Tag Archives: NRA

March for Our Lives – Kansas City – Theis Park – March 24, 2018 – signs

24 Saturday Mar 2018

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Cold. Windy.

5,000? 7,000? 10,000? Who could tell. It was a lot of people. At a protest event organized by kids.

“I walk for my students and fellow techers.”

“I teach recorder. You don’t want me to have a gun at work.”

“Teachers need funds, not guns.”

“A gun shoud not have more rights than a child.”

“I want my students asking ‘How do I solve this equation?’ not ‘Would you take a bullet for me?'”

“Shooting my mouth off so you won’t shoot me.”

“Help end America’s War on America.”

“Don’t pray for an answer, be the answer.”

“Am I next?”

That’s a very good question. The “adults” have failed to provide an answer.

Previously:

March for Our Lives – Kansas City – in Theis Park on Saturday, March 24, 2018 (March 20, 2018)

Another sign for the times (March 23, 2018)

March for Our Lives – Warrensburg, Missouri – March 24, 2018 (March 24, 2017)

March for Our Lives – Warrensburg, Missouri – March 24, 2018

24 Saturday Mar 2018

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At 8:00 am today sixty individuals gathered on the square in front of the Johnson County Court House in Warrensburg to speak out against gun violence as part of the March for Our Lives demonstrations taking place across the country.

Individuals who wished to speak did so – from the perspective of a student organizer and activist, a retired law enforcement officer, mothers, and a minister.

There were a few curious passersby. After the event individuals who were planning on attending marches later in the day in Kansas City or Columbia gathered to help organize rides for those who needed them.

Another sign for the times

23 Friday Mar 2018

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A sign for tomorrow’s March for Our Lives:

“21 to Buy a Gun, Make it the Law”

There’s a March for Our Lives event tomorrow at Theis Park (just south of the Nelson Atkins Museum) in Kansas City from noon to 4:00 p.m. This to coincide with hundred of marches across the country.

There are also planned marches in Lee’s Summit, Warrensburg, Springfield, Columbia, and St. Louis.

Previously:

March for Our Lives – Kansas City – in Theis Park on Saturday, March 24, 2018 (March 20, 2018)

March for Our Lives – Kansas City – in Theis Park on Saturday, March 24, 2018

20 Tuesday Mar 2018

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In case you haven’t already heard, there’s a March for Our Lives event at Theis Park (just south of the Nelson Atkins Museum) in Kansas City from noon to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 24th. This to coincide with hundred of marches across the country.

There are also planned marches in Lee’s Summit, Warrensburg, Springfield, Columbia, and St. Louis.

As of this writing the social media site for the Kansas City march indicates that over 3500 individuals have confirmed that they will attend and that almost another 10,000 are interested in attending.

The social media page also has announcements and a place for questions and discussions. Inevitably for protest movements on social media opposition trolls also show up in the comments. In response to a question asking if the Kansas City Police Department will have a presence at the march (they will) a troll taunted:

You want to take everyone’s guns, but be protected by guns? Hypocrites

Uh, the police always show up when several thousand people protest in public. Even when the protesters are armed.

A couple of other trolls joined in with their indignation. Gee, they believe they need all those firearms in case a tyrannical government (they get to choose who and when apparently) needs to be overthrown by their force of arms. There is the small matter of not having an air force, but they always seem to ignore that.

It probably galls them that the tyranny of the NRA could possibly be overthrown by people showing up and voting on Election Day.

Where to start? Well, you’re already losing when you’re trolling at a site for an event that’s anticipating thousands of participants. Perhaps they could start their own pro-NRA march and see who shows up. But they won’t because they already know what’ll happen. Not much.

The reality is that a lower percentage of American households have firearms. Gun manufacturers have to sell their wares to a saturated market. Fear goes a long way to getting someone to buy more of something that usually takes a very long time to actually wear out. Hence the significant, but much smaller, number of individuals who have acquired more than one firearm.

The only individuals who actually have something to fear are the elected officials who, at the behest of the NRA, continue to ignore the will of the vast majority of their constituents. If that majority shows up and votes.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): What, no thoughts and prayers?

08 Thursday Mar 2018

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Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r) [2016 file photo].

Today, from Representative Vicky Hartzler (r):

Hartzler Meets with President to Talk Videogame Violence
March 8, 2018 Press Release

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler (MO-04) issued the following statement regarding her White House meeting with the President, leaders from the gaming industry and grass roots activist groups to discuss efforts to curtail violence in schools:

“As a mother, former teacher, and member of Congress, I am clearly concerned with violence in our schools. Parents need to know that their children are safe in school, and more importantly, students must feel safe in their learning environment. I appreciate the President’s efforts in bringing together groups of all kinds with the goal of finding solutions to the horrific acts of violence in our schools and society. I believe the solution to curtailing violence lies in an all-encompassing approach, focused on several different factors that may contribute to school shootings. Discussions should not be limited to just video games and guns. The President’s approach of leaving no stone unturned is prudent and similar meetings with the movie industry pertaining to gun violence on film should also be conducted.

