I have no dog in the gun control fight but I do dislike specious, fake arguments. “Why not ban just the AR-15?” is such an argument. Nobody can possibly take it seriously since it comes from the same people who said “it’s just gay marriage” but then put male rapists into female prisons.
The same people also said “two weeks to flatten the curve” and then locked us up for two years and trashed our standard of living.
I used to believe these liars. “It’s just referring to somebody with a name they chose, what’s the big deal?” Then, almost instantaneously, it turned into “let’s imprison parents who refuse to castrate their children.”
These are people who always pretend to be for some reasonable, moderate measure but the second you compromise with them, they go for the most outlandish, winner-takes-all feast of extreme radicalism.
The gun violence problem in the US is the problem of gangs. Anybody who forgets to mention gangs in a discussion of gun violence is a liar. And of course it’s the same liars who pretended that COVID is dangerous to children and Officer Sicknick was murdered with a trash can by Trump supporters. (Or five million other lies).
We have terrible gun violence in our Democrat-run city of St Louis. The last time a Republican was a mayor was in 1945. We also have terrible gun violence in Chicago. The last time Chicago had a Republican mayor was in 1931. The sky-high murder rate in these cities owes entirely to the gangs. Almost a century of uninterrupted Democrat rule of these cities created the conditions for the existence and dominance of these gangs.
Constantly, I see and hear devastating news about people of all ages, good, peaceful, innocent people, being gunned down here in St Louis. Or upstate in Chicago. We are expecting a very bloody Memorial Day, as usual. These victims are a direct result of the failed policies of the Democrats. What these cities need is somebody like Rudy Giuliani but we’ll never get one.
I feel very strongly on the subject of gun violence in St Louis and Chicago. And the indifference with which the BLMing anti-gunners react to it makes me sick.
Clarissa's Blog 
” gun violence problem in the US is the problem of gangs”
IINM the Uvalde shooter was also a pothead (carefully removed from reporting after the first day or so….)
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You are not mistaken. There are photos going around in social media that show how NYT “edited” it out after day one.
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Although to be fair, these days I expect the news media to end every article with: “Oceania was always at war with Eurasia”.
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“Oceania was always at war with Eurasia”
Because it was! You want them to convey mistruths, thought criminal?
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I guess the legal-marijuana lobby made a phone call about that article.
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Yep. American Progressivism: No limits, no backstops, frictionless surfaces.
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But hey, the first step onto that downhill ice rink is always very reasonable and no decent person could possibly object…
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There is a problem as of late with mass shootings. However, the guns these mass shooters are using have been around for many decades now, just they are much more popular now. But you could buy AR-15s going back to the 1960s, and other semiautomatic guns before then. So there is something else afoot in the culture that is causing these mass shootings. I personally think it is a combination of bad parenting, a break down in morality in society, a rise in mental illness for some reason, and the rise of the Internet, social media, and the 24/7 news cycle, which allows instant fame for these mass shooters.
Clarissa’s points on why the gun rights movement does not want to compromise with the Gun Control movement are spot-on, because anyone who is familiar with the history of the Gun Control movement (which I am) knows that their goal is to ban any and all private gun ownership, period. They don’t admit to this publicly because the political winds are against them. When they’ve tried it in the past, it’s like trying to sail your ship directly into the wind, you just get blown backwards. So how do ships sail into the wind? They come at it from an angle and then zigzag, leftwards, rightwards, leftwards, rightwards, to go against the wind. This is how the Gun Control Lobby operates, they come at it from an angle constantly.
But to see the true mindset of them, all one need do is look at the major cities. For example, the Left are up in arms (pardon the pun) over the possibility that the Supreme Court may strike down New York City’s “good cause” requirement to get a hand gun license. What they don’t mention is that according to NYC, pretty much nobody, no matter how upstanding, demonstrates such “good cause” unless you can bribe the NYPD. If you are wealthy, and thus have the right connections, you can very much get a gun license in a city like NYC. But for a regular citizen, it’s pretty much impossible. Washington D.C. had a complete ban on guns, which is what led to the D.C. v Heller case in 2008, where the Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to keep and bear arms. Then in 2010, they declared that it also applies to the state and local governments and struck down Chicago’s ban on guns. Both these cities thus have had to essentially be dragged kicking and screaming into allowing any form of gun possession.
