Guns

[mccutcheon]

Yesterday there was a shoot out at the Arizona nursing school. Some student who was flunking out shot three teachers and then himself. One of the teachers taught a course in death and dying. The killer asked her if she was ready to meet her maker. She said yes. Then he blew her head off right in front of the rest of the class. After shooting two more he killed himself. He was 41, a father of two and a Gulf war veteran. All the people described him as nasty, mean and crude. The only person interviewed who said he was ‘normal’ was his trail park neighbor. She said this with long menthol dangling from her lip. But here is the thing. All the students were crying and stuff, which I get. But they all said ‘oh my god how could this happen here?’ This is also what I also heard during the sniper attacks. And I have heard this when Columbine happened and a few other times as well, actually I hear this every time some crazy goes on a shooting spree. Now I don’t know if the victims are just in shock or what but I will tell you one thing. You live in the USA and you have a chance to die in a violent way. A gun shot to the head a bullet in the brain. From now on, when innocent people get blown away in sleepy backwater towns or calm serene nursing schools, I want the victims to say. ‘Yes. This is America, people have guns, about once a month people die like this somewhere in my country. Of course this could happen here. I guess it was only a matter of time.’ How about some truth.

[<sarah>]

about guns and the insanity of America,
A reaction that is as faulty as being shocked because it happened in your town, is being apathetic because it did not. I blame the news for my own apathy -- it's an easy target.

I went out and found this portion of a poem (I would also highly recommend about the first four or five lines of LeRoi Jones' "A New Reality is Better than a New Movie"):

But is there anything to know?
Linger over the cases: the dead friends,
and what the obituaries omit

And one can only imagine: what it
must have felt like at the end, suspended
Between two impossible tasks, as though

the burden of each day were to rebut
a presumption of disillusionment
and a sense of hopelessness, deflected

By the daily routine, yet protected
by the cave of the imagination;
until at last the inner door slammed shut.

When did it all become unbearable?
The question begs the question of their lives
Asked from the inside, taking for granted

Their very being, as though enchanted
By the way the settings, in retrospect,
make up the logic of a parable

Whose incidents make no sense, and by how
time tries to project a kind of order
and the terrifying clarity it brings

into the enigma of the last things --
a vodka bottle lying on the floor,
an off-hand remark ( "I'll be going now") --

With everything contained, as in a proof,
In a few emblems of finality:
The bullet in the mouth. The sharp report.

That no one else can hear. The sharp report
That only someone else could hear.

-- John Koethe
The Secret Amplitude

[martino]

well, you know what people say: 'guns don't kill people; people kill people'... lunatic logic.

i also recently heard it said, when this guy i know got killed in a car crash: 'jesus, how could that happen? he was driving a fucking suv".

somebody (who i guess was a whole lot smarter) said that the only real difference between a child and an adult is the adult's ability to assess the risks of life. well, i guess he wasn't talking about most adults...

[Julien]

This topic makes me think about the film "Bowling for Columbine". Being completely naive about america's history,
I would like to know what do you think about this film.

It messed up my mind so much, made me ashame of being
an occidental man.

[<Jack Chiefton>]

You're absolutely right Mc. It should not be thought of as an anomaly when asked the question "did you ever think something like this could happen near you in the united states?" That question should now be so fucking obvious you need not give it a second thought.

[mccutcheon]

walk this way no longer.

Jam Master Jay, a founding member of the pioneering rap trio Run DMC, was shot and killed at his recording studio near the New York neighborhood where he grew up, police said. Two men were buzzed into the second-floor studio shortly before shots were fired inside its lounge at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, police said. As of early Thursday, police had made no arrests. The 37-year-old disc jockey, whose real name was Jason Mizell, was shot once in the head in the studio's lounge and died at the scene, said Detective Robert Price, a police spokesman.

It's a fucking sahme.

[mccutcheon]

Yesteray in the EVIL HEAT I saw a bumper sticker that read, 'Ted Kennedy has killed more people with his car than I have with my gun.' I had to laugh and cry.

[Sloth]

The drunk passenger who gets in a car with a drunk driver is just as responsible as the driver for any accident. Not smart. For all we know she was giving him a blow job.

Also... Dick Cheney has more DUIs than George Bush Jr and Teddy Kennedy Combined. We never hear about that asshole who is actually running the country and still drinking like Winston Churchill on a Saturday night German raid.

[mccutcheon]

HOW COULD IT HAPPEN HERE? Hey punks, check the date of this first post. It always happens here.


CEDAR GROVE, W.Va. - Police stopped black pickup trucks in this small town and residents warily went about their errands as authorities investigated three recent shooting deaths that could be the work of a single sniper.

"How could it happen here?" asked resident Danny Canterbury as he shopped Saturday for groceries in the Appalachian town of 864 about 20 miles east of Charleston.

[Sloth]

"How could it happen here?"

That was God's initial reaction when the first Republican showed up on Earth.