It’s embarrassing, but amazingly few of those responsible seem to be embarrassed.
Robert E. Crimo III, 21, the “alleged” shooter in the homicidal attack in Highland Park, was as unstable as its possible to be without being locked up. But that’s the problem: he was never arrested, despite officers seizing 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from his home in 2019. Crimo also posted music videos online that seemed to refer to mass shootings, some including cartoon images of victims spurting blood. In one video, a gunman lies in a pool of blood near police cars. But are the gun-phobics going to assert that social media posts, songs and videos are sufficient to justify psychiatric observation and the elimination of Constitutional rights? Hip-hop artists who rap about rape and cop-killing will be easy targets for that movement.
The shooter was able to legally buy several guns in Illinois, and passed two background checks, because he had never been arrested None of the measures in the heralded gun control law recently passed by a bi-partisan Congress would have prevented this tragedy, so having been shown with unusual speed just how pointless “do something” legislation is when the idea is to stop criminals and the deranged, the anti-gun forces are now organizing for a “do something else” push.
This primarily involves lying, with a lot of fear-mongering and grandstanding mixed in.
Kamala Harris was shouting yesterday that there is no reason for anyone to own “weapons of war.” The high-powered rifle that Crimo used is only a “weapon of war” if one regards all guns as weapons of war. The news media kept referring to Crimo’s gun as “an assault-style” rifle. To most of the public, that implies an automatic weapon. You can listen to the sounds of the shots on the videos and it is obvious he wasn’t shooting an automatic weapon. He was pulling a trigger for each shot, and fired an estimated 70 times.
Other elected officials made the usual dishonest or ignorant pronouncements.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker issued a statement: “Unfortunately, every time a mass shooting occurs it serves as a stark reminder that our gun laws often fall short of the rigorous standards that feel like common sense to most Americans.” Yes, its “common sense” again! All clear what that means? What feels like common sense is that sane, responsible, law-abiding citizens shouldn’t have their right of self-defense curtailed to restrain the conduct of disturbed, desperate people who don’t blink at breaking laws, especially since the laws curtailing those rights are likely to be carelessly enforced by government bureaucrats anyway.
Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (also D, of course) topped Pritzger for meaningless rhetoric, saying “there are too many guns on our streets," as if the guns were roaming the state shooting people by themselves. A single gun in the hands of a murderous wacko is "too much": what is your solution, Juliana? This: “As we struggle to process all that is happening today, we must again say ENOUGH,” Stratton said. “We must enact common-sense gun laws, stricter policies, and put resources in place to build the safe, healthy communities everyone deserves.” "Common sense gun laws" translates to "I have no clue what would work, but Guns Bad." "Stricter policies"! Oh. Got it. We'll get right on that.
On ABC, an enterprising reporter actually interviewed John Hinckley Jr. about his views on gun control. He’s sane now, see, so he’s an expert on gun policy. “Obviously,” the Jodie Foster fanboy said, the mentally ill shouldn’t be able to own guns. And what is mentally ill, John? Who gets to decide? Is sending bad Dylan rip-offs as love songs to an actress sufficient to mark someone as too “ill” to purchase a gun? Wait a minute: why are we listening to you?
The State Police have explained Crimo’s access to guns by noting that “at the time of FOID application review in January of 2020, there was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the FOID application.” How far can the law expand the “clear and present danger” standard to cover citizens like Crimo without getting into the business of pre-crime, which is totalitarian playground. The State Police said that Crimo’s father had sponsored his application for the permit. How often have we seen variations of that scenario with mass shooters? But here’s the problem: the people who know someone best (or should) are often conflicted and blinded by conflicts of interest, but if the judgment about whether a citizen can arm himself or herself is only to be made by people who don’t know him at all, the chances of abuse are multiplied. Shouldn’t citizens always have the benefit of the doubt when their access to individual rights are at stake?
As we began, this is embarrassing, or should be. It is particularly embarrassing that an entire party gleefully leaps on every gun-related tragedy to try to win votes by pretending they have a legal and Constitutional solution to evil and madness in human society.
Ethics Alarms 
As usual, the ignorant hive-minded illiberal sheeple are resorting to pure weapon of war hysteria as their only real “argument”. These people refer to those that support the 2nd Amendment as “bat-crap crazy” or “knuckledraggers”. These anti 2nd Amendment extremists claim that “the deadly weapon has no valid recreational use. Period.” and “reasonable people know there is no reason under the sun as to why this weapon is allowed for sale to the general public”; therefore, it seems that they believe that anyone that thinks there is a reason to have one of these firearms is an unreasonable bat-crap crazy knuckledragger and as such should not be allowed to have any firearms. I’ve heard these anti 2nd Amendment extremists openly say/write that anyone that would like to have an AR15 is mentally unstable. They’re engaging in purely irrational bigotry based persecution.
These people continue to completely ignore the statistical facts that the percentage of people that engage in mass shooting or firearm violence is a miniscule segment of an otherwise law abiding group of firearm owners. In fact the percentage of actual firearms being used in criminal behavior is so low (3 to 4 decimal point percentage) that in comparison to the number of firearms out there it’s effectively rounded to a percentage of zero making the firearm owners that are responsible and non-criminal as a figure that is effectively rounded to 100%. The statistics prove the hysteria FALSE!
