Who shot first?

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No, this is not about that.

I believe it is true that for decades, shooters and politically violent people (two overlapping categories) in the US were right wingers, almost always. Case in point: the white supremacists who have now all been handed (a little bit of) jail time for emptying a pistol into a crowd of protesters at a #BLM rally outside a police station in Minneapolis (and yes, they were white supremacists).

I’ve also always believed that one of the reasons the right wing has the privileged luxury of hating any kind of sensible gun law and regulation reform is because they know this. They know that they are the ones with the guns, and the libtards are unarmed.

I have no opinion on what happened today in Alexandria, Virginia, where someone opened fire on a group of Republican members of Congress playing softball. I don’t know if this was personal, political, or just “well, he was mentally ill” (I’ll leave it to the anti-ableist language mavens to rewrite that sentence and take it out of quotation marks).

But, now, suddenly, things are a little different, no matter what happened in Alexandria.

Killers with guns intent on mass slaughter are no longer just killing elementary school children. They are also killing Republicans in Congress! Yay! Maybe now Republicans in Congress will realize how the rest of us are feeling, and do something about it!

Sorry the guy got shot, though. At least he will make a rapid recovery, according to a Tweet by Fearfull Leader. The ideal scenario would have been if the shooter was a really bad shot and only hit inanimate objects.

A letter from the organization “States United To Prevent Gun Violence“:

States United to Prevent Gun Violence and our 32 state affiliates are deeply saddened that our elected officials, their staff and Capitol Police detail experienced the horrific mass shooting this morning – joining the unfortunate class of 33,000 Americans who die and 81,000 Americans injured by gun violence every year. This shooting targeting our respected elected officials is a resounding reminder that even a setting filled with the most highly trained and alert “good guys with guns” is no match the lethal and overwhelming firepower of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the hands of a mass shooter – the same weapons of war used in 28 mass shootings since the massacre of 26 children and school teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School 4 years ago.

It is unacceptable that law enforcement are forced to confront weapons of war in the hand of civilians in their line of duty. It is worrisome that Congress is, today, considering passing a bill that will deregulate silencers – the very instruments that hinder police from identifying locations of shooters – a federal regulation that was designed to prevent ambushing of police. Our Congress needs to stand up to the gun lobby once and for all and ban sales of weapons of war to civilians and say no to deregulating silencers.

Sincerely,

Julia Wyman

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9 thoughts on “Who shot first?

  1. “Making America Hate Again”

    Hmm, I wonder if you work hard at f******things up, things will maybe actually get f***** up…

  2. “Making America Hate Again”

    Hmm, I wonder if you work hard at f******things up, things will maybe actually get f***** up…

  3. Nice Greg.

    Make excuses for the shooter.

    Hard to believe you have no opinion on what happened.

    My opinion is that what happened was a crime and I am against it!

    Four people were shot – not just “the guy”.

    Still “Yay”?

    One of them was shot in the head (I believe).

    Still “Yay”?

    You might want to rethink this post – it makes you sound a little off.

  4. Ah,right, making excuses. Talking of which, seen the pundits making excuses for the three dumb monkeys trying to hide trump’s problem?

    The vast majority of rightwingers didn’t have the establisment on their side, so they didn’t have to riot. However, that didn’t leave anyone on the extreme end an outlet for their (probably imagined) problems, so they went apeshit and shot people up. The leftwing didn’t have the establisment on their side and so their unrest had to be by public action (riots) and the extremes there could get their outlet at that point and it wouldn’t build up to death.

    Now, though, there’s a big trumping down on rioting (for leftwing ideas only) and with the moron in charge the need for an outlet is higher.

    Still vastly more rightwingers doing the private shooting. After all, if the police will shoot the “bad people” for you, why bother too much doing it yourself?

    Funny thing is, such crimes committed by black or muslim people are terrorism. Committed by whites or rightwingers and it’s a lone wolf criminal. After all, can’t blame people like yourself, can you.

  5. The only good news from this is that the suspect wasn’t a good shot, and that nobody at the nearby YMCA — where at least three rounds were reported to have gone through windows — was hurt.

    It will be interesting to find out what caused the shooter to do this.

  6. Let’s see rePUKEians opposed ALL gun restrictions! The dimwit trumpkin was going to allow mentally ill have guns!
    And the rePUKEians KNOW guns are bad because they band them from their gatherings of gun happy politicians.
    I don’t like killing but I also don’t feel sympathy either!
    I’m sorry for the ones that died, they should be alive and suffering, the results of their dimwitted decisions!

  7. Sorry about the double post. I had a little trouble getting through this morning.

    RickA.
    No. There were no excuses in the article. I suggest that you stop waging your knee jerk war on nuance and own up to your part in degrading the civility that you pretend to be so concerned about. Time for you to grow up and recognize that societies need sophisticated and enlightened management, not more self-indulgent libertarian fulminations.

    Old saying: Blood begets blood.

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