The Manhandlers

Mmm good

That used to be a soup by Campbell’s, now they can just name some type of faux grade military weapon in which to market to men so they can go on a killing rampage.And with that it is advertising and marketing that brought us to the current state of guns in America.

Below is an article from yesterday’s New York Times about how guns have been advertised and marketed if not branded to attract buyers to certain kinds of weapons of choice, that play upon two factors: Sexuality and Gender Identity and of course FEAR.

I have said repeatedly Americans are terrified of anything or any body that somehow threatens their identity, beliefs and of course their personal safety. It has been used repeatedly as a moral panic and no greater and more recent example of that is Covid. The way they turned a disease into a political weapon is why we have the divisive natue surrounding everything from masks to vaccines and how we view Dr. Fauci. Seriously the histronics in those early days about Fauci, Trump and Cuomo were mind blowing. If you did not somehow reject, adore and admire one of them during Covid, the tribe will pounce. I feared more of my own, Liberals, than any Conservative. I actually could have rational discussions with Conservative folks about the disease, it being AIRBORNE akin to a Pox or Measles like virus and that masks do work in certain circumstances for certain time periods, dependent on the type/kind each were wearing and that yes a vaccine of this kind has great potential and no it is not “new” as it has been kicking around for a while for other diseases and then I left it at that. No argument, no real push or shove just let the info lay there. The “other” is NOT my problem and I can avoid and do my best to work around said issues or problematic people if I so choose. Damn that word again. But what I find with both Liberals and Conservatives is a real reading comprehension problem. If you cannot concisely get your point in akin to a text or social media post you have lost then and then guns are a blazing. With liberals that is their Trump Derangement Syndrome that puts you in line with him and his crazies and then they dismiss you as the “other.” Liberals are the most judgemental unforgiving bores I have ever encountered. And again I am very liberal. I just don’t vest in the tribal mentality that seems to be largely an affiliation of millennials. It explains the social media implosions and cancel culture bullshit as they are coddled beyond belief. I doubt one could get this far in the blog at this point they would be so, “my feelers are hurt.”

With that you need to toughen up if you are ever going to make it out of your home/work pod. Gun Safety, Gun legislation is by far more important that who said something not nice to someone else by someone they did not know about someone they don’t know, will never meet and have nothing to do with.

As or IF you read the article I have highlighted what I think are essential passages that discuss the rise in gun sales. And this will piss off the young millennial woman, it is WOMEN who are purchasing guns at a faster rate than men. They are afraid! BOO! And the other is that most don’t have one fucking clue on how to use, operate or maintain a gun. Shocking, I know, not really.

Gun Sellers’ Message to Americans: Man Up

The number of firearms in the U.S. is outpacing the country’s population, as an emboldened gun industry and its allies target buyers with rhetoric of fear, machismo and defiance.

A man raffled off a golden AK-47 at the N.R.A. convention last month in Houston.Credit…Mark Abramson for The New York Times

By Mike McIntire, Glenn Thrush and Eric Lipton

June 18, 2022

Last November, hours after a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of two shooting deaths during antiracism protests in 2020, a Florida gun dealer created an image of him brandishing an assault rifle, with the slogan: “BE A MAN AMONG MEN.”

Mr. Rittenhouse was not yet a man when he killed two people and wounded another in Kenosha, Wis. — he was 17 — but he aspired to be like one. And the firearms industry, backed by years of research and focus groups, knows that other Americans do, too.

Gun companies have spent the last two decades scrutinizing their market and refocusing their message away from hunting toward selling handguns for personal safety, as well as military-style weapons attractive to mostly young men. The sales pitch — rooted in self-defense, machismo and an overarching sense of fear — has been remarkably successful.

Firearm sales have skyrocketed, with background checks rising from 8.5 million in 2000 to 38.9 million last year. The number of guns is outpacing the population. Women, spurred by appeals that play on fears of crime and being caught unprepared, are the fastest-growing segment of buyers.

An examination by The New York Times of firearms marketing research, along with legal and lobbying efforts by gun rights groups, finds that behind the shift in gun culture is an array of interests that share a commercial and political imperative: more guns and freer access to them. Working together, gun makers, advocates and elected officials have convinced a large swath of Americans that they should have a firearm, and eased the legal path for them to do so.

Some of the research is publicly known, but by searching court filings and online archives, The Times gained new insight into how gun companies exploit the anxiety and desires of Americans. Using Madison Avenue methods, the firearms industry has sliced and diced consumer attributes to find pressure points — self-esteem, lack of trust in others, fear of losing control — useful in selling more guns.

In a paradigm-setting 2012 ad in Maxim magazine, Bushmaster — which manufactured the rifle used in the racist massacre in Buffalo in May — declared, “Consider your man card reissued.”

At the National Rifle Association convention in Houston last month, a Missouri-based gun maker, Black Rain Ordnance, featured a line of “BRO” semiautomatics punning on the company’s acronym: AR-15-style guns with names like BRO-Tyrant and BRO-Predator. Dozens of other vendors had similar messages.

The recurrence of mass shootings has provided reliable opportunities for the industry and its allies. Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago, gun sales have almost always risen sharply in the aftermath of major shootings, as buyers snap up firearms they worry will disappear from stores.

“Drawing attention to the concern that firearm sales could be further restricted will have a great impact on anxious buyers,” a firearms industry study from 2017 advised.

At the same time, guns rights groups have pushed an aggressive legislative and court agenda. For instance, it soon will be legal to carry a hidden firearm without a permit in half the United States.

In states where pro-gun forces do not have the backing of elected officials, they have taken up the fight in other ways. The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on a New York case challenging a century-old law that allows local officials great discretion over who can carry a handgun, which is widely expected to turn into another gun rights victory.

Gun makers and their supporters argue they are only responding to a public need. A rush to buy firearms often coincides with concerns about personal safety or events that could spur legal limits on gun ownership, said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry trade group.

“I don’t think that’s a marketing trick,” he said. “I think, more than anything, it’s consumer demand that’s driving the appetite for these firearms.”

Whatever the source of Americans’ sense of unease, the result is a country flooded with firearms and no end in sight.

“Fear,” said Darrell Miller, co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, “is an incredibly powerful motivator.”

Anxiety Sells

Marketing firearms for personal protection is nothing new. For the better part of the last century, certain gunmakers emphasized self-defense: One of the industry’s most influential campaigns was a 1996 ad in Ladies’ Home Journal that showed a Beretta handgun on a kitchen table, with the words “Homeowner’s Insurance.”

Still, hunting accounted for a majority of advertisements in Guns magazine from the 1960s to the late 1990s, according to a survey by Palgrave Communications, an online academic journal. The study found that “the core emphasis” shifted in the 2000s to “armed self-defense,” and that the percentage of hunting-related ads had dropped to about 10 percent by 2019.

This transition was accompanied by a surge in popularity of the Glock semiautomatic handgun and AR-15-type rifle, first widely used by law enforcement and in the military, in its fully automatic version. That provided a built-in market among veterans and former police officers, but also kicked off an effort to woo millions of men who liked to buy gear that made them feel like soldiers and the police.

In 2009, a marketing firm hired by Remington to push its Bushmaster AR-15s settled on an ad campaign targeting civilians who “aspired” to be part of law enforcement. The first draft of the new pitch, later obtained by lawyers representing parents of children killed at Sandy Hook, exhorted buyers to use their new rifles to “Clear the Crack House,” “Ice the Perp” and “Save the Hostage.”

The company toned down the language but embraced the idea of trafficking in fears of urban crime and mass shootings, the documents showed.

Josh Sugarmann, founder of the Violence Policy Center, a gun control group that tracks firearms advertising and marketing, said the firearms industry became adept at exploiting disquieting developments to spur sales.

“If you look back, it hasn’t just revolved around mass shootings. They tailored their marketing to Katrina, Y2K, 9/11, pretty much everything,” he said. “Their goal is basically to induce a Pavlovian response: ‘If there’s a crisis, you must go get a gun.’”