“Today’s meeting was an opportunity to learn and hear from different sides about concerns and possible solutions to violence in schools. I believe significant progress was made today, and my hope is that we can build on this progress in the future.”

-30-

Think about that press release title for a moment. Consider the lethality of getting hit with a video game console as compared to, say, a round or two from an AR-15 rifle.

Some of the commenters via social media were less than impressed. On Twitter:

Why don’t you allow people to again research gun violence to actually see if there is a connection? By the way, there are also violent video games in other countries. Why don’t they have the kind of mass shootings we have? (Oh…wait…guns aren’t as available…hmmmm.)

Why weren’t any psychologists at this meeting? It seems that would be one “side” you’d want to hear from. It’s almost like the meeting was a sham.

So you’re just completely ignoring the decades of research and learned testimony that indicate that video games have nothing to do with real world violence, yeah?

Other countries have video games and they don’t have the same issues so????

So basically you’re going to do nothing? Thanks for the update.

Look, I know you really wanna say “it’s a heart problem, not a guns problem”, so let’s try it like this:
It says an awful lot about your heart that you are willing to twist this hard to put people’s unfettered access to killing tools over a child’s access to being alive at school

Do you have any thoughts with actual substance concerning the meeting? Perhaps some details about the discussions? Who said what? Who proposed what? What the tone of the overall meeting was? Anything?

Please protect school children rather than the gun industry. Please relent and approve funding for federal studies that quantify the connections between the proliferation of guns and violent death.

Do you think the killer in Vegas played a lot of video games?

[….] Thanks for looking into the issue of gun violence. Perhaps we could start with the common denominator of the topic: guns. Give back your NRA contributions so that we can have an objective conversation. Otherwise, your opinions are biased and empty.

Video games are world wide… they are enjoyed all around the world, but you don’t see everyone else shooting up schools because of playing a video game.

They have nothing to do with gun violence in your country.

Instead of blaming violent video games, maybe you should research other countries that have the same games, but dont have the same gun problems. Japan is doing just fine. Keep scapegoating instead of fixing the real issue. You shouldnt be allow to make policy for anyone

If the rest of Congress is a stupid as you we’re screwed.

We’re screwed.

Still going back to this same old tired trough…..study after study has proven this is a bunch of bullshit…..start doing your job instead of supporting the NRA as they kill our kids! You say you are pro-life and yet you stand with this bullshit!

You want to talk to grass roots activists? On March 24th, in your district: COMO March For Our Lives

Exactly this

25 Sunday Feb 2018

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Kansas City Mayor Sly James (D) [2016 file photo].

Yesterday, via Twitter:

🐺@WolfJeremyR
Mayor, can you explain why gun sales skyrocketed from 2008-2016, and then slowed in 2017?
1:27 PM – 24 Feb 2018

Kansas City Mayor Sly James’ (d) response:

Mayor Sly James‏ @MayorSlyJames
Yeah. Fear of having a Democrat Black President is one reason.
[….]
1:32 PM – 24 Feb 2018

Yep.

I weep

19 Monday Feb 2018

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From the Balloon Juice Lexicon:

High Broderism – Also frequently seen as merely “Broderism.” A fetishistic attachment to bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake; reflexive adherence to false equivalencies, regardless of whether what one side says is patently insane. The result of forty years of believing that Dirty Fucking Hippies may be hiding under your bed. Whereby a center-right pundit, often Broder himself, decrees that bipartisanship is a good thing and can be achieved if only everyone would agree with the center-right pundit. For the last ten years or so, High Broderism has been the shorter version of virtually every op-ed from David Broder.

I listened to part of an interview on a cable television news network this evening. The insidious effect of the status quo propaganda on our body politic is a very powerful force and I just witnessed the beginnings of the destruction of what appeared to me just twenty-fours ago as an unstoppable grassroots movement.

Political power is not a precision instrument. When it is held and wielded it must be done so without compromise, with message discipline, with purpose, and with the understanding that it can evaporate quickly.

The raw emotion of a high school student, speaking from notes on a piece of paper, demanding action, not words, was powerful. And brutal.

The NRA and the republican party know that they have eleven days from last Wednesday until the murders in Florida fade from memory. Have you noted their disciplined silence?

Twenty-four hours ago I had some measure of hope. As I watched the interview unfold this evening I kept repeating aloud, “We’re all fucked.”

Tonight in response to a question from a cable news network interviewer asking two high school students if their activism had become a political movement they replied that it was not political and what was needed was “bipartisanship.”

I weep.

