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 Trial

I am not watching George Floyd’s trial, I had already made my mind up about his death a year ago. It was not murder as defined by law but it was manslaughter. Derek Chauvin did not know that at the time Mr. Floyd was positive for Covid, which we now know is a lung disorder that affects one’s ability to breathe. Added to that Mr. Floyd was on drugs which also may have contributed to his ability to breathe well. Then add the knee of a Cop to the neck of a man supine on the ground for over 11 minutes, you have lead him to take his last breath regardless. The neglect and abuse came when he begged for his life and was ignored, in fact we may never know if Chauvin at those moments just put a little more pressure on that neck as Floyd took those last fateful breaths as a camera cannot capture that. We know now that Chauvin explained that to the passer by’s who took video and spoke to the Officers, one an EMT that understood how to save lives and watched one expire despite her efforts to somehow change this deadly encounter.

All of the witnesses have expressed immense emotion and a quiet rage that given what they witnessed is justified, the excuse that they expressed outrage is seemingly the explanation, if not the defense, for why Chauvin just kneeled there a little longer, and maybe a little harder as to justify the show. Again we will never know those last moments of thought that passed Mr. Floyd or through Officer Chauvin’s mind that day as they are gone like a breath in the wind.

I am not sure what the outcome will be but then again this Jury is definitely more diverse and racially composed than others that have been in similar situations so we hope they can collectively use the information presented in the trial to come to a conclusive and unanimous decision. I know I made up my mind already and little will change that.

But what I have found interesting is the lies by Cup Foods to the media and now the witnesses and the employee that day who took that counterfeit 20. And that is what I perhaps find as the most controversial and the most disturbing that it was a child who did nothing wrong, was sent to fix it and it led to the fateful call over what was over nothing. The same thing that led to Michael Brown in Ferguson, a pack of smokes that were less than 10 bucks. And the same with Eric Garner in Staten Island selling loose smokes for a buck near a bodega that also sold cigarettes and did not want the competition or the activity as it was near a park that often was the site for selling much harder stuff. As of today, little has changed on that fateful street.

And this is what the Washington Post had to say about Garner’s death:

The more than 20 hours of trial testimony — together with previous public accounts of the incident — permit a comprehensive and detailed examination of Garner’s death, one of the most consequential events in the 174-year history of the NYPD and a pivotal flash point in what would become the Black Lives Matter movement.

That examination reveals how a mundane interaction between a black man and white police officers can quickly devolve, and how split-second decisions can alter the outcomes of such encounters. Five years later, it also sheds light on the extraordinary difficulty of holding police to account for deadly violence — even when the death is captured on camera and witnessed by the world.

In the end, a case that sparked a national reckoning over race and justice will reach its conclusion in a largely semantic inquiry about police takedown tactics.

And with that we are here today. Not a lot has changed in the years since Garner’s death, Brown’s death or will with Floyd’s death. As noted earlier the murder’s by Cops this year fell from 1,000 to 985. A 15 drop in body count. I am sure that is more pandemic related than actual behavioral/policy changes.

But what again is noted is that these owners of Bodega’s that set up businesses in minority neighborhoods are not members of the same community, they have distinct policies in place and they don’t hire members of said community to work in them. That may be the first step needed to build bridges not burn them down.

But as we heard the testimony of the clerk whom the owner/manager said in the Times interview that he did not know, had sent him away was another lie. This is from the New York Times

In an interview, Mr. Abumayyaleh provided new details of the moments before Mr. Floyd’s fatal encounter with four Minneapolis Police officers, saying that another man had tried to use a fake $20 bill minutes before Mr. Floyd walked into the store.

The first man handed the bill to an older employee who had worked at the shop for several years and used a special marker to determine that the bill was counterfeit, Mr. Abumayyaleh said. The employee refused the sale and handed the bill back to the man, who left.Reconstruction-Era Violence The Equal Justice Initiative has documented a rate of killing in the period following the Civil War that was far higher than the decades that followed.

A few minutes later, Mr. Floyd walked in and gave a $20 bill to a teenage clerk, who did not immediately recognize the bill as fake. After a machine scan determined that the bill was counterfeit, the young clerk followed Mr. Floyd outside, asking him to return the items he had bought, but he refused, according to a transcript of the clerk’s call to 911.

“He’s only been in the States for about a year,” Mr. Abumayyaleh said of the teenage clerk, who is no longer working at the store. “It’s his first time probably ever calling the police.”

Mr. Abumayyaleh, who is Palestinian-American and has spent all of his 35 years in Minneapolis, said he had left the store about three hours before the killing. It had been a busy day, like most Mondays, Mr. Abumayyaleh recalled, but he was used to that. The store had always been in his family, and by age 10, he was helping out behind the counter. By 15, he was working there full time.

That night, just after 8 p.m., an employee called Mr. Abumayyaleh, crying and screaming, saying, “they’re killing him,” he recalled. He said he told the employee to record the scene and “to call the police on the police.”

Since then, Mr. Abumayyaleh said, he has been bombarded with hateful messages. He asked a member of a local violence prevention group to serve as a spokesman and issued a public statement condemning Mr. Floyd’s killing and saying that the store supported the protesters and shared their rage.

Things have been even worse for the teenage clerk, Mr. Abumayyaleh said, describing the aftermath as “a nightmare.” He also said that Cup Foods has been rethinking when its workers should call the police. Mr. Abumayyaleh said they will now only call 911 to report violence.

Mr. Floyd’s death was not the first time that Cup Foods has been drawn into a killing that drew national scrutiny.

When a 17-year-old boy went on trial for the 2002 killing of an 11-year-old girl, he insisted he was at Cup Foods and not at the scene of the crime. Senator Amy Klobuchar was the district attorney in Hennepin County who oversaw the first prosecution of the teenager, Myon Burrell, and an investigation by The Associated Press raised serious questions about the verdict and shadowed her presidential campaign.

Investigators never followed up with two people whom Mr. Burrell said he was with at Cup Foods during or following the shooting. Both told The A.P. they were with him.

Since the killing of Mr. Floyd, several residents have said they support the store and its owners. On Monday, Kendrick White, 26, arrived at the store to connect with some friends, something he has done for years.

“You see brothers, sisters, cousins, people from the neighborhood,” Mr. White said. “There are people who grew up here who have been coming here their whole lives.”

But everything had changed. The streets were barricaded off, and many nearby businesses were still closed. Visitors snapped photos as they wandered around the memorials and wilting flowers.

“We respect the fight, but it’s emotionally draining for those of us who have been in the heart of it,” said Ebony Wright, 38, who lives not a block away from the store and has been kept awake by people shouting into megaphones and playing music from speakers. “People who come down here don’t realize that there are people who actually stay here.”

So as you read the portion highlighted there are some discrepancies I noted in the testimony of the clerk.

In other emotional testimony, prosecutors for the first time detailed the incident that led to Floyd’s arrest and eventually his death — including security video from inside Cup Foods, the market where an employee called 911 to report the passing of a counterfeit $20 bill that resulted in officers responding to the scene.

Christopher Martin, 19, a cashier at the time, recalled how Floyd had come into the store and appeared to be “high” but functional. The surveillance video presented in court showed Floyd, dressed in a black tank top and pants, casually walking around the store with a banana.

Floyd is shown fiddling with his pockets and shifting back and forth in stretch-like movements as he interacts with two people in the store, including Morries Lester Hall — a friend who was a passenger in the car he was driving that day.

Martin testified that Floyd purchased a pack of cigarettes with a $20 bill that he believed to be fake because of its blue tint. Under store policy, employees who are found to have accepted counterfeit bills have their pay docked for the amount, Martin said, but he testified that he initially considered putting the cost on his “tab” as a favor to Floyd

He said a previous customer had tried to pass a fake $20 bill in an effort to “get over,” but he didn’t think that was Floyd’s intention.

“I thought that George didn’t really know that it was a fake bill,” Martin testified. “I thought I’d be doing him a favor.”

But Martin said he raised the issue with a manager who ordered him to go outside to where Floyd was sitting in a parked car and ask him to come back inside the store. When Floyd did not do so, another employee called 911 to report the counterfeit bill — a fateful call that would lead to the 46-year-old’s death.

Martin, who quit his job after Floyd’s death because he said he didn’t feel “safe,” recalled returning to work and noticing a commotion outside. Leaving the market to investigate, he found Floyd restrained, “motionless, limp” with Chauvin’s knee “resting” on the man’s neck.

Martin, who lived upstairs from Cup Foods, said he called his mother and told her not to come outside, and then he began filming the scene — a video he said he later deleted after watching Floyd’s body loaded into the ambulance that drove the opposite direction from the closest hospital, leading him to realize Floyd was probably dead.

Martin told the jury he felt “guilt” over Floyd’s death. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided,” he said.

So we have the idea that racism, stereotyping and discrimination is a white-black thing. Uh no. Many of the assaults on Asians here in New York are from Black individuals. And that history is often one well known and documented. We rule by making sure all marginalized groups keep the hate going and it works. Again racism and hate are not owned by one group of folk; however, it’s not called White Supremacy for nothing! What it is is poverty and the faux meritocracy nonsense that we continue to spout as a type of egalitarian notion of American prosperity. Many members of the Asian community can assure you that there is an economic divide there that parallels the wider society. But then again who is Asian? And what does that mean? Again African? What does that mean? We are not of one color, but one of many. And with that comes the confusion about Cup Foods or the Ferguson Market where Michael Brown took a pack of smokes. These are the markets and stores that cut across the landscape, often owned by faces of color and largely shopped by them. They are cornerstones of small businesses and have found themselves targeted by Police and by thieves, the pandemic may literally be the death of many. But that many bodegas do sell drugs it does make one ask, did Michael Brown exchange pot for smokes and in turn who called the Police and why? Oh wait they didn’t. Brown was stopped for failing to walk on a sidewalk. So no there was no robbery or crime.

We don’t know the story until we know the story and even people lie to protect their own interests, videos show a picture but they don’t always tell the story, they show the event and without audio we have to fill in the blanks. The story of Floyd is still occurring. Who were his friends that day in the vehicle with him? Will they testify? Why not? Again this is never going to be a full accounting or recounting of the events as even witnesses have shared how they felt and what they saw. A 16 year old girl, a 19 year old boy. A EMT, a MMA fighter and they all share one thing – shame and anger as you can do nothing regardless when you are in the loop of the system. Once a Police man has decided you are the criminal, his knee is on your neck, metaphorically or not. They just manage to do it to more men of color than most. And that is due to opportunity. Men and boys who don’t have jobs, or homes or places to be and income to earn so they are just there trying to make it work, and sometimes it doesn’t to fatal ends. And those are not always by cops but it they just do it with the law and the protections they offer. Must be nice to be a Cop.

Take a Bullet

I believe that was the expression Michael Cohen used when describing his work and relationship with Donald Trump.  Then Trump promptly called his fixer weak and Cohen concurred as the thrall of working with that moron clearly meant committing crimes, lying and defrauding people.  Cohen learned well from his master and let us only hope his leader follows him soon.  Wishful thinking.

