"That brings the total of mass shootings this year -- incidents where 4 or more people are killed or injured by gunfire -- to 294.
There have been only 274 days this year."Via Wonkblog @ The Washington Post
A list of things the Founding Fathers thought you should have the right to own:
1. guns
2. literal human beings
— Heather Hogan (@hhoagie) October 1, 2015
Pat Toomey: "My idea of gun control is a steady aim"Hmm, I wonder if he wants to revise that statement?
I only wish a few of the teachers had a few .40 caliber Berettas and knew how to use them...they could have saved the lives of 20 babies and six adults in that school today.But it doesn't take long for it to go complete batshit:
Barrack won the election - Fast and Furious blew up in his face ! This stinks of a White House - Valerie Jarret planned gun control operation !And then the proper source of the blame is identified:
You, have to ask yourself since he was elected, why so many gun crimes. Are people hopeless...or has this country under libs melted down to no morale base.And of course:
What is the penalty for abandoning God..a debased immoral, and violent society. We have systematically removed God from our culture. ~Psalm 9:17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, and the nations that forgot God."~Yea, that's it. That's what caused the deaths of all those elementary school kids.
Following today’s mass shooting that left 20 young children dead at a Connecticut elementary school, numerous sources across the country reported that their government-protected right to own a portable device that propels small masses of metal through the air at lethal rates of speed is completely worth any such consequences. “It’s my God-given right and a founding principle of this country that I be able to own a [piece of metal that launches other smaller pieces of metal great distances, one after the other], and if a few deaths here and there is the price we have to pay for that freedom, then so be it,” said Lawrence Crane of nearby Danbury, CT, who is such a staunch advocate of the portable deadly-pellet-flinging apparatuses that he keeps multiple versions of such mechanisms in his home, often carries one with him, and is a member of a club whose sole purpose is to celebrate these assembled steel things and the small bits of metal they send flying. “Sure, it’s sad that a few kids died, but it’s far better than the tyranny that would result if the government came and took away all our [mechanical contraptions that make a lot of little pointy chunks of metal go through the air fast]. Can you even imagine what kind of horrible world that would be?” The man added that if the events that unfolded today led lawmakers to question his ability to possess any such items of steel and lead, authorities would have to “pry the [wholly inanimate mechanical object, nothing more, nothing less] from [his] dead hands.”Yea. While The Onion is a satire news site, this still rings truer than anything else I've read.
Then Bram wrote this.What follows is a pathetic mixture of abject self-pity, racism and rampant misogyny. None of which would be particularly surprising for someone who carried out these acts. In fact, the author claims to have orginally planned to commit this act several months ago, and nearly went through with it in January.
Reading this over, one is reminded of the old maxim about the banality of evil. Here's a guy who claims that he didn't get enough love as a child, can't get laid as an adult, feels misunderstood ... and so apparently decided to shoot up a roomful of innocent women.
If Sodini had wrote "I plan to kill blacks/gays/immigrants/Jews and detailed his anger against blacks/gays/immigrants/Jews and then had gone to a room with only blacks/gays/immigrants/Jews in it and killed and wounded them, would we be limiting the discussion to mental illness without pretty much any discussion of racism, homophobia, etc?And I'd agree that limiting the discussion to mental health issues would be an insult to those crime victims, never the less her point is well taken. Indeed Bob Herbert makes a similar point in this column at the NYTimes:
“I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me,” wrote George Sodini in a blog that he kept while preparing for this week’s shooting in a Pennsylvania gym in which he killed three women, wounded nine others and then killed himself.Though I think Herbert goes a bit too far when he writes:
We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.
Back in the fall of 2006, a fiend invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five.
I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women — not so much of an uproar.
I cannot deny that there's misogyny in this society but I would deny that "the barbaric treatment of women" is "more or less expected." I also cannot deny that there have been "outlandish crimes" committed against women (even those where the victims are victims because they are women) but I can not see how "rape, murder and humiliation" against women as an "important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment.We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.
We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.
Nearly every day we open our newspapers and read that a woman has been killed by her domestic partner. While the Collier shooter did not know any of his victims, this gender motivated crime, should inspire all of us to speak courageously about how we as a society respond to violence against women, how we can invest in more preventative efforts, early intervention strategies, and how we can develop strong sensitive men out of our boys and how we can create a world where none of our daughters need to feel afraid.Though I have to add that Sodini's crime was many things (tragic, horrible, frightening and so on) but one thing it wasn't: domestic violence.
Good Evening. My name is Heather Arnet and I am the Executive Director of The Women and Girls Foundation.
