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Fearing Rising Backlash, NRA Urges Gun Activists to Stand Down

by PedroFljuqey Posted on June 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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A woman with her 10-month-old twins outside a Home Depot in Texas on Saturday. Andy Jacobsohn/Courtesy Dallas Morning News

The last couple of months have been rough for proponents of open-carry gun laws. No fewer than seven restaurant chains have taken a stand against firearms being brought to their businesses, after activists in Texas conducted provocative demonstrations in which they toted semi-automatic rifles into various eateries. Texas law allows rifles (though not handguns) to be carried on display in public, but some patrons and employees were unnerved and angered by the demonstrations, and a national group advocating for reforms, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, pressured the companies using social-media campaigns. After Mother Jones published videos of the gun activists in action, Sonic and Chili’s Grill & Bar became the latest to officially reject guns on their premises.

There has also been a particularly dark side to the story of the gun activists: As I first reported in mid May, members of Open Carry Texas and their allies have used vicious tactics against people who disagree with them, including bullying and degrading women. Just last week they harassed a Marine veteran, pursuing him through the streets of Fort Worth on Memorial Day.

Evidently the National Rifle Association has come to realize that none of this is good for business. In an extraordinary move on Friday, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action—the organization’s powerful lobbying arm in Washington—issued a lengthy statement seeking to distinguish between “responsible behavior” and “legal mandates.” It told the Texas gun activists in no uncertain terms to stand down.

“As gun owners, whether or not our decisions are dictated by the law, we are still accountable for them,” the statement began. “If we exercise poor judgment, our decisions will have consequences…such as turning an undecided voter into an antigun voter because of causing that person fear or offense.” The NRA praised the “robust gun culture” of Texas—which recently has loosened laws as aggressively as any state—but then laid into those Texans “who have crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”

Recently, demonstrators have been showing up in various public places, including coffee shops and fast food restaurants, openly toting a variety of tactical long guns. Unlicensed open carry of handguns is legal in about half the U.S. states, and it is relatively common and uncontroversial in some places.

Yet while unlicensed open carry of long guns is also typically legal in most places, it is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms.

Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.

The problem has been on the NRA’s radar at least since April. In a roundtable discussion hosted by a Texas podcaster on April 28, Charles Cotton, a long-serving member of the NRA board of directors based in Houston, and Alice Tripp, lobbyist and legislative director for the Texas State Rifle Association (TSRA), squared off with CJ Grisham, the founder and president of Open Carry Texas. Cotton and Tripp, who have both been deeply involved in passing pro-gun laws in Texas for many years, warned Grisham that his group’s demonstrations were causing them major grief with their allies in the capitol.

“We do control a massive number of votes,” Cotton pointed out.

“I’m in the capitol three times a week,” Tripp added. “Every lawmaker’s office I went into today asked me, ‘Can’t you do something to stop the rifle demonstrations?'” One lawmaker told Tripp that he’d gotten a phone call from the Republican mayor of Arlington—the site of several provocative open-carry incidents—who’d been “absolutely incensed.” The demonstrations were seriously harming the overall mission to ease gun laws further, she said.

Grisham, whose group sees its demonstrations as a means to legalizing the open carrying of handguns in Texas, was having none of it. “I would like to vehemently disagree,” he said. He went off about “the two major foes” of his organization, the “ultraliberal gun control bullies” of Moms Demand Action—and gun rights defenders who don’t go far enough. “When you’ve got the TSRA and the NRA basically coming down on us for standing up for our rights, that’s where our problem is,” he said. “Because now you guys are siding with Moms Demand Action.”

“CJ, when you make a statement like, ‘We align ourselves with Moms Who Demand Action,’ or whatever the hell their name is, those are fighting words,” Cotton replied with growing exasperation. “You alienate the people that can get this done.”

He continued: “The New Black Panthers did exactly what you folks are doing. They marched on the convention center during the Republican convention here in Houston with their rifles and shotguns…No arrests were made, but the legislative response was, ‘We’re going to stop this.'” State law was watered down in the next session as a result, Cotton said, freeing local governments to ban the possession of firearms under some circumstances.

