"it's time for hunters to leave the NRA"

[Guest]

22 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

At the very least, Republicans should stop mocking this shit with their family Christmas gun photos on the heels of a school shooting, because they are pushing the anti-gun crowd into a situation where they won't accept any compromise.

I am a lifetime gun owner, well from around age 8 or so; and I view guns as both a sporting implement and tool of self defense( last resort.)  The micro-peen bullshit of guns in family/ personal photos is something I don't care for, in almost any situation.  I'm not saying it should be prohibited, but within  the context of what these morons are trying to convey and what is actually communicated; they are straight up saying, "I'm an inadequate dumbass."

Intended or not, that's how it comes across.

Yeah exception for those making trade or hobby photos; but I'm addressing what you are describing above.  Full agreement there.

Edited December 10, 2021 by slorch

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, you just never saw posing with guns for photos ever back in the day.  Unless you were taking a picture at a skeet shoot, or with a deer you got, or maybe some target competition you just won.  Otherwise, to get the weapon out, bring into the living room, check the lighting, and take Christmas photos with it.  That wouldn't even occur to me and I'm mostly fucking insane.  I think of weird scenarios for a living. 

Like I have photos of me with a rod & reel, but not in my fucking living room.  It's me on a boat or with a fish I caught.  Baseball bats can be for sport and self-defense.  But if I took a Christmas photo of my children holding full-size 36" aluminum Eastons in my living room...half my Christmas card list would call CPS on my ass.  It's just a sign that screams "this parent is all fucking wrong."  

Plus Massie obviously has a small dick.  Let's just be honest.  It's not homophobic or gay or whatever.  You can just tell.  So it's just doubly mean to make his sons hold those guns for this photo because now their classmates know the score with them and that's gonna make high school even more difficult for them.  

[DDD Dad 14370]

Yeah, you just never saw posing with guns for photos ever back in the day.  Unless you were taking a picture at a skeet shoot, or with a deer you got, or maybe some target competition you just won.  Otherwise, to get the weapon out, bring into the living room, check the lighting, and take Christmas photos with it.  That wouldn't even occur to me and I'm mostly fucking insane.  I think of weird scenarios for a living. 
Like I have photos of me with a rod & reel, but not in my fucking living room.  It's me on a boat or with a fish I caught.  Baseball bats can be for sport and self-defense.  But if I took a Christmas photo of my children holding full-size 36" aluminum Eastons in my living room...half my Christmas card list would call CPS on my ass.  It's just a sign that screams "this parent is all fucking wrong."  
Plus Massie obviously has a small dick.  Let's just be honest.  It's not homophobic or gay or whatever.  You can just tell.  So it's just doubly mean to make his sons hold those guns for this photo because now their classmates know the score with them and that's gonna make high school even more difficult for them.  

Posting for Christmas photos with weapons displayed seems like a pretty good test for disqualifying someone from owning said weapons.

[BHMCruiser 1818]

9 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, you just never saw posing with guns for photos ever back in the day.  Unless you were taking a picture at a skeet shoot, or with a deer you got, or maybe some target competition you just won.  Otherwise, to get the weapon out, bring into the living room, check the lighting, and take Christmas photos with it.  That wouldn't even occur to me and I'm mostly fucking insane.  I think of weird scenarios for a living. 

Like I have photos of me with a rod & reel, but not in my fucking living room.  It's me on a boat or with a fish I caught.  Baseball bats can be for sport and self-defense.  But if I took a Christmas photo of my children holding full-size 36" aluminum Eastons in my living room...half my Christmas card list would call CPS on my ass.  It's just a sign that screams "this parent is all fucking wrong."  

Plus Massie obviously has a small dick.  Let's just be honest.  It's not homophobic or gay or whatever.  You can just tell.  So it's just doubly mean to make his sons hold those guns for this photo because now their classmates know the score with them and that's gonna make high school even more difficult for them.  

I don't really disagree with any of this

[Guest Lobo]

Well in true demented Surly-fashion.  Let's game this out.  Nobody would take a Christmas photo with everybody, including the kids, holding hunting knives---right?  But those are for outdoor sport and self-defense.  But not even the Massie family would do that because it doesn't project anything to anyone.  Just a weird pic by a tree with little kids holding big Rambo knives.  But there are now several "people" posting photos of their families holding guns in front of the tree or the stocking-adorned hearth to show off their 2A love.  

So just like 20 years ago, people started sending out Christmas cards with little photo montages on the back of the kids in the mountains, or the beach, or doing something cool in some exotic place.  We will now begin to see a game of One-Upsmanship when it comes to gun-related holiday correspondence.  A new foundation has been laid and America must try to keep up with the Joneses-Massies, as it were. 

So we skipped posing with handguns and hunting rifles and went right to assault weapons.  So what's next?  Exotic/rare guns?  I could see that.  The kids actually firing the guns at a range somewhere that's decorated for the Christ's birthday?  This has to go somewhere from here?  Posing with the gun at a place where guns aren't allowed?  Posing with the gun with some illegal modification to it?  We are not a people who are going to let candyass Massie be the last word on assault-rifle themed Christmas cheer dammit! 

[Bozo_Casanova 26675]

6 hours ago, BHMCruiser said:

What is it that the NRA works against that you and most gun owners want? Please explain.

it’s literally in the post you quoted.

“to cut off legal access to weapons by mentally ill people, criminals and violent bullies, and to punish people who knowingly or through negligence provide them with weapons outside the law.”

they do a great job of concern trolling about slippery slopes and angry women though.

[Guest Lobo]

4 hours ago, BHMCruiser said:

I don't really disagree with any of this

"Is this true, BHM Cruiser?"

"Yes sir, I've seen Massie's dick."    

[atomheartbevo 90045]

22 hours ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, you just never saw posing with guns for photos ever back in the day.  Unless you were taking a picture at a skeet shoot, or with a deer you got, or maybe some target competition you just won.  Otherwise, to get the weapon out, bring into the living room, check the lighting, and take Christmas photos with it.  That wouldn't even occur to me and I'm mostly fucking insane.  I think of weird scenarios for a living. 

