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Confessions of a Gun Range Worker

Mother Jones

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Editor’s note: Americans today aren’t just stockpiling guns in record numbers; they are also shooting them at upward of 2,100 gun ranges across the country. In February, the pseudonymous author of this piece—a former employee at a gun range in Orange County, California—contacted Mother Jones reporter Josh Harkinson, who interviewed the author and corroborated his account (as told to Harkinson below) through official documents, news reports, and interviews with two other former employees of the gun range. The management and owner of the gun range did not respond to multiple requests for comment.


I’ve worked in the firearms industry for decades, including at a range in Orange County, California. It’s inside an industrial park, in your standard warehouse type of building. People come in and say, “Oh, I never knew this place existed.” Once you check in, there are two entryways and 16 lanes. The lanes are monitored by video cameras, and there are also large double-paned windows, which, it turns out, are not made of bulletproof glass.

I later worked as a contractor at ranges all over the region. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve witnessed multiple suicides. Three rampage shooters practiced at the Orange County range. The general vibe at the ranges has gotten much more extreme and paranoid. I don’t think this is unique to where I worked. The gun industry is really changing for the worse.

I was attracted to guns as a teenager because my family had been victims of violent crime. My dad had been mugged and my family has been held up in their store at least a couple of times at gunpoint. I guess you could say it’s a way of reclaiming some sense of power over a powerless situation.

My first gun was a military surplus bolt-action, a Lee Enfield. The ATF has a category for these things: curio and relic weapons. It was the only gun that at 18 years old I could legally purchase and walk out the door with. It was fully capable of punching through a car or a cinder block. I started buying and fixing up other relic firearms. At the time I was a college student; I’d sell a gun and use the money to pay for my books. I can’t even remember all the guns I’ve owned. That’s part of what attracted me to working at the range. You would see all sorts of different guns come through. I also came to enjoy the camaraderie. In some ways it’s not just a range so much as a gathering place for a certain type of crotchety old man. You sit there on the bench and drink your nasty cup of coffee and trade lies and war stories. For me, it was something that I kind of didn’t have growing up, because my dad wasn’t always there.

But there were certain people who were difficult. At some point during the day, you would have a gun pointed at you. I had a guy with Parkinson’s, and he had severe muscle tremors. He can’t hold the gun properly, and it jams. He walks off the range, he’s pointing the gun at me, and he’s saying, “Hey, hey, my gun is jammed!” I sidestep the muzzle and say, “Let’s have a look, shall we?” All the while that I am handling it I am saying, “You really shouldn’t be doing that.” And the guy, without missing a beat, says, “It’s all right, the safety’s on the gun.” I pull the slide back and there’s a live round that ejects from the chamber. And I’m thinking, okay, I was a three-pound trigger pull away from getting shot.

The ranges make a lot of their money from renting guns to people—those are the people you really have to watch out for. Like the time we rented a Ruger handgun to this woman. After I turned my back to her, she put the gun behind her ear and blew a nice, clean, round hole through the center of her head. I didn’t really feel anything at the time. At first it was disbelief, and then I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to take care of stuff.” Different guys handle it differently. I know a guy who quit right after something like this happened.

Our standard operating procedure when this happens is to call a cease-fire. Then we clear the range so that nobody is in any danger. Then sometimes you’d go up and, if it’s safe to do so, you’d kick the gun out. I still remember this: The manager at the time wound up putting gloves on and plugging the side of her head with his fingers. I’m thinking, “This isn’t going to do a whole lot. She’s toast, dude.” Not to be callous about it, but she was dead. Her eyes were flapping, there was nothing there.

Gun ranges often have policies that require anyone who rents a gun to be accompanied by a friend. It’s supposed to be a way to prevent suicides, but it doesn’t always work very well. Eventually the range started paying a service to come pick up the bodies and scrub everything. But before that happened, Christ, what was it? Bleach and kitty litter. I remember one time I had come in for a shift change and there was a pool of blood. We didn’t have any bleach but we did have some kitty litter. I remember using that to soak up the blood. And because we didn’t have the bleach, some of my members were kind enough to go across the street to the grocery store and buy some. In hindsight, we had no protocols, we had no protective suits. I could have exposed myself to blood-borne pathogens.