“They might not like our methods, but our methods are working,” Grisham told me in a recent conversation with regard to the NRA’s pushback. “We’re out there educating people on the street. We’re showing them firsthand that you can see a gun out on the street or at a restaurant and it’s not going to shoot you. I’m not going to let Open Carry Texas be beholden to anyone that doesn’t get our mission.”

For the NRA, furthering its agenda in state capitols may not be the biggest concern at this point. In light of the recent corporate backlash, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick proposed late last week that the war over gun policy may now be fought more in the crucible of the free market. The battleground has grown to include retailers: An open-carry rally at a Home Depot in suburban Fort Worth on Saturday drew roughly 150 armed citizens as well as some withering criticism, according to the Dallas Morning News. Home Depot, whose owner is deeply conservative, signaled that it was fine with the demonstration.

But other corporations are growing nervous and moving proactively to prevent gun activists from putting their brands in the crosshairs, says Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action. A large restaurant chain and a major retailer, she told me, “have reached out to us to discuss what policies they could put in place to keep gun extremists out of their businesses.” (She asked that the two companies not be identified due to the sensitivity of the discussions.) “Gun extremists believe that when a company is silent they tacitly support open carry, which clearly isn’t the case.”

It may be that a broader cultural shift—or at least a strategic one—is stirring within the gun lobby. In its statement on Friday, the NRA also cracked open the door to so-called “smart guns,” which aim to improve safety through innovative technological features. Historically the NRA has vigorously opposed them as yet another catalyst for dubious government overreach, but now says: “In principle, the idea would seem to have merit, at least in some circumstances.” That pivot comes not long after a businesswoman in California and a gun dealer in Maryland spoke out about harassment and death threats for trying to sell the cutting-edge weapons.

The NRA has also backtracked recently from its long-held stance against laws meant to disarm domestic abusers—a major factor in gun violence against women—by quietly supporting recent such legislation in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The NRA’s ability to wield outsize political control may now be starting to change, too—at least with some of the hardcore base to which it has long catered. On Sunday, Open Carry Texas dismissed the criticism of its tactics: “The NRA has lost its relevance and sided with the gun control extremists and their lapdog media,” the group tweeted, adding, “We don’t fight for rights at the discretion of the NRA.”

For more of Mother Jones’ award-winning coverage of guns in America, see our special reports.

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Fearing Rising Backlash, NRA Urges Gun Activists to Stand Down

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Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow Are Pissed at This WaPo Critic Over UCSB Shooting Column

by LoydI86hjsfv Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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In response to the mass shooting that took place near the University of California, Santa Barbara, on Friday night, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday wrote that the killer’s YouTube manifesto was a “sad reflection of the sexist stories we so often see on screen.” While pointing to a broader “sexist movie monoculture” that can be “toxic for women and men alike,” Hornaday specifically highlights Neighbors—a recently released, critically acclaimed comedy starring Seth Rogen—and Judd Apatow movies:

How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like “Neighbors” and feel, as the shooter Elliot Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of “sex and fun and pleasure”? How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, “It’s not fair”?

Movies may not reflect reality, but they powerfully condition what we desire, expect and feel we deserve from it. The myths that movies have been selling us become even more palpable at a time when spectators become their own auteurs and stars on YouTube, Instagram and Vine. If our cinematic grammar is one of violence, sexual conquest and macho swagger — thanks to male studio executives who green-light projects according to their own pathetic predilections — no one should be surprised when those impulses take luridly literal form in the culture at large.

Part of what makes cinema so potent is the way even its most outlandish characters and narratives burrow into and fuse with our own stories and identities. When the dominant medium of our age — both as art form and industrial practice — is in the hands of one gender, what may start out as harmless escapist fantasies can, through repetition and amplification, become distortions and dangerous lies.

Hornaday goes on to discuss the important issue of the state of women in Hollywood. But her Apatow and Rogen-related commentary is what caught the very public attention of, well, Apatow and Rogen.

Here’s Rogen, responding on Twitter on Monday:

Apatow weighed in more heavily, and shared his thoughts on how he believes American media outlets profit from mass murder:

Hornaday did not immediately respond to Mother Jones‘ request for comment.