Ironically, IMO, the Gun Control movement shoots itself in the foot on this (again pardon the pun), because if these ultra-left-wing cities had reasonable gun control, where you had some hoops to jump through, but could still get guns if you want them, then their arguments for such at the federal level would be much more acceptable, because they could just point to the cities and show how even there they don’t do unreasonable restrictions.
Personally, while I feel absolutely horrible about these children being killed, I am at the same time very reluctant to give up gun rights because of all the craziness in the world as of late, and now these left-wing D.A.s wanting to let out criminals, and the mayors and governors just allowing rioters to riot and not use their police and/or National Guard forces to restore order. Also the way that the governments in the other so-called “free” countries have shown themselves to be quite power mad regarding Covid, and many in our own government, especially some of these governors, showed themselves to be such, and to top it off, total hypocrites as well, not adhering to their own lock down rules. The right to arms serves (and is meant to serve) as a check on tyranny.
For those wondering why the Gun Rights folk are against seemingly reasonable things like Universal Background Checks and Red Flag Laws, it is because the only known way to enforce UBCs is with universal registration, and aside from being a privacy issue (it isn’t really the government’s business whether one owns guns or not, no more than it is their knowing what books you own), historically registration of guns, in this country and in other countries, leads to confiscation.
Red Flag laws could work I am sure ,but they are a due process violation. Basically someone says, “That person is a danger…” and the police confiscate their guns.
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Exactly this. Back when the world was more innocent in 2019, I was pro-gun control, but sometime in 2020 I realized that the only thing keeping us from becoming Canada is the second amendment and wide-spread gun ownership. And yes, while I do feel bad for those poor children, I too think that in the current political climate, it will be suicidal to allow gun control.
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And also: for someone quite unfamiliar with the history of the gun control movement but wants to learn, do you have any reading suggestions? I would love to learn more about what things are really like (outside of the MSM propaganda).
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Hmm (that’s a big topic!)…I will write up a post later on this to help head you in the right direction as I don’t have time right now.
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Okay, well for starters, check out David Kopel’s website and Stephen P. Halbrook’s, and their books too. A hallmark of the Gun Control Movement has been denying that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, so without going into that whole subject, those two guys should be a good starting point. Also look up some of the books for sale that explain the history of the Second Amendment from the individual rights interpretation.
The Second Amendment reads, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The gun controllers claim that the gun rights community only pays attention to the second clause, while ignoring the first clause (“well-regulated militia”). That is actually not true. Very extensive attention has been paid to that clause, and the argument that the amendment protects an individual right fully takes the whole entirety of the wording of the amendment into account.
A very good book to start with is “Guns: Who Should Have Them?” by David Kopel. Also check out the website of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, which has a lot on the medical community;’s crusade against gun rights. The medial community, including all the major medical organizations, pretty unanimously claim that gun violence is a public health issue, which it really isn’t. Public health is things like car accidents, obesity, pollutants, diseases, etc…whereas acts of violence are the purview of criminology. The medical community has shown itself to be mind-numbingly ignorant in some ways about guns and gun rights and so forth.
Other major gun control causes have been assault weapons bans, high-capacity magainze bans, universal background checks, red flag laws, armor-piercing rounds, and complaining over the requirement the FBI complete background checks within 72 hours or the sale goes through, and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act which outlaws frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers. You need to research them from the pro-gun side individually:
Assault Weapons – There technically is no such thing as an “assault weapon.” This is a political term created by gun control proponents and is arbitrarily defined. The term was created partially to confuse the public with assault rifles, which is a technical term and refers to a gun that fires an intermediate power cartridge and has automatic fire capability. Automatic fire guns have been subject to more extended regulation since 1934 and the sale of new ones to the public was ended in 1986. People can buy used ones, but they are pricey as supply is more limited and require a very extensive background check process, fingerprinting, special license, and waiting period.