But the expression now has a more sinister meaning as it appears that gun deaths are at all time high and that is where we are now with regards guns and a lack of control.  This does not include all the guns used to commit crimes and/or shootings that could end in injury short of death.  Here in the It City there are daily reporting of shootings where the individual is wounded but not killed.  Lets find out the additional costs associated with that regarding medical and rehabilitation that are likely passed onto taxpayers or to all of us via rising medical costs. 

US gun control
Gun deaths in US rise to highest level in 20 years, data shows

Forty thousand people were killed in shootings last year amid a growing number of suicides involving firearms, CDC reveals

Ed Pilkington in New York
Guardian
Thu 13 Dec 2018

A steady rise in suicides involving firearms has pushed the rate of gun deaths in the US to its highest rate in more than 20 years, with almost 40,000 people killed in shootings in 2017, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC’s Wonder database shows that in 2017, 39,773 people in the US lost their lives at the point of a gun, marking the onward march of firearm fatalities in a country renowned for its lax approach to gun controls. When adjusted for age fluctuations, that represents a total of 12 deaths per 100,000 people – up from 10.1 in 2010 and the highest rate since 1996.

What that bare statistic represents in terms of human tragedy is most starkly reflected when set alongside those of other countries. According to a recent study from the Jama Network, it compares with rates of 0.2 deaths per 100,000 people in Japan, 0.3 in the UK, 0.9 in Germany and 2.1 in Canada.

Jama found that just six countries in the world are responsible for more than half of all 250,000 gun deaths a year around the globe. The US is among those six, together with Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Guatemala.

That America is sapped by a continuing epidemic of gun deaths is hardly news. But the new CDC data raises concern that even within that relentlessly consistent story of bloodletting, the carnage continues to worsen.

While much of the public attention is on the intense tragedies of gun massacres in the US – 2017 saw the deadliest mass shooting by an individual to take place in the country in modern history, when 58 people died in the 1 October rampage on the Las Vegas Strip – in fact most suffering takes place in isolated and lonely incidents that receive scant media coverage.

Of those, suicide is by far the greatest killer, accounting for about 60% of all gun deaths.
2018 is worst year on record for gun violence in schools, data shows
Read more

Here too the age-adjusted rates are showing an alarming increase. In 2017, the CDC data shows, 6.9 per 100,000 – almost 24,000 people – killed themselves with a gun, up from 6.1 in 2010 and 5.9 in 2000.

Research by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence underlines that the tragedy of gun violence and suicides is not spread randomly across the country, but is concentrated precisely in those places where gun ownership is most prevalent and gun laws at their loosest. When the fund analysed the new CDC statistics, it discovered the highest rates of gun suicides occurred in three states which also have the greatest gun ownership – Montana (19.4 gun suicides per 100,000), Wyoming (16.6) and Alaska (16.0).

Alaska has the highest rate of gun ownership in the US, with 61.7% distribution. Wyoming (53.8%) and Montana (52.3%) are also at the top of the league table.

The statistics speak to a brutally simple truth. Studies have showed that suicide attempts often take place in a moment of hopelessness that can last barely minutes – which means that easy access to a firearm can in itself exponentially increase the risk of self-harm.

“People often think with suicides involving firearms that there’s nothing we can do to prevent this,” said the Education Fund’s policy analyst, Dakota Jablon. “But looking at these numbers it’s clear that simply having a lot of guns around increases the danger.”

Jablon pointed out that access to a gun in the home increases the odds of suicide more than threefold.

The CDC data shows that gun homicides account for a smaller proportion of the total of gun deaths, but here too there has been a worrying uptick in the past few years. The CDC figures show that 14,542 people were killed in firearm homicides in 2017, a rate of 4.6 per 100,000 that held steady on the previous year.

That was up from an equivalent rate of 4.2 in 2015 and 3.6 in 2010.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at http://www.befrienders.org

Trigger Warning

 Truly this is not for the faint of heart to read.  This describes the minutes that Nikolas Cruz entered his former school to wreak as much as damage as possible and had the building not been updated to make that effort impossible the outcome would have been worse.  And we know this as the Police and SRO stayed outside for whatever excuses, explanations, justifications or bullshit they could come up with that enabled Cruz to do the damage he did.

I have been quite critical of the way the Waffle House killer was handled. Found behind an Elementary School where it was likely he was all day, with only one Police Vehicle and Officer stationed outside in a school of over 1000 put many lives a risk.  We know he did have a firearm on his person but again given what was known at the time that could have been more.  So for over 33 hours the manhunt seemed utterly stagnant if not ludicrous if that woman who called 911 was clear about her observations which led him to be found.  I am unclear how anyone with any even rudimentary math skills could not map out an area, make some calculations on what was presumed to be a poorly attired man (at that point he was unknown if he was wearing full clothing to protect him from the rain) could run and hide within the time frame he left the Waffle House and in turn returned home to get whatever clothing and “other” items before absconding.  The stolen BWM the likely get away vehicle has already been returned to the Dealership nary a query to any neighbors to even gauge knowledge of the car and how it ended up in the parkling lot or even an attempt to see if they recognized the security camera footage of the alleged thief.  Great Police work.

So when you see or hear something say something.  I see incompetence and the solution is to arm Teachers.  Next Waffle House service personnel, sounds like a good idea.  And for the record I have never been to one as they are as ubiquitous here as Denny’s and my personal favorite that has since closed Sambo’s was in the Northwest where I grew up. They too had their own “issues” and hence why Sambo’s closed but these are notorious places to go and be drunk and disruptive and in turn find yourself a member of the club of patrons who made asses out of themselves.  That said the new climate of fear and resentment has changed that dynamic and Waffle House is no less  exempt as Starbucks for their “issues.”

So when the commission reviewed the carnage at Stoneman Douglas that day it showed a boy determined to kill and the chaos and lack of communication and security that enabled him to do so. From the fire alarms going off to the inability of Teachers to lock doors without going out into the hall to do so (which led to the one Teacher’s death) and lastly the failure of the Police to enter the building and enabled Cruz to vacate without incident shows that arming Teachers really is a stupid idea.  And sadly the one Father who I was hoping to never hear of again whose daughter died decided for whatever reason to sit on said commission and relieve his daughters last moments, was rightly furious.  Thankfully he stopped short of arming Teachers as he is very pro gun.  He simply cannot acknowledge that regardless of the mental health of the shooter the access to guns is something not denied, unlike say such as mental health care.

Again, had the self acknowledged not “hero” stopped the Waffle House gunman the patrons and the staff would have been senselessly murdered.  The father of this young man who returned said guns to his son after the FBI returned them to the Father with that caveat should be prosecuted as an accomplice.  And the gun laws need to be changed so that the FBI could have simply confiscated them and destroyed them as the owner was clearly too disturbed to retain ownership.  Funny they would take a pet from someone who exhibited similar behaviors, a gun not.so.much. 

Parkland Gunman Carried Out Rampage Without Entering a Single Classroom

By PATRICIA MAZZEI
THE NEW YORK TIMES
APRIL 24, 2018

MIAMI — Armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and more than 300 rounds of ammunition, Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February without entering a single classroom.

Instead, Mr. Cruz, a former Stoneman Douglas High student, carried out his carnage by walking down the hallways of the freshman building and taking aim at students and teachers trapped in the corridors or locked inside classrooms. Several times, he returned to victims he had already wounded to shoot them dead.

That was the chilling narrative that law enforcement provided on Tuesday in a minute-by-minute animation of Mr. Cruz’s movements through the school, the first time the police made public a detailed timeline of the gunman’s actions inside the building. The animation, played for members of a Florida commission investigating the mass shooting, showed that the gunman had time to pursue victims on all three floors of the building during his six-minute rampage.

At no point during the shooting did police officers enter the building or engage the gunman, even though there was an armed deputy from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office outside less than two minutes after the shooting began, and several other officers heard gunfire after they arrived. The law enforcement response is expected to be closely reviewed by a special public safety commission created by the Florida Legislature last month. Among its 16 members are three fathers of students killed in the shooting.

The commission’s first meeting, held on Tuesday in Coconut Creek, about 15 minutes from the school, laid bare a number of other areas under review. Emergency calls did not go to a single agency: The 911 emergency system sent cellphone calls from inside the school to the Coral Springs Fire Department, but landline calls from worried parents to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. The police radio system became overloaded during the response, forcing officers to use hand signals to indicate which classrooms had been cleared. And teachers could not lock their classroom doors from the inside.

“The teacher had to go out into the hallway and take the key and try to lock the door. That’s messed up no matter how you slice it,” said Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, the commission chairman. On the police radio problems, he added: “You had commanders that were going from car to car to car, from radio to radio to radio, trying to get on it.”

“We’ve got some hard questions that need to be answered,” he added. “Nobody here thinks it’s going to be easy.”

The animation, based on surveillance video and witness statements, showed floor plans, with dots to represent people. Victims appeared as green dots that turned yellow if they were injured and purple if they were killed.

According to the animation, there were two sets of fatal victims: 11 on the first floor, who were attacked so quickly that they could hardly take cover, and six on the third floor, many of whom were leaving their classrooms thinking a fire drill was underway. The gunfire created smoke that set off the fire alarm, contrary to early reports that suggested the gunman might have pulled the alarm himself to wreak chaos.

Students on the second floor knew to ignore the alarm and stay indoors because they heard the shots, the police said. The sound of gunfire apparently did not reach the third floor, and the students and teachers there had no way of distinguishing between a fire drill, which required evacuating the building, and a “code red,” which required seeking shelter.
Updated: What Happened in the Parkland School Shooting

A gunman armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 assault rifle and “countless magazines” killed at least 17 people at his former high school in Florida in February.

“That led to my daughter also being murdered on the third floor,” said Andrew Pollack, a commission member. He has said his 18-year-old daughter, Meadow, was shot nine times. The animation did not identify any of the victims. Mr. Pollack refused to refer to Mr. Cruz by name, instead calling him by his prison number, 181968.

On the first floor, the gunman shot from the door into classrooms 1214 and 1216, injuring or killing several victims, and later returned to the doors of both classrooms to hurt more people. One victim who entered the building during the shooting managed to take cover after being injured, but Mr. Cruz eventually found him and killed him.

Mr. Cruz fired from the hallway into two second-floor classrooms, the animation showed, but did not hit anyone.

On the third floor, Mr. Cruz fired indiscriminately into people assembled in the hallway, injuring several of them before turning his back and pausing, apparently to reload his weapon, said Detective Zack Scott, one of the lead homicide investigators on the case. That allowed a number of people to try to escape down a stairwell. Once the gunman realized they were getting away, he shot at them again, killing at least two of them. Four injured people remained in the hallway; he went back and killed three of them.

Sheriff Larry Ashley of Okaloosa County, a commission member, said the animation reminded him of a video game: “How many kills can I get?”

