The bad news: There was yet another mass shooting, one of the victims being a 10-year-old girl who was grazed and thankfully is in good condition. The good news: There were no deaths.
Happy Mother’s day:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Gunmen opened fire on dozens of people marching in a Mother’s Day neighborhood parade in New Orleans on Sunday, wounding at least 17 people, police said.
Three suspects were seen running from the scene. Raw video at the link.
Sadly, yesterday, there was another shooting of one small child by another. Via TPM:
A five-year-old boy in Denton, Texas was left in critical condition after he was shot in the head by his eight-year-old friend Saturday morning. According to the Denton Record-Chronicle, the police said the two boys were alone in the bedroom when the older child found a .22 caliber rifle, pointed it at the other boy, and shot him.
A ThinkProgress review of the NRA children’s magazine, InSights, found another piece of disturbing advice: kids should build target ranges inside their homes. The article, “BB, It’s Cold Outside,” ran in the January 2013 edition of InSights.
It sure did:
Okay, that’s not disturbing at all.
Who can resist a sweet little cherub with a rifle? Don’tcha just wanna pinch his cheeks? Well, yes, actually I do, he is adorable. But I’d rather pinch his parents’ and the NRA’s judgment… really, really hard:
While the article does tell kids to follow standard firing range safety rules and ask adult permission before setting up the indoor range, here are some other tips it offers:
– “Eliminate ricochet with a proper backstop. You have no idea how bouncy a tiny metal ball can be until you hear one whizzing by your head.”
– “There are plenty of indoor range setups you can find on the internet.”
– “You don’t want people opening a door or looking in a window to see a BB gun pointing at them.”
– “While you’re thinking of cool stuff to use as targets, also keep in mind how you’re going to set them up in your range. Hanging targets work great, by the way.”
– “When you’re trying to improve accuracy, BB guns are the best.If you have a habit of flinching when pulling the trigger, BB guns will help you work that out.”
Because, see, BB guns aren’t really guns, they’re just funsy practice playthings that shoot little bouncy balls. Bouncy balls that can maim or kill.
[The article] is addressed to children who are “shooting a real gun now” but can’t wait to practice until it’s warm enough outside to make firing one fun…
How many little ones would you trust to remember every safety tip, adhere to them, and shoot accurately? I have really good kids, but when they were very young, they simply couldn’t be counted on to act as mini-adults. Not even my perfectly perfect twins.
No child is 100% responsible. Nor are 100% of adults, for that matter, as all these articles document. And little ones can’t be expected to have the coordination and maturity to know which is more lethal, a BB gun or a real one.
Yet companies like Crickett and organizations like the NRA are more interested in sales than they are in saving lives.
91% want background checks. 91%. 67% want a ban on armor-piercing bullets. 60% are for an assault weapons ban. And 54% want to limit ammo magazine capacities to 10 rounds or less. Clear? Clear.
The question does not tell respondents that all nine proposals come from Obama’s recently released plan to reduce gun violence; however, the wordings used to describe them intentionally follow the White House’s “Now Is the Time” plan descriptions. [...]
Although Democrats show more support than Republicans for each proposal, majorities of both partisan groups favor seven of the nine proposals.
The following little, erm, mishap occurred last September, but I only just got wind of it today. Via 11alive.com, an NBC affiliate:
A teenager is recovering after police say he shot himself in the penis and testicle while cleaning a gun he just bought…. Smeriglio told police he bought the gun last month at a party.
In light of all the gun talk these days, it seems appropriate to point out how very badly things can go when a firearm falls into the wrong hands.
Take these examples that my old pal @KagroX tweeted only minutes ago. The phrase “What could possibly go wrong?” comes to mind:
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Dems often have the facts on their side of arguments, and we know how Republicans hate that. Reality has a liberal bias, right? The other day, in an article in the Washington Post by David S. Fallis, this reality was reported:
During the 10-year federal ban on assault weapons, the percentage of firearms equipped with high-capacity magazines seized by police agencies in Virginia dropped, only to rise sharply once the restrictions were lifted in 2004, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. [...]