UPDATE, May 27, 2014, 3:04 p.m. EST: Hornaday responded to Rogen, Apatow, and her other critics in the following Washington Post video:

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Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow Are Pissed at This WaPo Critic Over UCSB Shooting Column

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Gun Activists Flaunting Assault Rifles Get Booted From Chili’s and Sonic

by SalvatoRech Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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It would be an understatement to say that the tactics of gun rights activists have been backfiring of late. The showdown has taken place foremost in Texas, where in recent months groups such as Open Carry Texas have conducted provocative demonstrations in which armed men exercise their right under state law to carry semi-automatic rifles in public. No fewer than five national food and beverage chains have now told them to get rid of their guns or get lost, including Starbucks, Wendy’s, Applebees, Jack in the Box, and Chipotle.

And now Chili’s and Sonic have effectively joined the list: Two videos posted on YouTube on May 19 by the San Antonio chapter of Open Carry Texas—since removed from public view but obtained by Mother Jones—show its armed members being refused service at both restaurants. The two companies have not made official statements on open carry but have since indicated that they are reviewing their policies. See update below. From the nervous and angry reactions of some patrons to comments from some of the gun activists themselves, it’s not difficult to see why these spectacles haven’t been winning many people over.

When a young woman approaches the group in Chili’s and expresses her dismay, a guy with an assault rifle strapped across his back offers her a flyer. “Um actually, there’s children here,” she replies, “and you’re a dumbass.” As she walks away one member of the group comments mockingly, “Yes, I’m a dumbass,” and then says of her, “must be Moms Demand Action,” referring to the national gun reform group.

Open Carry Texas’ hostility toward Moms Demand Action, which has pressured corporations over the demonstrations using social-media campaigns, has been displayed in more disturbing ways. As I detailed in a recent investigation, members of Open Carry Texas have been involved in harassment, bullying, and degradation of women.

In the Sonic video, as the thwarted gun group lingers in an adjacent parking lot, one member says: “I just wish I had my kids in there when that one dumb chick come up and started rattin’ her mouth.”

Though probably few if any patrons regularly worry about their personal safety as they order Bacon Ranch Quesadillas or double cheeseburgers and shakes, gun activists in both videos comment about the apparent danger of not allowing open carrying on the premises. One says he told his daughter, “It’s not safe to be here—we gotta go,” while another comments, “This Chili’s is no longer the safest Chili’s to eat at.”

Open Carry Texas and other gun groups, whose common goal is legalizing the open carrying of handguns in their state, evidently have concluded that none of this is helping their cause. On Friday, four of the groups released a joint statement asking supporters to retreat from such tactics. “We have decided the prudent path, to further our goals, is to immediately cease taking long guns into corporate businesses unless invited,” the statement said.

For open carrying going forward, their new “unified protocol and general policy” advises supporters to avoid corporate businesses altogether, and not to post pictures if they do get permission and decide to go in. “If at all possible,” it says, “keep to local small businesses that are 2A friendly.”

It remains to be seen whether the rank and file will stand down. As one Texas commentator focused on open carry noted about the move: “As expected there are those who object to this new policy because they feel it is a form of surrender.”

Update May 27, 2014, 6:15 p.m. EDT: Patric Lenow, VP of media relations at Sonic, told Mother Jones: “There is no gun policy at this point; we’ve traditionally relied on local and state laws. We see the situation has changed and there’s new tactics being employed and businesses are being pulled into this debate. That’s really what prompts the need to consider it.” Lenow did not say specifically when the company would reach a decision on a gun policy, but said that it would be “in the month of June, certainly.”

Additional reporting contributed by Julia Lurie.

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Gun Activists Flaunting Assault Rifles Get Booted From Chili’s and Sonic

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Do Background Checks Work To Keep Disturbed People From Getting Guns?

by JacquelineXrt Posted on May 22, 2014

Mother Jones


More Mother Jones reporting on guns in America.