22 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

Posting for Christmas photos with weapons displayed seems like a pretty good test for disqualifying someone from owning said weapons.

I have a Christmas photo with a rifle, but it was taken on Christmas Day, when I was 10, and it was a .22 that my grandparents gave me (it had been my dad's).

The idea of taking a Christmas photo/card with the whole family wielding rifles or even just sidearms is weird as fuck to me, and yeah, makes me question the mental capacity/stability of the family taking it.  That's some fetish shit right there.  And/or somebody with a small dick, like tiny, like less than 6 inches.

These types of photos also show that these people are not actual followers of Jesus Christ.

Sure, they can call themselves Christian, just like I can call myself a lottery winner, but if I'm not playing the lottery, I'm not winning jack shit.

Edited December 11, 2021 by atomheartbevo

[HRSchenker 2288]

Well, here ya go. California set to ban all "assault weapons" using the Texas abortion bounty scheme

https://twitter.com/CAgovernor/status/1469865007517089798

[fattyflattie 4639]

Luckily, we live in Gods country.  Good luck, Ca. 

[Biff Tannen 45763]

10 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

Luckily, we live in Gods country.  Good luck, Ca. 

[Brisketexan 105570]

Well, here ya go. California set to ban all "assault weapons" using the Texas abortion bounty scheme
https://twitter.com/CAgovernor/status/1469865007517089798

I think this is fantastic. I truly do.

Not because I believe in the policy goal - I generally don’t. But if the hard right believes that the “personal bounty” system is a clever evasion of protection of constitutional rights from state interference, let them live with their monster.

Or, maybe, the SCOTUS will actually realize that if they bless the Texas plan, they will have no choice but to bless all-out gun ban plans in other places. Or hey, maybe a bounty on black voters, or shit like that. After all, it’s not the state doing it, so it’s all good….right?

[Bozo_Casanova 26675]

On 12/10/2021 at 5:00 PM, slorch said:

I am a lifetime gun owner, well from around age 8 or so; and I view guns as both a sporting implement and tool of self defense( last resort.)  The micro-peen bullshit of guns in family/ personal photos is something I don't care for, in almost any situation.  I'm not saying it should be prohibited, but within  the context of what these morons are trying to convey and what is actually communicated; they are straight up saying, "I'm an inadequate dumbass."

Intended or not, that's how it comes across.

Yeah exception for those making trade or hobby photos; but I'm addressing what you are describing above.  Full agreement there.

Good post me too

[Bozo_Casanova 26675]

4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

I think this is fantastic. I truly do.

Not because I believe in the policy goal - I generally don’t. But if the hard right believes that the “personal bounty” system is a clever evasion of protection of constitutional rights from state interference, let them live with their monster.

Or, maybe, the SCOTUS will actually realize that if they bless the Texas plan, they will have no choice but to bless all-out gun ban plans in other places. Or hey, maybe a bounty on black voters, or shit like that. After all, it’s not the state doing it, so it’s all good….right?

Are we rooting for the whirlwind now?

[Brisketexan 105570]

Are we rooting for the whirlwind now?

Is there anything else left to root for?

We’ve been sowing a SHITLOAD of wind.

[Bozo_Casanova 26675]

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Is there anything else left to root for?

We’ve been sowing a SHITLOAD of wind.

[Bullneck 19315]

4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Is there anything else left to root for?

We’ve been sowing a SHITLOAD of wind.

There's going to be a yuge outbreak of windmill cancer soon.

[hobbes2702 13150]

10 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

I think this is fantastic. I truly do.

Not because I believe in the policy goal - I generally don’t. But if the hard right believes that the “personal bounty” system is a clever evasion of protection of constitutional rights from state interference, let them live with their monster.

Or, maybe, the SCOTUS will actually realize that if they bless the Texas plan, they will have no choice but to bless all-out gun ban plans in other places. Or hey, maybe a bounty on black voters, or shit like that. After all, it’s not the state doing it, so it’s all good….right?

This. 

[Bookman 4723]

Great, now Texas is going to put a $10,000 bounty on gay marriages.

[atomheartbevo 90045]

2 hours ago, Bookman said:

Great, now Texas is going to put a $10,000 bounty on gay marriages.

Please don't give Abbott any ideas, or rather don't give Huffines any ideas, because then he'll rant about it and Abbott will adopt it and claim it was his all along.

[Bozo_Casanova 26675]

I need to get in Huffines ear about how the real American Conservative thing would be to expand Medicaid to every Texan who isn’t covered by employer health insurance.

[BHMCruiser 1818]

On 12/10/2021 at 9:27 PM, Bozo_Casanova said:

it’s literally in the post you quoted.

“to cut off legal access to weapons by mentally ill people, criminals and violent bullies, and to punish people who knowingly or through negligence provide them with weapons outside the law.”

they do a great job of concern trolling about slippery slopes and angry women though.

 

You're just repeating yourself without pointing to anything that the NRA actually does. The NRA advocates that mentally ill people should have guns, as should criminals and whatever a violent bully is that is somehow different than a criminal, and that straw purchases should be legal? Where are you getting this from?

[BHMCruiser 1818]

On 12/10/2021 at 11:41 AM, BHMCruiser said:

I'm all for people buying whatever they want to defend themselves and I'm sorry dumb laws prevent that in some situations. I keep all my guns unlocked in a safe because I have kids and live in a nice neighborhood (few if any recent Jussie Smollet sightings) so the cost/benefit analysis works that way for me. But if people feel the need or desire to be fully armed, that's cool with me. 