High Capacity Magazine – Again, this is an arbitrary term. According to the gun controllers, anything over ten rounds constitutes high-capacity. But this was never the case within the world of guns and is just an arbitrary standard. Many will argue, “No one needs more than ten rounds!” or “If you can’t hit the target with ten rounds or less, you probably shouldn’t have a gun…” the problem here is that for one, the right to keep and bear arms is also about checking tyranny, but two, when facing a threatening criminal, your adrenaline can start pumping, and when that happens, your accuracy will decrease substantially. In addition, depending on the gun, how many criminals you’re facing, and if they are hopped up on drugs, you may need more than ten rounds to stop them. These are all reasons why police officers carry guns with standard capacity magazines.
Universal Background Checks – This is one the gun controllers make sound like common sense, a no-brainer, etc…but what they don’t tell people is that the only way to enforce such is to require universal registration, and aside from the whole privacy issue of the idea of the Federal government having a registry of what guns people have, historically registries have almost always led to confiscation.
Red Flag Laws – Another one of those “no brainer” portrayed laws, but one that can be a major due process rights violation.
Armor Piercing Rounds – This is an arbitrary term like “assault weapon” and “high-capacity magazine.” For one, pretty much any rifle round will penetrate soft body armor and thus by its nature is “armor piercing” in that sense (soft body armor is more for pistol rounds). Otherwise, what does “armor-piercing” mean? Able to pierce soft body armor? Hard (plated) body armor? Armored vehicles? As it is, there are pistol rounds designed to penetrate soft body armor, but those are illegal for civilians to possess. There are also armor-piercing rifle rounds, but again, these are illegal for civilians to possess already.
72 Hour Requirement – The FBI must complete a background check within 72 hours or it gets approved anyhow. Some on the gun controller side claim this is a “loophole,” but it actually was put there by design by gun rights proponents after they discovered the FBI to be purposely dragging its feet on the issue of processing background checks.
Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act – This is a law that was passed to stop frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers. The gun control movement decided to try an idea of bringing such lawsuits against the gun industry because they knew the lawsuits would fail, but they nonetheless cost the companies money to hire lawyers to defend themselves. So the gun rights community got a law passed outlawing such lawsuits and the gun controllers have been raging since. They claim, “No other industry enjoys such a protection!” well no other industry has a large segment of people hellbent on outlawing it the way guns do either (other than maybe abortion?).
They also distort the law. The law does not stop one from suing a gun manufacturer if the gun has a clear design flaw, such as it fires when the safety is on. However if someone uses a gun to murder someone, the gun manufacturer themselves are not at fault, no more than Ford is if someone ran over someone’s dog with their Ford F-150. But the major automotive companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc…are so large that trying to sue them out of existence wouldn’t work.
NRA Money – A common claim made by gun controllers is that politicians are “beholden to the NRA” because of the money the NRA supposedly can give them. But the reality is that the NRA has been outspent numerous times by people like Michael Bloomberg. The gun control community likes to view the NRA as an industrial gun manufacturing lobby, but the reality is that it is just a grassroots civil rights organization, America’s oldest in fact, and what historically has given it its influence is the massive number of people in support of it. So rather than representing a hijacking of our political system by an organization, it actually is an example of our political system working exactly as it is supposed to, with politicians being beholden to their constituents.
The gun manufacturing industry itself is too small to have any real clout in Washington. That is why they tried a strategy even of suing it out of existence. The entire industry is less than the revenues of Target I believe. Gun companies are grains of sand compared to powerful industrial lobbies like the oil, chemical, banking and financial, defense, Amazon, Wal-Mart, pharmaceutical, etc…lobbies.