Industry data shows that in 1990, an estimated 74,000 military-style rifles were manufactured for domestic sale in the U.S. That figure began to climb after expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004 and reached 2.3 million in 2013, the year after Sandy Hook, when AR-style guns accounted for about a quarter of all sales revenue, according to the Firearms Retailer Survey, an annual report by the industry trade association.

Along with the rise in gun sales has been an intensifying effort by the industry to understand — and influence — the American consumer. In 2016, the trade association commissioned its first “consumer segmentation” study that developed profiles of potential gun buyers with labels like “Unarmed Aaron” and “Weaponless Wendy,” who presumably could succumb to the right sales pitch.

The newest study, produced last year, is closely held and not circulated outside the industry, but a copy was obtained by The Times. It found that typical gun owners were white men in their 40s earning about $75,000 a year with a preference for handguns. “Less than half consider themselves to be very knowledgeable about firearms,” the study found, though they felt the need to have one.

A common theme in consumer sentiment is anxiety. The 2021 study contained two new categories of buyers: “Prepared for the Worst” and “Urban Defender.” Urban Defenders worry about crime, “do not trust others around them” and are most susceptible to the argument that tighter laws could threaten their ability to purchase a gun.

Gun owners “Prepared for the Worst” tend to have the lowest incomes and are the least likely to have a full-time job. They cite “building confidence” and “empowering themselves” as reasons to learn shooting skills.

To reach these fearful consumers, the trade association offered suggestions in another of its reports. One example depicts an image of a woman in a desolate urban setting, calmly pulling a handgun from her shoulder bag as a hoodie-wearing man approaches from behind with a knife. *note the hoodie, not at all racist, right?**

That marketing approach may work for Weaponless Wendy, the report advised, but such “cheesy images” should be avoided when targeting Unarmed Aaron.

“It is important for the individual protecting himself or his family to appear to be a confident person while not seeming eager, delighted, or excited to be in such a scenario,” the report said.

Beth Alcazar, a former teacher from Alabama turned firearms instructor, has translated these sentiments into practice. More than a third of her clients are women, she said, adding that fear of crime is a major motivator for first-time gun buyers.

“It comes from not wanting to be a victim and from knowing there’s evil in the world,” said Ms. Alcazar, who has published a book for women on using handguns for self-defense.

Comrades in Arms

The aggressive messaging around fear has also helped define a newer crop of gun rights groups that increasingly overshadow the more deep-pocketed, but troubled, N.R.A. These groups, supported by the industry, have adopted a raw, in-your-face advocacy of near limitless freedom to own and carry firearms. Gun Owners of America, which lists more than 30 gun-related companies as “partners,” proudly calls itself the “only no compromise gun lobby in Washington.”

Their tone has grown more extreme along with the public discourse around guns in general. The Firearms Policy Coalition, which has launched numerous court challenges to gun laws around the country, used to sell T-shirts and bumper stickers with anodyne pro-gun mottos such as “Shall Not Be Infringed.”

But today, its online store has gear emblazoned with barbs like – “Abolish the ATF” and “Go and Print It,” a reference to using 3-D printers at home to make untraceable ghost guns. On social media, the coalition whips up members with warnings of an “impending GUNPOCALYPSE” wrought by weak or corrupt Washington politicians.

The image of Mr. Rittenhouse was put on Facebook by Big Daddy Unlimited, a firearms retailer in Gainesville, Fla., whose owners have said they started selling guns after the Sandy Hook massacre raised fears of new restrictions. “Be a Man Among Men” was a recruiting slogan used by the colonialist army of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and has gained popularity among white nationalist groups in recent years, although it is also used outside of that context.

Tony McKnight, chief executive of Big Daddy Unlimited, said in a statement to The Times that the meme was created by a former employee who did not understand the historical significance of the phrase. “The post in question was meant to recognize justice for Kyle Rittenhouse, whose life came in danger while defending the community,” Mr. McKnight said.

Along with using heightened rhetoric, major gun rights groups have been working to roll back state-level restrictions. Their financial partners include companies such as Daniel Defense, the Georgia-based maker of the military-style rifle used in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting in May, as well as major retailers like Brownells of Iowa, which last summer ran a promotion donating a portion of its sales to the Firearms Policy Coalition.

“Your purchases help defend our gun rights,” Pete Brownell, the company chairman, said as he announced the incentive.

A major target of gun rights expansion has been laws limiting the carrying of concealed weapons in public. More than 20 states over the past decade have moved to eliminate or loosen requirements to have a permit.

“Owning a gun that is locked up in your home is not going to help you when you are targeted in a crime,” said Michael Csencsits, an organizer with Gun Owners of America, which has pushed for the repeal of concealed-carry laws. “People buy guns because they want to carry them.”

In pressing the two-pronged campaign to sell more guns and weaken restrictions, the industry and activists have been informed by marketing research that shows an increasingly diverse pool of customers. Timothy Schmidt, president of the United States Concealed Carry Association, said the new generation of gun buyers encompasses city dwellers, suburbanites and those in rural areas.

“It’s not just the angry white male anymore,” he said “You’re seeing rising gun ownership among Blacks, among women. It’s really a different thing.”

JoAnna Anderson would seem to fit that demographic. A Black real estate agent in North Carolina, Ms. Anderson appears in a promotional video for SilencerCo, an online seller of devices that muffle the sound of a gunshot; its slogan is, “Suppress the Fear.”

In an interview with The Times, she said she carried a gun while on the job because she feared running into disgruntled residents of homes being vacated. Her first purchase was a 9-millimeter Ruger pistol, though she now has a collection of seven guns, including a military-style rifle.

“We cannot expect the government to protect us,” Ms. Anderson said, “because they haven’t.”

Nick Suplina, a senior vice president at Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group, said gun rights advocates tended to ignore data showing that firearms in homes often wound up hurting their owners instead of someone threatening them.

“While selling you this notion that a gun may provide security for yourself and your family, which is very appealing, they don’t tell you that owning a gun makes it two times more likely that somebody in the house will die of gun homicide or three times the likelihood they die by gun suicide,” he said.

Ascendant Gun Rights

After the mass shootings at Sandy Hook in 2012 and in Parkland, Fla., six years later, more than 30 states tightened gun laws, a successful effort pushed by well-funded groups such as Everytown, backed by Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City.

But the scorecard overall remains tilted toward gun rights, as states repeal concealed carry restrictions. Those victories have come amid the Republican Party’s embrace of Second Amendment absolutism and guns as central to its identity, a fervor that gun control proponents have not been able to match, said Mr. Miller of the Duke firearms law center.

“Gun rights advocates are reaping the benefits of a history of asymmetric intensity and political mobilization,” he said.

Energizing gun owners with a sense of alarm over the potential loss of rights has long been a reliable strategy of the firearms industry and its allies. Political candidates from both parties seeking the N.R.A.’s blessing traditionally would try to be seen hunting ducks or plinking at targets to reassure supporters that their gun rights would be safe.

But in the 2010s, with the rise of the Tea Party and increasingly strident opposition to President Barack Obama, Republican political messaging around guns took on a harder edge.

Christina Jeffrey, running for Congress in South Carolina, ran an ad in which she brandished an AK-47 assault rifle while asserting that gun rights were necessary “to ensure that our limited government stays limited.” In a Missouri governor’s race, Eric Greitens blasted away with a mounted machine gun while pledging to “fight Obama’s Democrat machine and their corrupt attacks.”

Such imagery has since become stock-in-trade. When Brian Kemp ran for governor of Georgia in 2018, one tongue-in-cheek ad showed him in a room full of firearms, leveling a shotgun near a young man interested in dating his daughter. It generated criticism, including from Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, who tweeted, “This recurring and uniquely American ‘joke’ is tiresome.”

Mr. Kemp responded dismissively with his own tweet: “I’m conservative, folks. Get over it!”

Groups like the Firearms Policy Coalition have filed dozens of court challenges to gun limits, and conservative judges, some appointed by former President Donald J. Trump, have delivered legal victories, including overturning a California law last month that placed an age minimum of 21 on purchases of semiautomatic rifles.

