Vance v. The Onion on Shootings
The Onion is more cogent.
JD Vance: JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security.
“If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”
The Ohio senator was asked by a journalist what can be done to stop school shootings. He said further restricting access to guns, as many Democrats advocate, won’t end them, noting they happen in states with both lax and strict gun laws. He touted efforts in Congress to give schools more money for security.
“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
To which I can only note this from The Onion that we have all seen over and over (and over and over) again: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.
It is unequivocally the case that other countries do not have this problem and it is because of public policy choices made in those countries.
While I am pleased to read the following via CNN: The father of the Georgia school shooting suspect has been arrested and charged, authorities say, it isn’t enough. The father appears to have acted recklessly, purchasing the weapon for his son even after law enforcement had investigated the child for making concerning threats online.
Colin Gray told investigators this week he had purchased the gun used in the killings as a holiday present for his son in December 2023, according to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
One source told CNN the AR-15-style rifle was purchased at a local gun store as a Christmas present. The timeline the teen’s father provided to authorities would put the gun purchase months after authorities first contacted Gray and his family to investigate school shooting threats made online.
And by the way, yes, right now is the time to be talking about public policy.
Meanwhile, yesterday a friend’s son spent much of the day in lockdown in Enterprise, AL. Via WDHN: No charges can be filed against student found with ‘large bag’ ammunition at Enterprise High, DA says.
Enterprise High School and the Enterprise Career and Technology Center went on lockdown for a little over an hour Thursday morning after police say ammunition was found on campus.
Enterprise Police said the “large bag” of ammo was found in the backpack of a student by School Resource Officers at EHS after another student tipped off the officers.
According to Enterprise Police Chief Micheal Moore, three students were detained while searching the premises but were released.
No charges have been filed, because it isn’t against the law to bring a bag full of ammo to campus, despite the obvious disruption this caused.
“We have scoured the books. I have talked to our coordinating agency, the Office of Prosecution Services. The Attorney General’s Office,” said DA Tarbox. “Based upon the facts and circumstances that we know right now, I am not aware of a criminal charge that is applicable from merely carrying ammunition, regardless of where that ammunition was located.”
Tarbox said the student would face internal disciplinary action at the school.
I am sure it is a relief to all the parents who had to deal with such a lockdown the day after a mass shooting in a school in the state next door.
I still maintain that one way to “deal with it” (without having 2-3 conservative SCOTUS Justices suddenly go away) is to require specific gun injury insurance by all gun owners and to make gun deaths and injuries strict liability drawn against that insurance.
As I said in the Forum, name one time when having cops or security personnel in a school prevented mass murder. Not to mention the times when cops held back because of some reason that made sense to them and to no one else.
Also: what’s the brown line running down the left hand side of your post? I’m not sure where your quote ends and your comment about the Onion takes over. It’s not all in the AP News link, is it?
Edited to add: why do we need 20 minutes to edit? Why did you extend it from 15? I’ve asked this before and not got an answer.
Well, there you have it:
There is nothing we can do but de facto militarize our schools – security staff could be National Guard Reserves, we could have TSA-type security lines, a daily search of all backpacks and lockers, and finally we start the day with The Pledge of Allegiance, followed by thoughts-and-prayers.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Youve been asking this for a while and I’ve been puzzled the whole time. Before, the edit button stayed active for 15 minutes, and now it’s 20. Why is that a bad thing?
Why does a child need a war weapon, and why does an adult think the child should have one?
BTW, the issue here is not the rate of fire or the magazine size. These have effects, but they’re secondary. the issue with the AR-15 and weapons like it is cavitation. This is a consequence of the muzzle velocity in such weapons.
I lack the time to explain it well. So, short version, the high kinetic energy of these bullets creates pressure waves that push aside tissues. That is, the create cavities inside the body (ergo cavitation), which causes vastly more damage in a larger area than the path the bullet takes inside the body. In particular it damages blood vessels, nerves, and anything that’s not muscle or tendons.
If you shoot someone in the thigh with a handgun, or a hunting rifle, chances are they will survive given emergency care, if the bullet misses the femoral artery. If you do the same with an AR-15 or similar weapon, chances are they will die of exsanguination (they’ll bleed to death), because the round will tear apart the femoral artery, even if it doesn’t hit it.
Not enough attention is paid to this issue. Such weapons are overkill in a civilian self-defense or security setting. They are weapons of war, designed to efficiently kill the target.
@MarkedMan:
Because it takes too long for the comment to post. 5 to 10 minutes is enough time to edit a comment on a thread. Also, at some point someone will answer the damn question, just a matter of who.
@Kathy: I’m afraid that the answer is “because my son is in danger of turning into a sissy beta cuck, and if he has a big gun, that will make him feel more powerful and dominating.”
I don’t know that, I just fear it.
Thing is, I trained people (all genders) as a martial arts instructor to feel more powerful and capable, and that feeling did not depend on any object that could potentially be taken away from them.
I recall one young man we had in for a while (a teenager) who could not “kiai”. This is a martial arts “shout”. It is a valuable training exercise, as it is a way to practice doing something that is fully committed an uninhibited. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t raise his voice higher than normal speaking voice (which most of the time he didn’t use.)