Another one was a father who was getting divorced. He was a pretty big guy. I felt the impact, and when I turned around there was pandemonium. Some of my members came rushing out the door yelling at me to call the police, and we did. The guy had sent suicidal text messages to his family. It made the paper because he was a beloved figure in the community, big into Little League. He was totally normal acting. And the next thing you know, you have 300 pounds hitting the floor.

I feel sorry for the families. Anybody who is that depressed for the most part has my sympathy. I do get a little bit irritated that they have to do it while I’m on duty. I think it’s kind of—I don’t know if you’d say inconsiderate—but almost that. You can’t really ask these people, “Hey, if you are going to kill yourself, why don’t you do it out in the desert or something like that?”

Around 2002, a middle-aged guy named Hesham Hadayet came into the range. He’d purchased a gun at a store. He asked me, “Hey, can you show me how to load and operate this gun?” I am thinking, “Wait a minute, didn’t you just take a class?” I’m like, “Fine, not a problem.” I think he came in two or three more times. I didn’t pay any attention to it. Well, a few months later, I turn on the TV and I see this guy’s face. He’d shot up a ticket counter at LAX. He killed two people and injured two more before being fatally shot by a security guard.

The second guy, Phong Thuc Tran, also shot at the range. He worked for the gas company and had been forced to resign. After he killed his supervisor and his co-worker, he was running around for like a day or two before he parked his car in front of a police station. That’s where he shot himself. We only found out about it when the local cops walked in. The guy, he was a little off, but he was very quiet, respectful. No outward signs of anger. You never would’ve known.

The third one, Scott Dekraai, practiced at the range in 2011 and after that he goes on a shooting rampage. He shot nine people at the Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, including his ex-wife. Only one of them survived.

We talked about them amongst ourselves, but if a member of the shooting public comes in and wants to, we pretty much dummy up. Because who wants to say, “Hey, yeah, there was a mass murderer here at the range?”

There are some good bosses that run these ranges, but for the most part they willingly overlook the fact that this stuff is dangerous. And I’m not just talking about the guns. They’re supposed to properly train people for handling lead, which gets released in large quantities by spent bullets. There’s not really a safe level for lead in your body once you get above five micrograms per deciliter of blood. At the end of the day, you’ve got various things that you have to clean up: the brass shells, paper from the targets, un-burnt powder from the ammunition, little bits of atomized lead. Anything with high enough concentrations of lead is supposed to be put into a canister and treated as hazardous material, but that didn’t always happen.

We’d get tested for lead in our bodies maybe once or twice a year. They would kind of look sideways at you if you asked for the test results. I knew better than that. I just said, “The hell with it.” But the last test that I had, it came back high. I was contacted by the California Department of Public Health, and the guy said, “Uh, why is your lead level so high?”

I started noticing a difference in the type of people coming to the range when Bill Clinton was president. It was the first time I had actually seen somebody post a picture of the president as a target. I told them, “Look, you can’t do that.” Now there’s a company that sells targets with images of Obama, and they put apelike features on him.

You never would have seen something like that 20 years ago when I started. It’s an echo chamber. It’s a place where people feel safe because they feel that people are of like mind. A few months ago, this woman wanted to know about getting her license. I asked her, “What do you need the gun for, if you don’t mind my asking? Was there a crime?” She said, “No, I think there’s going to be an influx of Muslims coming in from our southern border and then they are going to start killing people.” I’ve had people come up to me and say, “I don’t like it that you show these ragheads how to shoot.”

Paranoid? What would you call it when people have six months worth of food? What would you call it when people have 30-plus guns? What would you call it when they are stockpiling ammunition? The gun industry is making a killing, and it’s doing its best to fan the flames. You see stuff in internet gun forums like, “Hey, FEMA is purchasing a million and a half rounds of ammunition.” It’s supposedly because the government is preparing to come around and knock on your door and round you up into camps.