The gunman shot his way into a locked teachers’ lounge and tried to set up a sniper position from the windows, aiming at students rushing outside in what they thought was a fire drill. For about three minutes, he shot round after round into the glass — but they were hurricane-resistant windows. “The rounds fragment and splinter immediately, and they do not find targets,” Detective Scott said.

Outside, several sheriff’s deputies arrived on campus after reports of shots fired, but they could not determine where they were coming from. At least two officers from the Coral Springs Police Department did realize the shooting was taking place inside the freshman building, but did not enter. One of them, Bryan Wilkins, said in a firsthand account released on Tuesday that he was advised “by an unknown BSO Deputy taking cover behind a tree, ‘he is on the third floor.’”

Unlike the older buildings on the Stoneman Douglas High campus where classrooms line open-air hallways — resembling a motel — the freshman building was enclosed and allowed the gunman to operate without being observed from outside.

“There’s a reason why he picked Building 12, in my view,” Sheriff Gualtieri said of Mr. Cruz. “This was a unique building. He was unchallenged. Unfettered.”

The state commission, which has subpoena power, is expected to issue its findings and recommendations by Jan. 1. Commissioners plan to go to the campus to walk around the building and see the place where surveillance video showed that Deputy Scot Peterson, the school resource officer, took cover outside during the shooting, in apparent violation of protocol requiring that law enforcement try to confront an active shooter. Mr. Peterson resigned after Sheriff Scott Israel placed him under internal investigation eight days after the shooting. Several other deputies also are under investigation for failing to immediately enter the freshman building.

Sheriff Israel, who has defended his “amazing leadership” of the office, faces a nonbinding vote of no confidence on Thursday from the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association, a labor union that did not represent Mr. Peterson. The union president, Jeff Bell, cited the sheriff’s handling of the Parkland shooting as one of the reasons deputies have lost confidence in their leader. Sheriff Israel has dismissed the vote as a bargaining tactic from a union seeking a pay raise.

Locked and Loaded

As I noted yesterday the Students in many schools walked out again to protest gun violence and honor the victims of Columbine.  If anything that these kids in Parkland are they are diligent and determined.  I utterly respect and admire them but they are not the students I know, this is more like the ones with which I am familiar.

It was a miracle he encountered a Teacher he liked, he expressed remorse and had a clear understanding of what he was doing was misdirected rage and he is rare breed.  The reality is that this young man is the exception not the reality and again regardless he had a gun. That is the real issue that a boy had a gun, came from an abusive background and undoubtedly a history of problems in his wake.  And again no one cared enough to stop the train before it left the station. 

He fired a shotgun into a classroom door, police say, then said ‘sorry’ to the injured student
by Kristine Phillips
The Washington Post
April 21 2018

The young man in a white jail jumpsuit, handcuffed and shackled, looked past the throng of reporters pointing microphones toward his face, barely opening his mouth as he answered questions.

“I shot through the door,” he said, looking at a female reporter who asked about his connection to the student who had been shot.

“I didn’t see anyone,” he told a man with a video camera who asked why he shot the student.

“I didn’t see anyone,” he said again, this time, to the female reporter.

Sky Bouche was being taken to jail that Friday evening, hours after authorities said he drove to a high school in Ocala, Fla., carrying a shotgun hidden in a guitar case. The 19-year-old, a former student of the school, went to the bathroom, where he put on a tactical vest and gloves. He then shot one round from his sawed-off shotgun through a classroom door, injuring one student, investigators said.

The shooting happened at about 8:30 a.m. Friday, on the 19th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. It also came just months after a gruesome shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., reignited a nationwide debate over guns and created some of the loudest voices calling for gun control: the students themselves.

Students at Forest High School, like many others across the country, had planned a walkout Friday morning to protest gun violence, in observance of the Columbine anniversary. Instead, they experienced their own traumatic event.

As he made his way toward the police car flanked by five uniformed officers, Bouche told reporters he’s “sorry” to the wounded student.

“It doesn’t make it better, anyway,” he said.

Bouche is facing several charges, including terrorism, aggravated assault with a firearm and possession of a firearm on school property, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office said Bouche went to the high school “with the intention of causing harm to the students and to invoke fear in the community.”

Bouche told detectives that he had initially planned “some type of shooting” on April 13 but changed his mind, the sheriff’s office said.

“He then began researching different types of mass shootings and chose to target a school because he thought it would gather more media attention,” the sheriff’s office said. “Bouche also expressed to detectives that he felt ignored, and made statements that he could potentially conduct another shooting in the future.”

Bouche, in a jailhouse interview with the Ocala Star Banner, said that he bought the shotgun without a background check from a private seller online a week after the Parkland massacre. Shooting, he said, was his only way out of a violent home life.

“It’s not anger, it’s not hatred, it’s an adrenaline rush that, you know, I’m about to do something,” he told the paper. “I spend most of my time in a room alone so I’m getting this rush, so that’s what I was feeling.”

A sheriff’s deputy, who also was a resource officer at the school, arrested Bouche minutes after he fired that one shot, authorities said. The wounded student was reported to have non-life-threatening injuries.

One of the teachers, Kelly McManis-Panasuk, said she saw Bouche in the hallway near her classroom just after a screaming student came running by. McManis-Panasuk talked to Bouche, who was her student before he dropped out.

“His hands were up, and he said he wanted to be arrested,” McManis-Panasuk told the Ocala Star Banner, adding that Bouche told her he is mentally ill. “I asked, ‘Did you shoot a gun?’ He said he did shoot a gun.”

The Washington Post was unable to reach the teacher Saturday, but she told the Ocala Star Banner that her former student had been abused by his family and that this time, “he was done.”

“He wanted to be arrested,” McManis-Panasuk said. “I really don’t think he meant to shoot the gun. I think it really was an accident. He just wanted someone to listen to him.”

Bouche, wearing a striped red jail uniform, appeared in court for the first time Saturday, the Ocala Star Banner reported. He’s been placed on suicide watch.

The shooting at the county’s second-largest high school sparked a small panic in the city of nearly 60,000 people.

Parents rushed to the school to pick up rattled children, only to be directed elsewhere by sheriff’s deputies. The sheriff’s office and other officials tried to squash rumors that there were other shooters at other schools. Other schools in Marion County were placed on alert as a precaution, Woods said.

One picture, which appears to have been taken from inside the school, showed a tangle of desks, chairs and books piled up against a door.

And Onto the Next

I wrote in the last post that I took a couple of days off as I was struggling with my views towards children and especially those of color as well as Teachers,  particularly women and those of color during my encounters in Nashville Public Schools.

I have said these are schools of such dysfunction and disorder that I kept thinking that if I tried harder, was more open minded and simply just stopped walking in the door on guard it would be different.  I cannot as I simply do not trust the people here.  There is a type of rage that is so surpressed that you feel it the minute you walk in and with one who is working through their own personal anger it is a formula that simpy doesn’t work.

For now this has to work.  I have yet to schedule surgery and have had so many varying problems with regards to health that the flexible schedule works and I have to somehow figure out how to let go and just show up, babysit and walk out.  And on many days I do.  But then I heard about this and thought “there by the grace of God go I.”

The incidents of violence and troubles in these schools are just a Google search away. I have been accused of hyperbole when discussing the schools here but then again who actually looks at endless police reports and news on schools in their city?   I do as a matter of recourse and did the same in Seattle for the same reasons I do here, to protect myself.  Clearly one cannot protect oneself enough.

This story is again a demonstration that all the school choice reformers have no clue on how to fix but hey Betsy DeVos maybe they just need more Jesus.  Or that gun that would be used on the errant Grizzly can be used on the crazy kids.  We have seen many Security Officers wrestle, strong arm and taser kids so why not a handgun.  Makes perfect sense.

Then this came today.   The irony is that this was a charter school and that they are supposedly so on task with their kids unless they aren’t. And how did the kids have the weapons?  Again gun control an issue in Florida seems to be not one unless it is a terrorist or a lunatic or a kid.  Then again their Governor talking about the shooting at the airport said “these things don’t happen in Florida.”  Well unless they are in Gay bars or on the streets, Trayvon, or parked cars, or movie theaters. Sure.

The kids were 13 and 14 respectively. They told kids to wear white under the guise that they would not be shot while telling others to remain home. The white shirts were not as signs to exempt them as potential victims,  they were flag.  The kids later told authorities that as blood shows up better on white. Yes its time for me to get the fuck out education. I want nothing to do with it.

Jan 27 2017
Students Sound Alarm and Avert Florida School Massacre

Students at The Villages Charter Middle School in Sumter County, Fla., told educators about a rumor that potentially averted a school shooting.

by Corky Siemaszko
NBC News

A potential tragedy at a central Florida charter school was averted when students sounded the alarm that two of their classmates were planning to “shoot up the school on Friday.”

The whistleblowers alerted authorities that the accused teenagers had warned certain students at the Villages Charter Middle School to wear white shirts and say the safety word “Eugene” to avoid getting shot, according to a police report released by the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office.

A 13-year-old suspect “was intercepted by authorities as he attempted to arrive” at the school on Wednesday, the sheriff’s office revealed in a press release.

“At the time, he acknowledged conversations involving the plot and referenced the mass shootings at Columbine High School,” the sheriff’s office said.

The teenage suspect also implicated a 14-year-old boy who was “quickly” located at the school, which is located in the town of The Villages, about 60 miles west of Orlando.

“The student informed officials that the two students had planned an attack which included what they would use as a signal to open fire,” according to the sheriff’s office. “No weapons were found on either of the students or in their bags or lockers.”

But firearms were found in the Fruitland Park home of the 13-year-old and in the Wildwood home of his alleged accomplice — one of them an AR-15 assault rifle, according to the police report.

Both students are now charged with conspiracy to commit murder and local law enforcement is breathing a big sigh of relief.

“The Sumter County Sheriff’s Office is grateful for those students brave enough to speak out about the plot,” the sheriff’s office said. “Their heroic actions may have prevented a deadly tragedy and loss of precious lives.”

The sheriff’s office did not identify the students who went to authorities and the school referred all calls back to law enforcement.

Under questioning, the suspects gave a tearful confession during which the younger teen said he had been depressed, according to the police report.

“I just want to die,” he told investigators and insisted he had been joking about staging the shooting.

But under questioning, the teenage suspects also admitted they were supposed to meet at the gym and start shooting.

The signal to open fire? A dropped pencil.

The April 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado by two disgruntled students has been the inspiration for other massacres.

Among them the murders of 20 first-graders and six staffers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut by another troubled young man armed with an AR-15 assault rifle.

So Nashville

To give you an idea of how staid Nashville is, I found this 6 year old article after talking to someone about the “Gun Dealing Rabbi.” I had no idea he was of local fame/lore and yet apparently he has run for office and is the go to nut job here in Nashville about conservative politics.

 I met this fucktard, and trust me he is a whack job of high order, a couple of months ago.   During our meeting over coffee at the Farmer’s Market he shared his thoughts that Nashville has gotten too big (okay on that alone I knew he was utterly ignorant as the minute I hear that shit and the whole county talk I shut down) but wait for it..  he is considering moving to Montgomery, Alabama.  After almost laughing in his face (but not, the man carries a piece) I thought,  irony or sheer fabrication from this fucktard?   I am not sure but a right wing crazy moving to a home of Civil Rights has to be a joke right?

