Last Saturday night, four people were taken to hospitals late Saturday night after gunshots were fired in Denver. A fifth victim was discovered Sunday morning. All five are expected to survive their injuries.
- The Gun Violence Archive reports that the Denver shooting, along with mass shootings in El Paso and Boston, pushed the total of mass shootings this year above 500.
Hunter Biden’s recent indictment on federal felony gun charges may signal Republicans are ready to look at reasonable gun restrictions.
- Just kidding, they aren’t.
Expensive Facebook Addiction
The News Journal’s Jim Little reports on former county commissioner Doug Underhill’s expensive Facebook addiction.
- The District 2 commissioner has paid Ed Fleming’s law firm $138,904.99 and owes another $23K for defending him in three lawsuits concerning Underhill’s Facebook posts.
A recent court order requires the former commissioner to pay David Bear’s attorney fees, $130K, in a case in which Underhill repeatedly refused to hand over his Facebook posts and comments.
- Underhill is appealing a $35,000 fine from the State Ethics Commission for multiple ethics violations, and he is now fighting a lawsuit from Pro Watercross and its founder over alleged defamation on Facebook.
Southern League Playoffs
The Pensacola Blue Wahoos head to play the first round of the Southern League playoffs in Montgomery against the Biscuits in a best-of-three series.
The Blue Wahoos won their division in the first half of the season and finished the season 78-57, the highest winning percentage in the team’s history.
- Tuesday, Sept. 19: Game 1 at Montgomery Biscuits, 6:35 p.m., Riverwalk
- Wednesday, Sept. 21: Game 2 vs. Montgomery, 6:05 p.m. at Blue Wahoos Stadium
- Friday, Sept. 22: Game 3 (if necessary) vs. Montgomery, 6:05 p.m. at Blue Wahoos Stadium
Oh, a ps for you or other zealots and extremists who are not aware, Mr. Sharp: the term “constitutional carry” is relatively new jargon–part and parcel of NRA (Russia) propaganda–to enshrine relatively new state laws that mirror the original “Vermont carry,” and more important to convey by rhetorical slight that its usage is as old as the constitution itself.
And in fact, the concept of “constitutional carry” was never implemented on a federal level until our increasingly lawless and shameful Supreme Court unleashed it on our country in June of last year.
Even in the Wild West, if you wanted to enter a town with your gun you’d better damn well have presented it at the Sheriff’s office for permission, if you wanted to hold onto it long.
Like most reasonable people, I’d prefer something between the two extremes.
Mr. Sharp, thank you for helping to demonstrate my point by regurgitating the standard, spinning, polite-variety sea lion demands for answers that we’ve all seen thousands of times on this subject.
There is simply no use in wasting time combatting indoctrination in someone who spews hackneyed propaganda as if it’s somehow original thought and extremely clever to boot.
Now you can come back and say “I thought so” and this round of that tired game will be at an end.
Melissa, please define what an AR is.
What gun show loophole are you speaking of and got would that decrease gun violence?
How does constitutional carry, (permit less carry), lead to more gun violence than permitted carry?
Finally, possessing and carrying a firearm is a right, the government can’t make you prove you are qualified to posses or use. Driving is a privilege, so the fivernment may place various requirements.
Mr. Sharp,
1. Bring back the AR ban.
2. Roll back permitless carry as quickly as possible.
3. Close the gun show loop holes.
4. Take carrying a gun as seriously as, say, driving a car by issuing licenses only to people who have passed tests in not just an understanding of laws and safety, but in demonstrating an actual ability to employ the guns they carry with some degree of sufficiency in front of licensed professionals. It is cultural insanity that we do more to make sure that people can drive before they are issued licenses than the nothing we do to make sure people carrying deadly weapon have a baseline of cognitive and physical skills contributing to their safe use
While those common-sense measures obviously wouldn’t put a halt to all gun violence, they would certainly make a sizeable material dent, and go some way towards tempering the twisted and lunatic fixation on firearms that currently runs rampant in the Republican base. Reinstituting the AR ban alone would help safeguard children from having their heads blown off their bodies through the other side of a locked metal door. Not to mention make it less easy on the Nazis and White Supremacists to kill as many people as possible when they take it into their sick brains to do so with legally acquired weapons that were developed for military kill rates and speeds and not intended for civilian use.
Making those legal changes would certainly make life easier on law enforcement, as well, who are bearing the burden of these asinine legislative “policies” daily. It will only get worse for them, and if the current scenario continues to escalate, eventually they will be scapegoated for their inability to police the chaos the politicians have brought on our heads. Then enter the “well trained” militias, right? At least that’s the goal of the extremists and the foreign governments who infiltrated groups like the NRA and began their social media psy op warfare on American democracy in earnest 10 short years ago, and so far are achieving that aim very well.
There is still time to reverse this course and regain a modicum of sanity per our right to defend ourselves, but the window of opportunity grows smaller every day. History has born witness to this movie before, cyclically and throughout the ages. Cult fanatism born of demagogues whipping the populous into a frenzy in order to sew the chaos that becomes the excuse for autocracy typically doesn’t end well, if it’s not arrested by a societal wake-up call.
Melissa, please provide a specific list of additional laws that would reduce gun violence.
Anyone interested in knowing the truth about gun violence can start here:
A Third Way report found that between 2000 and 2020, Trump-voting states had 12% higher murder rates than did Biden-voting cities. -Arianna Johnson
“A new study published in Journal of the American Medical Association’s Surgery found that firearm deaths are more likely in small rural towns than in major urban cities, adding to research that contradicts common belief that Democratic blue areas have higher incidences of gun-related deaths than do Republican red districts.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/04/28/red-states-have-higher-gun-death-rates-than-blue-states-heres-why/?sh=ad5867c1f812
Don’t miss this nugget:
“A Third Way report found that between 2000 and 2020, Trump-voting states had 12% higher murder rates than did Biden-voting cities.”
Mr. Sharp, you might want to pull your head out of Fox news and obtain some actual facts about gun fatalities. The Whataboutism is going to wear more and more thin as gun violence will continue to escalate in states with asinine gun laws such as our Banana Republic just past for Herr Dictator in Tallahassee.
That’s not to excuse Chicago. I grew up three hours away from it and have been well aware of the problems there before the extreme right made it the post child for Woke. But just pointing the finger at a few urban locations every time somebody dares to speak about the GOP’s obsession with guns (they are something to be respected and handled with ultimate caution, not brandished about like a political poker chips) is not going to distract people from the gun violence escalating in red states for much longer.
People have had it with the gaslighting, and your attempt to distract from the real issues here in Florida and in our community is hackneyed and running out of steam. Just because more people don’t have the courage to say it publicly doesn’t mean a *lot* of people don’t say it behind the scenes. Which is one reason why you didn’t do very well in the mayor’s race. If you ran today, you’d probably fare even worse with those stale talking points.
So keep on keeping on with the same tired talking points. Because the more that sloganeering continues, the more people get sick of it and see the truth through the brainwashing.
‘At least 18 people have been injured in shootings across Chicago this weekend, police said.’ (Source ABC News 7 Chicago) This is a typical weekend occurrence in Chicago , which is run by Democrats, which has some of the strictest gun laws in America.
Also, Hunter Biden violated gun laws already in place.