “if he doesn’t want to.”

The ostrich farmer opened his eyes. “Everything in order?’” he asked.

“You’ve been in a coma for days, and the last time you were awake you were trying to defend your yard from a bunch of pigs with an ostrich catapult,” chuckled the patrolman. “So, no, everything is not in order, if you ask me, which you just did.”

“First of all, it wasn’t pigs, it was 30 to 50 feral hogs,” said Leiningen. “And second of all, you told me those 30 to 50 feral hogs were incredibly dangerous! ‘Fiends from hell,’ you said!”

“Did I?” asked the patrolman. “I don’t really remember. Since Velma left, I’ve taken to driving around in my patrol car bombed out of my mind on Ayahuasca. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t be a cop.”

“No,” said Leiningen. “You shouldn’t.”

“Well, I doubt they’ll let me quit any time soon,” the patrolman said, “the way we’re slammed this week.” He rose and headed for the door. “While you were in your coma, some white supremacist jackass shot up the Wal-Mart with an assault rifle. Good luck with the feral hogs or ostriches or whatever!”

And on that note, the patrolman left Leiningen’s ostrich farm and returned to the real world, where people kept getting murdered.

[edyzmedieval]

As a European with very restrictive gun laws in my country (civilians are not allowed to own no guns except hunting rifles - no pistols, no rifles, nothing), when is America going to change their gun laws?

[rory_20_uk]

As a European with very restrictive gun laws in my country (civilians are not allowed to own no guns except hunting rifles - no pistols, no rifles, nothing), when is America going to change their gun laws?

Although most people in most countries have some self-delusions, the USA has arguably one of the most. They see themselves as the "best". Increasingly the rest of us are seeing them as a bunch of racist plutocrats with little or no desire to change. The British have Empire Guilt, but the USA has none over sterilising the native Americans in the 1970's!

So don't hold your breath.

[Beskar]

US Media is all over trying to label White Supremacists as having Mental Illness. It comes from the ideology they ascribe too.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

White Supremacists are suffering from mental illness. Its called 'willful ignorance.'

The basic problem with gun control in the USA is the second amendment. If you believe it to be centered on the militia (an arm of the state) than anyone not in the National Guard (modern manifestation of our militia) should not have a right to bear arms.
If you are of the belief that all persons are required to serve as "militia" in times of need, and/or that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right underpinning but not requiring full membership in a community sanctioned militia, then any and all persons should have the right to weapons ownership.

The problem with the former (pro gun control) stance is that we have more than 280 million firearms in the USA -- so backtracking towards confiscation would be largely unworkable.

The problem with the latter is that if it is truly an individual right, then NO federal government restrictions on the ownership and 'bearing' of arms would be legitimate.

[Beskar]

The problem with the latter is that if it is truly an individual right, then NO federal government restrictions on the ownership and 'bearing' of arms would be legitimate.

To quote Star Wars: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes"

In the wording, it does state: "well regulated". So either in one or two, there is clause/cause for regulation of fire-arms. Now, to drive, you are required to have a licence. This licence is proof that you are able to sufficiently drive and understand the highway code. Now, you could implement similar with guns, with requirements such responsibilities in regards to operation, maintaining and storage of weapons. You could argue that with driving, there are still the idiots of drunk drivers, unlicensed drivers, etc. But what happens to these people? They face fines, penalties, withdrawal of license, etc. There are sanctions which can be enforced.

Now, this makes the US system a lot more similar to other international systems which do not completely ban the use of guns. It also does not affect legitimate businesses and usage of weapons.

[Strike For The South]

So anyone going into anywhere to kill a bunch of innocent people is insane. However that does not mean that the factors that influence these people can't be pointed out and examined. There is a lot of randomness in life but that does not mean everything is without a cause.

El Pasos manifesto is pretty much to the point. The Mexicans are taking the jobs, there is no hope, etcetera. Perhaps his most fantastical claim is that Donald Trumps rhetoric had nothing to do with this. I think we can safely write that off as a planted lie. He put that in there so people could have something to use a crudgel against the (correct) charge that this is a White supremacist terror attack. Its pretty clear what he was on about. So like he may have been crazy but that doesn't the ideology he attached himself to isn't any less dangerous.

American history is replete with racial and sectarian violence. I kind of cock my head when I hear people talk about northern Ierland coming here. We have NI beat! Reconstruction, The Jim Crow South, Tulsa, Detroit and Watts in 64. Its one of the reasons I don't use NAZI to describe whats happening. American white supremacy far predates the NAZIs and would be alive and well had they have never existed.