What I also found interesting was that in the varying articles I have now since read about this lunatic my suspicion that he was a liar of high order has since been confirmed, as he claims he possesses  varying degrees from varying acclaimed Colleges, his varying work experience or not, where he has lived or not,  but clearly he has a history for a need for attention, including trolling the internet and running for office.  He is the Jewish version of Donald Trump only less rich and even less interesting. 

I elected to not get into a debate with him I could tell immediately from the get up/costume  (imagine someone in the role of Tevy’a in Fiddler on the Roof or the new Borat movie (not the standard garments worn by Hasdic Jews nor what he usually wears himself as I found in other photos)  to the way we met (via an online personal ad and he is quite married) I suspected set up so I was polite and distant while sipping coffee.  But it was from him I derived the expression, “that’s so Nashville.”  It is my way of laughing at if not with the absurd idiocy and constant contradictions that populate the city/town/whatever this is.  And too bad the shop is closed as it would be a great tourist site just for his costume alone. 

I hope he moves. Period. The people of Alabama might deserve him. The deep South is already full of nuts one more can’t hurt. Well this one can as he carries and sells guns to those who do. He must be making a KILLING right now (pun intended) as we have a high rate of violent crime of late all related to guns (Nashville is up there with Chicago among others for violent crimes).   And yes he sold guns to a man who shot cops.  He is utterly unapologetic in his right wing nut job fantasies.  I find it interesting that he elects to avoid the Tevya costume when posing for standard media photos.  

Ah the rich get richer and guns apparently make you rich if you are on the right end of them.

Is Orthodox Jewish gun dealer Bill Bernstein an obnoxious right-wing agitator or a lovable curmudgeon? Either way, he’s a progressive’s worst nightmare.

Glorious Bastard
Jack Silverman
Nashville Scene
Mar 18, 2010 4 AM

The loud pop of a semi-automatic rifle shatters the quiet of a still winter day. The sun is shining through the motionless branches of bare trees in a large wooded area, reflecting off the sunglasses of a slender, dark-haired German. He takes aim once more, then fires.

Just a few yards away, a slightly round, white-haired man lifts his weapon to his shoulder and eyes the target in his scope. This man, however, could have come from a Central Casting file marked “Hasidic Jew.” He’s wearing a black hat, and his peyos — the long sidelocks of hair that Orthodox Jewish men grow — are wrapped around his ears to keep them out of his way.

He squints, steadies his arms and fires. Moments later, just several yards away, the German sets his sights on his quarry, exhales deeply and squeezes his trigger, as he’s been taught to do.

No, it’s not a scene from Inglourious Basterds — even if they did see the film together. The setting is Cheatham County, Tenn. The two men, who’ve wandered off to indulge their mutual love of AR-15 assault rifles, have become unlikely friends. The German is filmmaker Gandulf Hennig, whose well-received Gram Parsons documentary Fallen Angel was a highlight of the 2006 Nashville Film Festival.

And the other man? That’s Bill Bernstein, your run-of-the-mill right-wing, Ivy- and Oxford-educated, Orthodox Jewish East Nashville gun dealer and online provocateur. He’s extremely opinionated, yet calm and unflappable. Soft-spoken, yet outspoken. A tad shy, though never one to shy away from a good debate. And one of the more eccentric and polarizing individuals you’re likely to meet in the Bible Belt’s buckle.

Bernstein does not suggest the stereotypical “gun nut” of anti-handgun straw-man arguments — a yahoo itchy to open fire for the hell of it, anytime, anywhere. That’s not to say he doesn’t share much in common with those who fall under that umbrella. He thinks Obama is a disaster. He agrees with Rush Limbaugh. (He has no opinion of Bill O’Reilly because he hasn’t owned a TV in many years.) He loves goading liberals, and if the Tennessee legislature proposed to let kindergarten teachers pack heat in the sandbox, he would probably offer an MNEA discount.

But his calm demeanor, grad-school vocabulary and dry wit aren’t typical of the breed. He’s a progressive’s worst nightmare — a hard-line, pro-gun Tennessee conservative who doesn’t come off like a country bumpkin or raving lunatic. At least not in person.

When asked why people should have guns, he replies, “The bigger question is, ‘Why shouldn’t they?’ Guns do lots and lots of different things, just like any tool. Some provide self-defense, some provide sporting opportunities, some provide hunting. … Whatever activities that particular gun implies, people should have the right to do that.”

As for gun-control legislation, he says, “Every gun restriction has been a failure at the purpose, which was to lower crime. There has not been a single measure that’s been proven to reduce crime anywhere. Statistics are clear on this. … The only thing it does is it gives politicians more control over people’s lives, and that’s a bad thing. And criminals are not deterred by this.”

Don’t even ask him about the hot-button topic of Tennessee’s so-called “guns in bars” legislation.

“God, it is not ‘guns in bars,’ ” he says, with almost an audible groan. “The law was never about guns in bars. In fact, specifically, it excluded any place you had to be 21 to get into. That’s a bar. It’s about guns in restaurants that serve alcohol. The law already exists that you cannot be consuming alcohol and in possession of a gun. And the feeling was that if that’s illegal, why would you make somebody leave his gun in his car if he’s just going to go eat dinner with his family? Because it’s more likely that the car will be broken into and the gun stolen than if he has it on him.”

Many of Bernstein’s ideological opposites say that even though he hasn’t swayed them, he’s an unusually reasonable — and well-reasoned — advocate. Some who find his views intolerant nevertheless find him surprisingly tolerable. To others, that only makes him more infuriating. They say he’s an online bully who fires off bellicose provocations on the East Nashville listserv just to bait people.

Either way, Bernstein has a stockpile of something pro-gun advocates have often lacked, ironically enough: rhetorical firepower. And at his headquarters, he puts his muzzle where his mouth is.

The nondescript brick building at 1048 East Trinity Lane, just a couple of blocks east of Metro Nashville Police Department’s East Precinct, is mostly known to locals for the beloved meat-and-three Southern Bred. But along the building’s right side, next to Dynamic Creations hair salon, is the Eastside Gun Shop. If you open the door and find the iron security gate locked, that means Bill Bernstein is back in his office doing paperwork, making calls or stirring up trouble on the Internet.

It’s usually only a few seconds before he buzzes you in. He’s 48 years old, medium height with a mild middle-age paunch. Though he appears to be in average shape for his age, his mostly white hair and nearly solid white beard suggest someone several years older.

Step inside his gun store, and it’s clear that his extensive education — undergraduate work in English and classics at Vanderbilt, graduate work at Oxford, the University of North Carolina and Penn — didn’t include any courses in interior design. Eastside Gun Shop is the retail equivalent of a post-college slacker’s first bachelor pad.

His threads aren’t any flashier. Each day, it’s the same uniform: black yarmulke, black pants, black sport jacket, black shoes and white shirt, under which can be seen the tassels of his talis koton, a poncho-like religious undergarment. It’s the standard male wardrobe for the Hasidim, a strictly observant sect of Orthodox Judaism.

The store’s counter features a glass display case with a variety of handguns, among them a full-size 1911 .45, a Glock 27 and a Heckler & Koch (which Bernstein jokingly refers to as “Hitler Cock”). To the left of the munitions display is a paper target with a human silhouette. Further to the left, a small sign hangs on the wall, featuring a photo of Barack Obama and the NRA logo. The caption below reads, “Firearms Salesman of the Year.”

Cerebral and pious, Bernstein is not the type to obsess over clothes or posh decor, mundane concerns of the material world. What he does obsess over is guns. Stick around Eastside Gun Shop, and you’ll find Bernstein is not alone.

To your typical gun-averse liberal, the almost erotic infatuation some customers exhibit toward weapons seems perverse — the product of violent fantasies, maybe, or at least phallic insecurities. And to be sure, there’s the occasional guy who leers at the merchandise like he’s checking out the latest Barely Legal at the Purple Onion.

But for the majority of the almost exclusively male clientele — who ooh and aah over Bernstein’s various semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, shotguns and military-style rifles — a less deviant but no less passionate impulse emerges. More than anything, these gun lovers’ adoration recalls the way guitar collectors geek out over a ’59 Les Paul, or motorcycle freaks effuse over a BSA Gold Star.

It’s an analogy that Bernstein acknowledges, and one that partially explains his fondness for guns.

“Let me show you this 1911,” Bernstein says to a customer. “This is a Citadel, made in the Philippines. Every time I get one they’re better than the last one. Excellent slide-to-frame fit. Feel how smooth that is.”

The customer, a slim 60-ish man who plays bass with a couple of old-school country acts, takes the pistol in his hand. “Wow.”

“Feel the trigger? I’ve had Colts that didn’t feel that good,” Bernstein says. He sounds like a kid strumming a ’61 Strat at Gruhn Guitars.

The customer’s eyes zero in on an AR-15 on the wall. “I ain’t ever shot one of these,” he says, walking closer.

“You’ve never shot one?” Bernstein says in mild disbelief. “Oh, they’re real pleasures. No recoil at all. They’re loud as hell. You can feel the breeze coming out of them, but against the shoulder there’s nothing. I took our rabbi’s 60-year-old mother-in-law, who had never shot a gun before, out shooting, and of all the guns we shot, she liked my AR the best.”

For every five or six customers who wander into Eastside Gun Shop and reinforce gun-owner stereotypes — older, conservative-looking white males with rural accents, younger black males — someone will walk in defying such preconceptions.

On a late winter afternoon, two twentysomething men walk into the store. Sporting clothing that splits the difference between college kid and hippie, they look like guys you’d see at a Dave Matthews concert. They both have longish hair, and one seems to be toying with white-boy dreadlocks.

As if on cue, they start discussing the previous night’s concert by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio at the Ryman. Descriptors like “awesome” and “killer jams” enter the conversation, and they mention that they’re in a band of their own. They’re looking for a particular handgun, a Sig P238. Bernstein doesn’t have one, but he calls another store to ask if they carry it.

After the men leave, the unimpressed Bernstein pokes fun at their weapon of choice, the way a Harley dealer might dis someone asking about a Yamaha. Then he pulls back. Maybe he feels he was a little hard on them. “I’m sure it’s a fine functioning gun for what it’s designed for,” he says.

Another afternoon, a man walks in, hoping to buy a gun he saw the previous week. He’s Shawn Hancock, a 38-year-old country music video editor, and he looks like a typical East Nashville music type — someone more likely to sip coffee at Bongo East than shout down Jim Cooper at a town hall meeting.

He’s obviously looking for something that isn’t there. “Damn,” Hancock says, dejected. “You sold the P226 too?”

“It went this morning,” Bernstein replies.

“Someone bought that shotgun today too, right?” Hancock asks, already sensing the answer. “Because I came in with cash in my pocket.”

“Yeah, about an hour ago,” Bernstein says.

