Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 26, 2019

Thoughts: I THINK the NRA, Republicans and gun nuts are immoral and insane.

Prayers; I PRAY they all get voted out of office in 2020.

Saying “thoughts and prayers” is a blasphemous mocking of whatever god there may be, who endowed us with the free will and the power to enact public policies that protect people.

“God helps those who help themselves.”

“Faith without works is dead.” (Bible: James 2:20; 2:26)

For us to DO NOTHING and then pray for relief is a blasphemous insult of the highest order of magnitude, especially from the phonies who claim to be “Christians” while spitting in the face of everything Jesus taught, lived for and died for.

Seems to be the “answer” to climate change. Reduced population means fewer to feed and house.

More pious thoughts from those who want to protect the guns and not the people.

That yellow sign looks like it’s already been fixed once but it looks like it’s due for a second amendment.

What we create we destroy. Man has become Earth’s virus.

… at the corner of Wayne “I Spent Your Dues on Fine Clothes” LaPierre Blvd & “Moscow Mitch” Ave

I think the internet’s well-documented ability to bring out the worst in people has metastasized into triggering the triggerable into actual insanity. Otherwise, why is it so much worse now than even 15 years ago? Along with the fact that once elected, almost nobody leaves federal office until they are old and rich… and totally beholden to the richest few; this has turned what I remember as being reasonably idyllic (for a white kid) into the abyss that we seem to be circling ever nearer…

uh-oh!

Two drive by shootings, fatalities, near the heart of downtown Kansas City….probably a gang initiation….just dangerous times and getting worse.

It will continue until we rid ourselves of trump and the NRA mentality!

Sadly Wiley, You nailed this one.

While Massacre Mitch, the NRA’s exclusive salesman and model for funeral apparel, blocks meaningful reform.

Why look, it’s the NRA’s DREAM WORLD!!!!

“How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”

Stand and deliver was once the order given by bandits to victims. Buttercup, congress, and gun hobbyists will do neither when it comes to solving the epidemic of gun violence against the innocent.

Prayers for the fallen.

The Republicans take Russian money from the NRA, don’t expect them to do anything.

Bulletproof suits for those who work or live in high-risk areas. https://aspetto.com/

Once you start selling bullet proof backpacks for school kids, things have changed for the worse. I question if it’s too late for the US…

What I find interesting is people playing so ignorant to an expression. Fx. “thoughts and prayers” – its doesn´t mean do anything, but that their thoughts are with the fallen. Obviously it becomes an insanely hollow gesture after the umptheenth case …

Golly, gosh, gee: 95% of the commenters here are disgusted with the gun availability in this country, and would support positions 180 degrees from the NRA and administration. A representative sample of the 80% support for stronger gun laws/enforcement of existing laws. A direct refutation of dt’s claim that there is no support for changes. . .ALWAYS remember: the words “well-regulated” come BEFORE the words “right to bear arms” in the 2nd amendment

President Trump: ‘Take The Guns Away’

Mar 1, 2018 – Trump surprised lawmakers by saying police should have overridden due process to take away Parkland shooter’s guns.

Too many u.s. cities are called “Murder City” now, just call it “Murder Country”

3% of gunowners have over 70% of the guns…and the govt knows where they live.

Here we go again.

So appropriate, to have the sale in the fall…

I love the name of the store Duck & Cover Fashions ! Thanks for that one, Wiley. I’m imagining what wonderful goods they have inside.

“I laugh because I must not cry”……….

If all those that intone “thoughts and prayers” after a killing would actually be involved in praying, then God would’ve intervened by now. As it is, the situation shows us that all that’s going on is just a passing thought and little else.

Exactly when, please, did the NRA become the fourth branch of the federal government? seems they have as much power over this country as the other three.

I believe in the right for individual citizens to own firearms; however, I do not believe in the right for individual citizens to use those firearms to murder others. I believe that if the NRA has taken on the task and responsibility to guarantee the individual’s right to own guns, then the NRA should accept responsibility when those same individuals use their weapons to mass-murder others.If the NRA wants to be responsible for protecting hon owners’ rights, it must also accept the responsibility of protecting citizen’s right to “…life, liberty…”

Guns, huh? Without people, they’d just be rusty metal.