I can't believe I wrote "unlocked." I meant "unloaded in a safe"

[Gil Bang 26099]

 

[Gil Bang 26099]

On July 9, 2013, Colleen Sterner, the niece of the National Rifle Association C.E.O. Wayne LaPierre, received an e-mail from a manager in the Weddings and Special Affairs division of Atlantis, a popular family resort on Paradise Island. “It gives me great pleasure to provide you with the contract for your wedding at our incredible resort!” the e-mail said. Sterner and her future husband, Terry, had booked the Simply Love plan, with a location upgrade for their ceremony. It would be held a week later, at a neighboring, more upscale property. The couple planned to exchange vows by the twelfth-century Augustinian cloisters that had been transported to the site and completed in the nineteen-sixties.

On the day of the wedding, July 16th, there was rain and lightning, and the wedding took place indoors, at Atlantis. Sterner wore a white, jewel-collared cocktail dress at a ceremony that she described in a statement as “small,” and “private.” LaPierre and his wife, Susan, were among the guests. The event was part of a trip during which the LaPierres and the Sterners cruised around the Caribbean on a luxury yacht provided by an N.R.A. contractor for free.

In 2020, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, sued to dissolve the N.R.A. for a pattern of self-dealing that included LaPierre’s alleged acceptance of lavish gifts from contractors. Under questioning about the yacht trip, LaPierre did not disclose the wedding. Instead, he testified under oath that he used the boat that summer because his life was in imminent danger. He said that trip—the first of six annual summer voyages on the yacht in the Bahamas, from 2013 to 2018—was a “security retreat” and the only way he could be safe after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. LaPierre explained that he was under “Presidential threat without Presidential security” and that the boat “was offered” as a refuge. When he finally got to the yacht, he recalled thinking, “Thank God I’m safe, nobody can get me here.”

Internal N.R.A. documents, other records, and interviews with former staffers suggest that LaPierre repeatedly made misleading and possibly false statements under oath about the yacht and his niece. LaPierre testified that Sterner, whom he hired at the N.R.A., was an integral employee in the organization, but former colleagues, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, say she did little work.

Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law, said that LaPierre’s testimony could strengthen the attorney general’s legal case against the N.R.A. “The real risk with lies under oath, if they can be shown, is that a jury or judge will conclude that the person who lied had something additional to hide and knew it. What they said will then become evidence against them,” Gillers explained. “If LaPierre knowingly gave false testimony, it would be added ammunition for the A.G.’s effort to dissolve the N.R.A.”

 

The organization has disputed many of the attorney general’s allegations, and asserted counterclaims against James for allegedly breaching its constitutional rights. The nonprofit maintains that it is committed to “good governance,” and in recent tax filings revealed that LaPierre has repaid most of the travel expenses that the N.R.A. has so far deemed improper and intends to reimburse the rest. In October, its board elected LaPierre to his thirty-first one-year term as C.E.O. “The N.R.A. understands that Mr. LaPierre answered truthfully about his travel to and use of the yacht,” William A. Brewer III, the lawyer who represents the organization in its legal fight with James, said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is reckless and misleading.” He added that, “in the N.R.A.’s view,” LaPierre “is honoring all of his professional obligations to the association—operating with transparency and a commitment to good governance.” In a statement provided by the N.R.A., Sterner said “I have no idea why there is a fixation on my wedding, but it feels personally harassing.”

 

 

For nearly a decade, LaPierre failed to list the free yacht trips on N.R.A. internal disclosure forms, as required by the organization’s rules and New York State law. Instead, he only did so this spring, on the same day he was scheduled to testify before a judge for the first time. According to a charity-auction brochure, a four-night cruise on the hundred-and-eight-foot yacht—which has four staterooms, a waterslide, and a hydraulic swim platform—is worth more than seventy-five thousand dollars. In a deposition, LaPierre explained that, because he viewed the yacht as a “security issue with my family, with myself,” he had not considered it “a conflict back then.”

The owner of the yacht, David McKenzie, was a close confidant of LaPierre’s and a longtime N.R.A. contractor. For twenty years, the pro-gun group paid millions of dollars to McKenzie’s production company, Associated Television International, for “Crime Strike,” a reënactment show on cable TV that featured LaPierre as the host. Between 2011 and 2020, tax filings show, the N.R.A. also paid some seventy million dollars to two fund-raising companies that are at least partly owned by McKenzie’s wife, according to corporate records that she signed. McKenzie told me that he has nothing to do with the two firms and his wife played no role in their operation. “It’s a long backstory as to how that all happened,” he said. “It was basically a passive investment, and she doesn’t have anything to do with it, either.”

Contracts obtained by The Trace and The New Yorker for one of the firms, Allegiance Creative Group, were signed by LaPierre. The first extension was signed in November, 2013, four months after Sterner’s wedding. In his testimony, LaPierre asserted that he was not involved in contract negotiations with the companies tied to McKenzie’s wife. The N.R.A. told me LaPierre never reviewed the entities’ registration documents.

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER

[Bama Chick 28596]

Too bad all those dead kids didn’t go to school on a yacht for their “safety”.

Fucking lying ass ghoul.

[TwiceHorn 31681]

On 12/9/2021 at 10:55 PM, elfenix said:

laws are generally achieved through compromise.

Didn't recall this, but AWB was part of the VCCLEA, which was indeed a compromise.

[pacman 7427]

On 12/10/2021 at 4:12 PM, BHMCruiser said:

Actually Parkland and Sutherland Springs probably could have been stopped by simple application of existing laws. Who would have red flagged the Sandy Hook shooter? The psycho POS mom who bought her kid guns and got murdered for it?

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/07/1079013006/a-judge-ordered-the-u-s-to-pay-230-million-to-victims-of-a-texas-church-massacre?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab

Judge agrees

[atomheartbevo 90045]

Fuck.  Motherfuckers still mail me shit through the USPS even though I've not been a member for 20+ years.  Who knows what other data they have.

https://gizmodo.com/nra-confirms-hack-by-ransomware-gang-grief-1848673536

Quote

On Friday, the organization’s political action committee (PAC) submitted a filing to the Federal Election Commission confirming the attack. The PAC made the filing to the FEC in an effort to explain a recent financial discrepancy—it had failed to report thousands of dollars in donations to the government.