“And I came ready,” Hancock says, tugging on a wad of cash in the pocket of his jeans.

“I can help you out of that,” Bernstein says, perking up. “Take a look at that Mauser.”

“I don’t want it,” Hancock fires back, playfully pouting.

“You don’t want the Mauser?” Bernstein says, his tone suggesting Hancock would be a fool not to buy it.

“No,” Hancock says.

“Geez!” Bernstein exclaims. No use. Hancock isn’t biting.

Though a fiscal conservative, Hancock describes himself as socially liberal. He never thought he’d own a handgun, but some shady incidents near his neighborhood, around Fatherland and 14th, changed his mind. He says Bernstein made him think hard about whether he really wanted to own a handgun.

As Hancock recalls, “I said something like, ‘I want a handgun, in case I need to shoot someone in the leg.’ And his immediate response was, ‘Don’t buy one. If you’re not ready to put him down, then don’t have a handgun.’ That’s paraphrased.”

“God, I’m so smart,” Bernstein says, chiming in. “That’s exactly right. I would say that today. … No one wants to shoot someone. But are you prepared to shoot somebody?”

That’s probably not a question Gandulf Hennig heard much before meeting Bill Bernstein. And yet he’s become one of Bernstein’s close friends, not to mention a steady, locked-and-loaded shooting companion. The saga of how a German filmmaker and an Orthodox Jewish gun dealer wound up in Middle Tennessee shooting AR-15s began when their paths first crossed two years ago.

Hennig, who grew up near Cologne, Germany, and spent most of his adult life in Berlin, had been living in Nashville for a couple of years at the time. While working on Fallen Angel, he’d spent time interviewing people in Nashville, and eventually he decided the city would be a good home base. (He’s currently working on a Merle Haggard documentary slated to run on PBS’ American Masters series in July.)

The motivation for Bernstein’s move to Nashville was a little less grand. Given the slim job prospects in his chosen field, the Bronx-born classics scholar was working as a paralegal at a big Philadelphia law firm — “the worst job I ever had,” he says. As his wife Heddy drove him one morning, he witnessed something that dramatically altered his life path.

“I see this old fat bum down at the end of the block,” Bernstein says. “And as I’m watching him, he proceeds to lean over a fire hydrant, drop his pants, and have projectile diarrhea all over the sidewalk.”

That in itself didn’t bother him. “I’d felt like doing that myself many times,” Bernstein says. “But what bothered me was that everybody walking by pretended like nothing unusual was going on. And I said to [Heddy] right then, ‘That’s it, we’re leaving.’ “

That was 1992. Fourteen years later — after a short-lived career as a carpet salesman (“Very difficult for a guy who was shy”), nine years in the mortgage business and several more home-schooling his son — Bernstein opened Eastside Gun Shop. If not for Gram Parsons and a homeless guy with the runs — and their mutual enthusiasm for firearms — the two men might never have met.

“I grew up in a completely gun-free country,” Hennig says in fluent but accented English. “Only cops and robbers have guns where I come from. So I was somewhat interested in them. It was almost exotic to me, and I think a friend told me, there’s a gun store around the corner. So I went and visited him, and we made fast friends right away. He’s very interested in German culture, and I’m quite interested in American culture, so we just hit it off.”

If you were a screenwriter pitching this story to Harvey Weinstein, you might say, “A heartwarming tale of reconciliation in which a Jew and a German help heal a nation’s psychic wounds.” Grandiose? Yes. Simplistic? Certainly. Absurd? Why, of course. (So much so that you might just sell it.) Still, Hennig says he got a startling lesson in their cultural differences the first time Bernstein invited him over for dinner.

“I wondered why he didn’t pick up the phone when I was running late on a Friday night,” Hennig says. “Well, it was Shabbat dinner. I didn’t know that.” On the Sabbath, it’s forbidden for Orthodox Jews to talk on the phone, ride in a car or conduct business, to name just a few of the proscriptions.

“That shows you how little Germans know about Jewish culture,” Hennig says. “If you go to school in Germany, you get taught a lot about the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and of course that’s all important and good. But we somehow neglect to tell our kids what [Jews] actually are, beyond being victims.”

For Hennig, who is completely nonreligious, the experience was eye-opening. “It was just an amazing experience to me,” he says. “It was really nice, how they invited me into their home, and explained everything to me, all the ritual stuff. Which is still really interesting to me how you can spend that much time of your day, every day. But that’s a different subject.”

Bernstein’s other invitation was far less holy. “Bill asked me if I wanted to go to some property where you can legally shoot in the woods,” Hennig recalls. “I crack myself up thinking about that because it’s so against anything I was raised on. And Bill brought assault rifles, so we were firing AR-15s.”

The absurdity of the image is not lost on Hennig. “I felt like this is really like Monty Python,” he says. “A German and a Hasidic Jew standing in a forest in Tennessee and shooting assault rifles together. This is just too weird to be true. And I tremendously enjoyed it.”

Given the pleasure Hennig takes in shooting guns, he must be a right-wing NRA type, right? Wrong. “I am neither pro-gun or anti-gun or anything like that,” he says. “I’m just more like the kid in the American candy store, where guns are freely available. I guess it’s like an American going to Germany and going 180 miles [per hour] on the Autobahn.”

His own politics, Hennig says, skew liberal. “I wouldn’t say [Bill and I] disagree, because we don’t argue over things,” he says, “but we have different worldviews on a lot of things.” He even betrays a slight twinge of lefty guilt over his newfound hobby. “You kind of know something’s wrong with it, but since it’s so freely available … I don’t have a — what’s the expression? A dog in the fight?”

Since they’re so vastly different — upbringing, politics, religious beliefs — you might suspect they’d butt heads. But that’s not the case.

“It’s never a problem,” Hennig says. “Not because we don’t go there, but because we both like debating, I guess. And that is something — if I may be the European smart-ass for a second — that I feel I am kind of missing in this country more and more. It was always, America is a great country, and you can stand for whatever you want. And now it’s like you’re either with us or without us, depending on what side you’re on.

“That is something that I tremendously enjoy: that I can have a friendship and an active intellectual debate with somebody like Bill, although we know we will never be on the same side of the fence. We like each other more for that.”

Not everyone on the other side of the fence shares Hennig’s sentiments. In various corners of cyberspace, Bernstein has earned a reputation as an extreme right-wing agitator, promoting his views with commentary that runs the gamut from articulate to inflammatory to downright offensive.

As much as he likes to razz lefties, Bernstein has been known to poke fun at the hardcore paramilitary-wannabe crowd. Over at tngunowners.com, where some members lust after weapons used by Navy SEALs and such, Bernstein ruffled some feathers when he listed an ad for a classic deer rifle he was selling: “Winchester 30/30 lever-action deer rifle, used by Army snipers in Panama.” Though he was obviously joking, he was booted from the site for false advertising.

But on the East Nashville listserv, where the readership is far more ideologically diverse, Bernstein has become a notorious lightning rod. With nearly 5,000 subscribers, the neighborhood message board serves mostly as a place to sell guitars, find lost dogs, talk about area restaurants or get the name of a good plumber. When political topics come up, though, a small but very vocal minority of members starts sparring. And Bernstein, who posts under his own name, is often in the center of the fray.

Never shy about displaying his considerable knowledge, Bernstein often infuses his posts with historical context and dry humor. He’ll pontificate about the Manchu Dynasty’s opium problem, or offer lengthy expositions on the history of capitalism.

But when he goes for the jugular, he’s far more succinct. In a recent thread about health insurance, one commenter bemoaned the phenomenon of some grandmothers having to eat dog food. Bernstein’s response: “Dog food? That sure sounds better than the shit sandwich the Dumocrats are serving up these days.” When the topic of right-wingers comparing Obama to Hitler came up, he replied, “It’s obviously false. Hitler was surrounded by competent people and was able to achieve much of his agenda.”

A couple of belligerent Ted Nugent quotes Bernstein used as taglines were the last straw for many listserv members. One post featured the sign-off, ” ‘That Obama’s a piece of @##$, and I told him to suck on my machine gun.’ — Ted.” Another Bernstein comment featured the following farewell: ” ‘I said to Hillary: Why don’t you ride one of these, you worthless whore.’ — Ted Nugent.”

Frequent listserv contributor Mike Adkins, an East Nashville landscaper, isn’t shy when expressing his feelings about Bernstein. He writes, “Closet racist, hateful, not well-informed, ignorant, fearful, given to lash out in an immature moronic fashion when presented with simple questions. … There’s a lot of folks around here doing positive things that merit a story, not fucking Bernstein. I say this with a sense of sympathy towards him.”

Another regular commenter who goes by the name of “landotter” shares similar sentiments: “He’s a religious fundamentalist arms dealer who pushes fear and racism, then offers weapons as a solution to that which he foments. Can you imagine the attitude towards him if he was a fundie Muslim? Might be a bit different. Giving him more exposure is shameful.”

Asked if he’s racist, Bernstein says, “The only people that are bothered by language that might be racial are people that are unsure whether they’re actually racist or not, and they’re afraid that they might be. People that know that they’re not, really aren’t bothered by it. People that are actually racist aren’t bothered by it either.” His adversaries would undoubtedly point out that he didn’t answer the question.

So is he racist? Bernstein admits that one day shortly after the store opened in 2006, he had a couple of black customers in what he describes as “ghetto attire,” and that he felt threatened at first. “But you know it went fine, they were OK, and they left and I never had a problem with them. It evolved into, not what people look like, but how do they talk, and how do they present themselves. In neighborhoods they live in, if they dressed like you and me they’d probably get beaten up on a daily basis. … It’s a state of mind, not a color.”

And he’s felt threatened by white customers too, including a couple of skinheads who come in from time to time. “I think to myself, if I met these guys in a dark alley, it would not bode well for me,” he says.

He says he has plenty of regulars who are black — some older, some retired Metro cops. He gets Asian, Hispanic, even Arab customers. He’s become friendly with one of them, a Muslim from Yemen. “Hey, they’re here because they’re trying to get away from all that crap in the Middle East,” he says.

And the Nugent quotes?

“Personally, I think Ted Nugent is a nutjob,” Bernstein says. “But he’s our nutjob. … It’s fun to have people saying stuff that most people might think, but are generally too polite to say it. It’s a naughty pleasure, if you will. … [It’s good for] a little shock value.”

And does he think Hillary Clinton is a whore?

“They all are.” he says. “If you’re a politician there’s a certain amount of that that you have to be.”

To be sure, Bernstein has supporters on the East Nashville listserv — folks with pseudonyms like Wryker, King Jack, Rembrandt and Grizzly Reeves, who share either his political views or his twisted sense of humor. But more fascinating are the ideological opposites who have developed friendships with him.

“I can easily say I disagree with almost every political position he has, but I’m still one of his biggest fans,” says web consultant Laura Creekmore, who started the listserv almost 10 years ago. “He really comes off as a curmudgeon, on the listserv in particular. Several people have said he’s going to be upset [when the Scene story is published] because word’s going to get out that he’s a softie. And he really is.

