These fucking Parkland kids are just fucking awful pieces of shit.
I’m not backing down from that.
Goebbels Jr. did an interview with The Outline where he just went off the rails.
“They are pathetic fuckers that want to keep killing our children. They could have blood from children splattered all over their faces an they wouldn’t take action.“
That is really his opinion on NRA members.
That is a fucking blood libel, there are no other words for it. He really is a Gobbelsesque human being.
Some five to six million law abiding citizens who committed no crimes don’t want to be the victims of politically driven collective punishment (what else do you call confiscating a rifle a person bought legally because someone else broke the law?) are child murderers. That is an insane statement. There is nothing rational in that, it is pure hatred.
He’s not the only one. March For Our Lives put out a video.
We see these lawmakers representing the NRA, and not their constituents. We see our “leaders” making excuses and refusing to act. On Saturday, they’ll see US. pic.twitter.com/7OGttnRSsz
— March For Our Lives ☮️? (@AMarch4OurLives) March 21, 2018
I have never wanted to slap the attitude out of a high school kid any harder than I do now.
I have heard this line of attack from many sources on the left: gun makers/sellers love school shootings because money.
Let me be perfectly clear on this point, backed up by a lot of experience. Gun manufactures do no count on gun sales after a school shooting. These asshole talk about gun makers as though they are not people.
I know them. They are good people. They love their jobs. They love their spouses and children. They worry about school shootings and violence and everything else that everyone else worries about. They make guns for law abiding citizens (and the police and military) because they are gun people. It’s like a racing enthusiast working for Ford SVT or Toyota TRD.
This idea that people in the gun industry love school shootings because of sales is, again, a dehumanizing blood libel.
It is the idea that a group (traditionally Jews, but the Roma were subject to it as well) murder children for significant benefit (religious ceremony, profit, etc.).
Of course, these kids said other stupid shit, like politicians chose the NRA over their constituents or that assault rifles have nothing to do with the Second Amendment. All of that is worthy of challenge.
But it is this pervasive blood libel that has me raging.
Those people aren’t people, they are child murderers who love it when kids die so they can line their pockets.
I can’t see how that argument doesn’t end badly. Badly like in the type of thing that has filled history with mass graves.
These kids are playing with fire, egged on by the Democrats and media (not to be redundant).
That have crossed a line that should never be crossed, and they are awful for doing it.
I am a free marketeer. I believe that the free market generally provides the best solutions to problems. People will naturally spend their money in the ways that interest them, and in a competitive market, if a clientele is not being served, someone will come along and serve them.
Monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels are bad in a free market. They choke people out and limit competition. In the past, the US goverment has found it necessary to break up monopolies (Standard Oil, AT&T, Microsoft) for the benefit of the market.
Now we have entered a new age.
CEO’s are putting politics at the forefront of business.
When a handful of mega companies worth billions and trillions of dollars, who control significant shares of the market start to play politics, is it time for them to be regulated by the government?
How does a startup take on 75% of the internet to add a diversity of opinion, especially when that 75% is united in political ideology?
How does a bank that 10 years ago got a $15 Billion taxpayer bailout get to turn it’s position as the largest credit card backing bank in America against the American people?
Maybe “too big to fail” should be “too big to play politics.”
If the banks I have accounts with won’t let me buy guns with my money than I want the goverment to kick their asses.
Personally, I think Mark Zuckerberg is a super villain, and would love nothing more for the DOJ to pound his balls into mush and put him in a federal prison.
(The Facebook business model is: create a site that pretends to be a social media site, but instead tricks people into dumping all there personal information on it, which Facebook searches through and sells the data to god-knows-who then blasts you with targeted marketing ads.)
This is the potential backlash I see from all of this. Business plays the political game too hard and politicians decide they must be regulated. You can’t “do the job that Congress won’t do” and think that people will let you get away with it.
Playing politics isn’t just bad for those companies or customers, it is bad for the whole US economy.
A few weeks ago Vice News did a segment on Knife Rights, which they referred to as the “NRA of Knives.”
