Sometimes I get so frustrated and/or disheartened and/or annoyed by some of the news stories of the day that I can’t bring myself to write about them. Here are a few recent reports that made my blood pressure hit the roof. I am avoiding delving into them at length out of concern for my physical and mental health.
See if you sense a theme (I couldn’t even bring myself to add commentary this time):
See what I mean? So who’s up for a couple of Margs or a trough of wine?
Another “responsible gun owner” causes human death, this time his own, from a self-inflicted gun shot to the head. And how ironically sad is it that it happened at a gun “safety” class.
Brian J. Parry is believed to have shot himself in the head with a pistol Sunday during a class at West Coat Armory, a gun range and dealer with outlets in Bellevue and Issaquah.
It gets worse. According to the report, this happened in front of more than a dozen people, and several children also witnessed the shooting. That won’t scar them for life at all.
Participants paid $75 for three hours of instruction meant to teach students how to load and use pistols and revolvers.
Someone tell me again how more guns are a good thing? And why children should ever be around them?
H/t: @supersinga
Honestly, it’s getting harder and harder to know if these horrifying stories are new or updates of recent ones. There are so many, it’s as if a mushroom cloud-sized explosion of gun scares and/or massacres has occurred, or maybe we’re just seeing more reported. Either way, it’s scary as hell, and insanely unhealthy both mentally and of course, physically.
My jaw is dislocated from all the dropping. I’m in tears. I’m enraged. I’m appalled. I feel helpless. I’m confused. I’m determined. I’m re-energized. Why do gun zealots not see what most of America sees? Why is common sense gun safety legislation such a threat? (rhetorical)
A slippery slope, the gun huggers call it, because next thing you know, Big Guvmint will take ALL their guns! What about the slippery slope we are now experiencing, right now, right this minute? The one that leads to more mass murders, more senseless deaths, more children dying. What about that slippery slope?
The latest incident occurred in the state of Washington where two fifth graders may face charges after school authorities found a knife and a gun in a student’s backpack.
The student who owned the backpack is ten years old.
Ten years old.
School authorities said two fifth-grade boys planned to use the weapons to lure another student outside the school and kill her “because she was really annoying.”
That’s right, two boys (the other was eleven years old) wanted to murder a classmate because she was, in their opinion, annoying. They also targeted six others.
And to make matters even worse, they promised to pay $80 to a student if he promised not to tell anyone about their plot.
Had a fourth-grader not told a teacher he had seen the 11-year-old with a knife, who knows what might have happened?
Here’s what was found in the backpack: The knife, which had a 3¼-inch blade, a .45-caliber Remington 1911 semiautomatic handgun, and an ammunition clip.
A semiautomatic handgun.
Here’s what the 11-year-old had to say:
“I was going to kill her with the knife and [the other boy] was supposed to use the gun to keep anyone from trying to stop me or mess up our plan.”
What were their parents teaching these kids? Why were weapons like these even accessible to them? Why did they think murdering someone was the answer? Why weren’t they taught that words should be used to solve personal problems, not violence?
The older boy said he had been friends with the girl for several months “but that he hated her now.” He said the girl “had recently become rude and would pick on him.”
The obvious solution: End her young life.
Thankfully, the school had been promoting a program that encouraged students to report anything suspicious, which is exactly what happened. Thankfully, a child made the decision to step forward and report the suspicious thing.
And thankfully, School Supt. Mike Cashion said this when asked about arming teachers:
“I told them [the legislature] I can’t imagine a teacher taking a gun out, leveling it at a fifth-grader and killing them,” he said. “It’s the antithesis of what we are.“
If only murder and gun adoration were the antithesis of what way too many of us are.
More details at the link.
‘Nuff said.
When it came to legalizing same-sex marriage in Washington, women cast the decisive votes, according to a new poll.
The post-election survey conducted by Third Way, a D.C. think tank that favors gay marriage, showed women backed the marriage referendum by a whopping 15 percentage points.
In contrast, men narrowly opposed the measure, by a margin of two percentage points. Overall, Referendum 74 passed by a vote of 54 percent to 46 percent.
The gender gap is not surprising since other polls have shown they are more likely to support same-sex marriage. But the survey noted that the gender gap persisted in some surprising ways.
So what carries the day? Not money, not taxes, not bullshit, just straight up fairness.
Instead of focusing on rights and benefits, the group said, advocates needed to stress that allowing gays and lesbians to marry was primarily about them being able to make a life-long commitment to each other. In other words, talk less about issues like taxes and hospital visitations and more about how same-sex couples wanted to marry for the same reason as straight couples: to make a commitment to each other.
Vicky Dalton, the Spokane County auditor who headed the statewide marriage licensing effort, said the turnout Thursday for same-sex marriage licenses in Spokane County was lighter than she expected.
So she asked a question to a newly reassured, very heartened gay man: Why didn’t you rush to get a marriage license now that you have the legal green light?
Best Answer Ever:
“They said, ‘I thought you guys would have been one of the first,’” she recalled, “and he said, ‘You know, we woke up and we realized, we don’t have to rush. We don’t have to worry. This is not going away. We can get a marriage license wherever we want now.’ ”
“There’s no rush, nobody has to get down here immediately,” Dalton repeated to herself. “That was probably one of the most powerful moments of the day for me.”
Or to put it another way, progress.
“But on the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s a consequence of this crime, how does that make it better?”
I want to scream.
An activist working on behalf of liberal group FUSE Washington asked questions of Republican hopeful John Koster during a Sunday fundraiser.
Hey, come on, that “rape thing” isn’t so bad, relatively speaking. I mean, what’s the big deal? Why should a woman who has been the victim of a traumatic, invasive, violent crime make her devastation and her decisions about her own body the issues?
There’s a zygote at stake here, to hell with the living, breathing woman who just had some vile monster jam his penis into her unwilling body and make her pregnant. So what if she has to live with that flashback the rest of her life? Why not add to the indignity and suffering by also forcing her to give birth to the rapist’s child?
Rape thing, schmape thing.
John Koster is running against Democrat Suzan DelBene. Let’s hope like hell she wins.
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