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” You have to pay, somehow, someway, for things you enjoy. And for some Americans, dead kids are perfectly fine payment for the ability of having guns.

Year to date, 1,821 people have been shot in Chicago. 2016 was the year of the Chicago Blood Bath because 4,380 people were shot. 2019 looks like the year of The Great America Blood Bath. The NRA still has its iron hold on the government of the United States.

There have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days this year… MAGA!

Thoughts and prayers?

In Republican politician, that means after a mass shooting their first thought is their prayers have been answered, because it’s a guarantee the NRA will be sending another contribution to their campaign fund.

At least 5-7 would be killers have been arrested. Red flagged. So we may have been more violent if they hadn’t.

It’s no longer “New”. It’s just Normal.

Boy, @WileyInk, you sure know how to stir up the hornet’s nest.

Does anyone find it the least bit disturbing that there has been news reports of a nearly 300 percent increase in bulletproof backpacks ranging from $120-9,000 for school age children? Especially since bulletproof vest are designed to stop handgun ammunition, not high velocity, military grade ammunition, used by most mass shooters.

When the wearer of a bulletproof vest is shot with a handgun, the bullet flattens out from the Kevlar, stopping the bullet from penetrating the individual. There is a downside to this because of kinetic energy from the bullet, which usually results in heavy bruising, or broken bones and some cases, liquefied soft tissue, which can be fatal depending on the organ. Given a child’s developing body, even if a bulletproof backpack stopped the bullet, the kinetic energy most likely would be fatal.

Bulletproof vests shot with a high velocity bullets, are completely compromised unless they are Level IV full-military grade body armor with steel or ceramic plates. These vests can weigh upwards 16-25 pounds.

Nearly all active drills conducted by schools and larger businesses, lock, barricade and have everyone stay quiet until “All Clear” is declared. Then when the evacuation begins, all belongings are left behind for to be searched for evidence before being returned its owner.

The businesses and manufactures who sell these bulletproof backpacks are no more than greedy profiteers, con-artists and charlatans praying on parents’ worst fears.

As for DD Wiz and his self-serving socialist whining, I beg of the people who comment here just to ignore him. He loves to provoke people into responding so he can continue to promote his socialist views. For heaven’s sake folks, can’t you see him there, behind the curtain, pulling the levers to control your emotions?

I cry for our children. I have a grandson in high school. I honestly pray each day for his safety and well-being in this world of accelerating madness. Yet I also realize and understand that I can do very little to keep him safe. What I can do, I will do, and do well. Beyond that, I have to let go or go insane.

There are no guarantees of perfect safety. No one wants their own child or grandchild to be the victim of a mass incident. NO ONE. And yet, there is great truth to the concept that inanimate objects do not commit these atrocities. Only when those objects (whether knives, broken glass, Molotov cocktails, rocks, … or guns …) are grasped in the hands of living, breathing, supposedly-rational human beings do they become lethal. And that rationality depends upon the moral code of the individual.

We simply can not legislate morality. It is one of the few truly impossible tasks. We tried it with Prohibition, and look how well that worked. Morality is a personal thing, and each individual has his or her own concept of what constitutes a ‘moral’ approach to life. Taking away guns does not affect a person’s view of what is (or is not) moral.

I am a centrist. I do not ‘belong’ to either of the major political parties. I am not an NRA member. Anyone who even attempts to place me within any of those circumscriptions is behaving in an infantile manner. I do own guns, and intend to continue to do so. I do hate the concept that this somehow makes me a boogeyman ‘nut’ who runs around waving his gun(s) and threatening the peace and safety of everyone around me. I don’t. Mine are locked inside a gun safe that is lag-bolted to my office closet wall, unless I am in process of going to a gun range or otherwise acting within the terms of present-day law.