This was before Parkland, but I just saw the video today.
It is a good segment, not biased an opinionated. It is worth the almost seven minutes of your time.
One part of that segment that really stood out to me was the public defender saying that he never thought he’s be on the same side as a Second Amendment group.
The entirely of the segment could be described as “people are getting punished for owning ordinary tools that can be made to mimic banned items, even if they never used them to hurt anybody.”
That seems really, really close to the argument against banning AR-15’s.
So very close.
Maybe simply banning possession of an item doesn’t’ actually reduce crime, it just looks like it the way police can manipulate statistics, and only harms law abiding citizens who just want to be in compliance.
I wonder if after this segment how that reporter from Vice would answer the question “can you see how AWB’s are pretty much the same thing?”
They are so very close to learning a lesson here, I wonder if they could be pushed over the edge into clarity.
Politicians Also: Wait let's require voters to have id so we can suppress the vote of the people so I can get reelected via a system that disproportionatly effects people of color and the poor!?♂️ Smh https://t.co/E4FzmnPosB
Yeah, it makes to sense to me too. This is just further proof that he isn’t really interested in reducing gun violence or increasing school safety, just pushing a far left Liberal agenda with his unassailable victim status.
Today we announced a new U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy that centers around current firearms sales best practices that will guide those we do business with as a firm. More on our blog: https://t.co/sreRrPGCBg
This is the full text of Citigroup’s new policy (relevant text in bold):
For too many years, in too many places, our country has seen acts of gun violence that have resulted in heartbreaking losses. We are all too familiar with them and there is no need to recount them here.
Over the same amount of time, we have waited for our grief to turn into action and see our nation adopt common-sense measures that would help prevent firearms from getting into the wrong hands. That action has sadly never come and as the weeks pass after the most recent mass shooting, it appears we are stuck in the same cycle of tragedy and inaction.
As a society, we all know that something needs to change. And as a company, we feel we must do our part.
Today, our CEO announced Citi is instituting a new U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy. It is not centered on an ideological mission to rid the world of firearms. That is not what we seek. There are millions of Americans who use firearms for recreational and other legitimate purposes, and we respect their Constitutional right to do so.
But we want to do our part as a company to prevent firearms from getting into the wrong hands. So our new policy centers around current firearms sales best practices that will guide those we do business with as a firm.
Under this new policy, we will require new retail sector clients or partners to adhere to these best practices: (1) they don’t sell firearms to someone who hasn’t passed a background check, (2) they restrict the sale of firearms for individuals under 21 years of age, and (3) they don’t sell bump stocks or high-capacity magazines. This policy will apply across the firm, including to small business, commercial and institutional clients, as well as credit card partners, whether co-brand or private label. It doesn’t impact the ability of consumers to use their Citi cards at merchants of their choice.
We know our clients also care about these issues and we have begun to engage with them in the hope that they will adopt these best practices over the coming months. If they opt not to, we will respect their decision and work with them to transition their business away from Citi.
We have few relationships with companies that manufacture firearms. For those that do, we will be initiating due diligence conversations on the subject to better understand what products they make, what markets and retailers they sell to and what sales practices those retailers follow to ensure adherence to the best practices outlined above. This same due diligence screening will apply to potential clients going forward.
These common-sense sales practices already have widespread public support according to recent polling and they are easy to implement. Some, like Walmart, have gone even further.
We recognize that we don’t have all the answers and that existing technology in our industry doesn’t allow for a more targeted approach at points of sale. For that reason, we would like to convene those in the financial services industry and other stakeholders to tackle these challenges together and see what we can do. This approach has worked well in areas such as sustainability, where the Equator Principles ushered in a new era of environmentally and socially responsible financing practices. We hope to leverage collective action to encourage responsible practices by all who sell firearms. As best practices evolve, we will update our policies accordingly.
We know that the actions we are taking today will invite passion on both sides. We don’t have the perfect solution but we have come to the conclusion that we must do our part to keep guns out of the hands of those who wish to do harm. And we hope our actions help achieve that vital goal.
