Gunnuttery category archive

At Psychology Today Blogs, Scott Bonn takes issue with the notion mass shooters are “mentally unhinged individuals who simply ‘snap,'” pointing out that “the majority of mass public shooters are individuals who would not be classified as either clinically or legally insane . . . .” He thinks the problem is much larger, embedded in our very culture and mythos. An excerpt:

Other developed countries that we consider to be our peers simply do not have the problem with mass shooting incidents that we do. It is my contention that the very roots of our mass shooting epidemic may be found in our core cultural value of fierce individualism, a belief in vengeance, and the ethic that might makes right.

Methinks he may be onto something. Follow the link for his arguments.

Yes, indeedy-do, one of those responsible gun owners shot himself in the foot.

We are a society of stupid.

Practice random acts of politeness.

We are a sick society.

Show politeness at the drive-thru window.

Yet another responsible gun owner–oh, you know the rest.

Guns and stupid, guns and stupid,
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you, brother,
You won’t find one without the other.

At the Hartford Courant, Karl E. Scheibe asks a (rhetorical) question:

Why is the United States uniquely troubled with gun violence?

Follow the link for his answer.

Yet another responsible gun owner discharges her responsibility.

Yet another child is dead.

Beach blanket bango.

And, while we are on the subject of politeness . . . .

At The Roanoke Times, Sociologist Theodore Fuller points out that guns are the problem.

Some say that we will never solve the problem of random gun violence until people return to their faith in God. Church attendance is down. People are abandoning their traditional values. So, the problem is that Americans are less Godly than, say, the French, the Germans, the Brits, the Swedes, the Norwegians? Have you checked lately on church attendance rates in Europe? It is much lower than in the United States. No, the problem is not a lack of religion; it is that we have a horribly misguided interpretation of the Second Amendment.

(snip)

We have not always had this distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment. The idea that the Second Amendment means that any Tom, Dick, or Harry has a Constitutional right to purchase any weapon, no matter how deadly, has been sold to the American people by the NRA. And the NRA did not always have this interpretation. They started selling this idea in the 1970s.

To put it bluntly, that’s when the NRA morphed from being primarily a safety organization for hunters to being the marketing agency for merchants of death.

Follow the link for the rest.

Image via All Things Amazing, an image site (some images NSFW).

Once again, politeness is child’s play.

And thus passeth another day in NRA Paradise.

We are again reminded that “social” media isn’t.