I deeply resent the idea that just ‘taking away the guns’ will somehow reduce the violence. Oh, I fully admit that it will reduce the gun violence. But doing that just will promote even more violent forms of "personal statements’ by the nuts who want their 15 seconds of nightly-news fame. I am not advocating leaving things as they are, or counting the dead as justifiable social sacrifices. I AM saying that we need to attack this issue from more than one viewpoint. Reasonable restrictions (such as banning the sale of well-defined assault weapons) is just one sensible small point of counterattack. ‘Banning guns’ is not reasonable or even feasible.

Look, folks. Most of the firearm-implemented mass violence incidents (mass shootings) in this country are committed by individuals who want to see their names splashed all over the media. You know it, and I know it. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. Fine. However, it does not guarantee the right to incite people to riot, any more than a person is entitled by the First Amendment to scream “Fire!” in a crowded place of public assembly. That is just what our media do, on a daily basis, when they publish detailed, exhaustive accounts of mass murder and ‘glorify’ the name(s) of the perpetrators.

Instead let’s hear the cries of righteous indignation over the lurid accounts in the media.

Let’s see those accounts pared down to basic statements of what happened, without the lurid, emotional ‘witness statements’, relegated to the inside of the paper and back pages of the section, with no perpetrators’ names and without any front-page pointers to those accounts. Let’s see a national drive to financially discipline media publishers of lurid accounts by denying them circulation. This could be implemented by public rebuke using a boycott. By refusing to buy their papers, to watch their news broadcasts, podcasts, to read their tweets and other social media accounts, we deny them income. Just watch how fast that changes the reportage.

And without the public acknowledgement of their names and the public drooling over the bloody descriptions of the incidents, watch how fast the number of such incidents drops.

Next, get rid of the idea that somehow putting a ‘bans guns’ sign up somehow protects people. It does not. In fact, to the contrary, posting and enforcing such a thing only creates slaughter pens for the sheep inside who thought they were going to a ‘safe’ place.

Another prong of the attack should be to teach and require the teaching of gun safety and handling in schools. People who have knowledge are safer than those who only have fear. Remember that “well-regulated” part of the Second Amendment? My daughter will not have guns in her house. She is not afraid of them. She has shot them, knows how they work, and has been taught how to handle and use them safely. She has great respect for their destructive capability, just as she has for any other powerful tool. She just has no strong sense of any need to possess one. That’s fine. I respect both her judgement and her decision. I have no time for those who run around crying “Ban the guns!” when they never even have picked one up. That’s like saying “Ban the cars!” because children are dying when they never have ridden in one. Banning guns is a knee-jerk, ostrich-style, bandaid attempt at a solution.

There are many other aspects of, and points of attack against social (not just gun) violence. Turning our attention from ‘banning guns’ to ‘why is there so little support for treatment for mental and emotional health issues’ is only one. I am sure that that you truly thoughtful people can come up with dozens (if not hundreds) of other ways to attack this social violence issue in some meaningful and appropriate manner. We don’t have to get lost in rhetoric over one idea that is unworkable in its basis.

@DD Wiz — “the paralysis of analysis. Drag it out. Hold meetings. Hire committees. Put together (yet another) Blue Ribbon panel. Bottom line: complain that it is “complicated” and “nuanced” and NEVER ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING.”

Please note, all of you, that I never in any way espoused even one word of his ongoing tirade. I simply said (correctly) that it’s a complicated issue, and suggested some effective ways to approach solutions. That is undeniably true. But DD Wiz will go on shouting his demands for an instantaneous, knee-jerk ineffective response to any issue that comes along, in his continuing socialist effort to divide, isolate, enrage, and render ineffective any opposition to his socialist agenda.

I have no time for this

I’m just saying let the people who promote gun ownership figure out a way to end gun violence. However, don’t try to use the argument that there are already laws to control gun violence, because those laws are obviously not effective. If you have a better solution than taking away people’s guns, then use the NRA ’s influence to put in into place.

Amazing — how a simple tough-neighborhood comic opens up a can of TDS worms.