Here’s what I say to those that want to limit or strip my 2nd Amendment rights based on the illegal use of 0.000148% of firearms…
I share the same sentiment as your last paragraph. I live in Chemung County New York, you know, the state that just defiantly rejected the recent SCOTUS ruling in Bruen. I already have a permit (since 1997) but this new law has excess limitations on where you can carry. I’m still fuming to an extent.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/05/new-york-effectively-nullifies-the-supreme-courts-latest-pro-second-amendment-decision/
It honestly sounds like his mom wasn’t a great person if you believe the school officials. His dad maybe was too permissive while having some love, so the kid seems to have been dealing with harsh neglect and permissive neglect. You can tell the kid has issues though.
We were speculating here yesterday as to whether the failure to immediately identify the firearm used might mean that it didn’t conveniently fit the preferred “scary black rifle” narrative. Even now, the only official description I’ve seen coming from law enforcement is “could be similar to an AR-15”. That’s an oddly vague description, as many semi-auto rifles are “similar” to an AR in various ways. Could it be an M1 carbine with a 30-round magazine? A Ruger Mini-14 with a folding stock? A wood-stocked Remington 742 with a (unlikely) 20 round mag? An AK?
The media has, of course, translated the current information into “assault rifle, assault weapon, AR-15 style”, etc., but as of now, that seems to be just laziness, if not them pushing their article of faith. We’ll have to wait for an actual pic to find out how much gaslighting is being done. If they want to argue that those distinctions don’t make any difference, they should be reminded that that’s actually what firearms owners have been saying all along. Obsessing over “style” is just a tool of fearmongering and misinformation in the service of achieving incremental restrictions on firearm ownership. The Buffalo, NY shooter used a NY compliant rifle with “safety” features that either made no difference or that he bypassed before his crime.
We need anti-gun laws like the ones they have in Europe!
Oops. I guess I can’t say that, can I. It will elicit a “Republicans pounce.”
I wonder if Cuntala has heard of the Long Beach Police Department.
https://archive.ph/hJFGW#selection-821.0-821.376
“Cuntala” is over the line, ME. You know that.
How about Horizontal Harris?
Michael T Ejercito wrote, “Cuntala”
Wow Michael, that was straight up sophomoric.
Oops, that had already been covered in a different way, I didn’t mean to pile on.
I hadn’t heard either until just now, and I laughed at both. Horizontal Harris is funnier than my nickname for her; rhymes with Joe Blob.
The universe does indeed have a sense of irony. The shooting in High Park had a lower body count than Chicago over the holiday weekend. Which
, which….?
points out that all this is just politics..
first post was on my phone, damn technology…
Funny (to me, anyway) that I should be reading this post shortly after returning from a range session at my local gun club, where I sighted-in scopes on two of my “weapons of war” and function-tested a “lung-blowing” 9mm handgun as well while I was there.
Reading Jack’s post, I was reminded that in Illinois, residents must obtain a “Firearm Owners Identification Card” from the state police before they can legally possess firearms or ammunition. The list of qualifiers for obtaining this card is much longer than those on the nationwide ATF Form 4473. One of the items is something like, “I have not been ordered by a court or other authorized entity to in-patient or out-patient mental health treatment.” If memory serves, one can have one’s card revoked for five years for such an occurrence. This seems to be a pretty low bar, or would be in my state, where a mental health crisis response team can obtain an involuntary 24-hour commitment on an ex-parte basis pretty much on demand (with judicial review only after the 24-hour period), on their finding that the individual in question presents a clear and present danger to self or others. If Robert Crimo’s prior suicide threat had been handled forthrightly, he might well have been committed for observation / evaluation / treatment and (it seems) been ineligible for the FOID. Another thing I wonder about is whether he, like so many other mass shooters, was taking mental health meds already.
And how long before we find out the FBI was well acquainted with this guy and knowledgeable about what makes him tick and motivates him?
Re: the use of “AR-15 style weapon” in particular: yes, this turn of phrase is especially annoying to hear because it’s so vacuous (inevitably it has been stretched to mean “big black scary gun”); however, its use is merely a response to certain intellectually dishonest rhetoric by some of those who revere our 2nd Amendment rights. After the Sandy Hook shooting, there was very predictable vilification of AR-15s in the media. I saw numerous arguments mocking reporters for their general ignorance of firearms terminology because “it wasn’t even an AR-15, it was a Bushmaster XM15.” Technically that’s true: AR-15 is a trademarked name for that particular pattern of rifle when manufactured by Colt. But let’s call a spade a spade: a rifle manufactured after that pattern by any company, or by private individuals milling out incomplete lower receivers, has been colloquially referred to as an AR-15 since the day Colt’s patents expired. It takes even the most willfully ignorant fearmonger about 10 seconds worth of web searching to figure out how obtuse that argument is, and so the end result is the use of qualifiers and catch-alls to the point where words can mean whatever you (or your reader) want them to mean.
But are the gun-phobics going to assert that social media posts, songs and videos are sufficient to justify psychiatric observation and the elimination of Constitutional rights?
Several people I know that are nominally on the American right, would say that it does. They lament that the FBI did nothing or allowed a shooting to happen, even though they were warned that the guy was making weird posts on social media about violent topics. I don’t think any of the recent perpetrators posted anything about their intentions to commit shootings. There’s a difference between wishing something would happen and stating that you will make something happen.
I think my acquaintances just use these examples as evidence that the FBI should be disbanded, or federal government in general be torn down as worth less than what they flush down the toilets. They don’t want to limit the 2nd Amendment, they want Carlin’s utopia, where Kansas is turned into a state sized Escape from New York and every plate has actual blue food on it.
Why stop with only one Constitutional right?
Why not do the following:
* revoke any license to practice law, practice medicine, or fly aircraft.
* forbid them from being married or having any sort of intimate contact or relationshiop
*require them to wear a distinctive badge when out in public