It all plays into people’s paranoid fantasies, and guns are always the solution. They give people a sense of control in a world that is out of control. You go into the NRA convention and look around at the sea of faces— I’m sorry, it’s a bunch of paranoid white guys who see their country slipping away from them. They think people like Trump, or the gun industry, are the “real” Americans. The gun industry could give a rat’s ass. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m leaving the industry to make better money. Dude, I will still be into guns. I like working on ’em. My friends and I still shoot. But the other motivation, just as strong perhaps, is that I don’t want to have to be around a bunch of crazy people.

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Confessions of a Gun Range Worker

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Our election process is dead. Only the internet can revive it

Our election process is dead. Only the internet can revive it

By on 1 Mar 2016 5:02 pmcommentsShare

Happy National Pig Day! Coincidentally, it’s also Super Tuesday, the day when citizens of 13 states will cast their ballots for the candidate they want to represent their party in the general election — who, in one case, may be an actual pig. And how many people will take part in the glorious democratic process today? Hardly any! Voter turnout in 2008, the last time both parties were in hotly contested races, was a historically high 27 percent. That’s right: 27 percent was actually record-breaking turnout. And this year, it’s predicted to be even lower, at least among Democrats, who aren’t being forced to choose between four climate change deniers and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Why is it that so few of us turn out to vote in the primaries, even in races as dramatic and consequential as this year’s? Well, voting is surprisingly difficult, and the process varies widely depending on where you live.

Take Colorado, where tonight’s primary is actually a caucus, one of the more confusing aspects of American democracy. Caucus states require registered voters to go to a precinct meeting run by their local parties, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, listen to the rules, stand around for a while, and then cast their ballots for their preferred presidential nominee. After that, each precinct will elect a designated number of delegates based on the votes for presidential candidates. It’s confusing, and the process — which can take several hours — begins right around the time you would normally be making dinner. They don’t make it easy, especially if you have to work, have to travel, have children, are registered as an independent in the state, or don’t have access to transportation and many free hours to commit to the onerous process.

And even in places without the oh-so-confusing caucus, voting in primaries is actually getting harder as some states (looking at you, North Carolina) have shortened the early voting period, curtailed same-day registration, and now require government-issued IDs in an effort to prevent non-existent voter fraud.

Whew! It’s almost enough to make you want to skip it all together — which, incidentally, is what the vast majority of eligible voters do. But would we skip voting if it were easier? According to a new survey of 1,000 registered voters by Smartmatic, a corporation specializing in voting technology, the majority of respondents view our current voting system as “inefficient” and say that it discourages people from voting. While all demographics held this view, it was especially true of minority populations. As Brentin Mock at CityLab points out, Smartmatic found that 83 percent of African-Americans and 76 percent of Hispanic/Latino voters agreed that modernizing the voting system would increase voter turnout and strengthen our democracy.

While Smartmatic, a company that deals in voting technology, obviously has a horse in this race, it does seem crazy that in an era where you can apply for a credit card, buy a car, bid on a home, and find a mate from the comfort from your smartphone, voting is so old school. Why haven’t we invested in technology that would make it easier to vote? Clearly, if we can make driverless cars and send probes to Mars and create holograms of Tupac Shakur, we can figure out how to hold elections online. We landed a man on the moon nearly 50 years ago, for Christ’s sake! You’d think we can get a website up and running. And, if not that, the least we could do is make Election Day a holiday in all 50 states. Collectively, we could walk to our precincts, wave to our neighbors, cast our ballots, and think, just for a moment, how nice it is to be an American.

But, no. This Super Tuesday, the process will continue as it has in the past: A cumbersome and ill-devised system that keeps you from being heard. And until this system is fixed, until you can cast your ballot from your phone or you laptop or your local public library, the only way to take part is to force yourself, despite all the barriers, to show up — because someone wins when voter turnout is low, but it’s certainly not the voter.

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Our election process is dead. Only the internet can revive it

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Wheaton College: Still Standing Despite a Bit of Mild Criticism

Mother Jones

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Perhaps you remember the case of Larycia Hawkins. She’s the professor at Wheaton College who declared on her Facebook page that Muslims and Christians worship the same god. Wheaton College follows the “evangelical Protestant tradition,” which apparently has different thoughts on this matter, and as a result Hawkins is in the process of being fired.