A ransomware gang calling itself “Grief” bragged to the digital underworld last October about compromising the gun lobby’s servers and stealing sensitive internal documents. It leaked screenshots of what it claimed were documents that had been stolen during the incident. At the time, the NRA did not confirm or deny that it had been hacked, issuing an evasive statement about how it “does not discuss matters related to physical or electronic security.” Now, however, the NRA has admitted that it got pwned. The hackers were telling the truth.

Quote

According to the filing, the ransomware attack hit the NRA on October 20, 2021, taking the entire organization offline. NRA employees did not regain full access to the internet, their email inboxes, or their networked files until the second week of November. Grief leaked additional documents that month, including bank account numbers and other “sensitive personal and financial information,” seemingly still waiting for the NRA to pay up.

 

[bolverk 29815]

Pretty sure there's at least a couple of DT threads (What's the matter with you Houston? 6-yo killed in LA, etc.) covering these road rage shootings where the same assholes who rant about it are the ones who voted for it. It's the natural consequence of pushing for every Tom, Dick, and Harry packing heat wherever they are.

Y'all wanted the wild, wild, west, so stop bitching about it.

 

Angry Drivers, Lots of Guns: An Explosion in Road Rage Shootings
Dozens have been reported in Texas alone amid a pandemic surge in gun purchases and a country increasingly on edge.

HOUSTON — The trouble started with an argument between two drivers merging in slow traffic after an Astros baseball game last summer. It ended with two gunshots, fired from a moving Buick and exploding through the glass of a fleeing Ford pickup truck.

The bullets missed the truck’s driver, Paul Castro, but one — just one — struck his teenage son, David, who sat in the passenger seat. As Mr. Castro drove to get help, a 911 operator told him to apply pressure to the wound at the back of his son’s head. But David did not make it.

The random pointlessness of the killing shocked Houston. But it was one of dozens of similar incidents across the country over the past year amid an explosion of shootings and killings attributed to rage on the road.

These eruptions of sudden violence — a man in Tulsa, Okla., firing repeatedly after an argument at a red light; a Georgia driver shot while on a family road trip — are not unique to any part of America, among a population that is increasingly on edge and carrying guns. But they have been perhaps most pronounced on the roads of Texas.

“In the past, people curse one another, throw up the finger and keep moving,” Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston said in an interview. “Now instead of throwing up the finger, they’re pulling out the gun and shooting.”

Spoiler

As more motorists seemed to be firing guns last year, the Dallas Police Department began tracking road rage shootings for the first time. The results were alarming: 45 people wounded, 11 killed.

In Austin last year, the police recorded 160 episodes of drivers pointing or firing a gun; this year, there have been 15 road rage shootings, with three people struck. (Two others were stabbed in altercations stemming from road rage.)

The prevalence of such violence, not just in Texas but around the country, suggests a cultural commonality, an extreme example of deteriorating behavior that has also flared on airplanes and in stores. It is as if the pandemic and the nation’s sour mood have left people forgetting how to act in public at the same time as they were buying millions more weapons.

“It’s the same sort of ball of wax: People getting frustrated, feeling strained and acting out toward others,” said Charis E. Kubrin, a criminologist at the University of California, Irvine. “One thing that we do know is that there has been a huge rise in gun sales,” she added.

Last month, a woman driving with her dog shot and wounded another motorist in Oklahoma City. In Miami, a man fired 11 shots from his car on Interstate 95 in what he has said was self-defense. A Los Angeles couple is set to stand trial for firing into a car during morning rush hour last year, killing a 6-year-old boy on his way to kindergarten.

Criminologists cautioned that any theory of motivation behind road rage shootings is hampered by a lack of data. Most police departments do not keep statistics on road rage episodes, in part because it is not itself a crime category. There is no federal database.

Arizona has tried to get a rough approximation of the number of road rage incidents, adding a box for “possible road rage” to the form filled out by police officers for car crashes in 2018. The data showed an increase in such incidents in 2021 compared with the previous two years, according to Alberto Gutier, the director of the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

“It’s going crazy,” he said of road rage. “People are so stupid.”

But, he added, the state does not track the number of episodes that end up in gunfire.

For its report on an increase in road rage shootings, the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety relied on the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that compiles data from government sources and media reports. The group found that more than 500 people had been injured or killed in reported road rage shootings last year, up from fewer than 300 in 2019.

“The story that it’s telling is a definite and really worrying increase in incidents of road rage involving a gun,” said Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety. “Only in this country is someone shot and injured or killed every 17 hours in a road rage incident.”

Texas accounted for a quarter of the fatal shootings last year that were documented in the study, with 33 people killed in road rage shootings in the state, up from 18 in 2019.

Among them was David Castro, the 17-year-old who died in Houston in July. David played percussion in his high school marching band, wanted to study engineering in college and hoped to get his driver’s license by the end of the summer.

“I was going over lessons with him as we drove,” his father said in an interview, recalling a conversation with David before the shooting as they hit heavy traffic after the Astros game downtown. David’s 14-year-old brother was also in the car.

After letting several cars merge into his lane, Mr. Castro began to pull forward in his pickup. That is when a white Buick attempted to edge into the lane, he said. Neither yielded ground; eventually the two cars were touching. There was a “verbal altercation,” according to a court record.

A police officer directing traffic told Mr. Castro to let the Buick in. “So I let him in,” he said. “David was nervous. But I was like, whatever that was, it’s over.”

But it wasn’t.

On the highway, the Buick started flashing its lights and honking, Mr. Castro said. “I tried to get away and he stayed right behind me,” Mr. Castro said. As he took a turnaround lane under a highway, he heard two shots. The rear window shattered. David, seated in the passenger seat, was struck in the back of the head.