The above are all subjects you can research further. Also learn about the major gun control laws (1934, 1968, 1986). Learn about Aristotle and Cicero on the right to arms and self-defense as well.
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I’m getting some fascinating, very well-informed comments in these gun control threads. Thank you! I always enjoy finding out more from people who know what they are talking about. I’m tired of empty slogans.
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Thank you for the very detailed comment! I look forward to reading them!
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Testing
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Trudeau announced legislation today to ban handguns in Canada. This guy misses no opportunity. Of course, people protecting Trudeau from unhappy citizens are heavily armed. Obviously.
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When I lived in Boston (perhaps it’s changed? I doubt it), the requirement for a handgun license was also quite onerous, though perhaps not as bad as NYC? You had to prove that you needed one because you regularly transported large amounts of cash for your job, or that there was a credible threat to your life (i.e. stalkers, death threats).
I often idly wondered if there might be some fellas with a side-gig using payphones to leave threatening messages on the voicemails of people who needed gun permits…
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52 people shot in Chicago during the Memorial Day weekend, the bloodiest in years. Ten of the victims died. There were two mass shootings.
If we remove Chicago, St Louis, Philadelphia, Detroit and Washington DC from the stats of gun violence, the US has very low gun violence numbers. This is the real gun violence problem in the US. It’s the terrible situation with gangs in these big cities.
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Absolutely. I think all the folks who advocate for gun control should move to one of these cities. Not the nice suburbs: the gang-infested parts. Guns are practically banned there, so should be no problem, right? Or they could move to my old neighborhood.
This is the issue I have with the most vocal gun-control advocates. They live in nice apartment buildings with security, or they live out in the burbs where it’s safe. I might think that way if I could afford to live in a $300k+ house/condo where all my neighbors were nice white-collar professionals.
My parents’ neighborhood isn’t even that expensive, but was always nice and safe. I can see why people living there might think guns are unnecessary. At least until the hurricane, anyway. After that, squatters moved into the abandoned/damaged houses, and things got pretty sketchy for a while.
The last place I lived, a square-mile neighborhood out in the sticks, had at least two meth-lab fires in the two years we lived there. I could not let my children bike out of my sight, because I was too anxious about the drug dealers who walked up and down the street a couple of times a day. This was rural. The dealers were living in abandoned trailers that had been damaged in the hurricane, cooking meth and importing very large quantities of heroin and fentanyl and storing it in a shed in the woods on another abandoned property (I read it in the police report, after the big bust). They’d walk, every day, the two miles from wherever they were staying, out to the main road, meet up with customers, and walk back. You could tell who they were because they carried small backpacks and large purses, which were completely out of place in the neighborhood. Where are you going with that big purse? Shopping? The nearest gas station is seven miles away! These people would have shot my kids and buried them in the woods without a second thought if the kids had ever stumbled across their shed while out exploring. Would’ve been Sandy Creek Murders all over again.
I was washing dishes one afternoon when my six-year-old came screaming into the house because someone was chasing him. I looked out the window in time to see my older kid come streaking in as well (he had hidden under the house, briefly), and then a police vehicle pull into the driveway, and a cop jump out and run up the drive and behind the house. Out the window on the other side, we watched the cop leap the fence and tackle some guy in the neighbor’s yard, cuff him in the mud, and then haul him off to the police cruiser waiting in the road (by then there were four or five police vehicles). What I hadn’t seen, was the fugitive running up our driveway while the kids played there. They told me about it later. He’d jumped out of a moving vehicle at the stop sign, the driver took off, and he ran through our yard. Never found out what the police wanted him for. He was some relative of our neighbor across the street.