Over at National Review, David French says that this ought to be entirely uncontroversial:

But this is Christian higher education, and the Left is taking direct aim at Christian academic freedom and institutional liberty. In 2014, it launched an ill-fated attack on Gordon College’s accreditation, and last month the LGBT Left issued a report loudly condemning Christian colleges for having the audacity to exercise their statutory and constitutional right to opt out of Title IX. So it should come as no surprise that the Left is rallying around professor Hawkins, trying to pressure Wheaton into yielding on its statement of faith.

I read this over lunch, and with nothing more pressing on my mind than eating a slice of pizza, I decided to click those four links to find out just what kind of pressure the Left was bringing to bear. I urge you to click yourself to check my work. The first three go to a trio of little-read diaries at the Huffington Post. Here are the most impassioned statements I could find in each of the three:

Letter endorsed by Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and 26 others: In our view, the measures taken by Wheaton administrators…dampen the spirit of free inquiry so crucial to the academic environment; ultimately depriving the student body of the benefit of a deeply dedicated educator….We call upon her employers to renew their own commitment to the principles of tolerance and academic freedom.

Ken Wilson: There’s a way out of this morass. But it requires a commitment to the apostolic counsel of Romans 14-15. In a nutshell it boils down to this: we’re going to disagree over highly contentious issues….In the meantime, we can feast ourselves on the rich fare of mere Christianity. In a community shaped by Romans 14-15, there would be plenty of room for Julie Rodgers and Dr. Larycia Hawkins at the table.

Pamela A. Lewis: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? To the extent that Christians and Muslims come from the same Abrahamic tradition, yes they do….However, when it is a question about what these faiths call God and how they worship God, there are significant differences with respect to rituals and patterns of devotion….Whether or not Professor Hawkins has violated Wheaton College’s Statement of Faith will be decided by Wheaton College. But I am with those who believe that she was moved by her understanding of Christ’s commandment to love and stand with the vulnerable and the stranger, whoever they may be at the moment.

That’s…not…really very fiery stuff. I imagine the administrators at Wheaton College can still sleep nights. The fourth link goes to a pretty straightforward CNN story in which Hawkins herself is critical of Wheaton’s actions, which is hardly surprising since she’s the one being fired.

So where do these milquetoast statements leave us? French acknowledges that so far, “the Left has merely used its powers of persuasion to try to move Wheaton from its statement of faith.” But what about tomorrow? “Schools that don’t conform to leftist orthodoxy may soon consequences far worse than a barrage of negative news coverage.”

Maybe so. But it’s always worth clicking the links. If this is the best that the big, bad Left can do—and I assume French would have linked to worse if it existed—I think Christian colleges are probably not in any imminent danger. It’s pretty stunning sometimes just how little criticism it takes to bring out the victim in us all.

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Wheaton College: Still Standing Despite a Bit of Mild Criticism

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New Hillary Clinton Emails Surface

Mother Jones

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Uh oh:

The Obama administration has discovered a chain of emails that Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to turn over when she provided what she said was the full record of work-related correspondence as secretary of state, officials said Friday, adding to the growing questions related to the Democratic presidential front-runner’s unusual usage of a private email account and server while in government.

This is the kind of thing that really could hurt Hillary Clinton. But when you scroll down to the details, it looks a lot less sinister:

The messages were exchanged with retired Gen. David Petraeus….They largely pertained to personnel matters and don’t appear to deal with highly classified material, officials said.

….The State Department’s record of Clinton emails begins on March 18, 2009 — almost two months after she entered office. Before then, Clinton has said she used an old AT&T Blackberry email account, the contents of which she no longer can access. The Petraeus emails…start on Jan. 10, 2009, with Clinton using the older email account. But by Jan. 28 — a week after her swearing in — she switched to using the private email address on a homebrew server that she would rely on for the rest of her tenure. There are less than 10 emails back and forth in total, officials said, and the chain ends on Feb. 1.

In other words, we’re missing the very tag end of an innocuous email chain from Hillary’s Senate days that spilled over into her tenure as Secretary of State. That’s a little hard to get too exercised about.

I don’t know what the broader picture is here. Clinton has consistently said she switched to her new email address on March 18, but the Petraeus emails make it look like she might have switched by January 28. Or maybe she partially switched? Or else emails started getting forwarded to the new account as a test for a few weeks, and then got deleted on March 18 when she began using it for good? Beats me.

