In Related News
Gun sales have been way down since Trump was elected because that meant Obama or Hillary couldn’t come get your guns.
Gun stocks rose Monday following the deadliest mass shooting in American history late Sunday night. A gunman in a hotel room at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas killed at least 58 people attending an outdoor concert and wounded over 500 more.
Shares of Sturm Ruger (RGR) were up 6%, while American Outdoor Brands (AOBC), the company formerly known as Smith & Wesson, gained nearly 7%. Both stocks have tended to rally in the immediate aftermath of mass killings, which sadly have become more routine.
That chills my bones.
Americans are dying to increase gun sales.
Most people truly do not need guns or machetes or war equipment of any kind. If you live on a ranch, maybe, for rabid skunks. In urban areas, guns etc just are a horrible danger for all concerned. Trump scares me bad. So do guys with automatic rifles or whatever you call those humongous guns that shoot nonstop. If they add silencers, well, we all know how that works.
1Daily Kos just broke a story that congress is still voting this week on legalizing silencers. It’s a provision called the Hearing Protection Act, part of a larger bill. So. Democrats demand congressional action to prevent gun violence. Repugnantcans act to protect the hearing of shooters.
2Marge is right. What are the odds Congress will act on the use of silencers? Bought off Congress types usually stay bought off.
3Maybe it’s time to ask the Party of Hypocrites why they hate the free market they purport to love. Register and insure the little love sticks and let the free market & actuaries decide how much the privilege of a personal arsenal will cost you. As with our vehicle insurance, allow for those who know a gun butt from their own butt to demonstrate their eligibility for lower rates. Hey, if you haven’t shot yourself or anyone else for years, your rates should reflect that.
4along PP’s point
consider how many more people might have died if this terrorist had had silencers
how much longer would it have taken for victims to realize what was happening ?
how much longer would it have take police to pinpoint the gunman’s location?
I think ‘sportsmen’ will be just fine wearing hearing protectors – they don’t need silencers
5https://thinkprogress.org/gun-silencer-vote-a6d777b63eb0/
6Nevada has 4 Congress critters. At least some of them must’ve had constituents among the victims. At the very least, one would hope the makes a difference with them regarding weapons falling into depraved hands and minds. Of course, I am not holding my breath.
7Okay, I’m calling bullshit on the hyperbole about the number of people killed being the largest number in American history. It aint. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 may have been the largest; some people put the number of M, W, and C killed at 150; others put the toll at 300.
8I see this kind of crap in the media every time there is a mass shooting in this country. Native American murders apparently don’t count. I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that black deaths incident to white racist killings of blacks, may exceed some of the mass killings of the past 50 years, such as the killings incident to the UT Tower murders, and to some of the more recent exercise of racist mental illness. When will this crap stop and the true history of mass killings be heard?
Yep.
The solution to gun violence is more guns.
The solution to flooding is more rain.
The solution to drunkeness is more booze.
Saaayyyyy…. finding solutions is easy. Who woulda thought….
9Read up on “80% blocks” that you can buy to build yourself a firearm with no serial number. Then go on the dark web (maybe even YouTube) and see how to convert a semi-auto to full auto. Too damn scary.
Too many damn guns in this country.
{George in Lee County – it’s the most killed by a single person. Wounded Knee and other tragedies were more along the lines of mob actions.)
10George in Lee County, what you say is too terribly true. Wish we could say it was an ugly part of our history. But the state sponsored genocide against our First Nations is not over; not after what I saw while joining the Dakota pipeline protest. Then, we have Ferguson and all the other murders of unarmed PsOC and the total disregard for the Flint, MI water crisis, Detroit schools, and so many examples of institutional racism. That, too, needs to stop.
11Not the first to say this but, I want the military and police swat teams to have automatic weapons…not the guy down the street!
12JAKvirginia, gambling addicts do think that the solution for gambling losses is more gambling. Gun killing is similar in a way, except that it’s our lives the GOP politicians are gambling with.
WashPost article says that a majority of Americans polled support nearly all proposed gun and owner restrictions, most by large majorities, but the GOP pols don’t.