“I just started screaming. And he kept chasing us,” Mr. Castro said. “This was not a road rage incident — this was a grown man who took the life of a child because his feelings got hurt.”

The police eventually made an arrest in the case, charging Gerald Wayne Williams, 35, with murder. Mr. Williams has since been released on bond. “I can’t think of anything more tragic,” a lawyer for Mr. Williams, Casey Keirnan, said of the killing. But, he said, “my client denies that he is the person who shot him.”

The case drew widespread attention in Texas, as did another in Houston involving a 9-year-old girl, Ashanti Grant, who was shot and seriously wounded in February while riding with her family to a grocery store.

“It is unique to this moment,” Mr. Turner said. “I’m a native Houstonian. I’m in my seventh year as mayor. We have just not had it to the point where it has been a noticeable event, except in the last year.”

Mr. Turner said that a string of deadly cases had prompted the city to take steps to reconfigure its traffic cameras to preserve recordings, to eventually help catch roadway shooters.

In Texas, drivers have been allowed to carry firearms without a license in their cars since 2007, a law known as the Texas Motorist Protection Act. A new measure, enacted last year, allows most Texans to carry a handgun in public without a license.

Online, there are videos and trainings that offer tips for carrying and using a gun inside of a car.

Jacob Paulsen, who teaches an online course called “vehicle firearm tactics,” said that escaping should always be the driver’s aim. “Your primary objective is your own survival,” Mr. Paulsen said. “If your primary objective is to punish someone else, or to make sure that other person is in jail or gets justice, those are not good mind-sets.”

The guns used in road rage episodes in Dallas are often legally owned, said Detective Christina Smith of the Dallas Police Department, who investigates such shootings. “But having a legal firearm, you still have a responsibility for what you do with that,” she added.

The cases pose problems for the police because they almost always occur between strangers, on roadways without cameras. “The few that I have been able to find and actually arrest, it boils down to disrespect,” Detective Smith said. “When you reduce it at its core, the reasons are silly.”

The police in Dallas have been compiling a running report on road rage episodes, with data on the time and place of each reported incident as well as whether it involved a gun. They found that events tend to cluster in the afternoon.

“It seems to be happening around rush hour, in traffic, when people are going home,” said Maj. Mark Villarreal, who is helping lead an effort by the police in Dallas this year to crack down on aggressive driving. “It’s happenstance. It’s a crime of passion.”

That makes each case difficult to solve, said Lt. Kyle Cones of the Houston Police Department. Most escalate from a routine indignity, he said.

“I read every report that comes across, and every actual specific maneuver that they said led to it is they say they got cut off,” the lieutenant said.

That was the case, he said, in the shooting of Ashanti, who was placed in a medically induced coma. “It was a cut-off type deal,” he said.

As gunfire erupted, Lieutenant Cones said, Ashanti’s family members in the car got low. But Ashanti, who was watching a video with headphones on, did not.

Mr. Castro, David’s father, said having a gun in the car only made such tragedies more likely.

“What I want people to do,” he said, “is talk to their husband, talk to their brother, talk to their son, and say, ‘Do you really need a loaded weapon in the cab of your vehicle?’”

 

[Hookah Horns 3083]

Outside of the evanescent and inconsequential nature of existence, for my money there is no more depressing topic to consider than guns in America. Enormous problem about which nothing meaningful will ever be done, and for dumbass reasons. Lots of "it ends here" speechifying though, so that's fun.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Hookah Horns

[bolverk 29815]

1 minute ago, Hookah Horns said:

Outside of the evanescent and inconsequential nature of existence, for my money there is no more depressing topic to consider than guns in America. Enormous problem about which nothing meaningful will ever be done, and for dumbass reasons. Lots of "it ends here" speechifying though, so that's fun.

I hear what you're saying and fully realize nothing will be done about it -- precisely because of posters like those who love nothing more than to rage about the situation they actively created, and continue to make worse, but refuse to fix. The "debate" is over; they won.

[Brisketexan 105570]

4 minutes ago, bolverk said:

I hear what you're saying and fully realize nothing will be done about it -- precisely because of posters like those who love nothing more than to rage about the situation they actively created, and continue to make worse, but refuse to fix. The "debate" is over; they won.

Here's the thing.....guns aren't even particularly "more available" than they were in the 70s-80s.  If I recall the paperwork back then, it was....minimal.  I helped a good number of guys buy their first firearm at places like Oshman's and Wal-Mart, easy as pie.   And we could have bought 50 at a time, if we'd felt like it.

What has changed is the culture around guns.  And the NRA is a perfect example of that.

When I was a youth member of the NRA 40 years ago, the core NRA message was that guns were tools, to be treated with respect and seriousness.  Talking up a gun as "badass" etc. would have been seen as crass, and uncomfortable.

Today, the gun culture message, happily amplified by the NRA, is a complete fetishization of guns.  They are symbols of power, and "patriotism," and how "badass American" you are, and how you're "gonna protect my family and myself," and you have bumper stickers with your AR on it on your truck, etc. etc.  Guns are no longer a tool to be used with respect and restraint.  They are a symbol, to be displayed, brandished, and used to show how tough you are.  

If we could just dial back the clock to stop trumpeting guns as the ultimate symbol of masculinity, badassery, and freedomeagleindependence, it would help a lot.  But we refuse to.  Because the old attitude doesn't make guns and ammo fly off the shelf so there are shortages.

[Guest Lobo]

Well put.  Give it up for the NRA, they conflated patriotism, freedom, and guns when they really don't have that much to do with one another.  

My father and my 5 blood uncles (on both sides) plus 5 more uncles by marriage (on both sides).  All served in the U.S. Military/Texas National Guard.  All die-hard patriots, all rah-rah America as can be.  All outdoorsmen for the most part.  All flew the flag, took us to Veteran's Day parades, all voted in every single local election, all students of American History well on into adulthood, all belonged to VFW/American Legion, and most belonged to the NRA at some point.  It would never, ever have occurred to any of them at any point in their lives to own guns to prove their patriotism or machismo.  If one 'em said their right to own firearms partially defined them as an American, the rest would have taken him out behind the bar and beat some sense into him for talking crazy. 