Either way, this seems typical of this whole affair. Substantively, it’s hard to believe anything shady is going on here. After all, it’s unlikely there’s anything to hide from her first few weeks in office, and certainly not the Petraeus emails. But optically, it certainly looks bad. It seems like another example of Clinton handling her email issue awkwardly and defensively when she doesn’t really need to.

On the bright side for Hillary, this news was released on a day when the media was preoccupied with popemania and John Boehner’s resignation. So at least she’s not getting another round of dismal front-page headlines out of it. Yet.

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New Hillary Clinton Emails Surface

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Jeb Bush: Deficits Are For Democrats to Worry About

Mother Jones

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I analyze the news for you:

What Jeb Bush said this morning:

Everybody freaks out about the deficit….But if we grow our economy at a faster rate, the dynamic nature of tax policy will kick in….I’m more optimistic.

What he meant:

We should freak out about the deficit only when a Democrat is president. I’m a Republican. When Republicans are president we don’t worry about the deficit. We just cut taxes on the rich.

You’re welcome.

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Jeb Bush: Deficits Are For Democrats to Worry About

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Gay People, Liberal Nun Fail to Embarrass Pope at the White House

Mother Jones

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Pope Francis survived his visit to the White House this morning without anyone flashing boobs at him. That news might come as a surprise to conservatives, who for the past week have been attacking President Barack Obama for indecorously inviting LGBT activists and a liberal nun to attend the pope’s speech at the White House. They warned that the potential of these guests to embarrass the pontiff was scandalously high.

Among those on the guest list were the first gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, and Nuns on the Bus organizer Sister Simone Campbell, who defied American bishops to organize American nuns to publicly support Obamacare, which the bishops have said is akin to endorsing abortion because it mandates insurance coverage for contraceptives. Others included a gay Catholic blogger and a couple of transgender activists.

When the news broke of their inclusion in the papal event, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee went on a tear, telling Fox’s Megyn Kelly that inviting them to the White House was like setting up an open bar at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He has claimed the guest list was evidence that Obama was more interested in respecting the religious views of Osama bin Laden than those of the pope. He wrote in the Daily Caller:

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Gay People, Liberal Nun Fail to Embarrass Pope at the White House

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Palin Ponders the Infinite: Does the Lamestream Media Ever Ask Hillary About Her Favorite Bible Verse?

Mother Jones

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Huh. I almost forgot about the Palin-Trump lollapalooza. But it’s all on YouTube, and it was pretty boring. Palin’s word salad was subpar and it was just the same-old-same-old from Trump. My favorite part was this bit from Palin:

So you get hit with these gotchas, like most conservatives do. For instance, asking what’s your favorite Bible verse. And I listen to that going, what? Do they ask Hillary that?

Indeed they do! On August 27, 2007, in a nationally televised debate, Tim Russert asked every Democrat on the stage to share their favorite Bible verse:

RUSSERT: Before we go, there’s been a lot of discussion about the Democrats and the issue of faith and values. I want to ask you a simple question.

Senator Obama, what is your favorite Bible verse?

OBAMA: Well, I think it would have to be the Sermon on the Mount, because it expresses a basic principle that I think we’ve lost over the last six years.

John talked about what we’ve lost. Part of what we’ve lost is a sense of empathy towards each other. We have been governed in fear and division, and you know, we talk about the federal deficit, but we don’t talk enough about the empathy deficit, a sense that I stand in somebody else’s shoes, I see through their eyes. People who are struggling trying to figure out how to pay the gas bill, or try to send their kids to college. We are not thinking about them at the federal level. That’s the reason I’m running for president, because I want to restore that.

RUSSERT: I want to give everyone a chance in this. You just take 10 seconds.

Senator Clinton, favorite Bible verse?

CLINTON: The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think it’s a good rule for politics, too.

RUSSERT: Senator Gravel?

GRAVEL: The most important thing in life is love. That’s what empowers courage, and courage implements the rest of our virtues.

RUSSERT: Congressman Kucinich?