13https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/02/experts-and-the-public-agree-on-how-to-stop-gun-violence-politicians-dont/
When the indictments start rolling out of the Mueller investigation, I dearly and sincerely hope lots of Congressional snacilbupeR are included. Even though it won’t be for this, they’ll be out of Congress. I think the only hope for the snacilbupeR party is to thoroughly gut it so only people like Susan Collins, Kasich (He’s wrong about many issues, but sane & decent.) and a few other truly moderate snacilbupeR remain. They can rebuild in the image of DDE.
Only then will the United States of America have a humane, democratic, functional government again.
14The thing that, aside from being nauseated that yet *another* mass death shooting has occurred, pisses me off is that people on the right want to use ISIS’s propaganda that this is an Islamic terror attack.
Don’t they get that propagating ISIS’s lies helps ISIS? OTOH, they are so used to rejecting domestic news sources and following foreign propaganda that I guess we shouldn’t be surprised…
15America is awash in guns. I have no hope for anything to change. It can’t. Pandora’s box was opened when they allowed everyday citizens the right to own automatic weapons made specifically for the efficient slaughter of masses of people. You can’t reverse this action. Those guns are out there and will continue to be purchased. Welcome to the new normal.
16Ted. Are you kidding?
17By whose royal proclamation is it that killings of 10s and hundreds do not “count” as mass killings if done by more than one person? Seriously, I mean, sez who?
before you get too self rightous remember Wendy Davis when the D candinate, with party endorsement, came out in support of “murder” (gun) rights.
18So if the texas d’s are in the same corner as mass murders and the nra is there any hope for sanity.
K, let the record reflect that when I heard about Wendy’s vote, I called her campaign office the next day and raised holy damn hell. I still have the living and snarky email that I sent to her new campaign manager at the time. He resigned shortly thereafter.
You will note that even without a strong candidate for Governor yet, there is zero support and no call for Wendy to run again.
19Leos report 19 guns in Paddock’s room. Half the other victims are reported in critical condition.
Tom Petty reportedly found unconscious and in full cardiac arrest. Later report sez he passed away.
20Tom Petty left the building at age 66.
21George in Lee County: I never said other mass murders don’t count. I said this was the largest done by a single individual.
Got it?
22Actually Americans are crazier, or more evil than other countries’ populations or we would not have such an inordinate number of gun deaths each year!
231. The Wounded Knee Massacre was a military action, and therefore different from a mass killing, which I think is generally defined as civilians killing other civilians. I assume the Ludlow Massacre, though not committed by troops, would also be considered as such, since the Pinkertons were acting as state agents, not private citizens.
Also, since the Native American tribes were recognized by treaty as separate nations, not US citizens, I think that Wounded Knee would be classified as an act of war. Which doesn’t make it any less appalling.
2. The commentators, at least on MSNBC, are being careful to specify Las Vegas as the worst mass killing of the modern era. Not sure when that started. Presumably after it was common practice to send the US Cavalry out to butcher tribes.
24Ted, Lunargent. You need to do some research and educate yourselves about the mass killing at Wounded Knee. Your conclusions don’t fit well with the facts.
I have not heard any commentator describe the Las Vegas mass killing as the worst “of the modern era” or as anything but the worst mass killing in American history.
And please, identify the people or agencies who are defining or classifying such things so as to omit the mass killings of Native Americans because they were military actions. Have you not heard of the massacre at My Lai?
The Mỹ Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968. It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.
25I remember an awful lot of wingnuts in congress claiming that Americans committed no atrocities in VietNam. This was back during the dumbass dubya/kerrey election where it was repeatedly brought to attention that Kerrey returned his medals he’d gotten in combat. He was called every name in the book and swift-boated by a wealthy Texan if memory serves.
26Remember decades ago when the president of the national chiefs of police association highly recommended the use of a baseball bat a the best protection. Why? No muzzle flash. In a nighttime incident, no one could ever locate your position.
27PS What I just said also applies to Steve Scalise and his continued defense of uncontrolled guns.
288 foot steel posts are pretty good weapons too and don’t tempt you to shoot the person making fun of your lack of shooting skills.
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