Pic Of The Moment: Massacre Update

[EarlG]

[Cary]

1. More guns = more gun tragedies

It's that simple.

[quakerboy]

21. Youve got it all wrong. point 5 is key

Once you have enough guns, they aggregate into a sort of protective armor crust around your person, protecting you from other gun owners. Its just common sense.

[Midnight Writer]

28. And in regard to Point 5: At least 12 of the victims WERE ARMED..

Over 100 armed and trained officers, all with police firearm training, many with military training, many veterans with combat experience, and still victims of a lone shooter.

I hope this puts to rest the hate talk meme that these mass shooters are only effective in gun free zones.

[Pluvious]

2. Already the stock in companies making bodycams is jumping today - sigh

I guess this is just the new American Way.

:-/

[SCantiGOP]

3. As Woodward and Bernstein were told:

Follow the money.
The NRA has nothing to do with gun safety anymore. They are merely the lobbying arm of the gun and ammo industry.
I
I guarantee you there are people on this site that are being paid by the NRA to advance their agenda. Why else would someone park on a Democratic site and constantly support positions contrary to the Democratic Party's stated goals?

[underpants]

7. Marketing

they are the marketing department for the weapons industry. And they do some lobbying.

[liberalnarb]

10. Which also begs the question

Why do we have RKBA group?

[SCantiGOP]

14. Damn right, liberalnarb !

I have wondered the same thing. They are so out of step with the rest of our group here, and out of step with the Democratic Party, I don't understand how they get a forum here.
They post talking points from the NRA, like having an armed citizenry is the best way to stop the 'bad guys' with guns. Five minutes before CNN broke in with news of the ambush of the police officers last night they were showing the police presence in the area. If hundreds of armed, trained police couldn't prevent this, how can a couple of citizens carrying guns be effective?
I trashed the RKBA forum and most of the people I was in a discussion with there because they kept throwing out ridiculous stats that there are up to 1,500,000 cases of year of "defensive gun uses," and then they will post 2-3 stories where that has happened.
My state of SC is about average size for the 50 states in population, so that works out to more than 80 cases a day in South Carolina! Their answer to this absurd disconnect from logic is that the press doesn't publicize these stories - I guess because SC is such an anti-gun, liberal state? What utter crap.

I'm sure some of them are sincere (they just think the 2nd Amendment is the only one that is really important and "threatened) but I also am convinced some of them are paid or dedicated volunteers for the NRA.

[Jerry442]

30. I'm puzzled about what they hope to accomplish here.

I mean, I could see if someone came here trying to sell the idea that the expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment was compatible with the traditional ideas of the Democratic Party. It would be really heavy lifting, to be sure, but I can see someone having a go at it.

On the other hand, endlessly repeating NRA talking points, picking at technical nits in other people's posts, and just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything for anybody.

[Eleanors38]

15. Gun control is about elites talking to elites. Suggest it...

The time may be ripe. Our Fourth Amendment has been fractured by the WOD, liberal Democrats upped the ante on BushCo's "No Fly" to a "No Buy" Terrah Watch List and thereby knocked the snot outta the Fifth Amendment. You can now have a practice run toward the First, right here in Democratic Underground. (I think I can guess what some here think of the Second.). One thing is sure: The GCRKBA group Will have to be silenced by, yep, an elite(s). Otherwise, it ain't going away.

[japple]

20. Sorry, I am not a frequent poster, but I do have a huge interest in

this issue.

What does RKBA mean?

[liberalnarb]

22. "right to keep and bear arms."

[japple]

25. Thanks! I might have gotten it after

a few hours of searching and pondering.

[SCantiGOP]

32. It's a forum

In the "Justice and Public Safety" category.

[awoke_in_2003]

26. It makes a great place...

to dump the gun threads that the rest of us don't want to read, so that the main pages aren't cluttered up with gun worship.

[tclambert]

4. Good idea not putting the name of the city or the date on the picture.

Now you can recycle it every two or three days.

You could add "Congressional Republicans call for prayer and a moment of silence."

[Jerry442]

31. Yeah, somebody in a different thread...

...complained because a poster linked to a "Tom Tomorrow" political cartoon that was five years old. They didn't get the central message that a five-year-old cartoon about guns was just as accurate and relevant as the day it was drawn.

TT is great. The cartoon was great. The underlying reality sucks.

[Wounded Bear]

5. Lather, rinse, repeat...

[IronLionZion]

6. More gun tragedies = More gun sales

it's disgusting that some people are getting rich from this.

