The U.S. Shootings Update

Today's daily shootings news is from North Carolina, Texas and California.

A student at Coastal Carolina University has died after a shooting near the campus in Conway, NC.

Anthony Darnell Liddell, 19,  of Bennettsville died after the shooting at University Place residence hall. Police are hunting the shooter who fired four or five shots about 7:30 p,m,. Tuesday.

A public school employee was  shot and wounded  near Tyler, TX, during a  training session aimed toward arming school district employees. A student and a gun safety instructor were working with a malfunctioning weapon when it misfired.  The bullet struck a school maintenance worker in the leg.

A statement from the schools superintendent said, "The accident will not affect the district’s decision, in light of the Sandy Hook massacre and other school shootings, to arm employees."

Yesterday, two police officers were shot to death in Santa Cruz, CA.  A resident describes Santa Cruz as "a peaceful community of artists and hippies and vegans." 

The alleged killer of Sergeant Loren (Butch) Baker  and his partner, Detective Elizabeth Butler,  had previous arrests for sexual assault and carrying a concealed weapon. The San Jose Mercury News reports that he had three guns registered to him, including a .40-caliber semi-automatic Sig Sauer.

More than 2,000 Americans have died by gunshot since Sandy Hook.

Our National Pastime: Latest Statistics

Today's daily U.S. shooting deaths took place in Las Vegas.

Occupants of a black Range Rover shot up a Masarati which crashed into a taxi that burst into flames.  The episode left three persons dead and at least three others injured.  It took place at 4:30 a.m. at an intersection on The Strip surrounded by some of the most famous casinos in town, including the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Bally's.

Our daily dose of death by gunfire brought the total of Ameicans shot to death since Sandy Hook to well over 2,000.

Please be sure to write, wire or call Wayne LaPierre at the National Rifle Association to thank him for bringing us these daily entertainments.

"Guns don't kill.  People kill."

Thank Mr. LaPierre for fighting so hard to maintain his version of the Second Amendment, which gives everyone -- not just owners of black Range Rovers -- the "right" to bear arms.  After all, it's the brave patriots of his cockamamie organization who keep our nation safe from . . .er,  "bad guys."

You do feel safer, don't you?  Or have you already canceled your planned trip to Vegas? If you absolutely have to roll them dice, play high stakes poker or toss next week's grocery money onto a roulette table, you can buy body armor online. But don't think you can take shelter at your nearest courthouse, campus, shopping mall or church.  Some of the aforementioned 2.000 victims died at such places.

Our gun-toters are equal-opportunity killers.

This is The State of the Union

The union is still intact but the state of the nation is dismal.  Since Presidents are not required to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in their annual report to the citizens, here are some things Dr. Kidglove will not say tonight.

Our head of state violates his oath to uphold the Constitution daily. He has arrogated to himself the divine right of kings, the power of life and death over his subjects.  He has repealed, by executive whim, habeas corpus, the Posse Comitatus Act, and the First, Fourth, Sixth and Eighth amendments to the Constitution.

He deploys troops, tortures, orders attacks, invades, occupies and conducts secret raids and missions that violate treaties to which the United States is signatory, the Geneva Conventions, United Nations articles and United States laws. Many of the policies and actions of the United States meet the definition of war crimes.

The President has advocated policies and signed laws that have widened the gulf between the very  rich (about two per cent of Americans) and poor (about 20 per cent) and virtually destroyed the American middle class.

We have tolerated abuses of the Second Amendment to the point  that the nation has become one big armed camp.  Since "legal" weapons were used to slaughter 22 innocent children in Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn.,  gunshots have killed 1,900 more Americans, including two slain yesterday near the University of Maryland campus.

We have nurtured a culture of secondary citizenship for women.  Some states have claimed the right to invade women's reproductive organs by requiring vaginal ultrasound examinations before allowing certain health procedures to take place.  One state, New Mexico, is considering a law that would hold a woman guilty of felonious destruction of evidence for terminating  a pregnancy resulting from rape.  A judge in another state ruled the victim to be at fault when she was sexually abused by a police officer. 

The United States has refused to support worldwide efforts to slow the rate of climate change that is destroying ecosystems, changing habitat, warming the earth, melting polar ice and threatening the well-being of creatures great and small.

