The real tough guys weren't at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. They were taking time to tell their truth about the gun violence that plagues the USA.

LEWISTON, Maine, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Residents of Lewiston, a hard-bitten former mill town in central Maine, struggled on Thursday with a new reality: the scourge of American mass shootings had arrived.

Eighteen people were killed in gunfire in Maine’s second-largest city on Wednesday night, rocking a tightly knit community and shattering the state’s image as a haven from the types of violent crime seen elsewhere in the country.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mike Asselin, 66, a lifelong resident of Lewiston, who was smoking outside of his home a few miles from the bowling alley where police say seven of the victims were shot dead.

Richard Valdmanis - Reuters

Writing in Politico, Colin Woodard observes: "The reasons for these disparities go beyond modern policy differences and extend back to events that predate not only the American party system but the advent of shotguns, revolvers, ammunition cartridges, breach-loaded rifles and the American republic itself. The geography of gun violence — and public and elite ideas about how it should be addressed — is the result of differences at once regional, cultural and historical. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into the problem are revealed."

Absolutely worth your next 15 minutes.

—RC

Read on...

Where are the guns?

Secret arsenals allow the violent and the criminal among us to strike without warning. The simple ownership of a gun is not in itself a predictor of dangerous intent, but when multiple factors intersect, the probability of violence becomes palpable. In such cases, silence is itself criminal. Such factors include

• a history of violent behavior, publicly or domestically
• making verbal threats or engaging in threatening physical intimidation
• publication of hateful or threatening materials on line or in print
• assertion of the right to harm others to achieve some personal end or rectify some supposed wrong in lieu of pursuing normal legal remedies
• possession of ammunition beyond any reasonable purpose and/or capacity to employ such ammunition
• carrying weapons into tense situations
• et cetera

Wherever two or more of these factors intersect, families, friends, neighbors and citizens have a right to protect themselves, and the state should intervene to remove the potential for violence, including confiscation of weapons. Specifically, there should be No Secret Guns!

In a copyrighted article by Carol D. Leonnig, the Washington Post reports that "The chief executive of the National Rifle Association and several top lieutenants engaged in a decades-long pattern of fraud to raid the coffers of the powerful gun rights group for personal gain, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the New York attorney general, draining $64 million from the nonprofit in just three years.

"In her lawsuit, Attorney General Letitia James called for the dissolution of the NRA and the removal of CEO Wayne LaPierre from the leadership post he has held for the past 39 years, saying he and others used the group’s funds to finance a luxury lifestyle."

Read the story

Writing in The New Yorker, Andy Borowitz reports: "Hours after an armed teacher in a Northern California classroom fired a gun and injured a student, the head of the National Rifle Association proposed placing a second armed teacher in every classroom, to shoot the first armed teacher before he or she can do harm.

“'Had there been a second armed teacher in the classroom to shoot the first armed teacher, this regrettable incident would never have occurred,' Wayne LaPierre said. 'The only thing that stops a bad teacher with a gun is a good teacher with a gun.'"

(Read the rest of this hard-hitting article in The New Yorker.)

Borowitz on multiple shooters

Seattle-area students joined their peers across the country to protest state and federal indifference to recent school murders.

Seattle Times