“I first emailed with Bill several years ago when he was causing some ruckus on the listserv, and I had to email him and say, ‘You know what? You’ve got to tone it down.’ And we had a really nice conversation. He comes across personally as a very reasonable person but he has this habit of putting these inflammatory posts on the listserv. I really think he just likes to stir things up. And he’s really good at it!”

Creekmore even got together a collection of donated baby clothes when Bernstein and his wife were expecting their third child. “It was really funny to meet somebody in person that you’ve had a somewhat antagonistic relationship with,” she says, “but to meet them at a very human moment of their life. I guess all that is just to say I see beyond the gruff exterior and I love Bill,” she says, laughing.

Guitarist, songwriter and hardcore vegetarian Damon LaScot, who stirs up his own share of controversy on the listserv, shares a similar fondness for his ideological nemesis. “Let’s see … can I opt for ‘love to hate him’?” writes LaScot, who posts under the name “tradershort.” “Aside from the fact that he is a dead ringer for NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, Bill is an Orthodox Jewish, gun-totin’ redneck from the BRONX! To me, he is a complete and total enigma … and I gotta admit, because he is so unique, I gotta like him.”

Bill Bernstein: lovable curmudgeon, or fear-mongering, racist reactionary? Seeking answers, we followed him someplace even more sacred than his gun shop or rifle range — home.

It’s Saturday, Feb. 27, the 13th day of the Hebrew month of Adar, and the Bernstein family is preparing to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim. In the kitchen of a blue 1970 split-level ranch in Bellevue, Bernstein’s wife Heddy is busy preparing hamantaschen, the traditional pastry named for Haman, the Purim story’s chief antagonist. Like all married Orthodox women, she wears a head covering, and between her attire and her unadorned yet appealing appearance, you could almost imagine her preparing dinner over a wood-burning stove in an episode of Little House on the Prairie.

Daughter Gertrude, who will turn 17 in April, is doing homework at the kitchen table. (When boys from school come to visit her, Bernstein likes to say to them, “I’ve got a shotgun and five acres of land. You won’t be missed.” The boys don’t always get the humor.) Son Viktor, 15, strolls in from his bedroom, where he’s been on the computer. At about 7:30, everyone gathers at the table. Gustav, who’s 3-and-a-half, comes and sits on Heddy’s lap.

Heddy passes out copies of the Megillah, the biblical narrative of the Book of Esther that includes the story of Purim, and then distributes graggers, small hand-held wooden or plastic noisemakers. The Purim saga, simply put: Haman wants to kill all the Jews, but Queen Esther and her uncle, Mordechai, manage to foil the plot. During the reading of the Megillah, it’s traditional to shake the gragger at every mention of Haman’s name (and there are many).

A guest asks Heddy why she has no gragger. “Germans are known to be very staid,” says Heddy, whose father was 4 when his family left Germany in 1940, among the last Jews to escape. “So there’s an ongoing joke that when they hear the name ‘Haman’ they just,” and she knocks the table with her hand.

Bernstein begins reading from a small rolled scroll. Like most Torahs, the Megillah Bernstein is reading has no vowels. (In Hebrew, the vowels are made up of dots and lines that appear under the consonants.) When Bernstein gets held up on a word or mispronounces something, Viktor, who’s reading along on a version that has vowels, corrects him. Gustav, who has Down syndrome, gets restless and whines periodically, and Heddy patiently caresses and soothes him.

Thirty-one uninterrupted minutes later, Bernstein finishes the story. Heddy starts bringing out trays of hamantaschen in a variety of flavors: marzipan, poppy seed, cherry, strawberry, blackberry and lekvar (prune butter). After a guest says how much he likes the poppy-seed version, Bernstein laughs and says, “Don’t take a drug test after this.”

While Heddy is serving food, Gustav climbs up on Bernstein’s lap. “This little guy is so cute,” Bernstein says, beaming. “A little tired and crabby though.” Heddy explains that Gustav is still recuperating from some oral surgery he had a couple of days earlier.

Somehow the topic of Inglourious Basterds comes up. “Unfortunately, someone here isn’t interested in seeing it,” Bernstein says, looking at Gertrude.

“I’m sorry, I would rather not watch people getting hurt and getting blown up,” she fires back.

“But they’re getting hurt in German,” Bernstein says.

Soon Bernstein mentions that on Sunday, the family will go to a Purim carnival at Beit Tefilah Chabad, the Bellevue synagogue where he worships.

“We are?” Gertrude asks, surprised.

“We’ll have dinner here and then show,” Bernstein says. Then he turns to the guest to explain: “The thing on Purim is to drink a lot. That’s kind of important to the holiday.”

“So Rabbi’s going to get wasted?” Gertrude asks in disbelief.

“No,” Bernstein says. “I’m going to get wasted. And then I’m going to go. That’s a lot of fun, because you show up and you can say anything.”

“You want me to drive?” asks Gertrude.

In unison, her parents shout, “Yes!”

Though Bernstein worships every Saturday morning with Rabbi Teichtel at Beit Tefilah Chabad, he says he doesn’t really buy in to the Lubavitch strain of Judaism to which that group belongs. “It’s a geographical issue,” he says. “I live in Bellevue, that’s what opened up, that’s where I went.”

So is he Hasidic?

“It depends on how you want to cut it. I’m sort of Hasidic. But most people that look like this,” he says, pointing at his clothes and beard, “would not live in a place like Nashville. In fact, when I said I was going to move here, I had friends say, ‘I would never move to a place like that.’ There’s a huge fear of the outside world, which I don’t share.”

He describes his religion as “a weird mishmash of practices and outlooks. Some things I consider myself very modern on. Some things I’m probably fairly right-wing on. We don’t have a TV in the house, which is kind of a right-wing Orthodox position. But I don’t do it so much because of that. I do it mostly because I think TV is for idiots.”

And most Hasids would never send their children to public schools. Gertrude goes to MLK Magnet School, Viktor to Big Picture — both public. (Viktor was home-schooled through eighth grade.)

There’s no telling whether Bernstein’s religious fervor had anything to do with it, but it’s hard not to be struck by the closeness and warmth of his family. A 17-year-old girl and 15-year-old boy, at home on a Saturday night for a religious ritual, with nary a hint of complaint or restlessness?

“We worked very hard at that,” Bernstein says, “What you’re seeing is the result of a lot of work.”

Of all the blows the family has faced, none was harder than the news that the Bernsteins’ newborn had Down syndrome. “I was terribly anxious right after he was born and we got the diagnosis,” he says. “I was almost nonfunctional.”

The diagnosis wasn’t a complete surprise. An ultrasound during Heddy’s pregnancy revealed that there were some markers for Down syndrome. “They said we could go ahead and do the full genetic scan,” Bernstein says, “but there would be some danger to him by doing it. And I thought, let’s say it comes up, then what? Then you make the decision whether to terminate the pregnancy.

“And I thought about that for a brief second, and first off, that’s a problem for Jewish people to do anyway. We don’t believe in that. But more than that, life is very wonderful. And to deny a person that is, to me, unthinkable.”

In the end, Bernstein welcomed the child and his unique traits into the crazy quilt of his home life.

“We knew he was going to have disabilities,” Bernstein says. “You know, the other two have disabilities too. Viktor is never going to be a basketball player. Gertrude is never going to be a country music star. They don’t have that kind of talent. That doesn’t mean their lives are worthless.”

It’s an unseasonably warm Sunday morning in early March, a welcome respite from the worst winter Nashville has seen in 30 years. In other words, it’s a beautiful day to whip out weapons and light shit up.

Which is exactly what draws Gandulf Hennig and Bill Bernstein out to Tennessee Clay Target Complex. But what draws the two men to each other is far more intriguing.

Spend some time with this curious duo, and it becomes apparent that, more than anything, it’s their similarly twisted senses of humor that bond them. Clearly, they’ve found a perfect audience in each other — a German who can poke fun at his ancestors’ grim legacy, and an extremely religious Jew who can joke about Hitler.

Hennig even downloaded “Hava Nagila” as a ringtone for calls from Bernstein. “I thought he’d think it was funny, and he did. But I’m standing in a long line at the post office one day, and had forgotten about it, and the phone rings and starts going, ‘Daaaa Daaaa, dah-dah-dah,’ ” he says, mimicking the song’s melody. He got some curious stares.

And curious stares aren’t in short supply here, either, as the two men take turns shooting at orange clay targets flying across the sky — Henning with a Mossberg 500 12-gauge, Bernstein with a Browning SX Skeet. Though the two men share a sartorial single-mindedness about the color black, they couldn’t look more incongruous. Bernstein is in typical ballistic-rabbi mode: black pants/black sport coat/white shirt/black shoes. Hennig, meanwhile, looks like he just stepped offstage at Springwater: black leather jacket, black jeans, black Chuck Taylors.

Under the leather jacket is an olive green T-shirt with an image of a fighter jet and the words “COMMIE KILLER — Better Dead Than Red!” Though it’s what’s known in hipster rock circles as an ironic T-shirt, the irony is lost on the clientele here. “I wear it to a shooting range, and people say, ‘Hell yeah!’ ” Hennig says, laughing.

As the morning eases into afternoon and the two men begin packing up their rifles, the conversation turns once again to the time they went to see Inglourious Basterds together. Hennig says that in the scene where Hitler and his fellow Nazis are getting an ahistorical Big Payback from the Jews, all Bernstein could do was make comments about the guns they were using. “And when the girl shoots the young German Audie Murphy type guy, and he shoots her back, Bill said, ‘That’s what happens when you carry a .25. You need a bigger caliber.’ “

Bernstein remembers the scene well: “She shoots him like five times and he falls down, but he doesn’t die, and he has enough life in him to turn around, get up and shoot her instead. That’s what happens when you carry … actually, it was a .32, a PPK .32.”

And much like Basterds director Quentin Tarantino, Hennig and Bernstein have concluded that maybe there’s some therapeutic value in facing that gruesome chapter of history with gallows humor.

“When I go into the office here to pay, Bill calls it ‘reparation,’ ” Hennig says.

“And sometimes I call it, ‘paying it forward for the next time,’ ” Bernstein jokes morbidly.

The Jew and the German laugh as one.

G is for Gun

Another day and another kid with a gun. As I write this I am at the alternative school just over a block from my home. It is filled with kids who have been arrested, been expelled or simply cannot make it in conventional school. To my knowledge there are no Doctors of Psychiatry on hand, no licensed Therapists, no medical professionals or skilled trained individuals that would be needed in a school such as this. There wasn’t in Seattle at the Interagency’s of which this is similar.

The only difference is that the Welcome Center from which you enter has a metal detector. And we have a full time Cop and Parole Officer assigned to the school. Are they there every day? I doubt it.

