In America, we’ve come to accept these sorta things as the cost of living in a free society where the Supreme Court gives more weight to the vague caveats of the Second Amendment than it does to the unqualified imperatives of the First, so the only thing really surprising about yesterday’s tragic shootings at the University of Alabama was the identity of the shooter: a woman.
Not some disaffected teenage boy looking to kill himself, and take a few classmates with him, or some crazed homophobe with a grudge against Unitarians. Not a Timothy McVeigh or a Seung-Hui Cho or a Nidal Malik Hassan or a gangbanger, a skinhead, a terrorist or something like that. You know, not a man.
I’m no criminologist, but from anecdotal experience, I’m guessing that Prof. Amy Bishop just doesn’t fit the profile.
Yet, she had a loaded gun. And in America, that’s all you really need to make a mark on the world.
She might fit the profile in terms stress from job and marriage stress and mental illness. We’ll see.
Healthy people don’t shoot people, even with access to guns.
And let’s not turn this into an anti-gun screed. Instead, mourn for the victims and their families, and hope that the shooter offers some sort of expalanation for her actions before the State of Alabama barbecues her. Clearly there’s some sort of mental illness here.
Yeah, what #2 said. And remind me not to post in a pre-caffeinated state…
“Yet, she had a loaded gun. And in America, that’s all you really need to make our mark on the world.”
Pretty easy to do the same with a bunch of drinks and a steering wheel.
There’s not much to say, other than that this is all very, very sad.
Hmmm.. 4 kids.. Business, patent prospects.. Classes to teach.. Papers to write.. Academic politicking.. Tenure to make..
C’mon something has to give. You can’t have it all.
@2 and 3.
Gun control may be the knee jerk reaction among a large part of my lefty brethren but you provide the knee jerk reaction of a large part of the right.
It cannot be disputed that if Prof. Bishop did not have (legally I assume but interested to know if carrying on campus is prohibited) a loaded gun on her posession yesterday it is infinitely more likely that three people would be alive today. You can not conceal a sword or a baseball bat or a machete nearly as easily as a handgun and the odds of victims 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 escaping in the absence of a gun are considerably better. You might get one or two with a knife or some blunt weapon, but you won’t get six.
Not an argument pro or con re: gun control. Just pointing out that the knee-jerk absolutist reaction on both sides is crap.
“vague caveats of the Second Amendment than it does to the unqualified imperatives of the First”
C’mon Goldy
I seem to recall there was a recent first ammendment case that didn’t go your way due to those “vague caveats”.
well goldstein, in your list of people you made like tim mcveigh and skinheads etc, you forgot the jewish defense league. listed by the fbi as the second most dangerous domestic terrorist orginization.
Duh!
Didn’t this killing take place in the well known terrorist state of Al Abama?
In related news, Gottlieb strikes again:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35374252
Just be glad there were no guns used on this victim. It was a girl wailing on another!
Hmmm… isn’t Massachusetts one of them blue states? Braintree MA. Now who was guvnur in Massachusetts in 1986?
@12
And the victim is still alive. Did that little nugget escape you?
13
Is it possible for a human being to draw a more pointless connection than what you do here? A brain that works like yours is a sad waste of cells.
Right Pudwacker. ‘Cause governors regularly get involved when local police determine not to file charges.
Why do you even bother? Did you have a point? Pete Wilson (R) was governor of Blue State California when O.J. was acquitted. Pete must be guilty of something.
@8
Exactly.
8 and 17
Yeah, but our knee jerk reactions are better than theirs.
@12
There were folks with both authority and guns around, it didn’t help.
I’m thinking that had the police and security guards not been there people would have stepped in and stopped things. No guns needed. But, they saw the cops and security guards there and left it to them to do their jobs. Seattle needs some better cops and security. And a better sense of community.
@8 She had no permit for it.
@11: Al Abama, LOL.
Everyone wants to rationalize and make excuses for guns and why people feel the need to own/carry them, one of the most idiotic aspects of the culture. Michael Moore had it spot-on in Bowling for Columbine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPBHtjZmSpw
Check out the comments by the girl who did the beating’s attorney. Apparently what we saw on the tape was a “very small snapshot” of what was going on…
http://www.king5.com/home/Youn.....13162.html
The very small snapshot that I saw had one girl on the ground unable to protect herself and the other girl repeatedly kicking her in the head. Fuck that shit, lock that girl up.
