Gunshot Death. It’s the American Way.

There were 43 shootings in the USA on Sunday. One of them was in Orlando. The toll: 67 dead (including 5 children) and 94 injured.

More:

“We’re 164 days into 2016. We’ve had 133 mass shootings.” Sarah Frostenson and Sarah Kliff, Vox

“1,000 mass shootings in 1,260 days: this is what America’s gun crisis looks like,” The Guardian

“Gun Industry Describes Mass Shootings Like Orlando as a ‘Big Opportunity,’” Lee Fang, The Intercept

“A Brief History of America’s Massive Gun-Buying Spree,” Bryan and Dave Gilson, Mother Jones

 Gun Violence Archive website

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Orlando: American Shoots Other Americans

A heavily armed native-born American walked into an Orlando gay bar Sunday morning and killed at least 49 other Americans before he was shot by police. Actually, some people may say the perpetrator was not a real American because he was born in New York.

50 49 victims are known dead and about an equal number have been hospitalized, many in critical condition. At this time investigators have not established and reported other facts, but this has not kept commentators and politicians from recklessly flapping their gums. We await the NRA’s inevitable pronouncements that the shooter was mentally ill and that the bar patrons should have been armed.

More:

“The gun used in the Orlando shooting is becoming mass shooters’ weapon of choice,” Christopher Ingraham, Washington Post

“Ex-CIA Chief: It’s Way Past Time for an Assault Weapons Ban,” John McLaughlin, OZY

“Orlando nightclub shooting suspect bought guns within week of attack,” Mary Shanklin, Orlando Sentinel

“Assault weapons remain legal and easy to purchase in US,” Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press

“Ban on Weapon Used in Orlando More Distant Than Ever, Even If Clinton Wins,” Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

“Florida Nightclub Attack Just the Latest US Mass Shooting,” AP via NBC News

“Orlando shooting: The key things to know about about guns and mass shootings in America,” Max Ehrenfreund, Washington Post

“Orlando Shooting, 16 Front Pages From Newspapers Around The World,” Helene Snyder, Worldcrunch

Related:

“U.S. Gun Policy: Global Comparisons,” Jonathan Masters, Council on Foreign Relations

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Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Cheney: Okay, Iran Nukes ARE My Fault

Chris Wallace interviewed former Vice President and unindicted war criminal Dick Cheney on “Fox News Sunday.”

Chris Wallace: “You and President Bush, the Bush-Cheney administration, dealt with Iran for eight years. Iran went from zero known [nuclear] centrifuges in operation to more than 5,000. So in fairness, didn’t you leave — the Bush-Cheney administration — leave President Obama with a mess?”

Dick Cheney: “Well, I don’t think of it that way ….

Chris Wallace: “But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000.”

Dick Cheney: “Well, they may well have gone but that happened on Obama’s watch, not on our watch.”

Chris Wallace: “No, no, no. By 2009, they were at 5,000.”

Dick Cheney: “Right, But I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East.”

More:

“Dick Cheney faces surprise accusation on his own foreign policy,” Tony Dokoupil, MSNBC

A Farewell to Arms

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, will stop selling assault rifles in its US stores. Hope those aren’t on your kid’s back-to-school list.

The Big Box retailer, America’s biggest gun seller, claims there’s reduced consumer demand for AR-15s and similar military-style weapons. The NRA and other gun worshipers call such firearms “modern sporting rifles,” which makes perfect sense if you consider Adam Lanza and James Holmes “sportsmen.”

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Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Bobby Jindal: ‘Not the Time’ to Consider Gun Law Reform

On Friday Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) said that it is too soon after the mass shooting in a Lafayette movie theater to discuss gun control reform. By that logic it will never be a good time to talk about gun safety laws in Louisiana, since the rate of gun deaths in the Pelican State is the highest in the country. Discussion of rational policies to reduce firearms violence will always be preempted as citizens mourn Louisiana’s newest gunshot victims.

Come to think of it, that kind of neglect is perfectly consistent with the rest of Governor Jindal’s public health policy.

Kid Senator Pens ‘Cheeky’ Letter to Iran; International Crisis Ensues

In office for a couple of months, young freshman Senator Tom Cotton (AR-R) wrote an open letter to the leaders of Iran, saying that any nuclear agreement they sign with the current administration won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit in two years when the Tea Party takes over the White House. That’s misleading, but 46 other GOP senators signed on anyway, some of them older guys who really don’t know what they’re signing. These political pen pals are being hailed as … traitors, reckless, dumb, dangerous and irresponsible, trolls, saboteurs, and so on.

Secretaries of State past and present denounced the letter as a dangerous political stunt. Iran blew it off, but there’s been a strong, substantial public backlash in the USA. Now the GOP letter writers claim it was all a joke, that they were just being “cheeky.” After all, what’s more fun than jeopardizing a critical nuclear weapons agreement?

When Is a Gun Not a Gun?

Q: When is a gun not a gun?

A: When it’s a hammer.

That’s what Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R, TX-1) thinks, anyway. Asked about proposed legislation to restrict the sale of assault weapons, military-style arms like those used in recent mass killings, Mr. Gohmert replied:

“I refuse to play the game of ‘assault weapon.’ That’s any weapon. It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes. In Rwanda that killed 800,000 people, an article that came out this week, the massive number that are killed with hammers.”

Louie Gohmert is an authority on hammers, being dumber than a sack of them. Perhaps he’ll be named Chair of the House Subcommittee on Hand Tool Terrorism.

Firearms kill thousands of Americans each year; blunt objects kill hundreds, but we don’t know how many are committed with hammers, perhaps dozens. We expect Mr. Gohmert to hold fact-finding hearings about that in the new Congressional session.

More:

“Republican Congressman Claims Hammers Could Be Outlawed Under Assault Weapons Ban,” Scott Keyes, Think Progress

“Gohmert: ‘Any weapon’ is an assault weapon,” Justin Sink, The Hill

“Conservatives demand hammer control,” Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon

Related:

“Louie Gohmert: Aurora Shootings Result Of ‘Ongoing Attacks On Judeo-Christian Beliefs,'” Jennifer Bendery, Huffington Post

“Former NRA president compares banning guns to racism,” Jillian Rayfield, Salon

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Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-fvm

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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