Yes, you read that correctly. No more bump stock, high capacity magazines (undefined), or sales to anybody under 21.
Citigroup wants to restrict gun sales to a standard higher than federal law.
Did CEO Michael Corbat, not read about Dick’s sales loss and stock devaluation?
I’m coming back to the armed teacher thing because I was recently flooded with articles by combat veterans on why arming teachers is a bad idea.
I said it before, I hate the phrase “arming teachers.” I do not want to put a gun in the hands of someone who doesn’t want it. I am not drafting people into an army. This may be a semantic argument but my feeling is that any teacher or principal who wants to be armed in school should be allowed to.
I think the semantics are important because the “arming teachers” language has led to a series of articles with a common thesis “I served in combat and Iraq/Afghanistan and teachers shouldn’t have guns because they are not soldiers.”
Some of the loudest voices opposing President Donald Trump’s proposal to arm “highly trained” teachers to protect students belong to the group that knows best what it’s like to confront someone with a gun: military combat veterans.
“There is a gulf between being taught how to handle a weapon, and learning to fight. Those are two distinct things,” Brandon Friedman, a former Army captain who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and later served in the Obama administration, told BuzzFeed News. “And learning how to fight, how to stand your ground when an aggressor is trying to kill you, that’s not something that comes naturally to people.”
Learning how to fight takes training — military training.
“So in order to teach, now you have to be a soldier? That’s insane,” he said.
“They have this Hollywood view of what a gunfight is like,” Friedman said. “Veterans know first hand (that) until you’ve been shot at, and seen how people react in these situations, you can’t wrap your mind around it.”
“While soldiers/security are trained to run to the sound of the guns…not all do for a variety of psychological reasons. It happens more often than most would think, and it’s part of human nature,” he said.
As veterans who’ve experienced combat will tell you, no one ever really knows how he or she will perform in a situation like this until they get there. Acting like a swaggering action hero is not something many people can do, no matter how much they fantasize about it.
A school is not a combat zone. Somebody who is a sheriff’s deputy at a high school, a security officer, are they running ranges every day? Is he proficient with a firearm? There is a difference between being proficient with a firearm and someone who is in the mindset in which they are ready to engage at all times. Which takes us right to the heart of this idiocy of this proposal to arm teachers.
Beyond the training one is doing physically, I think it’s always important to remember the training and the great lengths the military goes to to get someone in a mental position to engage someone. We talk all the time about how teachers are dealing with things on a day-to-day basis that require extra levels of empathy. You know what requires no empathy? Shooting another human being. We’d be forcing teachers to go to great lengths to dehumanize their own students.
Defending children is a must, but putting a firearm in the hands of even the most trained teacher isn’t the answer. Anyone suggesting this solution has clearly never experienced a situation like the one seen in Parkland because it oversimplifies the complexity of an active shooter situation, especially in close-quarters. It is not as easy as a “good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun.”
I ask that you take a few minutes to understand my perspective and why I feel strongly about this matter. Before recently moving to Charlotte, I served for three and half years as an Army infantryman, stationed at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I deployed to Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province in 2011. By the time my tour was over, I left a place that claimed two members from my company, cost six others at least one limb, wounded over 25 percent of our total force, and left me with shrapnel in my face and a bullet hole in my left thigh. When I saw the news flash of another school shooting I couldn’t help but think of the firefights I had been involved in and how these students and teachers just encountered their own version of Afghanistan.
Regardless of training, you don’t know how people will respond in life and death situations until the moment comes. You don’t know how people will react when they hear gunshots. You don’t know how people will react when the person next to them is shot. You don’t know how a person will respond when their task is shooting someone they know or taught. You just don’t know.
And now we are expecting teachers, even with training, to perfectly handle this situation. I say perfectly because anything less could mean even more tragedy and death. This isn’t a movie where bullets always miss the hero. These teachers aren’t action stars. These are average people, who more likely than not, have never come close to experiencing anything like this.