The NRA continues to encourage gun purchases "for protection". Protection from who? I'm sure the asshole shooter felt like he was resisting government tyranny with his 2nd amendment rights.

[Jamaal510]

8. Another sad

thing about this incident is that it has taken attention away from the peaceful protest. It is extremely sad what happened, but this is all the media and others are focusing on rather than the goal of the protest, and some have even been likening it to BLM demonstrators despite that not being the case.

[lunatica]

9. this was a clear case of what the NRA screams about

Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. Except of course, in this case more of the good guys, which are, you know, trained for this sort of thing, are dead than bad guys.

Somebody should shove that phrase right up the NRA's nose along with anyone else who loves to use it, even if it's a DUer because in this case they're justifying the murder of cops.

[ailsagirl]

11. nra blames victims who weren't armed????????

Hideous monsters. That's truly revolting

[zebonaut]

12. Everyhing in the news has only one thing in common. Guns and their dangerous easy availability.

[passiveporcupine]

13. Two black men just died simply because they were armed.

Carrying a gun does not make you safer. Espeicially if black. If a cop stops you for any reason, and thinks/knows you have a gun, even a legally concealed carry gun, you are a dead man if you are black.

Period.

Philandro just proved that. A couple of days earlier he and his sister were talking to his mom and his sister said she didn't feel comfortable carrying her legal concealed carry gun, because she was afraid police would shoot first and ask questions later. She could not have been more right. If you are black and carrying a gun (even if it is a toy), police shoot first and ask questions later.

Philandro was even trying to comply and notify the officer that he did have a concealed gun, just in case something went wrong...and he was killed for doing what he was supposed to do.

This has to stop. someone just killed five officers in outrage over these two latest killings and Obamas response was:

President Obama condemned the sniper-style shootings of Dallas police officers Friday, calling the assault a "vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement."

His response to the two black men killed by police was:

“When incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our citizenry that feels as if, because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same, and that hurts, and that should trouble all of us,” Mr. Obama said in a statement on Thursday after arriving in Warsaw for a NATO summit. “This is not just a black issue, not just a Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we all should care about.”

Why was his response to the black men dying not as strong as his response to the police shootings?

I'm sorry, but Obama, you obviously don't get it. Philandro did absolutely nothing wrong. He was not resisting. He was complying with the officer's orders, while notifiying him (not warning him) that he had a concealed weapon, and the officer immediately felt threatened and shot him.

Why is that not a viscous, calculated and despicable act?

Why Obama?

Man, I love you, but you are so wrong on this.

[turbinetree]

16. The HUMAN BEINGS that have been murderd and those that have survived-----------

we has a society need to have this gun issue laid right at the feet of the NRA backed Congress, the Gun Owners of American that also has bought Congress, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation and there Congressional backers.

If, we as a society had campaign finance reform, whereby the public had a hand in financing these elections with public funds instead of funds from groups like those mentioned above, and other "DARK MONEY" we would not have read or heard about the carnage that has happened in the last three days, or the last month, the years and what is occurring on daily basis, the scale of death is going full "bonzo".

This political corruption is causing this country to turn into a war zone and the paranoia that is now gripping this democracy because of the gerrymandering and those feckless hypocrites that talk nothing but BS and that have installed unfit people running this country from the local up to the federal level, is actually causing people to die and that they are not doing the job to protect the society at large, and that includes both speakers of Congress and there minions, from both side of the aisle.

I am not here to defend anyone when it comes to guns, my position is the public does not have need for them.

Just think if you lived in another country and a police officer pulls you over, does that officer have to worry about a person having a gun, declaring they have gun or someone sitting in a underground parking lot shooting officers, human beings in protest, or someone laying in the back of trunk in a car and just shooting people driving cross country, or someone in a Texas Tower shooting down on HUMAN BEINGS at a university or from a book depository or being at a bar, or in church, or in a town or school in Colorado to Connecticut and Oregon, or at some facility, because of the access and the "availability " to buy a gun, or to have a gun that is not under lock and key in some military facility, which has only one purpose, and it not to keep life in any form, it and it's main function is death.

And, then the public gets the same old rhetoric coming out of the organization called the NRA saying that unarmed citizens only have themselves to blame------------------no, NRA you are to blame with your bought off Congress and the funds you get along with the manufactures that are killing this country and its citizens -----------------so in three words "Go F***K Yourself" and the horse you road in on.