KUCINICH: I carry that with me at every debate, this prayer from St. Francis, which says, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, and I believe very strongly that all of us can be instruments of peace. And that’s what I try to bring to public life.

RUSSERT: Senator Edwards?

EDWARDS: It appears many times in the Bible, What you do onto the least of those, you do onto me.

RUSSERT: Governor Richardson?

RICHARDSON: The Sermon on the Mount, because I believe it’s an issue of social justice, equality, brotherly issues reflecting a nation that is deeply torn and needs to be heal and come together.

DODD: The Good Samaritan would be a worthwhile sort of description of who we all ought to be in life.

RUSSERT: Senator Biden?

BIDEN: Christ’s warning of the Pharisees. There are many Pharisees, and it’s part of what has bankrupted some people’s view about religion. And I worry about the Pharisees.

Hillary Clinton’s choice wasn’t very original, I admit, but neither was Obama’s. Biden, as usual, provided the most entertaining answer: “I worry about the Pharisees.” I guess we all do, Joe. In any case, the lamestream media had no problem asking, and the Democrats all had no problem answering. See? It’s not so hard.

What’s your favorite Bible verse? I’d recommend Mark 12:38 “Beware of the scribes.” I think Palin would agree that it’s good advice for any era.

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Palin Ponders the Infinite: Does the Lamestream Media Ever Ask Hillary About Her Favorite Bible Verse?

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The Recent, Hateful History of Attacks on Black Churches

Mother Jones

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Churches have long been hubs of organizing and advocacy in the black community, which was one reason they were so often attacked during the civil rights movement. But the violence didn’t end there, obviously. Attacks and threats against black churches and institutions still take place at a greater frequency than you might think. Here is a partial list of church incidents in the past two decades alone:

1996

January 8: Eighteen Molotov cocktails are thrown at Inner City Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. The phrases, “Die N—– Die” and “White is Right” are painted on the church’s back door.

Rep. Larry Hill looks over the remains of Matthews-Murkland Presbyterian Church. Chuck Barton/AP Photo

January 11: Mount Zoar Baptist Church and Little Zion Baptist Church, two black churches within six miles of each other, are burned to the ground on the same night in rural Alabama.

February 8: The Department of Justice launches an investigation into a string of arsons at black churches in rural Tennessee and Alabama.

June 7: Matthews-Murkland Presbyterian Church is set on fire in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1997

March 22: Two men burn down Macedonia Baptist Church in Ferris, Texas. Asked why they did it, according to the US Attorney General’s Office, one of the men responded, “because it was a n—– church.”

June 30: Five white men and women, all between the ages of 18 and 21, burn down St. Joe’s Baptist Church, a small church of 21 worshippers in Little River, Alabama.

2004

January 12: Two white men in Roanoke, Virginia, cause $77,000 worth of damage to the inside of Mount Moriah Baptist Church after breaking into and vandalizing the premises.

2006

July 11: A cross is burned outside a predominantly black church in Richmond, Virginia.

2008

Firefighters work at the scene of a fire at the Macedonia Church of God in Christ. Mark M. Murray/AP Photo

November 4: On the day of President Obama’s first election, three white men set alight Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield, Massachusetts. The church was under construction.

2010

December 28: A white man firebombs Faith in Christ Church in Crane, Texas, in an attempt to “gain status” with the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist gang.

2011

June 23: The FBI investigates a cross burning on the lawn of St. John’s Baptist Church in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.

November 17: Vandals break into Cedar Hill AME Zion Church in Ansonville, North Carolina. They throw chairs through the stained glass windows, burn a cross, defecate on an alter, and dig up the tombstone of a child buried in the church’s historic slave cemetery.

2013

February 25: Vandals break into a day care center housed within a church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; spray paint swastikas on the inside; and set the building alight. One church member said that, several weeks earlier, the church had received a call saying, “We need these n—– to get out of here.”

2014

Members of the destroyed Flood Christian Church hold service in a tent in Country Club Hill, Missouri. J.B Forbes/AP Photo/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

November 26: Federal officials open an investigation into the arson of Flood Christian Church, the church attended by Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The fire was set the same night the prosecutor in the case announced he would not bring charges against officer Darren Wilson for killing Brown.

July 22: A cross is burned in the parking lot of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee.

