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A gunman opened fire at U.S. Congressmen and others who were gathered at a practice this morning for the Congressional Baseball Game. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and at least four others were reportedly injured. The gunman, who has been identified by unnamed sources as James T. Hodgkinson III, was taken to a local hospital where he died from his injuries:
A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire Wednesday at a park in Alexandria, Va., as Republican members of Congress held a morning baseball practice, wounding at least five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.).
The suspected gunman is James T. Hodgkinson III, 66, from Illinois, according to multiple law enforcement sources. President Trump announced that the gunman, who was wounded in a shootout with officers, has died at an area hospital.
The wounded also included two Capitol Police officers and a congressional aide, according to one law enforcement official and witness accounts.
Congressman Scalise was shot in the hip and is in stable condition.
Hodgkinson's motive may have already been identified by the media:
A Facebook page belonging to a person with the same name includes pictures of Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and rhetoric against President Trump, including a post that reads: "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co."
Charles Orear, 50, a restaurant manager from St. Louis, said in an interview Wednesday that he became friendly with Hodgkinson during their work together in Iowa on Sanders's campaign. Orear said Hodgkinson was a passionate progressive and showed no signs of violence or malice toward others.
Also at LA Times, Reuters, The Atlantic, The Hill, and CNN.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DECbot on Wednesday June 14 2017, @09:42PM (1 child)
The conservatives already saw behind the curtain once. That was the basis of the Tea Party movement before it was hijacked by corporate interests. The conservatives have been pissed about their party leadership since GWB. That's how Trump got the nomination, the republican constituents (1) nominated him in protest of the other bimbos selected as they were unelectable against Hillary and (2) hoped Trump might actually act on his campaign promises of helping small businesses and the middle class. Most conservatives would be happy to see the Progressive agenda curbed as it tends to harm average people and dismiss traditional values as irrelevant; stop the empowerment of banks, large corporations, and government; and provide a bit more protectionism for the American laborer as globalized manufacturing model hurts local US communities. If the media and politicians stayed out of the conversation, two sensible people of either party can come to an agreement on all of these issues with some of the details still a little fuzzy. What the media, politicians, and internet forums are doing is providing gasoline to add to the fire to ensure these conversations cannot happen. Specifically, narratives are written (AM talk radio vs print/TV) that frame the arguments in a manner that makes the opposing faction to appear to be logically insane.
Here's two issues where people on all sides have shut down their critical thinking:
Our 30 year war on drugs has not curbed the problem. If anything, it has made things worse by making more profit in selling drugs, overworking our judicial system, militarizing our police force, and making a whole demographic of our population 2nd class citizens. Legalizing and controlling pot like tobacco will stop this insanity and as an added benefit bring a huge tax incentive for the States. Like the end of Prohibitions, this should be stupid simple.
How many responsible gun owners who've owned their firearms for decades have committed a gun-toting act of terrorism? I'm sure Google can find a few, but most recent acts have been committed by people who have bought or acquired the guns to commit their premeditated acts. It was a convenient tool they had access to, if you remove the accessibility you still won't remove their intent. As events in Europe have shown, a determined terrorist or mentally unstable person can perform an act of terrorism with anything. Guns, knives, trucks, fertilizer, compressed air and hardware, pencils, scissors, literally about anything can be used to take a life. Banning guns won't stop anything--especially if your government is selling them to gun trafficking criminals. Taking away guns from law abiding citizens does not solve the terrorism problem. It only makes law abiding citizens unable to protect themselves while waiting for law enforcement to arrive. Will all people carry guns and solve all trivial arguments with a western style shootout? Hell no. Legalizing guns doesn't turn the world into some Mad Max post apocalypse playground. However, if there is one armed citizen in 100 subjected to a terrorism attack, he or she may possibly save 99 other people before law enforcement arrive. Sure there are risks to everyone, but mostly there is a greater risk to criminals as you cannot assume who of your targets will be armed and to law enforcement and government officers as there are greater immediate consequences when you abuse your power.
Yes, both my arguments have flaws and deserve criticism. That's what Congress should be doing as there is a middle ground that most everyone can agree on. I'm not advocating that every drug should be legalized, but legalizing pot--even if only medicinally--will defang much of the gang violence and theft that is associated with drugs because the finical incentive is diminished, it will lighten the load on the courts and police, and remove the tools used to punish nonviolent minorities for being a minority. Likewise, not every gun should be legalized and there should be public places where gun possession does not make sense like courthouses and airplane cabins, but area wide bans covering entire cities seem to violate an individual's constitutional right to own a firearm in my simple opinion.
Here is the problem: responsibility is lost. Congress is not held responsible. The POTUS is not held responsible. Most regrettably, the media is not held responsible for setting a decisive narrative. Our current situation makes sense if you realize that all news articles are written to increase revenue from the target audience--the urban subscribers and viewers while AM talk radio is formatted for those adversely affected by the policies enacted by the former target audience.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @11:15PM
Drop the medical exclusion for pot, it is disingenuous and would have zero impact on gang activity. Legalize all the drugs, get money from sales tax, use lots of that money for education and rehabilitation programs. It is the only sane way forward, obviously even draconian laws can't stop the massive drug problems. People that want to do hard drugs do them regardless, at least make the drugs safer and make it easier and less stigmatized to get help.