Some times teens get in fights; I’m on the side of letting them solve it them selves if all it involves is some shoving and yelling. This was not a couple of kids in a screaming match.
Here we go again.
This is why I go strapped, every where I go. I even sleep strapped. If more of those professors had been packing, they would have dropped her right away. Tenure? Hell, you’ll be lucky to get out alive.
I wore my matching Kevlar body armor to parent teacher conferences this year and they didn’t give me any guff.
@24
Which, if serious, makes you paranoid leaning toward psychotic. Did you fear that one of you kid’s teachers would open fire? Afraid you’d take one in the chest from a parent over a store bought sugar cookie? Were you planning on brandishing if a teacher told you your kids’ classroom manners were bad?
I’m betting your school district has regs. against bringing firearms on campus.
Your kids must be so proud that Daddy (Mommy?) needs a gun at school to feel safe.
8:
I wasn’t trying to repeat some sort of absolutist position. I was saying that the thread shouldn’t just become one long anti-gun screed. I can’t think of an ‘absolutist’ opinion on anything that’s of any good to the society at large. What needs to be done is to investigate what caused the shooter to snap as she did, rather than just yell “guns bad!” at the top of our lungs.
25
He’s not serious, but it’s not hard to believe some of our wingnuts could seriously express such paranoid sentiments.
@27
I’m being serious. I have prepared firing positions in my yard with range cards and interlocking fields of fire. I’m ready for anything. I made a mortar out of some heavy duty pipe and I have the cul-de-sac in front of my house sighted in. I can put one of my mortar rounds anywhere in the neighborhood. I trained my kids to be forward observers and they know how to make a call for fire and how to adjust fire.
do cuban citizens own firearms? how about north korea? iran? vietnam? hmmmm, what a coincidence.
I don’t know if they have guns, but I’m sure they don’t have smores, and everybody knows that a society that doesn’t have smores is not truly free.
Take all of the money spent on anti-gun campaigns by libs, and divert it into programs for at risk youth, and mental health for problem adults. I bet the gun violence stats would go down. This would require looking long term over several years, instead of for immediate gratification for someone’s politcal axe to grind.
ole Max went shooting today…..
yep, playing 500 yard plinko with the trusty Dragunov SVD..
my only complaint: finding good, quality 7.62 x 54 rounds is getting hard.
ok, back to your regularly scheduled pussification of America conversation…
Oh you leftist pinheads forget so much so quickly.
Bernard Shaw asks Michael Dukakis a provocative question in the second 1988 presidential debate: “If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer.”
Mike Dukakis – Ahhh ummm ahhh ummm ahhh…
The attitude comes from the top fools. If your state leader is a wimp, you can be a wimp too.
Too bad you fools just don’t get it.
There is so much Proud Goatist misses every day. Puddy tries but Proud Goatist is a brick wall for knowledge.
28
Yeah, well, I’ve got an arsenal of personal nuclear devices that ensures that no one fucks with me, not even our local law enforcement folks. Anyone comes at me and there ain’t gonna be nothing left of him but goo.
Racistpieceofshit @ 29
Why don’t you check into the prevalence of firearms in Middle Eastern nations?
Puddy @ 34
I know I’m failing my Wingnut Studies course. I appreciate your kind assistance in trying to help me understand the wingnut brain, but I’m just not getting it. I’ll work harder. I promise. Really.
@31
Yep!
Both pro and anti-gun groups are more about yelling at each other, continuing the 1960’s culture war, and providing some political types cushy jobs than they are about preventing gun violence.
@35
Here’s God’s own truth: considering you and me, only one of us has actually worked on nuclear weapons.
What kinda personal nuclear weapon do you have? An ADM? Know what it looks like? Heh. By the way, it is really hard to get goo out of a nuclear explosion. You can get goo out of fougasse, but you don’t want it.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, I can’t believe the depths of the shit I feel like ranting here about gun control. There are fucknuts who act like their guns are more important than their genitals.
Breaking News … Goldy leaves out of his post the fact that this woman also shot and killed her brother 23 years ago.
“Oh you leftist pinheads forget so much so quickly.”