2015

Worshippers embrace following a group prayer across the street from the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. David Goldman/AP Photo

June 17: Dylann Roof kills nine people at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

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The Recent, Hateful History of Attacks on Black Churches

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That Time Mike Huckabee Preached Against Booze, Sex, and Monty Python

Mother Jones

Good luck tracking down sermons from Mike Huckabee’s two decades as a Baptist preacher. The GOP presidential candidate, who once started a television station out of his church to broadcast his sermons, kept those tapes under wraps during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Among the handful of sermons open to the public is a partial recording of a 1979 sermon in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, at the congregation Huckabee had tended as a pastor a decade earlier when he was a student at Ouachita Baptist University. The sermon, included in the school’s special collections, catches a young Huckabee confident in his beliefs and fluid in his rhetoric, riffing from one New Testament passage to the next in critiquing the most “pleasure-mad society that probably has ever been since Rome and Greece, in the days when there was just absolute chaos and debauchery on the streets”:

It’s a sad thing but it’s true in this country: 10,000 people a year are directly killed by alcohol in this country. Ten thousand. But we license liquor. There’s one person a year on average killed by a mad dog, just one. But you know what we do? We license liquor, and we shoot the mad dog. That’s an insane logic! But it’s what’s happening, it’s because we love pleasure more than anything else. A lot of times we look around our society we see this problem we see pornography and prostitution and child abuse and all the different things that we’re all so upset about. You know why they’re there? You know why they’re in the communities? You say “because the Devil”—they’re there because of us.

It was dark days indeed, he argued, when “an x-rated theater can open up down the street from a church.” Above all, Huckabee was upset with Monty Python’s 1979 movie, Life of Brian. Huckabee was hardly alone in condemning Life of Brian, which follows the story of a Jewish man, Brian, who is mistaken for the Messiah because he was born on the same day as Jesus. The film was banned in Ireland; picketed in New Jersey; denounced by a coalition of Christian and Jewish leaders; and canceled in Columbia, South Carolina after a last-minute intervention from Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond. (On the other hand, the movie does have a score of 96 at Rotten Tomatoes.) Per Huckabee:

There was a time in this country when a movie like The Life of Brian which, I just read—thank God the theaters in Little Rock decided not to show, but it’s showing all over the Fort Worth–Dallas area, which is a mockery, which is a blasphemy against the very name of Jesus Christ, and I can remember a day even as young as I am when that would not have happened in this country or in the city in the South.

But friend, it’s happening all over and no one’s blinking an eye, and we can talk about how the devil’s moved in and the devil’s moved in but what’s really happened is God’s people have moved out and made room for it. We’ve put up the for sale sign and we’ve announced a very cheap price for what our lives really are. We’ve sold our character, we’ve sold our convictions, we’ve compromised we’ve sold out and as a result we’ve moved out the devil’s moved in and he’s set up shop. And friend he’s praying on our own craving for pleasure.

No word on whether Huckabee will defund the Ministry of Silly Walks if elected.

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That Time Mike Huckabee Preached Against Booze, Sex, and Monty Python

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Detroit Just Had the Single Largest Tax Foreclosure in American History

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Unlike so many industrial innovations, the revolving door was not developed in Detroit. It took its first spin in Philadelphia in 1888, the brainchild of Theophilus Van Kannel, the soon-to-be founder of the Van Kannel Revolving Door Company. Its purpose was twofold: to better insulate buildings from the cold and to allow greater numbers of people easier entry at any given time.

On March 31st at the Wayne Country Treasurer’s Office, that Victorian-era invention was accomplishing neither objective. Then again, no door in the history of architecture—rotating or otherwise—could have accommodated the latest perversity Detroit officials were inflicting on city residents: the potential eviction of tens of thousands, possibly as many as 100,000 people, all at precisely the same time.

Little wonder that it seemed as if everyone was getting stuck in the rotating doors of that Wayne County office building on the last day residents could pay their past-due property taxes or enter a payment plan to do so. Those who didn’t, the city warned, would lose their homes to tax foreclosure, the process by which a local government repossesses a house because of unpaid property taxes.

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Detroit Just Had the Single Largest Tax Foreclosure in American History

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