It’s a question at the heart of the gun debate. Most Americans think the answer is yes (an overwhelming majority continues to support comprehensive background checks for gun buyers), while the National Rifle Association emphatically believes the opposite (its leadership opposes new firearm regulations of virtually any kind). Now, a new report from the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety crunches some actual data: Citing figures from the FBI, the gun-reform group reports that the number of mental health records collected from states in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (known as “NICS”) has tripled to nearly three and a half million since 2011—and that as a result, a growing number of mentally ill people have been stopped from purchasing firearms through licensed dealers.

The change owes to increased federal funding for the system and a wave of more stringent state laws put in place. As we documented at the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, 2013 saw a barrage of new state laws from coast to coast, both easing and tightening gun restrictions. Among them were laws in 15 states intended to keep firearms away from the seriously mentally ill.

After a ghastly run of mass shootings from Tucson to Aurora to Newtown to Fort Hood (again), this particular issue no longer seems such a partisan one. The states passing bills in 2013 included gun-rights strongholds such as Texas and Florida, and this spring Republican-led Arizona and Oklahoma joined the list. At least 18 states have moved on this issue since late 2011, according to Everytown.

The result? In 2013 nearly 3,000 people were blocked from purchasing guns because of NICS—more than 600 more than in 2012, continuing an upward trend that goes back to 2009.

Granted, that’s but a tiny fraction of the 300 million guns in circulation nationwide. And it remains remarkably easy for people to get firearms from somewhere other than a federally licensed dealer. But it only takes one gun in the wrong hands to wreak havoc. As our in-depth investigation showed, a majority of mass shootings are carried out by people with serious mental health problems, using weapons they obtained legally.

Also notable in Everytown’s report are the states still failing on the mental health front with respect to firearms. This interactive map shows them, including a couple that may seem surprising—liberal Massachusetts?—and others that have fresh reason to consider the issue, such as Georgia. It was less than a month ago that a young man went on a rampage at a FedEx facility in suburban Atlanta, wounding six people before killing himself. Police investigators declined to say where he bought the gun he used, but his state of mind was clear enough: He described his “mental instability” in a suicide note that he left behind. “I am a sociopath,” he wrote. “I want to hurt people.”

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Do Background Checks Work To Keep Disturbed People From Getting Guns?

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WATCH: The NRA Recently Held Its Annual Meeting, And It Was Just as You’d Expect Fiore Cartoon

by ConsuelOmar Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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WATCH: The NRA Recently Held Its Annual Meeting, And It Was Just as You’d Expect Fiore Cartoon

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Meet the Insiders Posing as Grassroots Members of the NRA

by DonetteKoss Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Every year at the National Rifle Association’s convention, executive vice president Wayne LaPierre makes a point of extolling the broad, grassroots appeal of the organization’s membership, which may or may not be 4 to 5 million strong. “I think that in human history, seldom has there been a meeting quite like this,” his speech last weekend in Indianapolis began. “A gathering—and you know we are—of all ages, all political parties, races, all religions. A gathering of people who just love our great nation.”

LaPierre and the NRA also unveiled a glossy new video meant to reinforce that all-American message and push back hard against Everytown for Gun Safety, a new group combining Moms Demand Action and Mayors Against Illegal Guns and armed with major funding from Michael Bloomberg.

The NRA video opens with a casually dressed, rugged-looking white guy talking directly into the camera: “Michael Bloomberg says he has 50 million dollars to attack my gun rights. Well, I have 25 dollars to protect them.” He’s referring to the cost of a one-year NRA membership. Then, a veritable rainbow coalition of youngish NRA members flashes by, all of them in agreement: “I’ve got 25 dollars,” says a black guy with a goatee and baseball cap. “And me too,” says a smiling Asian guy. “I’m a mom, and I do too,” says a blonde woman. Hispanic woman? Check. Additional women? Check. A banner across the top invites viewers to “join now.” Then the rugged guy comes back around to ding Bloomberg again: “This guy thinks he can scare us into running from a fight to protect our rights and our freedoms. He’s one guy with millions. We’re millions with our 25 bucks.”

In fact, this group has quite a bit more firepower than it’s letting on. At least seven of the ordinary-looking folks in the video work for NRA News, the media arm of the nation’s biggest gun group. They comprise the official team of NRA News commentators, part of an operation billed as “America’s premier source for Second Amendment news,” which includes a website, multiple video channels, satellite radio programming, and a magazine.