Hunting, home defense, target shooting for sport (which is why I use them)...sure.  But to have it be part of what defines you?  That's just so bizarre to me, I guess I understand why I'm so far apart from so many gun owners on the philosophy of it all.  I love to fish, but it's less than 1% of my personal identity.  But it seems like owning guns is at least 10% of the persona of millions and millions of Americans.  And it's not that interesting a personality trait.  If you made your own guns, I guess that'd be kinda cool.  Guns taken off WWII SS officers, that's kinda cool.  But just buying a half dozen AR-15's...that's not remotely interesting to me.  It makes you less interesting.  It's just a different version of a guy trying to buy attention.   

[atomheartbevo 90045]

28 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

Outside of the evanescent and inconsequential nature of existence, for my money there is no more depressing topic to consider than guns in America. Enormous problem about which nothing meaningful will ever be done, and for dumbass reasons. Lots of "it ends here" speechifying though, so that's fun.

Eventually we are going to have somebody livestream themselves stalking and gunning down their classmates who are begging for their lives, and you'll see some movement.  

How much movement, I don't know, but right now, it's extremely easy for this shit to be out-of-sight and out-of-mind because we aren't seeing the results in near real-time, and it's "always in another town."

But we have this younger generation that has grown up with the active shooter drills, etc., and an awareness, and this kind of stuff could get them voting and applying pressure.  And in purple states, they could tip the balance.

 

[atomheartbevo 90045]

19 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

When I was a youth member of the NRA 40 years ago, the core NRA message was that guns were tools, to be treated with respect and seriousness.  Talking up a gun as "badass" etc. would have been seen as crass, and uncomfortable.

Today, the gun culture message, happily amplified by the NRA, is a complete fetishization of guns.  They are symbols of power, and "patriotism," and how "badass American" you are, and how you're "gonna protect my family and myself," and you have bumper stickers with your AR on it on your truck, etc. etc.  Guns are no longer a tool to be used with respect and restraint.  They are a symbol, to be displayed, brandished, and used to show how tough you are.  

I'd be curious when it changed from the tools thing to fetishization.  When I was a member in the 90s (adult admittedly), it had started shifting to taking on the AWB, and was pushing the "they came for assault weapons and banned them, and now they'll ban your shotguns and deer rifles" talking point.

But I feel like the fetishization came about in the early/mid 2000s when people were fucking cosplaying soldiers in Afghanistan and trying to load their rifles with accessories, etc.

I've wondered if when the AWB expired in 2004, if the gun and accessory manufacturers did a full-court sales press fetishizing guns.  I've never really looked into it, but it would not surprise me if that happened.

[Brisketexan 105570]

5 minutes ago, Lobo said:

But just buying a half dozen AR-15's...that's not remotely interesting to me.  It makes you less interesting.  It's just a different version of a guy trying to buy attention. 

Bingo.  It's another version of the jacked up Ford Raptor or somesuch.  It's a desperate claim at some sort of identity worthy of attention.

Now, there's something underneath that worth discussing -- how American males are and have been in an identity crisis, lacking a sense of value and purpose and acutely feeling it and wanting to address it but not knowing how.

We are a society that increasingly sees our men turning to bullshit displays of "manliness" like guns and trucks and not putting up with anyone disrespecting me, etc., and also a society where our men aren't finding success in school and aren't going on to college.  I think that these are all elements of the same problem.  As a culture, we are failing our males.  We've done an amazing job of turning things around for women (and NO, we aren't done by any means, and YES, women still have things shitty in many ways) -- see for example the percentage of women in our universities (it's skyrocketed).  See the earning power of women over the past 50 years -- same thing.  Our education system is built for people who learn more like women do, so they have an easier time fitting into that model of success.  I'm no Jordan Peterson fanboy -- I think he's a lazy provocateur who does a fine job cloaking himself in intellectualism -- but when he gives voice to the crisis of masculinity, he's not wrong in spotting the issue.  His counter-approach often draws upon the worst of ideas of masculinity, but he's not wrong to note that there's a problem.  Of course, the fact that to solve the issue, men are lurching to destructive and harmful tendencies is a second part of that problem.

I have guns.  They don't define me.  I have a truck.  It doesn't define me (which is good, because it's old and shitty....wait, fuck, maybe it DOES define me).  My manliness is defined in generally healthy ways: I am a family man, I have a successful career in which my more masculine traits are often an advantage.  But I am of a prior generation.  Today......the role of men is much more difficult to navigate.  And being in a shitty situation can lead to some shitty reactions.

TLDR; our gun culture is a terrible "solution" to a very real problem among men.  Solving the underlying problem might be our only chance to solve the symptom/bad solution.

[bolverk 29815]

5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Here's the thing.....guns aren't even particularly "more available" than they were in the 70s-80s.  If I recall the paperwork back then, it was....minimal.  I helped a good number of guys buy their first firearm at places like Oshman's and Wal-Mart, easy as pie.   And we could have bought 50 at a time, if we'd felt like it.

What has changed is the culture around guns.  And the NRA is a perfect example of that.

When I was a youth member of the NRA 40 years ago, the core NRA message was that guns were tools, to be treated with respect and seriousness.  Talking up a gun as "badass" etc. would have been seen as crass, and uncomfortable.

Today, the gun culture message, happily amplified by the NRA, is a complete fetishization of guns.  They are symbols of power, and "patriotism," and how "badass American" you are, and how you're "gonna protect my family and myself," and you have bumper stickers with your AR on it on your truck, etc. etc.  Guns are no longer a tool to be used with respect and restraint.  They are a symbol, to be displayed, brandished, and used to show how tough you are.  

