guns

The US is less of a nation than a collective, psychotic episode.
Within day to day life in the nation, a cultural aura exists that shifts, mingles, and merges between a sense of nervous agitation and displaced rage, in combination with a sense of weightlessness. The fragmented quality of daily life imparts an insubstantial, unreal quality wherein the citizenry of the capitalist/consumer empire of hungry ghosts drift through a nadascape comprised of ad hoc, fast-buck-driven, suburban/exburban architecture and the ersatz eros of constant, consumer come-ons.

I had Doctor Daniel Brown from Harvard spend 70 hours with Sirhan over almost three years [and] he comes away with this staggering, staggering evaluation. He says Sirhan was hypnoprogrammed ….. a technique of using chemicals as well as hypnosis ….. The program on him makes him forget everything within a certain time frame ….. He remembers when he gets a pinch on the neck [that] what he sees is not Senator Kennedy. It’s a paper target of a human being.
— William Pepper, 2013, speaking at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Four Rhode Island towns, Burrillville, Hopkinton, West Greenwich, and Foster, declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. Two months ago, a similar policy was passed in 25 of New Mexico’s 33 counties as they also adopted Second Amendment Sanctuary status.

Like you, I’ve had countless experiences of pointing out a new fact to someone, and seeing them acknowledge it and incorporate it into their thinking and their talking from that point forward. I’ve even had this experience with public petitions pushed on powerful people. But, I’ve also had a different experience. There are some facts that some people just will not accept, and for some of them I have a very hard time understanding why. Can you help me understand?

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
— Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
— Puck, in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream

Five weapons were said to have been used, all inscribed with symbols, numbers and insignia.  The individual charged with the shootings at two Christchurch mosques that left 49 dead was an Australian with, it is alleged, a simple purpose: inflict death, and on specific communities in worship.  Even as the carnage became clear, Christchurch was already the epicentre of twenty-four hour news television, supplying a ghoulish spectacle.  Saturation coverage followed, and continues to do so, a point that will warm the attacker’s blood (his entire effort was streamed on live video on Facebook).

Allegra Harpootlian links gun violence at home to U.S. wars abroad. By Allegra Harpootlian TomDispatch.com In the wake of the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 students and staff members,…Read more →

A number of sheriffs around the state, including those from Spokane, Chelan, Stevens, Douglas, Benton, Adams, and Lewis counties, have refused to enforce the law because, in their view, it violates the Second Amendment. In response, threats to kill these sheriffs and all Republicans were posted on Facebook.

California has some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation that failed to stop the mass shooter. Wheeler advocated for qualified citizens to keep and bear arms, conceal carry, and to defend ourselves.