We have come together today to lend our prayers and supportive words of strength and sympathy to the families and victims of the Collier gym shooting.
We are here to honor the passing of three incredible women, to share our sympathies with their families, and to pray for the full and speedy recovery of the nine other women whose physical wounds are still being treated, and whose emotional scars will be felt for many more years to come.
We have come together as a community to provide each other the space and support to begin the grieving and healing process. But we also come together to speak out against this hate crime perpetrated against women in our community.
This tragedy should be a wake up call to this community – and to our nation - that we need to engage in a robust and courageous conversation about how women are treated and portrayed in our communities, in the media, online, and in our homes.
From the limited information we know about the shooter, we know that this was not a random act – this was an intentional premeditated act of violence, a hate crime whose perpetrator targeted his victims for the sole fact that they were women.
Tonight, we are heartbroken, we are angry, we are terrified, we are desperately sad, and we are committed to work together as a community to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.
Several weeks ago, a Harvard University Professor was arrested in his home and that single act inspired a national conversation about race in America.
Nearly every day we open our newspapers and read that a woman has been killed by her domestic partner. While the Collier shooter did not know any of his victims, this gender motivated crime, should inspire all of us to speak courageously about how we as a society respond to violence against women, how we can invest in more preventative efforts, early intervention strategies, and how we can develop strong sensitive men out of our boys and how we can create a world where none of our daughters need to feel afraid.
We will hear from others now, who will lead us in prayers and remembrances...
Oh lord!
Two huge elephants in the room here.
FIRST ELEPHANT:
While Sodini was certainly a racist by his own words he did not go looking for a room full of African Americans to kill.
While Sodini certainly did not seem to have male friends and expressed jealousy of other males (though almost always in the context of their ability to get laid) he did not go looking for a room full of men -- or even a room full of men and women -- to kill.
In Sodini's head women were "hoes." Worse still: "hoes" who would not have sex with him. He went looking for a room full of women -- all women. He found one. And he tried to murder them all. He even wrote: "Why do this?? To young girls?"
That's reality.
EVEN BIGGER ELEPHANT:
I'm hearing so called experts on TV talking about the problem of "people" being isolated. I'm hearing discussions of "peoples" access to guns. I see here someone asking "what if it was a woman attacking men," etc.
Here's a reality check: if you could somehow stop men from murdering others you would stop 90% of all murders.
So talking about what the problem is with "people" killing is like me saying that I want to lose weight but let's not get into what I eat or how much I exercise -- you know, basically unproductive -- and ignoring a huge piece of the puzzle.
And before some heads explode here, I'm not saying all men are murders or violent or would-be murders or are one step away from being violent.
But, if we want to really cut down on murder than we need to figure out why men murder. And, guys, this would be to your benefit because while men overwhelmingly are the ones to commit violent crimes, they are also far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes.
P.S. Where exactly would women wearing gym clothes pack a gun? Do they maybe hold it in their hands while exercising? This is just silly.
Candlelight Vigil to be Held Thursday, Aug. 6th 5:30-6:30pm
at City-County building for Victims of Collier Shooting
Community Groups and Public Officials will gather to offer prayers to families.
PITTSBURGH- The Women and Girls Foundation is organizing a community candlelight vigil to be held in the portico of the City-County Building in Downtown, Pittsburgh, Thursday August 6th at 5:30pm to offer support and non-denominational prayers to the victims and families of the Collier Shooting.
“We are organizing this vigil so that we can join together as a community to send collective prayers to the families of the women who were killed and the women who are still in critical condition, as a result of this horrific and violent act against women,” said Executive Director Heather Arnet. “From the murderer’s own blog and note, it is more than evident that the focus of his rage and violence was women. This vigil is intended to send strength and prayers to the families who are grieving and for those women and their families who are hoping to heal from this horrific event.”
All members of the community are encouraged and welcome to attend. Participating in the vigil will be representatives from the Foundation, local elected officials, the National Organization of Women, National Council of Jewish Women, Pittsburghers Against Domestic Violence, local victims service agencies, and many other community organizations. All are welcome.
Also participating in the vigil will be members of Women and Girls Foundation’s Regional Change Agents, a diverse group of 15 teen girls and 15 adult women from Allegheny, Fayette, Greene and Washington counties, who have come together to engage in civic advocacy in their communities to support women. The tragic events of Tuesday night have moved the Allegheny County team of Regional Change Agents to call attention to the inexcusable acts of violence against women within our community and beyond it.More information about the Women and Girls Foundation can be found at http://www.wgfpa.org/
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Yes, the shooter was male.He's been identified as George Sodini:
Yes, he hated women.