Mr. Suplina, of Everytown, disputed the idea that this was an era of gun rights expansion, citing a recent modest gun compromise in Washington and some state-level victories, including laws banning or limiting ghost guns in Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New York and Rhode Island. At least four states — Delaware, New York, Rhode Island and Washington — have put new limits on high-capacity magazines that can hold a large amount of ammunition.

“The fight is really intense,” Mr. Suplina said. “But for the first time in any recent period, the gun safety movement is showing up, meeting them on the battlefield, as it were, and that includes state houses and also Congress.”

Still, gun supporters are feeling generally optimistic.

“We are just at the start of expanding gun rights,” said Mr. Csencsits of Gun Owners of America.

But lest its members become too complacent, Gun Owners of America has on its website a very different message about the state of things: Be afraid.

“A handgun ban coming to America?” blared a recent headline on the site. The post goes on to ask for a donation to stop “what could be the single biggest attack on our God-given rights.” *uh no that was the founding fathers in the 1700s not God***

A Moron with a gun…

To counter the trope peddled by the NRA, “A good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.” These morons watched way to many a Western in their day to believe that shit. First of all you would have to be a hell of marksman to shoot out a AK15 toting asshole with enough ammo to take out a classroom plus of students and teachers. As the fucktard in Texas had and this is from CBS news:

The gunman in Uvalde carried more ammunition into Robb Elementary School than a U.S. soldier carries into combat.

A U.S. soldier would take 210 rounds into combat. 

The suspect had purchased 1,657 total rounds of ammunition – 315 rounds were found inside the school, said Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

A law enforcement source told CBS News that the amount of ammunition that the suspect brought with him is more than what an average U.S. soldier would go into basic combat with, apparently planning on a massive gun battle.

And why do you think that the Cops stood outside for 40 minutes as they sure as hell, despite both training and a law mandating they get he fuck in there to diffuse the situation. But hey a Border Patrol guy grabbed a rife from the Barber he was at getting his hair cut when his wife called and said there is a shooter. As both his daughter and wife were inside he boogied his ass in and started rescuing those trapped inside. Did he take out the shooter with the Barber’s rife? Fuck no, but a trained colleague of his did. So there you go.

Now the story will continue to evolve but we have more than massive evidence that in mass shootings Police inside as well the intended victims are often collateral damage when the shooting by law enforcement begins. This happened in the Thousand Oaks Broderline Bar shooting. And similar questions have been raised in other shootings of this scale, including the Pulse shooting. But there are many stories of friendly fire killing Police during gun battles as in San Diego and Las Vegas. And again this is from supposed experts who are required to train and maintain their skills. They seem to have zero problem killing innocents so this is always not an issue in those circumstances but when it is mass killer, there seems to be a problem there.

And with this the standard responses are given and there once again nothing will be done. We have resigned ourselves to this Kabuki Theater as if that is the only thing we can do and frankly will in a country plagued by mass shootings for decades. And with that add the numerous assassinations, homicides and random gun violence that plagues this country in ways Covid could never have. And if you validate your reasoning behind owning a gun as protecting your family then you must be able to fly at the speed of air through the time like a Marvel hero to make it to the Church, the Mall, the School, the Concert or the Walmart in which to rescue them. Funny that the parents in Uvalde were armed and ready and tackled by Police to not. I cannot find a single story where some good guy with a gun rescued other good guys using a gun. Using a chair, their bare hands, talked out of it, or some other instrument that has no bullets yes. Ask the Waffle House shooter how he was taken out. The Church Shooter in Antioch or in California a few weeks ago? Not with guns. So when I hear that comment I roll my eyes until I am near blind.

The attendees at the NRA Convention are not allowed to bring guns, irony or oxymoron? And with that plenty of morons are there defending if not demonstrating why of all they people should not have a gun.

What they needed to see was the actual crime scene photos, the Coroner Examination photos and of course the Funeral Parlors efforts to disguise the damage to the flesh from said guns and ammo that today are way beyond the guns that the Founders permitted the colonies to possess. A reason largely behind not the war against Britain but against Natives and Slaves that could possible rise up and do harm. There is your reasoning behind why to have guns. Again where are you using said guns you need to protect yourself. Oh yeah on the road.

This weekend closes with a total of 11 mass shootings in total. Well it’s Memorial Day so what better way to remember than a killing after a BBQ. Booze and guns the American Tradition.

U.S. marks Memorial Day weekend with at least 11 mass shootings

Since the Uvalde, Tex., elementary school tragedy, there have been at least 14 other shootings that had at least four victims

By Annabelle Timsit The Washington Post

May 30, 2022

After a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers last week, many politicians, public figures and gun-control advocates said the U.S. government should ensure mass shootings could not happen again.

But mass shootings have already happened again — and again. At least 14 mass shootings have taken place across the United States since Tuesday, from California to Arizona to Tennessee.

This Memorial Day weekend alone — spanning Saturday, Sunday and the federal holiday on Monday — there have been at least 11 mass shootings.

These incidents, gleaned from local news reports and police statements, meet the threshold for mass shootings as defined by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research organization.

GVA defines a mass shooting as one in which “four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.” Several of those shootings occurred at parties, and one at a Memorial Day event.

At least seven people have been killed and 49 injured in the mass shootings over the holiday weekend, according to GVA and local news sources. Since the Uvalde shooting last Tuesday, at least10 people have been killed and 61 injured in mass shootings.

Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent and news anchor at CNN, interrupted a broadcast Sunday about the response to the mass shooting in Uvalde to tell viewers about another — in Tennessee.

“Mass killings like Buffalo and Uvalde become national news, but many mass shootings do not. They just end up being local stories,” Stelter said, in a clip that has been viewed over 334,000 times on Twitter.

On Saturday evening, six teenagers were injured by gunfire in Chattanooga, Tenn., in what Mayor Tim Kelly said was probably “an altercation between other teenagers.”e

The victims, who were between the ages of 13 and 15, were transported to a hospital, and two had life-threatening injuries, according to the Chattanooga Police Department.

Kelly said he was “heartbroken” for the families of the victims and “angry” about political inaction on gun laws during a news conference following the shooting.

The Chattanooga shooting was one of at least five mass shootings that took place on Saturday alone, according to GVA.

On Sunday, there were at least another five mass shootings, including one at a Memorial Day festival in Taft, Okla.

Authorities said one person was killed and seven people were injured, including a minor. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said a suspect turned himself in and was in custody.

Meanwhile, one person died and three others were injured during a shooting at a party in Merced County, Calif., the sheriff’s office said. One victim was still in “critical condition” Sunday afternoon.

The latest apparent mass shooting occurred in the early hours of Monday in Port Richmond, Pa. Two people died and two others were injured during a shooting at a party, according to preliminary statements from law enforcement. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 21, and police told FOX 29 Philadelphia they found 47 shell casings at the scene.

The incident was not listed in the GVA database as of early Monday, but appears to meet the standards for a mass shooting.

It was the city’s “2nd DOUBLE HOMICIDE scene in two hours,” according to Steve Keeley, a reporter for FOX 29 Philadelphia,after a father and his 9-year-old son were shot inside their car in Philadelphia on Sunday evening, law enforcement said.

The grim litany of mass shootings began even before the official start of the holiday weekend, when police in Anniston, Ala., said gunfire erupted after a graduation party attended by more than 150 young adults and teenagers as young as 14. Six people were injured by gunfire.

And on Friday afternoon in Michigan, officers in Mecosta County found three children under the age of 10 and a woman dead of “what appeared to be gunshot sounds” when they responded to a report of a man with a gun and shots fired at a private residence. They also found a man with a gunshot wound to the head, who was taken to a hospital. Relatives told a local news outlet that the children were siblings and were 3, 4 and 6 years old, and that the woman was their mother.

In the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, many local leaders and community representatives issued emotional pleas for action. As The Washington Post has reported, it’s unlikely that Congress will be able to pass gun-control measures.

In other news

A nut fuck Covid denier hit up the blog here and wrote a comment about my Man’s Man entry, telling me “Get back your meds. Seriously” Really I do? I was on meds? What meds? When? Why? Where or who distributed said meds? In other words I hurt his teeny weeny penis and with that the best he could do in between writing his Covid denial blog was that. Hey thanks for playing!