This was the first time I have ever been truly afraid. I am in a basement hall, I have no keys and for the first part of the day no one bothered to give me a number to call for emergency’s to the office nor actually correct attendance sheets. That and no actual lesson plans but some notes on the board, pretty much rounded out my morning. So when the schedule I had was wrong, I had to finally figure out when the kids go to lunch. When that time came I was thrilled until one young man refused to leave. He was insistent I give him candy, then insisted that I eat lunch with them as I am “supposed” to and this went on for 5 minutes until I saw a Teacher walk by and I yelled help. She got him out and then informed he was a liar and not to believe a word he says.

Then another young man at the end of the last period before my beloved prep came in and stood in the door asking how my day was. I said fine and he needed to leave so I could shut the door and do my work. He just stood there and finally removed himself and I shut the locked door, of which I have no keys, it locks on its own. So if I leave I have to get a VP to unlock it and the bathroom. Which after today I am beginning to see the whole bathroom lockdown thing.

And now the door knocks and once again another young male demanding candy. I am afraid, very afraid. This is not what I wanted my life and work to be. And then I read this about a school in an adjacent county (I’m finally getting the whole “county talk”) and thought she is braver than me.

A teen took a gun to his middle school. This counselor talked him out of killing teachers and a cop.

By Derek Hawkins
The Washington Post
September 30 2016

The 14-year-old boy arrived at Sycamore Middle School Wednesday morning ready to carry out a deadly plan.

But there was one person he knew could talk him out of it, according to police. So after his first-period class at the school in Ashland, Tenn., he went to see her.

Molly Hudgens, the school counselor, took the boy into her office and immediately sensed something was wrong. He asked some questions Hudgens found alarming and told the counselor he was having “issues,” police said.

Do you have a gun? Hudgens asked.

Yes, he said, and showed her the loaded .45 caliber pistol tucked under his clothes. He told her he wanted to kill teachers and a police officer, The Tennessean reported.

Just hours later, on Wednesday afternoon, a different 14-year-old boy in South Carolina would open fire on an elementary school playground, injuring two children and an adult.

But Sycamore Middle School avoided such tragedy. After a 45-minute conversation in her office, Hudgens persuaded the teen to give up his gun, Cheatham County Sheriff Mike Breedlove said Wednesday.

“She did something even the most experienced law enforcement officer might not do,” Breedlove said. “Had she not been there, it could have been very different.”

The boy, who has not been identified, was arrested and charged with possession of a weapon on school grounds and threatening employees. He is being held in a county jail pending his next hearing.

What happened at Sycamore is rare. In most school shootings in recent memory, gunmen have attacked without clear forewarning, and guidance counselors, friends or family members are seldom given a chance to step in and stop them. In Wednesday’s shooting in South Carolina, authorities say the gunman killed his father before opening fire at the school.

People in the community have hailed Hudgens as a hero.

Hudgens, who said she’s been with Sycamore for almost 19 years, wasn’t available for comment Thursday night. But in a video statement released by the Cheatham County School District, she called the boy a “student in need” and said that her training in deescalation helped her persuade him to hand over the weapon. She said the boy didn’t name any specific students or teachers as targets.

“Sycamore Middle School is safe,” she said. “I’m proud of the actions of our faculty, staff and students … in maintaining an atmosphere of calm.

In a news conference Wednesday, Breedlove said the boy brought the gun from home but he declined to comment on what problems prompted him to take it to school. During the conversation in her office, he said, Hudgens tried to discreetly text security to let them know about the situation, but she couldn’t get a clear signal from inside the room. When she did notify police, Sycamore Middle School and a neighboring high school were placed on lockdown. Breedlove said the gun never left her office until police arrived.

“It was Ms. Hudgens that defused the whole situation,” he said. “She had a lot on her shoulders.”

On her school profile page, Hudgens says she started working at Sycamore in 1999 and joined the counseling department in 2006. She says in her bio that she hopes students find the counseling department to be a “warm environment” where they can go for “advice, direction, and encouragement.”

Jessica Williams, a friend of Hudgens, told the Associated Press that she wasn’t surprised by Hudgens’s actions Wednesday.

“She’s the type of person that would be easy for her to get through to somebody,” Williams said. “She’s a very loving, caring, motherly personality.”

Got Guns?

Well hell if I know and apparently no one, anyone, knows either.  Good to know or not in this case. Really?

How many guns are in America? A web of state secrecy means no one knows

A majority of states actively restrict access to information on gun permits, the FBI must destroy background checks and Congress bans funding for research

The Guardian UK
Jessica Glenza in New York
Tuesday 27 October 2015

The American Public Health Association will join the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in a national summit in Washington DC to tackle gun violence. They describe the issue as “one of the biggest public health issues facing America”.

But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the state of gun research.

Ask one of the dozen or so active firearms researchers in the United States, and they won’t be able to answer the fundamental question: how many guns are in America?

In addition to a 1996 ban on federal funding for firearms research that is cited as one of the most onerous obstacles to treating gun violence as a public health issue, states have passed dozens of laws in just the past five years that make once-public data on gun ownership confidential.

The best available data comes from a private survey by the University of Chicago, not the federal government, and that is still an estimate, finding that 79 million US households have guns. Other surveys have estimated there are between 270 and 310m guns.

“There are lots of holes in actually having any data on the number of guns in our communities,” said Fred Rivara, head of pediatrics at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center and Seattle Children’s Hospital and a firearms researcher for almost three decades. “You look at, well, are people with mental health problems more likely to have guns, or are people with past problems more likely to have guns, we don’t know because we don’t have that data.”

States have not made the job easier.

From Florida to Maine to West Virginia to Wyoming, a variety of provisions have exempted concealed-carry permit data from public disclosure or stopped permitting altogether. For researchers, these provisions make it impossible to study guns within a given zip code or cohorts of owners who might have run-ins with the law.

“The fact of the matter is we know how many people own cars, we know the identity of every car in the United States … Yet we don’t know who owns guns, and we don’t know how many guns there are in the United States,” said Rivara.

“When I first started in gun research back in 1987, we could actually go down to the state capitol in Olympia [Washington] and identify through state records at that point who owns guns,” said Rivara. “That ability was subsequently removed.”

As of 2013, 28 states, including Washington, don’t allow access to gun permit records. Some states, such as Vermont, Wyoming and Kansas, removed permitting requirements. Iowa has worked for years to make gun permit data more secretive. Two counties in the state lent the legislature a hand by destroying all permit applications. New York tightened public access to gun permits after a newspaper north of New York City published a map of permit holders’ names and addresses. In the past five years dozens of laws have exempted concealed-carry permits and applications and gun licenses from public disclosure or made them confidential.

Take one state as an example: Louisiana.

Louisiana has the second-worst firearms death rate in the country, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, topped only by Alaska. In 2013, 19.3 people per 100,000 died because of a firearms-related injury for every 100,000 people in the state. That rate is equivalent to 14.7 people dying at a single New Orleans Saints football game (where the stadium seats roughly 76,000).

The same year, in addition to repealing state bans on machine guns, legislators made concealed-carry permit records confidential and allowed for issuance of lifetime concealed-carry permits. At its most basic level, that means researchers will never know how many concealed-carry permit holders, including those licensed for life, there are in the state.

But that wasn’t far enough for legislators in the state. Louisiana lawmakers also made it a misdemeanor criminal offense to release information about concealed-carry permit holders – levying a $500 fine and up to six months in jail for any department of public safety and corrections employee who releases such records, and a $10,000 fine and six months in jail for anyone else who releases that information.

Firearms dealers in Louisiana are also not required to retain background checks or sales records, meaning that if a dealer chooses not to record such transactions there is no way for researchers (or anyone else) to trace guns or oversee the efficacy of background checks.

Some federal data has also disappeared. A firearms trace database operated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives once used to publicly shame gun retailers who sold to criminals was made confidential in the early 2000s. And the FBI is required to destroy all background checks.

These state and federal restrictions have compounded challenges for the already-barren field of gun research, which has been barred from federal funding.

In 2013, following the massacre of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, Barack Obama signed an executive order that was supposed to lift the ban on firearms research. Congress, however, turned down the president’s request to fund the research.

In firearms violence research, this has been the state of affairs since 1996. At a time when gun violence was among the highest in American history, Congress defunded firearms research and passed a provision many researchers believe had a deep, chilling effect on the pursuit of answers.

At the time, a series of papers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention became a hot-button issue after scientists began to view gun violence as a public health issue.

One such paper was co-authored by Rivara in 1993. Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and found that gun owners were more likely to be the victims of homicide, than protected from it. This research drew particular ire in Congress.

“We have here an attempt by the CDC, through the [National Center for Injury Prevention and Control] a disease control agency of the federal government [trying] to bring about gun control advocacy all over the United States,” Arkansas Republican representative Jay Dickey told colleagues during a hearing on his namesake amendment.

The rider, stipulating that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the [CDC] may be used to advocate or promote gun control”, would stop research into gun violence for the next two decades.

The CDC, Dickey argued, was trying “to raise emotional sympathy for those people who are for gun control”. Congress also yanked $2.6m in funding from the CDC, even as 1.1 million Americans fell victim to gun crime that year alone (In 2011, 439,100 were victims).
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Even Democrats acquiesced to Dickey’s amendment. Lobbying colleagues to restore funding, New York Democrat Nita Lowey told House colleagues: “Our amendment preserves language in the bill which prohibits the CDC from advocating or promoting gun control.”

“The NRA opposes the CDC injury control research because it wants to suppress the awful truth about gun violence. The NRA simply does not want the facts getting out. It is no more than censorship. It must be stopped,” Lowey said.

Despite her efforts, Dickey’s amendment passed, and firearms research ground to a halt. Nineteen years later, in the wake of a mass shooting inside a church in Charleston, South Carolina, Lowey lobbied for the removal of the same rider she had once been willing to live with to restore funding.

“Preventing research because you worry about the outcome is cowardly,” she said at a hearing, before Congress re-upped (again) the requirement that the CDC not lobby for gun control.

Now, despite $130m in “violence research” grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health, no studies explicitly looked at firearms. Nor did any of the $59m in grants devoted to “youth violence” or the $16m that went to “youth violence prevention”.

“The lack of research has been so detrimental because not only do we not have the research funding, another thing I think that’s really important is that it’s been a huge blow to the trained workforce,” said Susan Sorenson, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who studies gun violence as a public health issue.

In the United States, researchers are required to generate their own grant funding for projects, including for lab time, salaries and equipment.

“If there’s no funding, that researcher simply is not going to have a job, so they go into fields that are more heavily funded – cancer, tobacco, HIV – simply because they too need to be able, like all humans, to eat, to have a place to live,” Sorenson said.

As scientists struggle to rebuild a field Sorenson called “nascent”, some surprising funding streams have stepped forward.

The Seattle city council funded research studying whether people who go to the hospital for gunshots were likely to later be the victims of violence (they are). The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation is cited by researchers as one of the only private foundations willing to provide money for research, and firearms researcher Dr Gary Wintemute donated about $1.1m of his own money to fund his research.

“Better data, and data systems, are needed. Interventions must be evaluated, and those evaluations must help guide further efforts,” wrote Wintemute in an editorial for the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Until we revitalize firearm violence research, studies using available data will often be the best we have. They are not good enough.”