Trump, Russia, the NRA and today’s tweet storm

18 Sunday Feb 2018

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After Donald Trump – and to be honest, most of the Republican political class – totally failed to discuss the gun part of the fact that the children in Parkland, Florida were massacred by a kid armed with a legally purchased assault weapon, there was lots of right-minded noise about how the GOP is a totally owned subsidiary of the NRA. But, nevertheless, I found it odd that nobody – to my knowledge – has brought up this little bit of news from a few days earlier:

But when it comes to funding, the NRA may have finally gone too far: the FBI recently launched an investigation to determine whether a Russian central banker, and Putin ally, illegally funneled money through the organization to help the Trump campaign.

Kind of casts Trump’s worries that the Russia investigation might be eating up too many FBI resources in another light. Also explains his tight-lipped stance when it comes to bucking the NRA line. It might just not be the Russians who may have a few dirty secrets our putative president would prefer to keep quiet when it comes to money laundering.

Of course, given the limited intellectual capacity of the current White House occupant, it’s really not too surprising that he might not believe that the agents of a huge, complex agency like the FBI can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Roy Blunt and the NRA: Married on the way to the bank

15 Thursday Feb 2018

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According to The New York Times Roy Blunt is one of the top ten “career”recipients of NRA largess in the congress. His take: $4,551,146. That’s right. Our boy got himself over four million of those NRA dollars. And I don’t think anyone would disagree that he’s done himself proud when it comes to earning his fee.

All of which prompts one to ask what he has to say about the latest mass shooting event at a school, a spree that took 17 lives and wounded at least 12 other children. The Sedalia Democrat offers the following quote:

In an interview, Blunt said that “I don’t think we have enough information yet to know that a change in any law would have impacted what happened in Florida.” But, referring to reports that the FBI had been warned by threats that the killer had made on social media, Blunt added: “Whether it is bizarre anti-social behavior or terrorist activity, when people see something they should say something.”You have got a guy parading around in a gas mask with weapons making threats and putting that on social media; that needs to be reported,” Blunt, R-Mo., said. “And the people that is [sic] reported to need to respond to that report.”

Blunt echoed the president in his imputation that the correct way to protect against mass school shootings would be for the “normal” folks to report aberrant behavior on the part of troubled individuals. Happened here, didn’t work, not going to work, just stigmatizes folks with emotional problems.

In the past Blunt has resorted overtly to the tack taken by Donald Trump today which is that it is mental illness that kills people, not guns – in spite of the fact that those suffering mental illness have been shown to more often suffer violence than they are to commit violent acts,  that when they do act out violently, they themselves have frequently been previously victimized, and they are more likely to do so within institutional settings rather than in public.

All of this is just a way to frame the simple-minded NRA bumper sticker that says in one variant or another that “people kill people, not guns.” If Kim Jong-un, who may or may not be mentally unstable, doesn’t realize that he’s dealing with a possible mental case in the White House, push comes to shove, and hundreds of folks, possibly in the U.S. as well as North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are killed, will Republicans excuse the holocaust with a similar slogan: Crazy people kill people, not bombs? Funny that. Or not.

Of course, the real thrust of Blunt’s response was that he just doesn’t have enough facts to say anything substantive. While I know he’s unlikely to read this screed, I’d sill like to supply him with a few hard and fast facts:

  1. A disturbed young man, who, incidentally, had been reported and investigated by the authorities, was able to legally buy a military-grade weapon.
  2. President Trump, in his haste to destroy any remnants of Obama-style common-sense regulation, stopped a rule that would have made it more difficult for the mentally-ill to buy firearms.
  3. Republicans like Blunt have consistently refused to vote for legislation that regulated civilian acquisition of military-grade weapons in spite of the fact that they seem to be the weapon of choice for mass shooters.
  4. A conservative analysis by The Washington Post tells us that “more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.”
  5. In the first 45 days of this year there have been six school shootings that have injured students.
  6. States are skint. They aren’t willing or able to pay to supply the school security officers that schools are requesting. Florida schools, scene of the most recent shooting, are among those that have experienced growing enrollments but have received less money to pay for necessities like increased security for which they have requested funding.
  7. A spate of studies report that states – and developed countries – with more guns have more homicide deaths and suicides. States and countries with better regulated gun ownership have fewer.

There are lots more facts like these. And I’m willing to bet that Blunt knows a few of them already. He just doesn’t care.

Nor, as Blunt’s GOP pals like to claim, do these facts suggest that gun ownership should be illegal; nobody’s 2nd amendment rights should be violated. But we have to be clear that the Supreme Court ruling, District of Columbia v. Heller, authored by conservative, gun-loving Judge Antonin Scalia, specifies that that the right to own firearms is subject to regulation, specifically in the case of “prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’.”

So what’s keeping the pot boiling for a dangerously out of control NRA, an organization that wants to persuade us that even talking dirty about guns is not only a violation of a poorly understood 2nd amendment, but an invitation to “jack-booted government thugs” to steal our liberties? Look no further than Senator Roy Blunt and an NRA-whipped GOP.

But hey! Four million dollars is one heckava payout. And Blunt wasn’t even number one on the list.