I have been verbally bashed all day for my posts at WaPo discussing the most recent shooting. Again this is a pearl clutching, prayer baiting and hand wringing moment. Then it goes it finger pointing, blame seeking and denial. We are moving quickly to that as the day wears on and with 19 children dead I think that is expected. What will not happen will be any meaningful change with regards to the issue of guns and controlling them. Monitoring our personal data, knowing every move we make and take, not a problem. Thanks high tech! But even delaying a gun purchase well that is a right enshrined in the Constitution, the privacy thing as we are learning no it is not.

This is the 2nd Amendment in its originalist context and form: 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.

Okay as the writers of the Constitution were in the middle of defending the right to our own Country and Democracy they were referring to a what we could say today, a Vigilante group. Or a small group of individuals deputized to protect their city or state from insurrectionists. Or could be just talking about making sure Guns were available and considered legal to own to protect the Country from the English or some other Country from invading. The type of guns they did not mention as there were only one kind – Muskets. With that hey I am all for anyone owning a musket, an AK-15 not so much. It did not exist and they were the original composers of the document, psychics that could foresee guns becoming fully automatic and adaptable to kill many and near and close range with bullets that explode and destroy upon contact, not really in their wheelhouse. So maybe Alioto could summon his psychic to channel a convo with one of the Founding Fathers to clear that one up. I have a couple of names if he needs them.

So as I continue to rally and when posed questions or verbally abused I respond, and then crickets. Just like a man who after he spittoons his jizz into you he is one and done. Oh today I am sick of it all. Name three women who have been mass shooters? No? How about one. And I am the first to come after women but in this one I cannot.

And then this news: Joe Garcia, the husband of Irma Garcia, one of two teachers shot and killed in Uvalde, TX on Tuesday, has reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack. Joe and Irma were high school sweethearts and married 24 years. They leave behind four children. In other words, now more children who suffer at the hands of the shooter. Again no name there let’s be consistent.

So if you really want to hurt me, well sticks and stones may break some bones but an AK-15 can do a fuck lot of damage. Continue with the abuse your words mean nothing as I have learned here we do fuck all nothing. Although Senator Murphy from Connecticut (a founding State btw) is demanding all voices to rise.

Senator Chris Murphy has called for a “popular uprising of citizens” to pressure Republicans to support gun laws following the Uvalde massacre.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill, alongside fellow Democratic lawmakers and activists from Everytown for Gun Safety, the Connecticut senator said he would be talking with Republican lawmakers in the coming days to try to pass compromise legislation:

We’re going to extend a hand of partnership to those who have been sitting on the sidelines, to those who have chosen to side with the gun lobby… to try to find a path forward to makes our streets safer, to make our schools safer.

[We hope] we will be facilitated in finding that common ground by a popular uprising of citizens who are going to make clear: if you don’t do the right thing here, you aren’t coming back here.

It has to stop it must stop. And here is an interesting story about a gun and a murder. You decide. Trigger warning… pun intended.

The only trial that really matters

How to Murder Your Husband writer found guilty of murdering husband

Portland jury finds Nancy Crampton Brophy guilty of killing chef Daniel Brophy in June 2018

Oliver Holmes the Guardian Thu 26 May 2022

A jury in the US city of Portland, Oregon, has convicted a self-published romance novelist who wrote an essay titled How to Murder Your Husband of fatally shooting her husband.

The 12-person jury found Nancy Crampton Brophy, 71, guilty of second-degree murder on Wednesday after deliberating for two days over Daniel Brophy’s death, according to reports.

Brophy, a 63-year-old chef, was killed on 2 June 2018 as he prepared for work at the Oregon Culinary Institute in south-west Portland.

Crampton Brophy showed no visible reaction to the verdict in the crowded Multnomah county courtroom. Lisa Maxfield, one of her lawyers, said the defence team would appeal against the decision.

The defendant’s 2011 how-to treatise detailed various options for committing an untraceable killing, written in the form of a brainstorming exercise for writers.

Its opening reads: “As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder and, consequently, about police procedure. After all, if the murder is supposed to set me free, I certainly don’t want to spend any time in jail. And let me say clearly for the record, I don’t like jumpsuits and orange isn’t my color.”

The blogpost went on to detail motives – financial, “lying, cheating bastard”, abuser – and a discussion of possible methods. Knives were “personal and close up. Blood everywhere”, while poison, “considered a woman’s weapon”, was too easy to trace, Crampton Brophy wrote. Guns were “loud, messy, require some skill”.

The circuit judge Christopher Ramras had excluded the essay from the trial, noting it had been published several years ago. Jurors were not allowed to consider it in their judgment. A prosecutor, however, alluded to the essay’s themes without naming it after Crampton Brophy took the stand.

Prosecutors told jurors Crampton Brophy was motivated by money problems and a life insurance policy.

However, Crampton Brophy said she had no reason to kill her husband and their financial problems had largely been solved by cashing in a portion of Brophy’s retirement savings plan.

She owned the same make and model of gun used to kill her husband and was seen on surveillance footage driving to and from the culinary institute, court exhibits and testimony showed.

Prosecutors alleged Crampton Brophy had bought a “ghost gun”, an untraceable firearm kit, and swapped parts with a shop-bought handgun.

Police have never found the gun that killed Brophy.

Defence lawyers said the gun parts were the inspiration for an idea Crampton Brophy’s had for a new book and suggested someone else might have killed Brophy during a botched robbery.

Crampton Brophy testified that her presence near the culinary school on the day of her husband’s death was mere coincidence and that she had parked in the area to work on her writing.

Crampton Brophy has been in custody since her arrest in September 2018. She will be sentenced on 13 June.

“I find it is easier to wish people dead than to actually kill them,” Crampton Brophy wrote in her 2011 post. “I don’t want to worry about blood and brains splattered on my walls. And really, I’m not good at remembering lies. But the thing I know about murder is that every one of us have it in him/her when pushed far enough.”

Kill For Love

And that seems to be the truth when it comes to Domestic Violence and gun ownership. Most killings occur at home not with some intruder but with one’s partner. The reality is that guns kill people and people with guns use them to do just that. It is called a crime of passion but it is not that kind of passion, it is kind that resonates from a place of anger and in turn fear that the one you love has betrayed or hurt you so you want to hurt them back – permanently.

Below is an article from today’s New York Times about women who have become victims as a result of Domestic Violence in a way that could have been prevented but the N.R.A has systemically intervened and blocked any legislation to make this stop. No means no to the NRA and it means no way no how is anyone not going to be able to have a gun and use it however they sit fit on whomever they see fit.

The acronym for the NRA is supposedly the National Rifle Association, a group with less than 10% of actual gun owners as members, but you would think they have an enrollment short of the current population of the United States given their propensity for being everywhere and anywhere when gun legislation rears its cold cocked head. The NRA should change its name to Noxious Righteous Assholes as they have little interest in the safety and security of any American, good, bad or ugly.

The NRA kills more bills faster than a wild west shooter and they have endless dollars and support when it comes to buying off Legislators one bullet, whoops, I mean check, at a time.

Read the article and the stories of the women who have died by the hands of the men they once loved, were married to and were the fathers of their children. We love to attach women to their connections to others, ironic that it is that connection that killed them.

In Some States, Gun Rights Trump Orders of Protection
By MICHAEL LUO
Published: March 17, 2013

Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to obtain a temporary order for protection.

Her former husband, Corey Holten, threatened to put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger, she wrote in her petition. He also said he would “put a cap” in her if her new boyfriend “gets near my kids.” In neat block letters she wrote, “He owns guns, I am scared.”

The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks of his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What it did not require him to do was surrender his guns.

About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was lying in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their two children in tow. Armed with a small semiautomatic rifle bought several months before, he stepped out of his car and thrust the muzzle into her chest. He directed her inside the house, yelling that he was going to kill her.

“I remember thinking, ‘Cops, I need the cops,’ ” she later wrote in a statement to the police. “He’s going to kill me in my own house. I’m going to die!”

