(Gun) Smoke and Mirrors From the NRA
Last night was supposed to be California’s first official recognition of Lunar New Year (and Year of the Rabbit) celebration, but instead a festival in Monterey Park became a mass shooting event. Ten people are dead, more are wounded (some critically, some not), the gunman (assumption) is at large, and the festival is cancelled.
The carnage keeps happening in America because it can only happen here. We are awash in guns and tribal resentments large and small.
We don’t know the motive, but at what was designed to be an Asian cultural event in a city whose population is majority Asian, so we can probably guess. I’ll be surprised if our unstated guess is wrong.
Mock Paper Scissors 
The story was splashed all over the media. Not sure what can be done to address the ongoing slaughter. We live in a time and place where guns have more rights than do our citizens…
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Not sure what can be done…
Thank a Republican for the freedom of the murderer to own an AR15-type rifle.
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“Nothing that can be done” says only Nation where this regularly happens.
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We’re Number One! USA! USA!
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Thank you Supreme Court majority for enshrining the holy second amendment’s guarantee that every american has the right to be shot by another american. Anywhere a d everywhere.
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads.
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??
Is it the man/woman thing?
From a 1950’s movie, “Born Yesterday”, via IMDb
I just don’t get why we can’t just get that a gunman can be a woman, that mankind includes all sexes and races. I see it as a source of friction.
(Just give me this. I’ll absorb the story of another massacre later, after coffee.)
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If you don’t get this, wait until you hear about pronouns.
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Surprisingly, pronouns, in the new sense, makes more logical sense to me.
Originally the whole “why not a door-woman?” argument was a sort of waking up Archie Bunker to his blind spots exercise. Or waking up Edith, I guess. But pursuing it became an argument against the wording in long-standing documents, like the writings of Alexander Pope, or the Constitution. I mean, ideally the Constitutions “All men are created equal” should apply to all people, with “men” being the common term for mankind members, so anyone pursuing the clumsy wording to rigorously might stab themselves in the foot with the words. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.
But “pronouns”, that is the expression of a whole new battle. I hope we make progress as we grow out of the clumsiness part of this.
By the way, there’s a transcription error in the quote I cited. Billie didn’t say
“Cause, that means women too.” It was ” ‘Course that means women too.”, eliding the “of” in “of course”. But that quibble is beside the point.
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Lil Zen and I have attended the Lunar Festival in Monterey Park in years past. It was always a lot of fun. She was very impressed with the Taiko drummers, who were all young, well muscled and good looking as I remember them. There were no guns or violence. It is so sad to be living this nightmare now. The Asian community is devastated.
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