In Virginia, The Post found that the rate at which police recovered firearms with high-capacity magazines — mostly handguns and, to a smaller extent, rifles — began to drop around 1998, four years into the ban. It hit a low of 9 percent of the total number of guns recovered the year the ban expired, 2004.
The next year, the rate began to climb and continued to rise in subsequent years, reaching 20 percent in 2010, according to the analysis of a little-known Virginia database of guns recovered by police. In the period The Post studied, police in Virginia recovered more than 100,000 firearms, more than 14,000 of which had high-capacity magazines.
To some researchers, the snapshot in Virginia suggests that the federal ban may have started to curb the widespread availability of the larger magazines.
“I was skeptical that the ban would be effective, and I was wrong,” said Garen Wintemute, head of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine. The database analysis offers “about as clear an example as we could ask for of evidence that the ban was working.”
The massacre in Tucson by Jared Lee Loughner prompted the Post analysis. As you may recall, he killed six people and shot Gabby Giffords and 12 others with a legally purchased semiautomatic handgun and a 33-round magazine. After that, there was one mass shooting after another, many involving shooters using high-capacity magazines.
The federal ban that expired in 2004 required magazines to hold no more than 10 rounds. There was a Big However though, because large capacity magazines manufactured before the ban could still be sold.
The research overall has not been as definitive, as was noted in a 2004 report that said, “Success in reducing criminal use of the banned guns and magazines has been mixed.” But it’s pretty obvious that it is easier to mass kill when you can spray a larger number of lethal bullets in quick succession at a crowd of people before having to reload.
See that high-capacity gun magazine that David Gregory was waving under Wayne LaPierre’s wingnutty nose on “Meet the Press”? He shouldn’t have done that because his possession of such a piece of equipment was illegal. But Gregory’s off the hook and will not be prosecuted, says D.C.’s attorney general, because he has no criminal record, so off to court he doesn’t go.
Whew! That was a nail-biter! Kidding.
The AG went on to say that “our recognition that the intent of the temporary possession and short display of the magazine was to promote the First Amendment purpose of informing an ongoing public debate about firearms policy in the United States.”
In other words, don’t be silly, this was a news show [sic], and Gregory’s a dufus a journalist so he gets a pass. This time.
“Having carefully reviewed all of the facts and circumstances of this matter, as it does in every case involving firearms-related offenses or any other potential violation of D.C. law within our criminal jurisdiction, OAG has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated with the December 23,2012 broadcast. OAG has made this determination, despite the clarity of the violation of this important law, because under all of the circumstances here a prosecution would not promote public safety in the District of Columbia nor serve the best interests of the people of the District to whom this office owes its trust.”
“…Ignorance of the law or even confusion about it is no defense. We therefore did not rely in making our judgment on the feeble and unsatisfactory efforts that NBC made to determine whether or not it was lawful to possess, display and broadcast this large capacity magazine as a means of fostering the public policy debate. Although there appears to have been some misinformation provided initially, NBC was clearly and timely advised by an MPD employee that its plans to exhibit on the broadcast a high capacity-magazine would violate D.C. law, and there was no contrary advice from any federal official.”
“Repetition by NBC or any employee of any similar or other firearms violation will be prosecuted to the full extent supported by the facts and the law.
“I am confident that you will convey our deep concern and warning to your client.“
The NRA could not find a more appealing spokeswoman than Carlson. But let’s look at a few facts:
The NRA was taken over by the far right in 1977 under the leadership of Harlon Carter, an anti-immigrant fanatic. As a teenager, he was convicted for murder (his conviction was eventually overturned).
The 2nd Amendment was not conceived in an era of 30-round clips. Today, weapons like the AR-15 are sold at gun shows. Why isn’t the NRA at the forefront of responsible gun reform?
About 11,000 Americans are killed because of gun violence every year. Britain has fewer than 100 such deaths. The NRA position on addressing this is unacceptable.
Carlson wrote that the NRA’s “power lies in its ability to tap into people’s real and imagined fears.” I respect others’ fears. Now respect mine: I’m afraid of the NRA.
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