Ms. Holten, however, managed to dial 911 on her cellphone and slip it under a blanket on the couch. The dispatcher heard Ms. Holten begging for her life and quickly directed officers to the scene. As they mounted the stairs with their guns drawn, Mr. Holten surrendered. They found Ms. Holten cowering, hysterical, on the floor.

For all its rage and terror, the episode might well have been prevented. Had Mr. Holten lived in one of a handful of states, the protection order would have forced him to relinquish his firearms. But that is not the case in Washington and most of the country, in large part because of the influence of the National Rifle Association and its allies.

Advocates for domestic violence victims have long called for stricter laws governing firearms and protective orders. Their argument is rooted in a grim statistic: when women die at the hand of an intimate partner, that hand is more often than not holding a gun.

In these most volatile of human dramas, they contend, the right to bear arms must give ground to the need to protect a woman’s life.

In statehouses across the country, though, the N.R.A. and other gun-rights groups have beaten back legislation mandating the surrender of firearms in domestic violence situations. They argue that gun ownership, as a fundamental constitutional right, should not be stripped away for anything less serious than a felony conviction — and certainly not, as an N.R.A. lobbyist in Washington State put it to legislators, for the “mere issuance of court orders.”

That resistance is being tested anew in the wake of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., as proposals on the mandatory surrender of firearms are included in gun control legislation being debated in several states.

Among them is Washington, where current law gives judges issuing civil protection orders the discretion to require the surrender of firearms if, for example, they find a “serious and imminent threat” to public health. But records and interviews show that they rarely do so, making the state a useful laboratory for examining the consequences, as well as the politics, of this standoff over the limits of Second Amendment rights.

By analyzing a number of Washington databases, The New York Times identified scores of gun-related crimes committed by people subject to recently issued civil protection orders, including murder, attempted murder and kidnapping. In at least five instances over the last decade, women were shot to death less than a month after obtaining protection orders. In at least a half-dozen other killings, the victim was not the person being protected but someone else. There were dozens of gun-related assaults like the one Ms. Holten endured.

The analysis — which crosschecked protective orders against arrest and conviction data, along with fatality lists compiled by the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence — represents at best a partial accounting of such situations because of limitations in the data. The databases were missing some orders that have expired or been terminated. They also did not flag the use of firearms in specific crimes, so identifying cases required combing through court records.

Washington’s criminal statutes, however, contain a number of gun-specific charges, like unlawful possession of a firearm and aiming or discharging one, offering another window into the problem. Last year, The Times found, more than 50 people facing protection orders issued since 2011 were arrested on one of these gun charges.

In some instances, of course, laws mandating the surrender of firearms might have done nothing to prevent an attack. Sometimes the gun used was not the one cited in the petition. In other cases, no mention of guns was ever made. But in many cases, upon close scrutiny, stricter laws governing protective orders and firearms might very well have made a difference.

The Times also looked at several other states without surrender laws. In Minnesota, more than 30 people facing active protection orders were convicted of some type of assault with a dangerous weapon over the last three years, court records show.

And in Oklahoma, The Times found the case of Barbara Diane Dye.

Ms. Dye, 40, obtained an emergency order of protection in July 2010, on the same day she filed for divorce from her husband, Raymond Dye, a firefighter. Ms. Dye, who worked as a personal trainer at a gym the couple owned, explained in her petition that since telling her husband she wanted a divorce because of his infidelity, he had repeatedly threatened to kill her. She wrote that she feared he would “have a violent reaction when he receives divorce papers.”

When asked if there were weapons on the premises, she wrote, “Yes.” In fact, Mr. Dye possessed an arsenal of weapons, which Ms. Dye and her family would later beg the local police to help them deal with, to no avail.

After obtaining the court order, which was good until a hearing about a lengthier order three weeks later, Ms. Dye went into hiding in Texas but returned to Oklahoma to attend divorce proceedings. Two weeks after obtaining the initial order, she was in a bank parking lot in the city of Elgin when her husband pulled up in his truck, blocking her in.

Witnesses later told the police that Mr. Dye, 42, tried to drag her into his truck. When she fought back, Mr. Dye brandished a .357 revolver and shot her in the leg. She fell to the ground. Mr. Dye fired several more shots into her, saying, “I love you, I love you,” according to the police report. He then shot himself in the chest with a different gun, a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, and collapsed, dead, onto his wife.

“We kept telling them, ‘He’s got all of these weapons,’ ” said Ms. Dye’s mother, Barbara Burk, a local official who has fought unsuccessfully in Oklahoma for a measure that would give judges issuing protective orders the power to order sheriffs to confiscate weapons and hold them for a “cooling off” period. “Is there nothing you can do?”

Legislative Landscape

Intimate partner homicides account for nearly half the women killed every year, according to federal statistics. More than half of these women are killed with a firearm. And a significant percentage were likely to have obtained protection orders against their eventual killers. (A 2001 study, published in Criminal Justice Review, of women slain by intimate partners in 10 cities put that number at one in five.)

It was in recognition of these converging realities that Congress included a provision in the 1994 crime bill, over the objections of the N.R.A., that barred most people subject to full protective orders filed by intimate partners from purchasing or possessing firearms. In a nod to the concerns of the gun lobby, the statute excluded most people under temporary orders, on the ground that they had not yet had the opportunity to contest the accusations in court.

The statute, though, is rarely enforced. In 2012, prosecutors nationwide filed fewer than 50 such cases, according to a Times analysis of records from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center at Syracuse University that collects federal government data.

It has, therefore, largely fallen to a state-by-state patchwork of laws to regulate this issue — or not.

A handful of states have enacted laws requiring that judges order the surrender of firearms when issuing even temporary protection orders. The strictest states, like California, Hawaii and Massachusetts, make it mandatory for essentially all domestic violence orders; others, like New York and North Carolina, set out certain circumstances when surrender is required. In a few other states, like Maryland and Wisconsin, surrender is mandatory only with a full injunction, granted after the opposing party has had the opportunity to participate in a court hearing. Several other states, like Connecticut and Florida, do not have surrender laws but do prohibit gun possession by certain people subject to protective orders.

Although enforcement remains an issue, researchers say these laws have made a difference. One study, published in 2010 in the journal Injury Prevention, found a 19 percent reduction in intimate partner homicides.

Washington State has seen several efforts to enact firearm surrender laws. In 2004, Representative Ruth Kagi, a Democrat, introduced a bill mandating the surrender of firearms with temporary protective orders. But after strong opposition from the N.R.A., the bill failed to make it out of committee. The N.R.A.’s lobbyist in the state, Brian Judy, testified that the measure granted “extraordinarily broad authority to strip firearms rights.”

Gun-rights groups stress that the subjects of temporary orders have not even had the chance to be heard in court, and that many temporary orders do not become full injunctions. Advocates for domestic violence victims counter that the most dangerous moment is when such orders are first issued, and that the surrender of weapons at this stage may be only temporary.

Nevertheless, in 2010, they decided to lower their ambitions and backed a proposal in the Washington Legislature requiring surrender only after a full protective order was issued, restraining threatening conduct against family members or children of family members. The measure also would have made it a felony to possess a firearm while subject to such an order.

Once again, the N.R.A. and its allies strenuously objected. The group sent out a legislative alert to its members, who besieged legislators. A veteran gun-rights lobbyist flew in from Florida to meet with Representative Roger Goodman, a Democrat who had introduced the measure.

Mr. Judy, the state N.R.A. lobbyist, wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Goodman that his organization considered the current Washington law “already bad on this subject.” He added, “It is the N.R.A.’s position that any crime that is serious enough to cause an individual to lose a fundamental constitutional right should be classified as a felony.”

Ultimately, lawmakers stripped the gun measure out of a broader package of domestic violence legislation.

Lessons of History

This year, the issue is pending once again in the Washington Legislature, part of a number of gun-related proposals introduced after the Newtown shooting. The proposed legislation, further narrowed in an attempt to placate the N.R.A., seeks to mirror the language of the federal prohibition, which bars most people under full protective orders from buying or owning weapons. But in an e-mail to House Judiciary Committee members considering the measure, Mr. Judy wrote that the federal law “does not provide adequate protection” and argued that individual firearm rights were more broadly protected in Washington’s State Constitution than in the Second Amendment.