If we could just dial back the clock to stop trumpeting guns as the ultimate symbol of masculinity, badassery, and freedomeagleindependence, it would help a lot.  But we refuse to.  Because the old attitude doesn't make guns and ammo fly off the shelf so there are shortages.

We're about the same age, and it's not like I wasn't raised around them (rifles only though). Got a BB gun around 7-8, pellet gun around 10-11, and a .22 around 13-14. Never considered them as a means of self-defense except during the occasional BB gun war. They were mostly for just plinking shit for target practice around my grandparents' farm, since my dad wasn't a hunter.

I do recall a friend in middle school who seemed to have an obsession with them and seeing stacks of Soldier of Fortune magazine lying around. This is the same crazy ass friend that pointed a .38 pistol he pulled from his dad's closet at my face while laughing. Don't know if that thing was loaded but still have a very vivid memory of a freezing chill going down my spine. 

I suspect you're right about the gun culture beginning to change around that same period (late 70s/early 80s) and have sometimes wondered if it wasn't the knock-on effect of a bunch of Vietnam vets coming home angry and traumatized from the war with the NRA taking advantage of that to promote sales.

But, here's the thing, the culture that glorifies guns is the same that's weakened the laws around concealed carry (with a license) to open carry (with none) while also actively promoted those weapons being ever-present in all situations. I know I've read the posts of guys on this site talking about keeping their guns in special holsters under the steering wheel in their car to keep at the ready out of a strong sense of paranoia that they could be in a shootout at anytime.

It's a cycle that feeds on itself. They wanted to feel like they were badasses in a Hollywood movie, and now they've get to live it with road rage shootings becoming common place: 15 alone in Austin so far this year. They don't get to bitch about it.

[Brisketexan 105570]

6 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I've wondered if when the AWB expired in 2004, if the gun and accessory manufacturers did a full-court sales press fetishizing guns.  I've never really looked into it, but it would not surprise me if that happened.

I think there's one hell of a sociology project to do.  Go through shooting literature and pop culture from say, 1970 to present.  NRA publications, marketing materials, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, American Rifleman, outdoors TV shows, that sort of things.  It would be a LOT of material, but you're definitely going to see the evolution.  Tie that to newspaper articles regarding gun violence and firearms accidents.  There really is a lot to look at, but I'm betting multiple inflection points will be easy to discern.

[Hookah Horns 3083]

40 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Eventually we are going to have somebody livestream themselves stalking and gunning down their classmates who are begging for their lives, and you'll see some movement.  

How much movement, I don't know, but right now, it's extremely easy for this shit to be out-of-sight and out-of-mind because we aren't seeing the results in near real-time, and it's "always in another town."

But we have this younger generation that has grown up with the active shooter drills, etc., and an awareness, and this kind of stuff could get them voting and applying pressure.  And in purple states, they could tip the balance.

 

If Sandy Hook or Vegas didn't move the needle beyond a couple weeks of noise, I don't think that'd do it. Now, if you said congressional colleagues instead of classmates, maybe that'd make a dent. But even then I'd be surprised. Sorry it's hard to not be jaded as fuck about this topic.

[Pescado_Rojo 19453]

28 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I'd be curious when it changed from the tools thing to fetishization.  When I was a member in the 90s (adult admittedly), it had started shifting to taking on the AWB, and was pushing the "they came for assault weapons and banned them, and now they'll ban your shotguns and deer rifles" talking point.

But I feel like the fetishization came about in the early/mid 2000s when people were fucking cosplaying soldiers in Afghanistan and trying to load their rifles with accessories, etc.

I've wondered if when the AWB expired in 2004, if the gun and accessory manufacturers did a full-court sales press fetishizing guns.  I've never really looked into it, but it would not surprise me if that happened.

I think the other stuff played a part, but I think the bolded poured gasoline on an already smoldering fire. With all the embedded press and books and documentaries coming out post-Afghanistan, SOCOM guys became rock stars. Guys whose sole military experience was dodging the Army recruiter they got a t shirt from in high school all "knew a guy who was a SEAL" and immersed themselves in "warrior culture". They started getting sleeve tats of eagles and American flags, working out like fiends, and buying kitted out ARs. They wanted to do everything but put on a uniform and get shot at. Now that those wars are over and they've over-invested in that persona, they have to find a new enemy...just in time for the rise of right wing Nationalism. 

[atomheartbevo 90045]

12 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I think there's one hell of a sociology project to do.  Go through shooting literature and pop culture from say, 1970 to present.  NRA publications, marketing materials, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, American Rifleman, outdoors TV shows, that sort of things.  It would be a LOT of material, but you're definitely going to see the evolution.  Tie that to newspaper articles regarding gun violence and firearms accidents.  There really is a lot to look at, but I'm betting multiple inflection points will be easy to discern.

I don't recall people loading up their rifles with accessories outside of hunting scopes up through the 90s.  Just looked and the Picatinny rail was standardized in the late-90s for the military (I was in the Army in the early 90s and our M16-A2s did not have the rails/accessories that you see these days).  During the AWB from 1994 - 2004, a lot of AR-15s were banned from being sold (I think manufacturers were able to get around the bans by changing some features).  We obviously had rails prior to the Picatinny, but I don't remember people hanging all kinds of shit off of their rifles, and I don't remember people buying AR-15s when they looked like M-16s that had been shipped home from Vietnam 20 years earlier.

Don't have time to research, but I feel like there is a correlation of the AWB expiring in 2004, Picatinny rails and the accompanying accessories for the M4s coming into widespread use around that time thanks to the military in Afghanistan, AR-15s/M4s/etc. being widely and cheaply available, and people seeing lots of images of soldiers/special operations/etc. with fancy-looking rifles (short stocks, hand grips, all kinds of sights, etc.).  The M-16A2 looked like an antiquated clunker from Vietnam prior to the M4s you saw in Afghanistan.