We are subsidizing the growth and profits of extraction industries whose products fill the atmosphere with destructive carbons, while refusing to encourage development of sources of sustainable energy. We export gas from fracking which destroys water sources even as the country suffers an epic continuing drought.

We have declared corporations to be "people" and given them unprecedented power over our government, while systematically repealing the constitutional rights guaranteed to individual citizens.  Yet our rate of economic growth is one-fifth of that of the Third World despite record corporate profits.

We have the poorest, yet most expensive, health care in the industrialized world. The quality of our educational system is plummeting even as our politicians demand further cuts in funding it because of a mythical "national debt problem."

The most celebrated of our academic experts on economics advocate strengthening the social safety net and increasing public spending to create jobs, while our elected officials pursue austerity policies that  cause troubled economies to fail even more egregiously.

We nurture an unrealistic, myth-driven national self image as a superpower operating on a high moral plane, while the rest of the world sees us as a rogue nation complicit in virtually every failed and oppressive policy in the global scheme of things. We think we are a democracy but we are a nation on the brink of becoming a  fascist oligarchy and police state.

And that is the real state of the union.

An Essential Guide for Oberservers of the Great American Political Theater

This infographic, created by OnlinePsychologyDegree.com, and published by permission, is presented as a public service for those who habitually watch Fox "News," sessions of Congress (especially confirmation hearings in the Senate), or any public utterances by American office-holders or aspirants to public office. http://www.onlinepsychologydegree.net/why-people-lie?

We Need a New Financial Responsibility Act

Dr.  Kidglove, who backpedals better than most NBA point guards, seems to have dropped the assault weapon ban from his post-massacre strategy on gun control.  Some self-designated experts on the issue say that's OK because the assault-weapon ban is a red herring anyway.  The important thing, they say, is to ban large-capacity magazines.

Whatever.

Perhaps bans and endless arguments over the original intent of the Second Amendment are all a waste of time.

How about this?

Require that all firearms in private hands -- yes, even genuine hunting weapons -- be licensed, but only after thorough background checks.  We license cars and motorcycles and doctors and fishermen and therapists and all kinds of stuff.  Why not lethal weapons?

And as a precondition for obtaining a license, require that each licensed weapon be insured: liability insurance, a minimum $5 million in compensation to families of victims killed by the insured weapon,  a range of, say,  $100,000 to $1 million in victims' compensation for anyone injured by the insured weapon.

Yes, Mr. NRA Macho Bigshot, you can keep your entire arsenal of military firepower; we'll give you, say, six months to license and buy insurance for each one.  Then go out and play Black Commando to your heart's content -- knowing that if your Navy Seal Sniper Automatic Rifle accidentally kills the farmer down the road, his widow will get $5 million from your insurance company.  (And, no doubt, your insurance will be cancelled, along with your licenses for the rest of your arsenal.)

Under our plan, after the six-month grace period, it would be a felony punishable by two years in jail and a lifetime ban from firearms licensing to carry, possess or use an unlicensed fiirearm of any kind, for any purpose.

As long as you obey the law, your precious "right" to bear arms remains inviolate. But you will be held accountable -- financially, at least -- for whatever damage your bloody guns cause, whether you're using them or someone else is.

Some gun nuts won't pay the costs of licenses and insurance, which should reduce the number of gun owners and the size of their arsenals.  Others will think twice about whether such an expensive phallic symbol really does much in the way of self-defense.  After all, weapons didn't save the self-styled Greatest American Sniper Ever, even at his second home on the shooting range.  And Machine-gun Mamas with such an investment in their guns will be motivated to keep them away from their teen-aged progeny with messed-up heads.

There would be attrition in gun ownership under this plan without the fuss of a constitutional fight over the Second Amendment.  Nobody's taking away your "right" to be Rambo.  They're simply requiring you to prove financial responsibility, just as you have to do to legally drive your pick-up truck.

The financial compensation for the wounded or the families of the slain would be simple justice. No amount of money can adequately  compensate the families of the murdered children of Sandy Hook,  but since money is the great engine of our corrupt society, let's try to make it work for the public good.

Maybe we could even persuade the health insurance companies to write these gun policies, and lower the premiums on regular health care for regular people.

Fat chance!