Gee Pudwacker, you remember 22 years ago but can’t get your head around SCOTUS decisions a mere four?
That’s a powerful mind you have there. And still not relevant. What power to arrest does the Mass Governor have if local and/or state police determine that charges aren’t warranted?
Sic the AG on a teenager and see if you can make charges stick against the sworn statements of the Mother of the deceased?
Hmmmmmmmm?
No one had to victimize you.
You did it to yourself.
Coward..
@39
That’s because they don’t have any genitals.
@40Breaking News … Goldy leaves out of his post the fact that this woman also shot and killed her brother 23 years ago.
if you are not mistaken, it is amazing the type of people our universities hire. just like bill ayers. but only certain types of people. do any of you have any doubt that if bill ayers had bombed synagoges rather than the pentagon, he would be hired by a school?
@40
Breaking news! It was breaking news; he probably didn’t know about it!
Plus, what’s someone who shot someone doing with a gun?
Can we get instant background checks on ammo purchases now?
And years ago she shot her brother and wasn’t charged with a crime, so a background check would have done nothing. Instead, investigate why she got let off.
Was taking night school courses at the graduate level in economics in the mid-1970s, my instructor was an older but very attractive female PhD.
She asked me out to coffee in a couple of weeks after the course started. I was for it and hoped for more.
She told me the names of three top American Universities that she had worked at on tenure track and never received tenure.
Some other comments convinced me in a half an hour of the total waste of time and money getting a PhD in economics.
Hey, I think the woman was justified. If a defense fund is posted I’ll contribute and I really don’t care that she killed her brother twenty years ago.
It isn’t about guns. It’s why people are turning to hurting others as a solution to their problems. What is wrong with people nowadays? Mass murders. Anti-science. Voting for Republicans. America is gripped by mass insanity.
@23 Betcha the boyfriend did it.
I wonder if it has occurred to anyone that all these cop shootings might be a result of anti-government agitation?
Associated Press reports that Amy Bishop killed her brother with a shotgun when she was 19 and he was 18.
There were suspicions at the time that shooting was intentional, but it ultimately was ruled accidental.
And the police records of that case have disappeared.
@48 What is wrong with people nowadays?
Or yesterday. How many people ended up with lung cancer or died thanks to the second hand smoke you poured into the air from decades of heavy cigarette smoking? You’ll never know, but they’re probably out there. Lives destroyed, families wrecked, thanks to your conscious decision to smoke year after year after year, despite the warnings . . .
@52 The Vietnam War was very bad for many people’s health, too.
Actually liberalism kills more people than guns, knives, or even republican lead wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just ask Detroit, LA, Washington DC, New Orleans, Chicago, NY City, St. Louis ect…ect…ect.
RUFUS,
Before I address the substance of your nonsense, let me first say that your “ect . . . ect . . .” thing makes you look a little stupid. Let me school you a bit–the latin “et cetera” is generally reduced in English to “etc.” Damn, you wingies don’t know a damned thing, do you?
#48 Roger,
Well said.
@50
I wonder if it has occurred to anyone that all these cop shootings might be a result of anti-government agitation?
roger, remind me again what hilary clinton screamed during bush’s tenure when she said something like she’ll be damned if anyone thinks she has no right to criticze her government…something like that…just remind me.
Goldy, I would have never placed you as a sexist.
Don’t you believe that a woman can do anything a man can do?
how much you wanna bet that the prof was a dyed in the wool hardcore progressive?
I’m betting we will find out that she has a multiple personality.
Well as it turns out she’s a raging lefty.
Boston Herald:
“A family source said Bishop, a mother of four children – the youngest a third-grade boy – was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting.”
Herr Goebbels Himmler Dumb Bunny sez:
We see what it did to you.
Wait for it… Pavlov predicts some off balanced comment about Puddy not being there, etc….
Delbert@61
EXCELLENT CATCH on her pinko leftist views. She’s further left than “we ylb arschloch” and that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay past left field.
Cant wait to see how they spin this one…
Sure got quiet when it’s reported that she was a big liberal. Fucking mental cases, all of them.
@65….SHhhhhhhhhhh mark, its supposed to be a secret.
especially now when its revealed that 1) she shot and killed her bro, and 2) was under investigation for a mail bomb…and now that investigation is being reviewed.