An executive producer for the network, John Popp, confirmed in an email to Mother Jones that the people in the Bloomberg video “are employees of NRA News.” The main talking head is Dom Raso, an ex-Navy SEAL who also stars in a forthcoming NRA production, I Am Forever. In that show, according to the Blaze, Raso “takes his experience as a former operative and breaks it down for a young, 17-year-old girl in an attempt to teach her how to not only be proficient in guns, but also be smart and defend herself.”

NRA News’ Dom Raso schools the young ladies on being badass. NRA

Just prior to this year’s gathering in Indianapolis, NRA News announced that it had added three new commentators to the official team, including two women, Gabby Franco and Nikki Turpeaux, and an openly gay former Google employee from San Francisco, Chris Cheng. They all appear in the video, as do the rest of their colleagues on the team, Natalie Foster, Billy Johnson, and Colion Noir.

It’s unclear what financial rewards underwrite the group’s passion for the Second Amendment: Popp declined to answer questions about the terms of the commentators’ employment, including how much they’re paid for appearing in NRA videos and other programming. Team member Noir recently confirmed in the Los Angeles Times that he was approached by the NRA and agreed to a deal, but also declined to discuss his compensation.

It’s not as if the NRA has gone to great lengths to hide the identities of the people in the video; they are all profiled on the NRA News site. But the video itself doesn’t identify any of them, and most viewers are unlikely to wonder much about who they are, let alone go looking for more information about them.

Such sleight-of-hand is perhaps unsurprising from an organization that raises the specter of a federal gun registry from legislation that in fact specifically outlaws one, or that rolls out a report with a phony mass shooting in it as it calls for more guns in schools. Yet, launching the new video in tandem with LaPierre’s grandiloquent praise in Indianapolis for rank-and-file members may have been intended for a specific purpose—to divert attention from the increasing chasm between the extreme politics of the NRA’s leadership and the views of most Americans, including those of most NRA members.

It may also seem ironic for the NRA to appropriate a David-versus-Goliath theme, given the prodigious sums of money it gets from gun companies and other corporate patrons and that it pumps to its favorite politicians. But it’s also a savvy tactic: LaPierre and company no doubt recognize that they’ve got a growing public-relations problem in the post-Sandy Hook era, not least with women. It’s no coincidence that the NRA also gave its women’s network a makeover last year. (Natalie Foster, one of the NRA News commentators appearing in the video, explains here how the NRA approached her for help and she negotiated with them for months before deciding to “accept the offer.”)

Even if the NRA hopes to come off as a diverse, lady-friendly underdog with the new Bloomberg spot, the finale suggests that the gun group won’t wander far from its usual approach of strafing the opposition. As Raso puts it, “Let’s see who crushes who.”

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Meet the Insiders Posing as Grassroots Members of the NRA

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Quote of the Day: If We Don’t Like Your Gun, You Should Not Be Allowed to Sell It to Anyone

by IngeborgTeague Posted on April 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Lawrence Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for gun manufacturers:

They tried to put the product on the market, and the market reacted.

I know that “Orwellian” is overused, but what else can you call this? The product in question is a “smart gun,” which can only be fired by its registered owner. A company called Armatix put one on the market—you know, the market, a place where people can voluntarily buy or decline to buy products depending on whether they want them—and the gun lobby went ballistic:

Belinda Padilla does not pick up unknown calls anymore, not since someone posted her cellphone number on an online forum for gun enthusiasts. A few fuming-mad voice mail messages and heavy breathers were all it took. Then someone snapped pictures of the address where she has a P.O. box and put those online, too. In a crude, cartoonish scrawl, this person drew an arrow to the blurred image of a woman passing through the photo frame. “Belinda?” the person wrote. “Is that you?”

Her offense? Trying to market and sell a new .22-caliber handgun that uses a radio frequency-enabled stopwatch to identify the authorized user so no one else can fire it. Ms. Padilla and the manufacturer she works for, Armatix, intended to make the weapon the first “smart gun” for sale in the United States.