When we first moved in, there was a feral pig that kept showing up in our yard to sniff the dogs. Large animal, but seemed mostly harmless. But one afternoon it became aggressive and bit my sister’s hand while we were trying to shoo it out of the yard with brooms. She had to get rabies shots, because we couldn’t catch it, couldn’t figure out who owned it, and couldn’t verify that it wasn’t sick. Fortunately, the owners a couple streets away eventually recaptured it. If not we’d have had to shoot it, because it was a threat to the kids. We were within our legal rights to do so, and we had a plan of action in place for it– ditto for dogs allowed to run loose in the neighborhood (we were lucky because most were friendly and had good owners, but it’s the sort of area where people drop off unwanted pets, and once they get hungry/numerous enough, they form packs and become dangerous). County animal control does their best, but they’re powerless because there’s too much woods for feral animals to hide in.
This is the kind of place we can afford to live, and that was all in the space of two years. Two years we watched drug dealers walk up and down our street daily, watched at least three arrests from our front porch, had a fugitive criminal chased through our yard, and dealt with a large, aggressive feral pig. But people who live in nice safe neighborhoods tell me that I don’t need a firearm. After all, we have cops, right? They’re only fifteen minutes away. Heck, we had about five houses in that neighborhood burn to the ground in that two years, partly because the nearest fire station was so far away. But I guess that’s because fire trucks have to drive there, and cops can just teleport? F*&% that. Anybody who thinks private ownership of guns is unnecessary… how about we arrange a house swap for a couple years? I’d love to live in your neighborhood. I bet it’s nice.
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For the “Oh come on, we’re only trying to ban these particular guns crowd:
“other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives” –Justin Trudeau
And yeah, I don’t live in Canada, but all my liberal friends seem to think that dude is the bees’ knees and that we should do everything Canada does.
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Took all of 3 seconds for them to come up with the radical iteration of the “just AR-15” proposal. As always.
There was a time I bought into these lies but no more. I don’t understand how anyone still takes it seriously.
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IKR? “Oh, but it’s just these big, scary-looking guns we want to ban. Nobody needs those. And of course handguns. Nobody hunts with those, right? And really, I find all firearms scary and detestable, so how about we go ahead and ban all of them…”
What most of these people need is a good firearms safety class and a couple of days at the shooting range with an instructor. It is like people who are afraid of the water because they can’t swim. “Oh so many children killed by guns!” — like seriously people, have you ever seen the child drowning stats in this country? If they put half the effort and resources into providing free swim lessons, they could make a real difference in the world!
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This is a sobering narrative that I wish more people could read. Nice, well-meaning people who keep talking about banning guns live in a fantasy world completely divorced from reality. We keep doing the rounds of these identical, never-changing debates because so many people know the world through the neat, easy to digest news stories. But that’s not reality. My uncle in Canada has guns. He lives in the woods, far from any civilization. There’s wildlife. I can’t imagine anybody living there unarmed. It would take police 40 minutes at best to drive to his place. What is he supposed to do? He’s lived there his whole life. There are a lot of situations where this one-dimensional bleating about gun bans makes no sense.
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Another thing that’s changed since then: deinstitutionalization.
If anything, I think a lot of these cases are a good argument for bringing back involuntary commitment. I feel like I’ve read so many of these things now, where it comes out that the kid was living with mom/grandma, who had been trying to get help for the guy for years, was out of options, knew he was eventually going to kill someone or blow something up and go to jail… and was powerless to prevent it. Neighbors have reported to police. Coworkers have heard him brag about his plans. He tortures animals.
Did we used to lock these guys up in the state mental hospital?
Maybe the situation happens more often these days, with the dissolution of the family. Maybe not. I mean, dysfunctional families and sociopathic young men are not new.
I do think schools are part of the puzzle. It’s not an accident that disaffected young men would have schools on the brain.
I have to wonder if the reason schools didn’t used to be a target was simply that… schools were smaller, and not as horrible. Kids spent less time at school (fewer school days, shorter hours, and on average fewer years), failing at school was not a life sentence like it is now, where you can’t get a job as a dog-washer without a highschool diploma and a 2-year certificate from dog-washing school. There wasn’t as much stigma attached to it. There were other routes to respectable employment. Kids who didn’t do well in school generally dropped out between fifth and eighth grade, and went to work on the farm, or found other employment.