[atomheartbevo 90045]

51 minutes ago, Lobo said:

But just buying a half dozen AR-15's...that's not remotely interesting to me.  It makes you less interesting.  It's just a different version of a guy trying to buy attention.   

1234.

I would rather have half-a-dozen random weapons that have been reviewed on the Forgotten Weapons YouTube channel.  Anybody into guns that has a few hours, go through that channel and when you come out of your deep dive several hours or days later, let us know which ones you like the most.

[Pescado_Rojo 19453]

11 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I don't recall people loading up their rifles with accessories outside of hunting scopes up through the 90s.  Just looked and the Picatinny rail was standardized in the late-90s for the military (I was in the Army in the early 90s and our M16-A2s did not have the rails/accessories that you see these days).  During the AWB from 1994 - 2004, a lot of AR-15s were banned from being sold (I think manufacturers were able to get around the bans by changing some features).  We obviously had rails prior to the Picatinny, but I don't remember people hanging all kinds of shit off of their rifles, and I don't remember people buying AR-15s when they looked like M-16s that had been shipped home from Vietnam 20 years earlier.

Don't have time to research, but I feel like there is a correlation of the AWB expiring in 2004, Picatinny rails and the accompanying accessories for the M4s coming into widespread use around that time thanks to the military in Afghanistan, AR-15s/M4s/etc. being widely and cheaply available, and people seeing lots of images of soldiers/special operations/etc. with fancy-looking rifles (short stocks, hand grips, all kinds of sights, etc.).  The M-16A2 looked like an antiquated clunker from Vietnam prior to the M4s you saw in Afghanistan.

Black Hawk Down came out in December 2001 during the post 9/11 patriotic surge. It was a Bruckheimer special with amazing sound and action sequences, and was the first movie I remember seeing a lot of heavily kitted out M4s. 

[atomheartbevo 90045]

11 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

If Sandy Hook or Vegas didn't move the needle beyond a couple weeks of noise, I don't think that'd do it. Now, if you said congressional colleagues instead of classmates, maybe that'd make a dent. But even then I'd be surprised. Sorry it's hard to not be jaded as fuck about this topic.

They were still very distant for a lot of people, simply because it wasn't in real-time, you didn't see the victims (or in the case of Vegas, it happened so late that you saw a lot of the aftermath).

If we started seeing the kinds of stuff like you see in Ukraine, seeing actual bodies of little kids crumpled up, holding on to one another, etc., you'll see the needle moved.

Like I said, the first generation to really have grown up with school shooter drills is starting to become adults.  

It's just a matter of time.  Somebody will livestream the killing of kids.

[atomheartbevo 90045]

8 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

Black Hawk Down came out in December 2001 during the post 9/11 patriotic surge. It was a Bruckheimer special with amazing sound and action sequences, and was the first movie I remember seeing a lot of heavily kitted out M4s. 

Black Hawk Down happened in 1993.  M4 went into service in the mid-90s.  Did Bruckheimer take some liberties with historical accuracy?

Edit: Nevermind, I see what you mean - the M-16s were kitted out, and yeah, that was the first time it was probably in the mainstream conscious.

Edited April 12, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[Born to Run 6583]

I think there's one hell of a sociology project to do.  Go through shooting literature and pop culture from say, 1970 to present.  NRA publications, marketing materials, Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, American Rifleman, outdoors TV shows, that sort of things.  It would be a LOT of material, but you're definitely going to see the evolution.  Tie that to newspaper articles regarding gun violence and firearms accidents.  There really is a lot to look at, but I'm betting multiple inflection points will be easy to discern.

I got my Hunters Education certificate in 94. Lots of discussion on gun etiquette, and being a model citizen as a hunter to maintain an image of responsible gentlemen who happen to hunt. If you are wearing camo, hold the door open at the store and say yes sir, no ma'am. Don't show off dead animals in public. Don't use a gun rack.

The premise was that gun owners needed to be kind to non-gun owners, and not create fear so that we might maintain our current rights.

Lots of that sentiment with the NRA mags my dad kept by the shitter. But lots of fear mongering even then. My dad was never much of a hunter and owned maybe 5 guns total. Even he started getting wound up about the AWB. NRA plus Rush Limbaugh and he was hoarding ammo he never shot, buying my brother and I guns "before it was too late".

We come a long way. Now it's fuck your feelings, I deserve to carry military grade hardware with no permit every where.

It's insanity.

[Born to Run 6583]

If Sandy Hook or Vegas didn't move the needle beyond a couple weeks of noise, I don't think that'd do it. Now, if you said congressional colleagues instead of classmates, maybe that'd make a dent. But even then I'd be surprised. Sorry it's hard to not be jaded as fuck about this topic.

You are correct. Nothing will ever be done, not even something that would have bipartisan support 20 years ago.

The answer now is always more guns. Arm 12 year olds. Put machine gun nests outside high schools.

[Born to Run 6583]

They were still very distant for a lot of people, simply because it wasn't in real-time, you didn't see the victims (or in the case of Vegas, it happened so late that you saw a lot of the aftermath).
If we started seeing the kinds of stuff like you see in Ukraine, seeing actual bodies of little kids crumpled up, holding on to one another, etc., you'll see the needle moved.
Like I said, the first generation to really have grown up with school shooter drills is starting to become adults.  
It's just a matter of time.  Somebody will livestream the killing of kids.

Won't matter. Full stop. Some crazy fucker with a long history of crazy behavior and published manifesto could massacre an entire school with multiple livestreams. Bill for background checks and red flags dies in the senate.

[Guest Lobo]

The big mystery will always be the magic trick the NRA pulled off.  That limiting the firepower crazy people could have access to would somehow inhibit sportsmen like you and I to own hunting rifles and range pistols.  Not allowing Formula 1 cars to roam brazenly about the streets near our elementary schools at 230mph and pulling 6g while cornering in no way prohibits me from picking up my child in a massive SUV and then speeding away once I leave the school zone.  It's only binary because of the small brains that host the dilemma.