… spiced with NATO-standard-calibre 5.56mm rounds, downpowered for the civilian market. Which, of course, didn't make a damned bit of difference to seventeen direct and hundreds of indirect victims of those rounds in Parkland, Florida. Unfortunately, this isn't really a link sausage platter. It is, instead, the same old rancid dish with several variations.
- It's both fascinating and mildly disturbing how easily a high-school junior took down a Fox political commentator for, well, being stupid and ignorant. <SARCASM> Of course, at the founding of the American republic, neither of them would have had a voice because they lack Y chromosomes, so that smack talk about "children" (and how they should speak to purported "adults" who can't be bothered to get publicly available facts straight) is just a little bit much. </SARCASM>
- Don't arm teachers for the same reason that guards and staff in mental hospitals are unarmed (and that guards don't carry firearms on cell blocks in prisons). Almost nobody who is calling for "arming teachers" has any experience in a post-1960s public high school large enough for eleven-a-side football — nor with dealing with the overtly "mentally disturbed." In any event, most mental institutions are probably less disturbed (and less infested with cliques and bullying) than most high schools…
- It's fascinating how right-wing assholes are excoriating the FBI for internally evaluating the facial validity of a called-in tip regarding a possible future action — and (in this instance mistakenly and without following established procedure) deciding that tip did not justify an arrest or even further investigation as otherwise required by its procedures — while simultaneously protesting that calls for the FBI and its former director Robert H. Mueller III to do so regarding actual, past actions in the electoral-misconduct probe would be a gross miscarriage of justice and violation of due process rights. Leaving aside that this is a distraction from determining actual cause, instead of a chance of avoidance that would not have dealt with that actual cause: Goose, meet gander. But preferably not tied up seminaked on a couch.
- All of which beats playing NRA bingo with Theophilus E. Connor's true heir. I'm becoming less and less certain that the rhyming of "NRA" and "KKK" is entirely coincidental… especially given not so much NRA membership demographics, but who actually speaks for it.
- Finally, a note on the substantive rationale for "individual gun rights:" In July 1776, there was no Second Amendment in effect in North America. Instead, at the risk of arrest and execution, patriots pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in pursuit of liberty against specific actions — not policy disagreements — that after due consideration of alternatives were decried as tyranny. Those who claim that individuals need an unfettered right bear to firearms useful only against persons are unwilling to make that same pledge… or run the same risks. I won't call them "cowards," because that's actually a different inquiry entirely; I will, however, call them hypocrites. The means of revolution are merely a temper tantrum when not employed in furtherance of an actual, explicit rationale against a target that has already demonstrated that it will employ unlawful means against dissent and refuses to even listen to that dissent.