It is a failure in the teaching of the history of this country to see this as a new phenomenon. I guess we had 15 good years in the 90s where material conditons improved enough that we were able to push this just out of the discourse enough?

That's really all I have to say I guess. White terror attacks have gone on in this country a long time and Trump is simply pushing an old button. I mean he is still doing it obviously but he in no way invented it.

[Montmorency]

White Supremacists are suffering from mental illness. Its called 'willful ignorance.'

The basic problem with gun control in the USA is the second amendment. If you believe it to be centered on the militia (an arm of the state) than anyone not in the National Guard (modern manifestation of our militia) should not have a right to bear arms.
If you are of the belief that all persons are required to serve as "militia" in times of need, and/or that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right underpinning but not requiring full membership in a community sanctioned militia, then any and all persons should have the right to weapons ownership.

The problem with the former (pro gun control) stance is that we have more than 280 million firearms in the USA -- so backtracking towards confiscation would be largely unworkable.

The problem with the latter is that if it is truly an individual right, then NO federal government restrictions on the ownership and 'bearing' of arms would be legitimate.

Any right to individual gun ownership in any capacity and for any particular purpose, such as self-defense, is at most a 9th Amendment consideration.

As a purely practical matter, most guns are held in relatively few hands. The first problem is a material and a cultural one, interlinked (cf. "supply side"), which is why I said above that all new production and importation of guns needs to be ended by fiat, and the valorization of guns (if not possession itself) to be stigmatized. Afterwards, we could talk about the ongoing need to reduce the existing supply of guns in the country. What that looks like will have to comport with a certain sense of the term "permanent revolution", which I would use to describe the concept that long-term social, political, and economic problems that seem insoluble to reform must be addressed as the long-term problems they are, and is applicable generally to anything you can think of besides gun control. There are two semantic components: "permanent," meaning changes must be progressive, dynamic, and self-regulating over lifetimes without the need for achieving threshold of constant new decision-making at high-veto chokepoints (e.g. building bespoke campaigns for legislative reform); "revolution," meaning that there is widespread understanding that radical change is the long-long term goal yet it cannot be achieved quickly or under conditions of widespread (creative) disruption and upheaval. The overall idea is that since acute revolutionary activity comes at a high cost and is unpredictable to put it charitably, radical change has to be robustly 'locked in' on the part of government during periodic reformist moments in a way that doesn't require continual active upkeep. Take advantage of Chesterton's Jenga Tower of Kludges by installing kudzu vines.

The Constitution permits the restriction of all rights, no matter how they are constructed. But one of the central frauds of far-right gun ideology and jurisprudence is the "individual right" of firearm ownership. The 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to participate in the militia (i.e. the collective). One of the official stakes of FedSoc jurisprudence has been that, supposedly, no other amendment in the Constitution applies to collective rights. A moment's consideration reveals this to be false, as the very 1st Amendment is just such a hybrid right of individual participation in collectives: freedoms of speech, press, religion, and petition were and remain substantiated by individuals participating in collectives: the freedom of ASSOCIATION. Without association there is little meaningful possibility of realizing self-expression on a systematic scale. Just so with the Second Amendment, as supported by the Framers' own documented deliberations and the precedent rights and laws they drew upon. They saw a need for individuals to participate in a collective defense (in the doublespeak sense of "Department of Defense") of their communities against people who weren't white settlers, but also as a state-level bulwark against the feared potential of a tyrannous central (federal) army. Ultimately the 2nd Amendment is part of the compromises and reassurances on behalf of the anti-federalists. The very question of "Should the federal government have authority to regulate individual gun ownership" is an anachronistic one; it didn't factor into the mindset of the Framers at all. It's just not a question they would have thought to ask. The 2nd Amendment is a parallelism of the 3rd in its preoccupation, and it would be strange to have expected the Founders to consider a question like "Should the federal armed forces be able to lease bases in foreign countries?" in the context of the 3rd Amendment. The difficulty arises not necessarily from the lack of foresight by the Framers on this issue, but from their lack of foresight on constitutionally enabling us to wisely revise the parameters of government outside the context of catastrophic turmoil. The 2nd Amendment didn't create the far-right, but the basic structure of our society and government from the beginning enabled the far-right to dominate American life for centuries and eventually to co-opt the 2nd Amendment.

