Two people dead at one of my hometown’s assisted living facilities plus one more in critical condition. The suspect is in custody following a brief pursuit and a no resistance surrender in front of the Sheriff’s office.
I’m just stunned. One of the victims was an acquaintance of mine and the shooter is a friend of a friend. Things like this are ‘big city’ happenings. They shouldn’t be found out here among the peaceful and friendly citizens of small town 'Merica.
This is utter horseXXXX!
We’re all affected by this and this is a product of all our choices. I’m a gun owner and this incident has done nothing to make me question that choice. That doesn’t mean I don’t bear the responsibility for that choice. I don’t know what the solution is to gun violence in America but I’m getting very tired of dealing with people who argue “The Second Amendment give me an absolute right and anyone who disagrees with me is either wrong, a traitor or trying to victimize me!”
The solution will only be found when people decide that so many innocent deaths is too high a price to pay for the right to have easy access to guns. It’s very simple in my opinion.
Just as you wrote, too many gun owners are basically saying, “Tough. It’s my right.” But as a gun owner, you have a critical role to play in agitating for change. You can help convince your countrymen - on the edges with things like waiting times, and in the long term with by advocating either a constitutional amendment or a SCOTUS re-interpretation that binds for generations (and with your vote too).
Ahh, yet more impeccable logic from the Smartest, Hippest, which is why I know you will join me in demanding that alcohol and automobiles be immediately banned due to the little old lady down the way being run down by a drunken driver last Thursday night.
Also, we lefties have been advocating for mass transit, dense development near mass transit stops, and an absence of parking requirements in order to create walkable cities and towns, and reduce dependence on the automobile. And it’s been pressure from the left that’s made cars so much safer than they were decades ago. Fatalities per passenger mile are about 1/4 of what they were in the early 1970s.
And over the past few decades (this one’s been across the political spectrum) we’ve made drinking and driving a LOT less acceptable. Remember a joke from the mid-1980s that went “Don’t drink and drive - you might hit a bump and spill your drink.” People thought that was funny back then. Try to get laughs with that nowadays - good luck; you’d just get dirty looks.
So yeah, we want to make the sort of progress with guns that we have with alcohol and automobiles. So if your argument is “what about alcohol and automobiles,” that’s my argument too!
Still nothing official but the local rumorsmith (crafting fine skuttlebutt since 1920) reports that the shooter and his partner were in the middle of a bitter divorce and that he accused the targets of making the situation worse.
At the shooter’s arraignment, it was reported that this fine person was a previously convicted felon who could not legally possess a weapon.