The pattern is more normal in young women, but I frankly never saw a girl with this much of an issue.
I’m only guessing, but I suspect his father domineered him so much that he was fearful of doing it, even as said father/parents sent him to the dojo to be more of a “man”.
Sadly, he stopped coming rather quickly.
@MarkedMan:..and now it’s 20…
This is a good thing!
It is five minutes closer to the EDIT key lasting to the end of the day which I have requested in the past.
@Not the IT Dept.:
I frequently use the full 20 minutes, I like it.
My experience suggests people are seeing my comments before I add edits.
@Not the IT Dept.: It is crazy easy to mess up the formatting given some bugs on the backend. I have mostly fixed it.
And I have no info on the edit issue.
Someone needs to get JD to expound on the “this” in that sentence. It would seem that Vance is too cowardly to even use the words “gun violence” or “the needless death of minors.”
@Not the IT Dept.:
Again, the 20 minutes (and the 15 before) were completely arbitrary. I think 15 is the default for that WordPress plug-in. As to “why 20” it’s because as I was debugging why the damn thing wasn’t showing up, I needed an easy way to tell if changes were being pushed. So, with each revision, I flipped between 15 and 20. For whatever reason, it finally started working on one of the times that it was set to 20.
Why it’s still at 20? Honestly, since I am still not completely sure what the issue is, I’m not changing anything and risking it going away again.
This, btw, is in keeping with what I learned from friends who were involved in microprocessor design: you don’t necessarily need to fully understand what you are doing–you just need to keep the magic smoke inside the chip and things should run ok.
On the topic of J.D. Vance, if I’m not mistaken, those comments were delivered behind a clear, bullet-proof shield.
I wonder if he or former President Trump would also agree that attempted assassinations are also now “just a fact of life.”
BTW, the fact he even said this at all is once again a sign that his current retail political instincts are just really, really bad.
@Not the IT Dept.: The edit button doesn’t affect how quickly the comment posts. I have seen posts that had funny typos one minute get changed the next.
@BugManDan: You seem to be saying that corrections are “live” on both sides of the user interface (??). That would be amazing if true. I’ve always assumed that people only see my corrections upon reloading the page. That doesn’t particularly trouble me, though; as a ignint cracker, I accept my work will be less than perfect.
Washington State had a similar problem with bestiality, but after the Enumclaw Incident in 2005, a law was passed to fix that. I hope Alabama fixes their ammunition in schools gap.
Isn’t ammunition explosive? Can you bring explosives to school? They should check that. Also, might as well make sure bestiality is a crime while they are at it, as it’s a little embarrassing for a state to have legal bestiality.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I have no idea if that is true as I am not present for the correction so can’t be sure of timing. But I would guess that once you correct and then hit OK it is live for all.
Great Xitter post by Aaron Rupar I saw in a thread on Balloon Juice. Vance’s “fact of life” quote above a photo of him speaking behind bullet-proof glass. https://balloon-juice.com/2024/09/05/seems-like-cake-might-be-in-order/
Per WaPo:
I get the feeling that we are not going to be getting many of those “he was a quiet kid, and I never dreamed he would do something like this” quotes.
In addition to the various murder charges, father is being charged with 8 counts of cruelty to children. I haven’t been able to find whether that is for various victims of the shooting, or his son.
The mom is a piece of work too.
per CBS Austin:
The parents separated, with the mother taking the two youngest kids, and the father taking the eventual shooter.
Hard to say whether the kid would have been better off with the mother. Those kids haven’t killed anyone (that we know of), so maybe? I hope CPS is checking on this kid’s siblings.
Since we aren’t going to do anything about the easy access of guns, maybe we could have some in-school program that teaches kids that if they are absolutely desperate and in need of some kind of an intervention, they can just steal a car, or set fire to something that doesn’t have people inside. I don’t know.
@BugMan:
I can confirm that posts go live as soon as you hit “Post Comment.”
Edits are applied after, during those (current) 20 minutes. As someone who tends to obsessively reread and tweak his comments, I have definitely experienced having people quote earlier versions of their comments in their quotes.
@Matt Bernius:
Vance doesn’t have the political courage to connect assassination attempts with the proliferation of guns and the glorification of gun violence in the US, so yes, attempted assassinations are “just a fact of life.” If you follow the “logic” in his response, the problem in this country is the lack of Secret Service and bullet-proof glass at soft targets like schools, churches, concerts… well, any place where JD isn’t, really.
@Not the IT Dept.:
As to the edit timing: Gift horse. Mouth. Don’t look into it.
Two unconnected thoughts…
1.) From the images I’m seeing online, Vance appears to have delivered these remarks from behind bulletproof glass and while surrounded by security.
2.) “If these psychos are going to go after our kids we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix.” Perhaps a controversial position but we shouldn’t forget that most of the time — in the case of school shootings — “these psychos” are themselves someone’s kid.
Vance in the early industrial age: ” Ppl r dying from dysentery lol. Don’t eat poop, losers lol. Haha. Plumbing infrastructure and hygiene is woke lol. Sucks 2b poor”
The utter lack of empathy – don’t get it, never will.