Back in August, officials at the University of Colorado's Colorado Springs and Boulder campuses announced the creation of a separate dorm for students aged 21 and older with concealed-carry gun permits. So far, exactly zero CU students have elected to move in, according to a university spokesperson.
Governor Perry, is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
When the first reports of a multiple-casualty shooting outside the Empire State Building came down the line this morning, most of us thought the same thing: not again. Not another senseless tragedy, not another crazy lone gunman, not another mass shooting.
The immediate aftermath of any American tragedy offers a heady potential for vile ideas. Details are scant, speculation is still wide open, motive is easily assigned—and in the rush to scoop other outlets, journalists don't have as much time to investigate claims, arguments or citations.
If you were looking for NRA president Wayne LaPierre's response to the Trayvon Martin case, you're not going to find it. At the annual NRA meeting, LaPierre said he would not comment "without a full understanding of the facts." He did, however, accuse the media of not caring about other violent crimes — presumably those not involving guns? And then he told us how he really felt.
A young man in Tennessee is facing criminal charges after he had to be Lifeflighted off the highway for treatment of gunshot wounds. No, he wasn't involved in a road rage shootout. 23-year-old Justin Newberry accidentally shot himself in both legs after his handgun, The Judge, slid out from under his seat while he was driving. Newberry grabbed The Judge by its trigger. Oh, and cops found weed, paraphernalia and fake IDs in the car. Ahh... there's nothing quite like being 23, high as fuck, armed and driving.
Hypothetical scenario: At your current job, you were once in charge of clandestinely selling 2,000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels in the hopes of bringing down a big time leader, but instead those guns were later connected to multiple homicides (including a U.S. Border Patrol agent). Now, after investigations and apologies and so on, would you expect to get shit-canned and possibly charged with crimes, or would you expect to be promoted to a managerial position? If you work for the ATF, you'd get the latter!
Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik is charged with killing 68 people, many of them teenagers, at a youth camp on Utoya Island near Oslo. How did he manage to get off that many shots when Norwegian law "forbids the sale of clips for hunting rifles that hold more than three bullets"? By ordering clips from the U.S., of course.
Yesterday was a big day for armed vigilantes in Texas. The state Senate first passed a bill that will allow "legislators, statewide elected officials, some former legislators and some state employees to carry their concealed weapons into churches, hospitals, bars, sporting events — even if a sign is posted saying weapons are prohibited." Do you foresee any problems arising from that?
If you're on the FBI's terrorist watch list, you can't get on a plane. You can't get 9/11 responder health benefits. But you can buy all the fucking guns your little jihadi heart desires—247 of you did last year, according to the FBI—because the NRA is out there protecting the Allah-given right of suspected terrorists to buy guns.
You know what's a really bad idea? Allowing college kids to carry concealed handguns on public university campuses. For the second time, a Texas Republican state senator, Jeff Wentworth is trying to get a bill passed that would allow this to happen. But as of last night, according to The Austin American-Statesman, the bill appeared to be almost dead. Wentworth told the paper, "I didn't have the votes" to get the bill on trigger happy Governor Rick Perry's desk. Good.
What's dumber than a gun show? A gun show that allows people to bring their own weapons. Especially when someone decides they're going to bring a .45 caliber handgun after they've been drinking, load said handgun, and then accidentally shoot an old man and a teenager. According to the AP, 30-year-old Joshua Wilkinson went to the Tri-State Gun and Knife Show on Saturday in Evansville, Indiana, where:
Just when you thought he was too busy to deal with anything else, especially something with annoying culture-war implications, Barack Obama went and published an op-ed in this past Sunday's Arizona Daily Star to start a conversation on gun reforms. That does not mean, as he anxiously rushed to note in his column, that he wants to take everyone's guns and repeal the Second Amendment. He just wants "commonsense" reforms, of some sort. Unfortunately, this political process starts by reaching out to the NRA, and guess what? The NRA does not give a fuck about Barack Obama.
Republican Iowa State Rep. Jeff Kaufmann, speaker pro tem of the Iowa State House, was caught joking on a hot mic that a proposal which would allow state residents to carry weapons in public without permission from a sheriff and without any training or a background check might better be called the "give-a-handgun-to-a-schizophrenic-bill."