We don’t let them do that anymore. We take the failures and keep pushing them up the grade ladder through high school, forcing them through meaningless boredom and failure for years, because…. why? They’re not getting an education. But at least some of them are building up a helluva lot of resentment.
IMO, child labor laws happened for good reasons. We stopped flunking people out of middle school for… at least well-intentioned reasons. And deinstitutionalization happened for good reasons. And all of those things need to be reconsidered, because they probably all cause at least as much harm as they solved.
In our race to prevent exploitation, we’ve taken young men who are radically unsuited to academic institutions, forced them onto a set of tracks where the only option is uselessness and failure, and made sure they have no other legal options. And they have to spend the most hormonally-charged, emotionally-acute years of their lives this way.
It’s a wonder there haven’t been more shootings. Or that they haven’t taken up bombings and arson.
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My husband was a violent, disaffected kid who started doing arson at the age of 9. He’d blow up abandoned warehouses and sheds in the area. An abusive family, bullying at school, the typical stuff. What saved him was martial arts. He joined a martial arts club and never had any problems with violence again.
The way we understand schooling is very detrimental to young boys. In the local state elementary school, kids are punished for bad handwriting and sloppy note-taking by having the recess taken away. This is absolutely insane. Kids need to be outside, running and playing 5-6 hours a day. Schooling should be organized around outside time, not the other way around. Physical activity is absolutely crucial. Kids should be making things with their hands, moving around, not sitting.
I saw a workbook for first-graders that shows the structure of a flower. This blew my mind. Why aren’t these kids outside, looking at real flowers? None of this makes sense. The Fordist economy that gave rise to this robotic education that produced obedient drones is dead. Even from the economic perspective this form of education makes no sense any more.
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Yeah, this is a big reason we homeschool. We mostly don’t start any book-work in the mornings until the kids have been running around outside for two or three hours. I come from a long line of people who think sunshine and fresh air are the cure for every malady. I don’t think they’re wrong 😉 We can get in a really decent amount of book-learning type education in 3 hours or less, four days a week, when you strip out all the administrative/procedural garbage: roll-calling, going to lockers, waiting for the other kids in the class, riding the bus, filing through the lunch line, etc etc etc. When you think of the sheer amount of time that gets wasted day in, day out, in things that have nothing whatever to do with educating… and none of that time is used for anything that benefits the kids, like running around outside, or having positive interactions with adults, or figuring out how the real world works by being in it… (shudders). What the hell gives people the right to do that to children? As an adult, if someone wasted that much of your time… you’d leave! But kids don’t get a choice. It’s basically a prison sentence without a crime.
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My brother is an intelligent, capable guy. Also fairly dyslexic, with a personality and learning style totally unsuited to classrooms– school was a complete waste of time for him. He quit at ~15, bummed around doing drugs for a few years, got a GED, joined the military, cleaned up, and now he’s a talented repairman. His teenage years were completely wasted, and nearly killed him. Why couldn’t he have been working, then? Why can’t we have apprenticeships at that age? Because child labor?? Was it really better to be pissing away those years getting high and sleeping on filthy couches?
Even now, he runs into terminal career problems. He’s really, really good at fixing stuff, and would like to get a better fixing-stuff job doing, say, hospital equipment instead of refrigerators and stoves. But those require certifications that you can’t get OTJ. You have to go sit in a classroom for like 120 hours, and write essays and study textbooks, at your own expense, and on your own time in order to get those jobs. That has nothing to do with it being necessary for the job, and everything to do with protecting the people currently doing those jobs from having to compete with people like my brother (who walks me through diagnosing and repairing my own car/fridge/sink/computer, over the phone, from another state, successfully, several times a year), who could probably do it better because he’s that good. But he couldn’t write an essay if his life depended on it.
The “let’s keep everyone in school until age 18” model is crap. We need something better.