….The National Rifle Association, in an article published on the blog of its political arm, wrote that “smart guns,” a term it mocks as a misnomer, have the potential “to mesh with the anti-gunner’s agenda, opening the door to a ban on all guns that do not possess the government-required technology.”

According to Keane, this is the market “reacting.” It’s certainly heartwarming to see such dedication to free enterprise.

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Quote of the Day: If We Don’t Like Your Gun, You Should Not Be Allowed to Sell It to Anyone

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15 Years After Columbine, How "Never Again" Became "Oh Well"

by DallasCopland Posted on April 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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On April 20, 1999, two teenagers walked into a suburban high school outside of Denver and shot 13 people to death. The massacre at Columbine was not the first mass shooting in America. It was not the first mass shooting at an American school. Indeed, Peter Jennings began the news that night, “The reaction of so many people today was ‘oh no, not again.'” But Columbine was different. It became a national trauma in a way the others hadn’t. Yes, it was the deadliest American school shooting on record at the time—though it is no longer—but what really amplified its significance was the fact it was the first mass shooting that played out in real time on television. The shootings began at 11:19am. By noon, local television stations had broken into regular programming with uninterrupted media coverage. Millions of people across the country turned on CNN and watched the story develop.

Here’s how America watched the chaos of Columbine: There were reports of a shooting and it was at a school and the body count began going up and witnesses said they were two shooters with shotguns and rifles and pistols and there had been an explosion across town and it had been a diversion maybe and pipe bombs, something about pipe bombs, and the body count kept rising, and booby traps, and then Clinton gave a speech and then the shooters were in a mafia that wore trench coats and maybe there were more than two and then no there were only two and they were dead and the bomb squad finished the initial sweep of the building at 4:45pm and it was over, but not really because then there was the CCTV footage, the witness interviews, the search for motive, they had been bowling, they had been bullied, they had said something about Hitler and they listened to Marilyn Manson and they wanted to one up Timothy McViegh and What Does It All Mean?

Studies show that following breaking news events can itself be traumatic. Following Columbine certainly was. Parents hugged their kids a little tighter that night.

After Columbine there was a general sense that something had to be done. That kids getting killed at school was a thing we weren’t going to be ok with. “Never again,” the saying goes. It wasn’t some fanciful impossibility. The British did it after Dunblane. And so we did that. Everyone got together and passed sweeping gun control legislation and there was never another mass shooting in America.

Except not really. Because the “never again” response—though shared by many—was not shared by all.

On May 1, Charlton Heston came to Denver and made a much-discussed speech where he said, “We have work to do, hearts to heal, evil to defeat, and a country to unite. We may have differences, yes, and we will again suffer tragedy almost beyond description. But when the sun sets on Denver tonight, and forever more, let it always set on we the people, secure in our land of the free and the home of the brave.” Say what you will about that speech, but as far as predictions go it was spot on. It’s a fait accompli. There were more shootings. We mourned and then did nothing because we seem to have accepted that occasional mass murder is the cost of America.

Both responses, “never again” and “don’t bother trying,” offer statements about the USA. The former says “America is the greatest country on Earth. We went to the moon. Surely, we can stop kids from getting shot to death at school! If the Brits can do it, so can we. ” The latter says, “No, we can’t. We’re America. The greatest country on Earth and the cost of the liberty that makes us so is that our kids may get shot to death at school.” It goes further, “Kids in other countries may get shot to death at their schools too, but we know that after kids get shot to death in our schools that there will be no significant reforms to prevent more of our kids from getting shot to death at more of our schools. Their death will, in a very real sense, be utterly meaningless.”

Every time there is another mass shooting and nothing happens it becomes a little easier to believe that the “don’t bother” crowd is right.

Nothing changed after 13 people were killed at Columbine, or 33 at Virginia Tech, or 26 at Sandy hook. Each of those tragedies came with the same breaking news coverage as Columbine, but none generated the same sense of action because fewer and fewer people actually believed things could change. The last 15 years have been a lesson in how “never again” can be cowed into “I need a drink.”

And that’s insane. It’s an insane thing to have to accept that problem as an inevitability. It’s an insane reality to have to shrug off.