[YOHABLO]

17. Change the second amendment. Get rid of the guns.

[Eleanors38]

18. I think the OP has amply demonstrated the futility-by-repitition of the gun control outlook...

(it is hardly a "movement). More importantly, to those looking at the Gunz Issue seriously, is the year-after-year "more of the same" which glaringly signals that this "issue" is wholly miscast, that something else is at work. I believe we have always had a violent culture (although the murder/violent crime rate has fallen sharply, disappointing some), and if a violent culture is the problem, then let's define it and act within government authority to address that problem. But honestly, I don't know what the banners and culture warriors really want. Most seem upset by school shooting; then "mass shootings" in general; then minorities getting shot. The "murmur of the battlefeld" that is many central city areas seems merely nettlesome. Frankly, get past the animosity and hatred (often used as a substitute for compassion), I think those "progressives" who want to bet the house on the thin back of NRA-hate and rather orthodox prohibitions, it seems the biggest concern is the style of death as it elbows its way into our celebrity culture. (Underwriting this, I believe, is a growing sense of impotency within liberal Democrstic circles, especially in the face of a well-placed cadre of RW rich kid bullies who know when their enemies are squealing, but this a non-policy matter.)

If liberal Democrats really want to continue trying "more of the same" thing expecting different results, then they will rather conservatively not change. Hoping for some movement to arise when one hasn't before -- despite billionaire finances, some foundations, a once-burned academia, and the always supportive but declining MSM -- is a fundamentally passive, non-activist disposition.

To address this problem which banners and controllers seem incapable of even defining is to call into question the whole liberal-progressive enterprise and the very relevancy of the Democratic Party. So far the Party is not ready to pose that question. I'm not sure DU is ready for it, despite the relative comfort "underground" suggests.

[japple]

19. Why does the "Beltway Sniper" keep coming to mind? It just

keeps coming to mind today. I don't know why.

[Skittles]

23. they should just leave the flags at half-staff

FUCK THE NRA

[allan01]

24. the time is now . now . NOW dont you get it , now

gun owners always say now is not the time , the time is now

[Jopin Klobe]

27. Tune in tomorrow ...

... if you're still around ...

[Dworkin]

29. Armed protesters

Hi,

On the Beeb radio news there was a British film maker who had been following the BLM protest marches and said that in certain states the protesters were marching with 'open carry' semi automatic rifles and shotguns. A quick google and I found some images to confirm.

This is interesting from the second amendment point of view. Would these marchers qualify as a well regulated militia?

D.

[stage left]

33. K&R

For the disgusting, maddening truth.

[PatrickforO]

34. Gun owners aren't saying "now is not the time for politics." Instead, the NRA

is putting those words in their mouths.

Boy, that media spin is powerful, isn't it: 'gun sales expected to soar,' 'Congressmen accuse President of playing politics,' 'Angry shooter planned to kill and injure people not like himself.'

I just read some letters written by cops to a local news channel in response to the tragedy in Dallas. Doesn't seem like the cops get it - they keep saying all lives matter, as if by saying black lives matter, people are somehow implying that no other lives do not matter, which isn't the case. That isn't my take on what they are saying at all.

What's happening here seems to be the police feel 'under siege' so they are hunkering down and becoming even more heavily armed, militarized and mistrustful of the populace. In fact, it is clear some consider the people 'the enemy.'

In the meantime, the AA community continues to become more and more enraged at what many perceive is 'open season' on their children.

Neither side understands the other, and the media continues to bleat about the 'controversy,' wording their message carefully so that gun sales will rise. The skinheads, neonazis and Ku Kluxers, basically Trump supporters, continue to dig and stockpile their bunkers and prepare for an assault against the government. Homophobes continue hate crimes. Xenophobes continue preparing for war against migrants. The MIC roars because times are GOOD!

In the meantime people like me hope the social fabric can hold together just a little longer so all they money we paid into Social Security will support us after retirement. Younger people become angrier and less trustful of their employers, the capitalist system, the corrupt government and the banks.

Know what? We are on the verge of another decade like the '60s of massive social unrest. What, do you think, will we look like in ten years? I mean, I used to warn the capitalists about pitchforks in 20 years, but now I'm not so sure. Unrest seems to be accelerating.

I had a mentor once who said there was only one thing that is really certain.

Change.

[marble falls]

35. Truly one of the best Pic of the Moments ever. Thanks for the quality you work at on all of them1