Always the Mother

I am not sure what to make of this article which firmly lays the blame on the Mother of the maniac who shot and killed the students in Oregon last week.

Well someone is at fault and let’s take a look at some of the problems with this tragic tale.

A woman obsessed with owning guns and firing them. Nothing wrong with that many parents have guns, teach their children gun safety and use and then well it may or may not work out. Ask this 11 year old about that:

Tennessee: Boy Accused of Killing Girl Over Puppies

By REUTERS
OCT. 5, 2015

An 11-year-old boy was in custody Monday on charges that he killed an 8-year-old neighbor with a shotgun because she would not show him her puppies, the authorities said. The unidentified boy was talking to three girls who were outside the window of his mobile home on Saturday night and asked one of them if he could see her two new puppies, but she refused, said Sheriff G. W. McCoig of Jefferson County said. The boy retrieved his father’s 12-gauge shotgun, shot the girl in the chest from the window, and then threw the weapon outside, Sheriff McCoig said. The girl, Maykayla Dyer, was a third grader at White Pine Elementary School. The boy was in fifth grade at the same school, where counselors were on hand Monday to help the other children deal with the news, Sheriff McCoig said. The shooting took place in White Pine, a town of about 2,200 people about 42 miles east of Knoxville. The boy was charged with first-degree murder as a juvenile. A judge at a detention hearing on Monday determined that the boy will remain in a juvenile facility in Knoxville. He will appear in court again on Oct. 28, at which time the judge may decide whether he should be tried as a juvenile or as an adult.

There are many stories of children who seemingly have unrestricted access to guns which is odd if all gun owners are so responsible as we are told then why does a minor child have unfettered access?

Then we have a mother who was a mommy blogger. You know the type and they are annoying to say the least harmless at best. But it is clear that she should be minding her own backyard. Sad really, as I am sure she wanted to find connections and support and that online seems to be the only type for parents of children with special needs once they are past school age.

Then we have a father who knew none of this. He had not seen his own son or spoke to him about his gun obsession for over two years. But now demands laws to prevent this. Really dude we are not your minder of your adult child.

Now we have mental illness vs Autism. Not the same. However Autism can have violent episodes that can bring usually harm to the self first then others. Of course if I had a child who exhibited all the tendencies and aggression that this young man appeared to do to the point of being institutionalized, I am going this is not someone who should have access to an arsenal of weaponry.

And we have Donald Trump. Man he is everywhere. Can we blame him for this as well?

There is so much here but what is sad is that is was the Mother who had no real help or support system and network in which could legitimately look into her son’s behavior, his attitudes and assist her in making wise conscientious decisions about her own love of guns, her son’s fascination and in turn ensure that he had some connection to community that does so much with ensuring the productivity and worth of those who struggle with what it is like to be “normal.”

I know many young adults who have Autism and they are bright lights that just blink furiously but they can be a part of society. So who is to blame here? I have no idea but rather than go down this road let’s look at gun laws, let’s see what we are doing for families that have a disabled and/or mentally challenged family member and what are we doing other than looking for someone to blame.

Oregon Killer’s Mother Wrote of Troubled Son and Gun Rights

By JACK HEALY, MIKE McINTIRE and JULIE TURKEWITZ
The New York Times
OCT. 5, 2015
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ROSEBURG, Ore. — When a downstairs neighbor of Laurel Harper learned there was a gunman on the loose at Umpqua Community College here, he ran up to tell her, knowing that her son, Christopher Harper-Mercer, was a student there. Like other parents, Ms. Harper started to set out in a desperate search, fearing her son could be hurt.

“She was very upset,” said the neighbor, who asked not to be named, citing his family’s privacy.

But as she was leaving, the sheriff and his deputies intercepted her and broke the news that her son was the gunman.

Ms. Harper, who divorced her husband a decade ago, appears to have been by far the most significant figure in her son’s troubled life; neighbors say he rarely left their apartment. Unlike his father, who said on television that he had no idea Mr. Harper-Mercer cared so deeply about guns, his mother was well aware of his fascination. In fact, she shared it: In a series of online postings over a decade, Ms. Harper, a nurse, said she kept numerous firearms in her home and expressed pride in her knowledge about them, as well as in her son’s expertise on the subject.

She also opened up about her difficulties raising a son who used to bang his head against the wall, and said that both she and her son struggled with Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. She tried to counsel others whose children faced similar problems. All the while, she expressed hope that her son could lead a successful life in finance or as a filmmaker.

Ms. Harper did not respond to messages seeking comment.

In an online forum, answering a question about state gun laws several years ago, Ms. Harper took a jab at “lame states” that impose limits on keeping loaded firearms in the home, and noted that she had AR-15 and AK-47 semiautomatic rifles, along with a Glock handgun. She also indicated that her son, who lived with her, was well versed in guns, citing him as her source of information on gun laws, saying he “has much knowledge in this field.”

“I keep two full mags in my Glock case. And the ARs & AKs all have loaded mags,” Ms. Harper wrote. “No one will be ‘dropping’ by my house uninvited without acknowledgement.”

Law enforcement officials have said they recovered 14 firearms and spare ammunition magazines that were purchased legally either by Mr. Harper-Mercer, 26, or an unnamed relative. Mr. Harper-Mercer had six guns with him when he entered a classroom building on Thursday and started firing on a writing class in which he was enrolled; the rest were found in the second-floor apartment he shared with his mother.

Ms. Harper’s posts were found on Yahoo Answers, a site where she spent hours over the last 10 years, mostly answering medical questions from strangers, occasionally citing her own difficulties raising a troubled child. Her Yahoo profile had a user name of TweetyBird, accompanied by a cartoon image of a nurse. In many of her postings, she included her email address, which public records link to Ms. Harper.

Ms. Harper and Christopher’s father, Ian Mercer of Tarzana, Calif., divorced in 2006 and were separated years earlier. Mr. Mercer told CNN last week that he thought the nation should change its gun laws, saying the massacre “would not have happened” if his son had not been able to buy so many handguns and rifles.

Neighbors in Southern California have said that Ms. Harper and her son would go to shooting ranges together, something Ms. Harper seemed to confirm in one of her online posts. She talked about the importance of firearms safety and said she learned a lot through target shooting, expressing little patience with unprepared gun owners: “When I’m at the range, I cringe every time the ‘wannabes’ show up.”

In addition to talking about guns, Ms. Harper, 64, was a prolific commenter in online forums dealing with medical issues, frequently answering questions from strangers with a tone of empathy and concern. She expressed having expertise in autism, saying that both she and her son — whom she never identified by name — had Asperger’s syndrome.

Consoling another parent seeking help with disruptive behavior by an autistic child, Ms. Harper said that her own son “was, among other things, a head-banger” when he was younger and was initially given a misdiagnosis of attention deficit disorder. But over time, he had learned to cope and was doing better, she wrote: “I was in your shoes and now my son’s in college.”

She expressed frustration with people who questioned how successful a person with autism could be, noting: “I have Asperger’s and I didn’t do so bad. Wasn’t easy (understatement) but it can be done.” She also said she had “dealt with it on a daily basis for years and years” because of her son, who she said was progressing well.

“He’s no babbling idiot nor is his life worthless,” Ms. Harper wrote. “He’s very intelligent and is working on a career in filmmaking. My 18 years worth of experience with and knowledge about Asperger’s syndrome is paying off.”

Alexis Jefferson, who worked with Ms. Harper at a Southern California subacute care center around 2010, said the gunman’s mother sometimes confided the difficulties she had in raising her son, including that she had placed Mr. Harper-Mercer in a psychiatric hospital when he did not take his medication.

“She said that ‘my son is a real big problem of mine,’ ” Ms. Jefferson said in a telephone interview. “She said: ‘He has some psychological problems. Sometimes he takes his medication, sometimes he doesn’t. And that’s where the big problem is, when he doesn’t take his medication.’ ”

Ms. Jefferson said Ms. Harper had described bringing her son to the Del Amo Behavioral Health System in Torrance, Calif., near where they had lived before moving to Oregon.

“He calls and says, ‘Take me out, take me out,’ ” Ms. Jefferson said, recalling her conversations with Ms. Harper. “She didn’t take him out until the doctor said he was ready to get out.”

One piece of advice Ms. Harper dispensed online for a parent with an autistic infant was to start reading to the child as soon as possible and to use expressive gestures. An online posting from six years ago included the unlikely revelation that she used to read to her son a book by Donald J. Trump, the real estate mogul now running for president, who recently suggested that childhood vaccines cause autism — a claim Ms. Harper dismisses in her postings.

“Fact: Before my son was even born, I was reading out loud to him from Donald Trump’s ‘The Art of the Deal,’” she wrote. “And as for the ‘gesture effect,’ I was practically a mime. And now my son invests in the stock market along with me, turns a profit and is working on a degree in finance. His language and reading skills are phenomenal. I tell you this because it’s not too late for you to start helping your daughter.”

It is not clear where — or if — Mr. Harper-Mercer had pursued such a degree. Little has been disclosed about his studies at Umpqua. In California, Mr. Harper-Mercer was enrolled at El Camino College from 2010 to 2012, but officials there would not confirm whether he obtained any degree or certification. Both son and mother moved to Oregon about two years ago; Mr. Mercer said he had not seen either of them since then.

Neighbors in the apartment building here where the mother and son lived said that Mr. Harper-Mercer rarely strayed far. They would see him getting the mail or walking down the road to buy a soda at a market, but said he did not appear to have a job in Roseburg and stayed home most of the day.

At night, when his mother went to her nursing jobs, a neighbor whose bedroom was directly below Mr. Harper-Mercer’s frequently heard him pacing until 3 or 4 in the morning, the neighbor said. She complained to her own family about the noise, but never mentioned it to Mr. Harper-Mercer or his mother.

In an interview in their ground-floor apartment, the neighbor, a young woman, and her mother echoed other people’s memories of Mr. Harper-Mercer as quiet and distant.

They said Ms. Harper had occasionally invited them upstairs for a visit, or when she was writing a complaint letter to the apartment managers about the smell of marijuana smoke or late-night guests at another neighbor’s apartment. She would ask her son to say hello, but he rarely chatted with them.

“Chris would just be in his room,” the young woman said.

The young woman’s mother, who immigrated from the Philippines, said that she had shared Filipino meals with Ms. Harper, and that Ms. Harper had taught her how to drive. She wrote a letter of support when Ms. Harper was applying for a $1,500 scholarship to continue her nursing studies. The family still has Ms. Harper’s thank you card.

“Once again, thank you so very much for helping me with my scholarship application,” the note says. “Now I can attend the nursing program without having to stress out about tuition!”

The day of the shooting, the young woman from downstairs rushed home to check on her toddler, and saw Ms. Harper standing outside talking with the police. It was Ms. Harper’s son who had killed nine people and wounded several others before exchanging fire with the police and then taking his own life.

“She was still in denial of it,” the young woman said. “She just handled it like a nurse would — like it was another person’s life