So, 15 years after Columbine rattled America to its core, people still get shot while they’re at school. People get shot while they’re at work. People get shot eating. People get shot drinking. People get shot watching movies, shopping, driving, swimming, skipping and playing baseball. It’s 2014 and in America people get shot doing basically any goddamn thing you can think of.

They don’t have to.

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15 Years After Columbine, How "Never Again" Became "Oh Well"

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LISTEN: Alleged Kansas Gunman Frazier Glenn Miller Discusses the Tea Party, Obama, and Ron Paul

by DorotheaOsulliv Posted on April 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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In a 2010 radio interview, Frazier Glenn Miller, the man suspected of killing three people on Sunday at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement center in Kansas, said he was interested in the tea party, voiced support for then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and spoke approvingly of Ron Paul, the Texas Republican congressman and presidential candidate. In late April 2010, Miller, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, was a guest on The David Pakman Show, a nationally syndicated left-of-center radio and television program. At the time, Miller was running for US Senate as an independent in his home state of Missouri with the slogan, “It’s the Jews, Stupid,” and Pakman pressed Miller on his extreme views.

During the interview, Miller was unabashed about his anti-Semitic positions. When asked whether he thought the United States would be better off if Hitler had succeeded, Miller responded, “Absolutely, the whole world would… Hitler would have created a paradise on Earth, particularly for white people. But he would have been fair to other people as well.” He added, “Germans are blamed collectively because of the alleged so-called Holocaust.”

Not surprisingly, Miller denigrated most American politicians, but cited one positively: “If I had my way all US Senators would be in jail right now for treason, if not hung from a sturdy oak tree… Ron Paul is the only independent politician, representative in Washington.” He also spoke highly of another conservative: “Patrick Buchanan, he’s a great man, he’s a great historian, he’s one of the very few journalists who has the courage to speak out against Jewish domination in the country.” Miller called Howard Stern “a Jew liar.” When asked whether he supported the tea party, Miller replied, “The school’s still out on them. They’re a new movement. I’m watching them closely. I suspect, however, they’ll be infiltrated by the Jews and therefore led into defeat.”

During the interview, Pakman asked Miller whom he would “elect, deport, and waterboard”—given the choices of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and former Fed chair Alan Greenspan. Miller answered, “I like Obama more than the other two, by far.” He chose to elect Obama, deport Greenspan, and waterboard Biden. Miller said, “I have a great deal of admiration for Louis Farrakhan,” and he called Ahmadinejad “a great man” because he “has guts and he tells the truth about the Jews.”

“I’m a convicted felon and I’m proud of it,” Miller boasted, noting that he “was convicted of declaring war on the federal government and possession of illegal weapons.” He added that Jews “were responsible for my conviction that prompted me to go underground and declare war… Morris Dees mainly, he’s a Jew that runs the Southern Poverty Law Center.” (The SPLC monitors hate groups.)

In November 2013, Pakman had an exchange of emails with Miller in which Miller noted that he was “close friends” with Craig Cobb, a white supremacist who had attempted to form an all-white town in Leith, North Dakota. According to Miller, the two had worked together “on several White Nationalist projects, including the Aryan Alternative newspaper.” Referring to the recent news that a DNA test indicated that Cobb had African ancestry, Miller told Pakman, “I can’t believe a man as intelligent as you, actually believes Craig Cobb is an octoroon. Surely, you know it’s just another jewsmedia fraud.”

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LISTEN: Alleged Kansas Gunman Frazier Glenn Miller Discusses the Tea Party, Obama, and Ron Paul

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Rahm Emanuel on Charlton Heston: "Shove It up His Ass"

by Lavon5225vx Posted on February 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Friday, after a one-year delay, Bill Clinton’s presidential library posted thousands of pages of previously unreleased documents. It’s mostly inside baseball stuff, but there are some useful nuggets. For instance, a 1998 memo written by White House speechwriter Jeff Shesol recounts a proposal by then-Clinton-aide Rahm Emanuel (who went on to be President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and is now mayor of Chicago) for dealing with National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, in a speech heralding a new bulletproof vest law: “Shove it up his ass.”

William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library

Excerpt from – 

Rahm Emanuel on Charlton Heston: "Shove It up His Ass"

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