“Shooting under stress is extremely difficult. Even for the most well-trained shooters,” Jay Kirell, an Afghanistan veteran who has written about difficulties veterans face in civilian life, tweeted. “A teacher is not going to be able to do this. Cops & soldiers literally get paid to do this & most of them can’t shoot accurately under stress.”
“Not because they suck, but because it’s nearly impossible to hit a target in one shot when pumped full of adrenaline,” Kirell added. “And if you’re in a school with a shooter and dozens of children, if you’re not shooting accurately you’re just creating crossfire.”
Data compiled by the New York City Police Department underscores the difficulty of firing accurately in challenging situations.
In 2005, NYPD officers intentionally fired their guns at someone 472 times, hitting their mark 82 times. In 2006, New York police fired under the same circumstances 364 times, hitting their target 103 times. That same year, Los Angeles police fired 67 times, recording 27 hits.
Honestly, I think that says more about how shitty the NYPD is than anything else. I wouldn’t hold them up as the paragon of urban defensive tactics when they are encouraged not to practice shooting with guns modified to be more difficult to shoot to prevent accidental discharges because teaching trigger discipline is hard.
(Forgive me, but Task and Purpose seems like a really Lefty magazine for the military. It may be just a semantic thing, but I have a problem with a military magazine that has a column titled “The Long March” knowing what the significance of that phrase has in Marxist Communism.)
Instead of would-be Rambos, Trump’s logic goes, perhaps it’s those Americans who fully understand and respect the power of firearms who are worthy of safeguarding our schoolchildren. To which a lot of veterans on Twitter responded: Fuck that noise.
By all means, let's recreate the shootout at the OK Corral in our schools, nothing could go wrong with that other than maybe the good guys shooting some kids too. It wouldn't be on purpose though, so they don't count. #VetsForGunReformhttps://t.co/7EHj8vw3Xe
No.. no it won’t. I never thought that a prerequisite to teaching would be to know how to shoot and use a gun, and “you must be willing to kill someone.” I am a teacher…. I am an Army veteran as well… and this isn’t the solution sir. Arming teachers with guns.. nope!
So there you go, multiple veterans from multiple sources telling us why arming teachers would be a disaster.
I am not a combat veteran. I mean no disrespect to the majority of people who have served, but fuck that and fuck these veterans.
This falls in the same family of arguments that I’ve seen made by police against concealed carry and by police and members of the military against owning AR-15’s.
It all boils down to an appeal to authority: “you’re just a shitty civilian, you don’t know how to use that gun under stress, you’ll only make things worse, leave the guns to us.”
It’s an obnoxious as hell argument.
Especially because what I am advocating for isn’t to turn teachers into SWAT teams or infantry units. I don’t expect teachers to engage in combined arms squad tactics.
What I do want is for people who want to be able to defend themselves to be able to to that.
At Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Cho killed students when he was able to get through an insufficiently barricaded door. Police call a breach like the the fatal funnel. It doesn’t take combined arms training to know to take a defensive position and aim at the door in case the shooter comes in.
Hell, there is little evidence that a teacher has to hit the shooter to be effective. As per the last news I read on the recent Maryland school shooting, it is unclear if the cop or the shooter fired the fatal shot (it may have been a suicide once engaged).
It’s not about bounding overwatch or slicing the pie. Those are great to learn. At the end of the day it’s about self defense.
One of my favorite books, and movies is We Were Soldiers… (Once, and Young). Joseph L. Galloway was a reporter and conscientious objector. When his position was overrun he put down his camera, picked up an M-16 and defended himself.
I will at this point deffer to one of the greatest soldiers of 20th century American History, Command Sargent Major, Basil L. Plumley, giving one of the simplest orders ever given in combat.
(Note that it was Joe Galloway, played by Barry Pepper that the camera cuts to next – just to prove my point.)
That’s the point, this is about the simplicity of self defense. That is a right that shouldn’t be stripped from people.
It’s hard to find a video worthy of following the great Sam Elliot playing CSM Plumley, but if there is any, it’s got to be Clint Smith.