So what is the militia? Whatever the government says it is. Here is how the militia is currently statutorily defined:

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Now there is minimal connection between personal property or behavior and participation in modern armed forces. Training and arming of men has tended to be centralized to some extent throughout history, especially the more complex the society and larger the forces fielded. Today it is almost perfectly standardized and centralized. The unorganized militia's guaranteed access to guns is no longer a particular factor in the operation of well-regulated armed bodies. Heck, if it wanted to Congress could legislate the militia out of existence entirely. Logically the Second Amendment should not be afforded great respect today. It certainly should not be twisted into a consumer demand-side protection or as having anything to do with personal self-defense. The bottom line of the 2nd Amendment is to limit the federal government from being able to drain the state militaries of armament, which could plausibly be extended against eliminating micro-level private possession in one of those legendary "originalist" readings - but no more. A universal handgun ban, for example, should not reasonably fall afoul of the 2nd Amendment.

But the far-right wants it to be something it has never been, and they want it that way because it bundles well with their broader ideology of economic and social hierarchy and their aims in overwhelming and tyrannizing contemporary civil society. Flood the cultural consciousness with guns and define them into core masculinity and you increase their material and psychic significance in public life. Radicalize enough white men about the alleged omnipresent threat of violence against them, their loves ones, and their property, and they will buy guns because they think guns are effective and necessary to address the perceived problem and because they think it fulfills their masculinity. (Bonus if you can do a heel turn and convince women that they need guns to defend themselves from all the random violent men who definitely aren't a problem in the context of everyday economic and gender relations.) Once they have bought into the gun ideology they cannot be brought to abandon it because it is bundled into their core identity. Convince them of the link between the nebulous threats and the non-whites and non-Christians and the political liberals and future economic insecurity and you have the everlasting loyalty and uncritical attention of tens of millions, forming the impetus for both sectarian violence and aggressive capture of the government by a reactionary vanguard. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but we must understand guns not just for what they are but also as a proxy in the titanic conflict between the forces of reaction and everyone else, the thread running through disputes as far-flung as queer civil liberties and #MeToo and climate change policy. Cue...

So anyone going into anywhere to kill a bunch of innocent people is insane. However that does not mean that the factors that influence these people can't be pointed out and examined. There is a lot of randomness in life but that does not mean everything is without a cause.

I don't think it's helpful to label killers (including serial, spree, mass) eo ipso insane. You could say "f****d in the head," but that doesn't have as much content to debate.

American history is replete with racial and sectarian violence. I kind of cock my head when I hear people talk about northern Ierland coming here. We have NI beat! Reconstruction, The Jim Crow South, Tulsa, Detroit and Watts in 64. Its one of the reasons I don't use NAZI to describe whats happening. American white supremacy far predates the NAZIs and would be alive and well had they have never existed.

It is a failure in the teaching of the history of this country to see this as a new phenomenon. I guess we had 15 good years in the 90s where material conditons improved enough that we were able to push this just out of the discourse enough?

That's really all I have to say I guess. White terror attacks have gone on in this country a long time and Trump is simply pushing an old button. I mean he is still doing it obviously but he in no way invented it.

American white supremacy inspired the Nazis. But I think it is notable that white violence tended to take the form of either pogroms or legalistic endemic terror. Sporadic mass shootings by motivated actors are a new form here, and it's eerie how much they are beginning to resemble the episodes of sectarian violence we periodically hear about from places like Nigeria or Iraq. The next step is for the militias to get in on the action and organize conflict for real, and the step after that is for the Republican Party itself to incorporate them. I remind you that insurgencies only ever needs tens of thousands of fighters, or even just thousands, to get off the ground. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara landed in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Cuba with like 20 guys, and stole guns and recruited peasants as they went; they occupied Cuba within 2 years. Our population is bigger than any country to have ever experienced such a thing (other than China and India), so the pool is bigger as well.

To quote Star Wars: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes"

I said that to someone on the Internet many years ago, on my first or second forum ever.

He pointed out that this statement is logically also an absolute.


For @SEAmus, the modern adventures of a communication studies professor.

Finally, time for more feral hogs. Recommended viewing for all, but especially for @PVC.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...hooting-odessa

Another in Texas, 5 dead, 21 injured.

[rory_20_uk]

Thoughts and prayers

[Montmorency]

Another in Texas, 5 dead, 21 injured.

7-22

https://twitter.com/_annaive/status/1167936945126875136

This toddler that was injured in the face will probably manage to raise at least $200,000 for healthcare. Most of the victims or their families have set up crowdfunding pages. How neoliberal.

Texas naturally sees a high proportion of mass shootings, so in response the government there passed another gun-control package relaxing restrictions on possession. In a poetic turn, these took effect the day after the shooting.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...a666WYc5PGJqIo

Meanwhile, it was a Chinese MA student here in Exeter, he got 8 months.