The bill seemed on the verge of being scuttled as the N.R.A. pushed to amend it in a way that supporters argued would render it meaningless, but House Democrats managed to close ranks and pass it. It faces a much steeper climb in the Republican-controlled State Senate, where the N.R.A. wields greater influence.

The issue has also gained traction in Colorado — a traditional power base for the gun lobby but also the state where 12 people were shot to death and 58 were wounded at a movie theater in July. A measure that would require the surrender of firearms in protection-order cases is part of a gun-control package passed by the State Senate last week, though not a single Republican voted for it.

And in Congress, Representative Lois Capps, Democrat of California, introduced a bill last week that would expand the federal prohibition to include temporary orders and current or former “dating partners.”

Even so, across the country, any suggestion of a broad shift must be tempered by history.

In the mid-1990s, Wisconsin became one of the first states to require the surrender of firearms with full protective orders. But in 2010, seeking to strengthen enforcement, advocates for domestic violence victims pushed for the statewide adoption of procedures that had been successful in a few counties. Among a host of provisions, people subject to protective orders would have been required to list their firearms and surrender them to the county sheriff or a third party within 48 hours.

The N.R.A. mobilized, calling the measure “a blatant violation of Americans’ Fifth Amendment rights” in an alert to its members. Jordan Austin, an N.R.A. lobbyist, expanded in his testimony on the bill before an Assembly committee: “Once a person has an injunction issued against him, he is already a prohibited person. He cannot, under the Fifth Amendment, be forced to disclose whether he is in possession of firearms, because that would be tantamount to forcing him to admit a crime.”

The bill died in the State Senate.

In Virginia, the gun lobby has repeatedly stymied efforts to make it illegal for people subject to court injunctions to possess firearms. (Currently, they are barred only from buying and transporting firearms.)

“There’s often recognition that firearms and domestic violence is a lethal combination, but it’s followed quickly with concerns about taking away an individual’s right to possess a firearm,” said Kristine Hall, the policy director for the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance.

The lack of a state surrender law helps explain what happened when Deborah Wigg, a 39-year-old accountant in Virginia Beach, obtained a protective order in April 2011 against her husband, Robert Wigg, whom she was in the process of divorcing. In her petition, she described a violent encounter in which Mr. Wigg grabbed her by her hair, threw her down, ripped out a door and threw it at her. He was arrested and charged with assault. She also made clear in the petition that her husband owned a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun.

She eventually won a full protective order, but Mr. Wigg kept his gun, which he used in his business installing and servicing A.T.M.’s.

Ms. Wigg and her co-workers at an accounting firm openly fretted about the weapon. She agreed that every morning she would call Marty Ridout, a partner at the firm, so he could make sure she was safe.

On the morning of Nov. 8, 2011, Ms. Wigg left Mr. Ridout a voice mail message saying everything was fine.

Around 11 p.m. that night, however, Mr. Wigg, 43, showed up at his wife’s home and began ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door. Ms. Wigg called her parents. Her mother, Adele Brown, told her to hang up and call 911.

But as Ms. Brown and her husband, who lived about a half-mile away, were heading over, Mr. Wigg smashed through the door and into the house. The Browns arrived to find a neighbor bent over their daughter’s bleeding form, screaming, “Debbie, don’t leave me!”

“When we got to her, those beautiful blue eyes were already set,” Ms. Brown said.

Ms. Wigg died of a single shot to the head.

After shooting his wife, Mr. Wigg drove to the Browns’, apparently to kill them as well. He killed himself in their front yard.

“It astounds me,” Mr. Ridout said. “I cannot believe we have a society where a person has physically abused another person and been charged with assaulting her and that they don’t automatically take away his weapon.”

A System That’s Working

One state with strict laws in this arena is California, where anyone served with a temporary protective order has 24 hours to turn over any weapons to local law enforcement or sell them to a licensed gun dealer.

Enforcement, however, has been inconsistent. So in 2006, the state set up pilot programs to increase enforcement in San Mateo County, just outside San Francisco, and Butte County, a largely rural area north of Sacramento. The programs’ money dried up in 2010 with the state’s fiscal woes, but San Mateo sought other financing because it believed that its program was saving lives.

“We have not had a firearm-related domestic violence homicide in the last three years,” said Sgt. Linda Gibbons, who oversees the program as the head of the major crimes unit in the county sheriff’s office.

Last year alone, the program took in 324 firearms through seizure or surrender from 81 people, out of more than 800 protective orders it reviewed.

Every morning, Detective John Kovach, who handles a range of domestic violence investigations, reviews a stack of protective orders filed the day before — generally 15 to 20 a day — looking for any mention of firearms.

Usually, a handful of orders a day will contain some reference to guns, which Detective Kovach follows up on. He sometimes contacts the person protected by the order to find out more. He also checks various law enforcement databases, including one available in California that tracks handgun purchases.

He goes out once or twice a week and serves the restraining orders himself. Usually, he says, he tries to collect firearms immediately, employing a well-honed sales pitch about helping the person comply with the law. If he believes beforehand that the person might not be cooperative, he will sometimes request a search warrant.

“My experience is the quicker you act, the more successful you’re going to be,” he said.

Notably, given the gun lobby’s objections to seizing guns after just a temporary order, Detective Kovach said he had handled only one or two restraining orders involving firearms in the last year that were eventually dropped after the court hearing.

In a typical case, a 19-year-old woman from Redwood City filed for a restraining order against her husband in December, explaining that he had become increasingly abusive and that she had recently moved out. She checked off a box on the form saying he had used firearms to threaten her and, on a confidential “weapons possession data sheet” provided as a part of the San Mateo program, indicated that he owned an assault rifle and a handgun.

The detective picked up her order the following morning and, with a colleague, arranged to meet that day. She told them that after an argument a year earlier, her husband had threatened to kill himself, sending her in a text message a picture of himself holding an assault rifle to his head. More recently, he had warned that if she started dating, he would shoot the man, her and then himself.

Detective Kovach quickly secured a search warrant. He and several other detectives staked out the man’s home and served him with the protective order while he was walking his dog. In their search, they turned up seven guns, including two AR-15 assault rifles.

“Every murder, when you look at it, there are always points where law enforcement could have made a difference,” the detective said. “I don’t ever want to be that guy who goes to sleep knowing he hasn’t done everything to protect the public.”

Deadly Consequences

In Washington State, The Times’s analysis highlighted danger at play when there is no broad mandatory firearm surrender law.

Under current law, judges issuing protective orders are required to order the surrender of firearms only in very specific situations, like a determination by “clear and convincing evidence” that the person has used the weapon in a felony or has committed another offense that by law would disqualify him from having a firearm. Otherwise, judges have the discretion to issue a surrender order under a variety of circumstances, including a finding that there is a threat of “irreparable injury.” (There is also a court form specifically requesting the surrender of firearms, but advocates say it is rarely used because few victims of domestic violence know about it.)

All five of the Washington cases identified by The Times in which the woman who obtained the protective order was later killed were murder-suicides. In three cases, the woman wrote in her petition that her husband or ex-boyfriend possessed firearms. In none of the cases did the judges issue surrender orders.

In fairness, it was not always clear that such an order would have prevented the deaths. Even so, those cases can show the existing system’s weakness in the face of obvious peril.

Melissa Batten, a 36-year-old software developer for Xbox, secured a temporary protective order in July 2008, describing a series of episodes in which her estranged husband harassed her and also broke into her workplace in Redmond. She said he also pointed a loaded gun at her in an argument and then put it to his head, threatening to kill himself.

It fell to a mutual friend, however, not the courts or law enforcement, to deal with the gun. He persuaded the husband, Robert Batten, to sell his .22-caliber handgun back to the dealer, according to a police report. But Mr. Batten later bought two more guns, a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver and a 9-millimeter Taurus semiautomatic, according to the police. It is not clear exactly when he bought them, but the police found evidence that he went to a gun show a few days after being served with the protective order. (In some states, the existence of the order would have barred him from buying guns.)

Mr. Batten shot his wife eight times in the parking lot outside her home before shooting himself, killing them both.