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“The gun violence problem in the US is the problem of gangs”
And suicide, which I understand used to be included in gun violence figures. Shooting oneself with a gun is one of (if not the) most common method of suicide of middle aged to older men.
Control for gangs and suicide and gun violence figures in the US are very small. And school shooters are more an issue of mental health issues (not the “I’m so stressed!” millenial snowflake versions but real dysfunction that needs and doesn’t get professional attention).
Has there been any investigation of the home life of the Uvalde shooter? Shooting the grandmother looks like some kind of clue (though I’m not sure of what precisely) but… I’m sure things had gone wrong for him a long, long time ago.
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Many things went extremely wrong in Uvalde. The police acted weirdly. The school was irresponsible. A few weeks ago, somebody left the door propped open at my kid’s school. Cameras showed that it remained open for 27 seconds. Nothing happened but this prompted an endless investigation with the school issuing half a dozen apologies and public statements. This isn’t even about criminals but general safety. What if a little kid wanders off? Or an animal comes in?
Uvalde needs to be seriously investigated on all sides.
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One does wonder, in addition, if there is any connection to the recent massive exodus, from police forces all over the country, of experienced, independent-minded cops with actual backbones– you know, the ones who were willing to give up a good job rather than be forced into a massive medical experiment. The last year, has seen a lot of those guys taking early retirement, or finding other careers.
No idea where Uvalde falls on that issue. It could just as easily be the classic small-town problem of not having the budget to hire decent cops, so you wind up with the guys who already tried to get hired in San Antonio but didn’t make the cut. Or they just hire the local businessman’s nephew and the local mayor’s daughter because why waste good jobs on outsiders? That also happens.
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Or they are terrified to use lethal force because they don’t want to be accused of racism. There’s a lot of that behind the current spike in crime.
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Brother says he met a lot of those in the military: people who are totally incapable of making any kind of decision involving risk. They just wait around for someone else to take charge.
That’s why I wonder if the vax mandates are in play here. Did we just cull half the country’s police forces and get rid of everyone who had the intelligence and the balls to make decisions involving limited intel and risk?
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The things that leapt out at me are:
A) living with his grandmother (does he have parents?)
B) Was mad at his grandmother for trying to keep him from smoking pot, and for asking him to contribute to utility bills.
C) Shot the grandmother before heading to the school.
This does not suggest a healthy family situation.
But also:
1) He had a truck, a weed habit, and a few thousand dollars’ worth of firearms.
2) He worked at Wendy’s.
3) WTF?
You can increase your disposable income considerably by living with relatives and not paying your rent, utilities, or grocery costs. So perhaps this is feasible. I do wonder about the truck, though. Was that also contributed by grandma?
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It’s a very interesting question how he could afford those weapons. As I said, this needs to be investigated massively on all sides.
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Yeah it doesn’t sound like he worked there long, and that’s typically what? $10/hr and they keep you pinned under 30 hours so they don’t have to give you insurance, typically. That’s like a $15k/yr job, that it doesn’t sound like he worked a whole year at. And weed isn’t cheap these days.
I have questions.
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“And weed isn’t cheap these days”
Maybe he was dealing too?
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It would certainly explain how he could live a $40k lifestyle on a $15k income.
But then, why would he need the fast-food job? I feel like I’m missing something.
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“I feel like I’m missing something”
I know next to nothing about the case except for what I’ve heard third or fourth hand… but… yeah
To me, when something like this happens my first reaction is ‘how did this obviously mentally very unwell person slip through so many cracks? (except I don’t think there were cracks… more like free fall)
Living with his grandmother in the US is weird (living with a grandmother in mexico while parents are working in the US would seem more likely)
I can think of a fair amount of possibilities but it’s all random speculation…
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I read an interview with the parents, so they are both around. And in the US.
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Though to be fair, I’ve heard from people who should know, that it’s pretty common for broke stoners to act as delivery boys in exchange for product, so that’s a possibility.
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