Ms. Batten’s case made headlines. Then there are the more routine episodes that unfold outside the public eye.

Julie Lohrengel obtained a temporary order for protection against her estranged husband, Shawn Lohrengel, in August 2010, detailing several encounters, including one in which he had shaken her and grabbed her by the throat. She checked off the box in the petition that indicated he possessed firearms.

The court commissioner did not order Mr. Lohrengel to surrender his guns. Several weeks later, Ms. Lohrengel and a friend, with Ms. Lohrengel’s two children in the back seat, drove up to her home in Centralia but stopped when they saw Mr. Lohrengel’s truck parked outside the garage. As they started backing out of the driveway, between five and eight gunshots rang out, but no one was wounded. When the police arrived, Mr. Lohrengel ran out onto the front porch with a rifle, as if looking for someone, the police report said. He eventually pleaded guilty to aiming and discharging a firearm and reckless endangerment.

Sometimes, the person who takes out a protective order is not the one ultimately victimized.

James Anthony Mills, 17, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder for firing two shots that killed Adrian Wilson, 16, at a birthday barbecue in Auburn, Wash. Less than a year before, an ex-girlfriend of Mr. Mills’s had obtained an order for protection against him. She explained in her petition that Mr. Mills had threatened her with a gun during an argument. Nothing was done about the weapon.

Even in cases where there was evidence that someone subject to a civil order for protection possessed a gun in violation of state and federal law, no move was made to remove it.

Dennis Pirone was arrested in Seattle in July 2009 and charged with harassing his ex-girlfriend Jody Mayes. A criminal no-contact order was issued, requiring him to surrender his firearms. He filled out a form declaring that he had none. He was arrested again a few weeks later for violating the no-contact order. Once again, after being ordered to surrender firearms, he declared that he did not have any.

That December, Ms. Mayes sought a protective order, writing in her petition that Mr. Pirone had bought a gun even though “he is a convicted felon and is not supposed to have it in his own words.”

Two months later, Mr. Pirone flew into a rage at another woman, a roommate, after she refused his sexual advances. He came back with a small silver handgun, told the woman, “I will kill you,” and pointed the gun at her before firing a shot into an old sofa, according to a Seattle police report. The police later found two .22-caliber semiautomatic handguns in the house.

More than a year after her ordeal in Spokane, Stephanie Holten still cannot understand why the judge did nothing about her former husband’s guns.

“I do believe in the Second Amendment,” she said, “but at the same time, public safety has to be paramount.”

Ms. Holten, 39, who is still seeing a counselor about the episode, said her mind relentlessly replays the scene of her on her knees, looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. In the recording of her 911 call, she can be heard sobbing and begging Mr. Holten to leave. He can be heard responding, between expletives, that she is going to die.

Mr. Holten — who later pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree assault and was sentenced to more than six years in prison — ordered her upstairs to her bedroom, forcing her to show him that she still had their wedding photos and other mementos. He then offered her a deal: he would put the gun down if she promised to drop the protection order, give him custody of their son and not call the police. When she tearfully assented, Mr. Holten placed his 9-millimeter carbine — the same weapon Ms. Holten believes she saw at his home a month earlier and cited in her court petition — in a hallway closet. That was when they both heard a male voice say “Police Department.”

Her legs buckled, and she crumpled to the ground.

“I wish in my case he had to surrender everything,” she said. “If the cops had been able to take the firearms out of that household when they served him, I think it would have averted the entire thing.”

Matter of Public Record

If something is a matter of public record there should be no problem with it being published.  We publish birth, death, marriage, dissolution and criminal or legal issues without concern of privacy or even guilt, so why should LEGAL  gun registration be a problem?

Well it is if you own a gun apparently.  And to a local township that decided to publish the names of legal registered gun owners they found themselves in need of protection.  I have no idea what the problem is.  If you are proud of your rights under the 2nd Amendment then you would take arms to protect all the other Amendments including that free speech one.  Oh wait, hypocrisy is not an official Amendment. Ask Thomas Jefferson, he of “all were created equal” also Slave owner father of the Constitution that said gun owners love to wave about. Maybe they use it as target practice.

After Pinpointing Gun Owners, Paper Is a Target

by CHRISTINE HAUGHNE
Published: January 6, 2013

WHITE PLAINS — Local newspapers across the country look for stories that will bring them national attention, but The Journal News, a daily nestled in a wooded office park in a suburb north of New York, may have gotten more than it bargained for.

Two weeks ago, the paper published the names and addresses of handgun permit holders — a total of 33,614 — in two suburban counties, Westchester and Rockland, and put maps of their locations online. The maps, which appeared with the article “The Gun Owner Next Door: What You Don’t Know About the Weapons in Your Neighborhood,” received more than one million views on the Web site of The Journal News — more than twice as many as the paper’s previous record, about a councilman who had two boys arrested for running a cupcake stand.

But the article, which left gun owners feeling vulnerable to harassment or break-ins, also drew outrage from across the country. Calls and e-mails grew so threatening that the paper’s president and publisher, Janet Hasson, hired armed guards to monitor the newspaper’s headquarters in White Plains and its bureau in West Nyack, N.Y.

Personal information about editors and writers at the paper has been posted online, including their home addresses and information about where their children attended school; some reporters have received notes saying they would be shot on the way to their cars; bloggers have encouraged people to steal credit card information of Journal News employees; and two packages containing white powder have been sent to the newsroom and a third to a reporter’s home (all were tested by the police and proved to be harmless).

“As journalists, we are prepared for criticism,” Ms. Hasson said, as she sat in her meticulously tended office and described the ways her 225 employees have been harassed since the article was published. “But in the U.S., journalists should not be threatened.” She has paid for staff members who do not feel safe in their homes to stay at hotels, offered guards to walk employees to their cars, encouraged employees to change their home telephone numbers and has been coordinating with the local police.

The decision to report and publish the data, taken from publicly available records, happened within a week of the school massacre in nearby Newtown, Conn. On Dec. 17, Dwight R. Worley, a tax reporter, returned from trying to interview the families of victims in Newtown with an idea to obtain and publish local gun permit data. He discussed his idea with his immediate editor, Kathy Moore, who in turn talked to her bosses, according to CynDee Royle, the paper’s editor.

Mr. Worley started putting out requests for public information that Monday, receiving the data from Westchester County that day and from Rockland County three days later. All the editors involved said there were not any formal meetings about the article, although it came up at several regular news meetings. Ms. Royle, who had been at The Journal News in 2006 when the newspaper published similar data, without mapping it or providing street numbers, said that editors discussed publishing the data in at least three meetings.

Ms. Hasson said Ms. Royle told her that an article with gun permit data would be published on Sunday, Dec. 23. While Ms. Hasson had not been at the paper in 2006, she knew there had been some controversy then. She made sure to be available on Dec. 23 by e-mail, and accessible to the staff if any problems came up. A spokesman for Gannett, which owns The Journal News, said it was never informed about the coming article.

“We’ve run this content before,” Ms. Hasson said. “I supported it, and I supported the publishing of the info.”

By Dec. 26, employees had begun receiving threatening calls and e-mails, and by the next day, reporters not involved in the article were being threatened. The reaction did not stop at the local paper: Gracia C. Martore, the chief executive of Gannett, also received threatening messages.

Many of the threats, Ms. Hasson said, were coming from across the country, and not from the paper’s own community. But local gun owners and supporters are encouraging an advertiser boycott of The Journal News. Scott Sommavilla, president of the 35,000-member Westchester County Firearm Owners Association, said 44,000 people had downloaded a list of advertisers from his group’s Web site. But he emphasized that his association would never encourage any personal threats. Appealing to advertisers, he said, is the best way for gun owners to express their disapproval of the article.

“They’re really upset about it,” Mr. Sommavilla said. “They’re afraid for their families.”

The paper’s decision has drawn criticism from journalists who question whether The Journal News should have provided more context and whether it was useful to publish individual names and addresses. Journalists with specialties in computer-assisted reporting have argued that just because public data has become more readily available in recent years does not mean that it should be published raw. In ways, they argued, it would have been more productive to publish data by ZIP code or block.

“The Journal News, I personally think, should have rethought the idea as actually going so far to identify actual addresses,” said Steve Doig, a professor with an expertise in data journalism at Arizona State. “This particular database ought to remain a public record. Just because it’s available and public record doesn’t mean we have to make it so readily available.”

Mr. Worley disagrees. “The people have as much of a right to know who owns guns in their communities as gun owners have to own weapons,” he said.

Mr. Doig pointed out that the recent publication of gun information by other papers has made access to this public information more difficult because legislators started blocking the data immediately. “The backlash, very typically from this, is for legislators to try to close up the access to this type of data.”

Mr. Worley said he had received mainly taunting phone calls sprinkled in with callers who said “you should die.” He found broken glass outside of his home and would not say how much time he was spending there right now. But he said he had largely been supported by the newsroom.

The Journal News’s features editor, Mary Dolan, said that while she was not involved with the publication of the article, her home address and phone numbers were published online in retaliation. She has had to disconnect her phone and has “taken my social media presence and just put it on the shelf for a while.” She has also received angry phone calls from former neighbors in Westchester whose gun information was published.

She said she was especially concerned about the part-time staff members who write up wedding anniversary and church potluck announcements who have been harassed. But she supports the paper for its decision.

“It sparked a conversation that needed to occur in this country, and it revealed tactics that will be employed when gun owners feel their rights are threatened,” she said.

Putnam County has refused to release similar data, but Ms. Hasson said she would continue to press for it. She would not say whether the paper had lost any of its advertisers. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, The Journal News, like many newspapers nationwide, has had sharp declines in circulation. Its total circulation from Monday through Friday fell from 111,536 in September 2007 to 68,850 in September 2012.

At the same time, Ms. Hasson has been trying to calm the nerves of her family after photographs of the home she is renting and references to her adult children were put online.

“They are concerned about my safety,” she said about her children. “But they are very supportive.”

War on Guns

To the NRA they are in defense and since they are pro guns we are all at risk. The absurd argument that gun ownership is protected by the 2nd Amendment is absurd.  I have already pointed out that said Amendment was written at a time of war when the need for personal arms and militia were necessary.  Today we have a fully functioning National Guard, a Military,  and each Municipality has more than ample armed professionals whose jobs it is to “serve and protect.”

And to think this has anything to do with National Security think again. 9/11 happened on our shores without a gun in place. And no having guns on planes didn’t work either.  But not every hijacker is a DB Cooper.

The secondary argument is for protection. From whom? Those intent on stealing your home, property or some belonging.  Well ask the recent victims of Hurricane Sandy that bitch took quite a bit and without a gun and guess what thanks to insurance or to “hard work” belongings can be replaced, lives cannot.  Research shows that access to guns greatly increases the risk of death and firearm-related violence. A gun in the home is twelve times more likely to result in the death of a household member or visitor than an intruder.

It is exhausting to lather rinse repeat this to those who are sure that without guns anarchy would exist.  And then I point to any number of Countries in Africa – the Sudan anyone?  And again I have no problem with sport hunters.  However your guns need to be locked when not in use and when in transport and not legal in any urban setting regardless.  Sorry but the density and diversity of Cities lead to more conflict and confusion that for some seems to be settled at the end of a gun barrel.

Guns are a national health crisis.  Medical care for gunshot victims in the United States is up to $4 billion per year. Including indirect costs such as disability and unemployment, the costs may total up to $100 billion.  Costs for this are disbursed through taxpayers and in turn costs for our medical insurance.  It is spread to us all. Gun violence costs the U.S. criminal justice system approximately $2.4 billion per year—nearly equal to all other crimes put together.

And the article below I think explains quite clearly what gun violence does to one community over another and perhaps that might explain why nothing has been done until now.   Its the equivalent of the Drug Laws – aka – the New Jim Crow laws.

My conversationalist on NYE who said what can we do about the “white” children? Well now that the extreme violence in the past year is due to “white” “male” “children/boys/men maybe now you will do more than label them Sociopaths, Psychopaths or Nuts.  Or maybe not.   This time the gun toter was in Newton, not with the surname of such.   But will it change anything? We love to have conversations/debates/lectures instead of actually doing something. And yet he asked me if I had a problem with “working hard”  No I don’t, do you?  Bubblelator going down.

Who Pays for the Right to Bear Arms?

By: David Cole
Published: January 2, 2013

IN the days following the Newtown massacre the nation’s newspapers were filled with heart-wrenching pictures of the innocent victims. The slaughter was unimaginably shocking. But the broader tragedy of gun violence is felt mostly not in leafy suburbs, but in America’s inner cities.

The right to bear arms typically invokes the romantic image of a cowboy toting a rifle on the plains. In modern-day America, though, the more realistic picture is that of a young black man gunned down in his prime in a dark alley. When we celebrate gun rights, we all too often ignore their disproportionate racial burdens. Any effort to address gun violence must focus on the inner city.

Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related. In the city’s public schools, 319 students were shot in the 2011-12 school year, 24 of them fatally. African-Americans are 33 percent of the Chicago population, but about 70 percent of the murder victims.

The same is true in other cities. In 2011, 80 percent of the 324 people killed in Philadelphia were killed by guns, and three-quarters of the victims were black.

Racial disparities in gun violence far outstrip those in almost any other area of life. Black unemployment is double that for whites, as is black infant mortality. But young black men die of gun homicide at a rate eight times that of young white men. Could it be that the laxity of the nation’s gun laws is tolerated because its deadly costs are borne by the segregated black and Latino populations of North Philadelphia and Chicago’s South Side?

The history of gun regulation is inextricably interwoven with race. Some of the nation’s most stringent gun laws emerged in the South after the Civil War, as Southern whites feared what newly freed slaves might do if armed. At the same time, Northerners saw the freed slaves’ right to bear arms as critical to protecting them from the Ku Klux Klan.

In the 1960s, Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party made the gun a central symbol of black power, claiming that “the gun is the only thing that will free us.” On May 2, 1967, taking advantage of California’s lax gun laws, several Panthers marched through the State Capitol in Sacramento carrying raised and loaded weapons, generating widespread news coverage.

The police could do nothing, as the Panthers broke no laws. But three months later, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law one of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

The urban riots of the late 1960s — combined with rising crime rates and a string of high-profile assassinations — spurred Congress to pass federal gun control laws, banning interstate commerce in guns except for federally licensed dealers and collectors; prohibiting sales to felons, the mentally ill, substance abusers and minors; and expanding licensing requirements.

These laws contain large loopholes, however, and are plainly inadequate to deal with the increased number and lethality of modern weapons. But as long as gun violence largely targets young black men in urban ghettos, the nation seems indifferent. At Newtown, the often all-too-invisible costs of the right to bear arms were made starkly visible — precisely because these weren’t the usual victims. The nation took note, and President Obama has promised reform, though he has not yet made a specific proposal.

Gun rights defenders argue that gun laws don’t reduce violence, noting that many cities with high gun violence already have strict gun laws. But this ignores the ease with which urban residents can evade local laws by obtaining guns from dealers outside their cities or states. Effective gun regulation requires a nationally coordinated response.

A cynic might propose resurrecting the Black Panthers to heighten white anxiety as the swiftest route to breaking the logjam on gun reform. I hope we are better than that. If the nation were to view the everyday tragedies that befall young black and Latino men in the inner cities with the same sympathy that it has shown for the Newtown victims, there would be a groundswell of support not just for gun law reform, but for much broader measures.

If we are to reduce the inequitable costs of gun rights, it’s not enough to tighten licensing requirements, expand background checks to private gun sales or ban assault weapons. In addition to such national measures, meaningful reform must include initiatives directed to where gun violence is worst: the inner cities. Aggressive interventions by police and social workers focused on gang gun violence, coupled with economic investment, better schools and more after-school and job training programs, are all necessary if we are to reduce the violence that gun rights entail.

To tweak the National Rifle Association’s refrain, “guns don’t kill people; indifference to poverty kills people.” We can’t in good conscience keep making young black men pay the cost of our right to bear arms.