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More of this!

For the billionth time-

No one wants to take your fucking guns.

We just want you and your guns to be licensed and registered, same as driving a car.

It’s common sense. It keeps 5yr olds from driving down the street. I’m epileptic, so the state won’t give me a driver’s license…. does that upset u or does it make you feel safer that I’m not behind the wheel?

Stop the stupidity. It’s getting old.

By Tayo Bero

This month, the Texas state parole board unanimously recommended the pardon and release of convicted killer and former US army sergeant Daniel Perry, along with the restoration of his firearm rights. Perry had been working as an Uber driver in July 2020 when he shot and killed Garrett Foster, a white man who was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with his Black fiancee. Perry was later indicted for murder, tried, convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison by an Austin jury.

Almost a year from the date of his sentencing, Perry’s pardon was granted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and he now walks free. As terrifying as the initial incident was, this pardon sends a chilling message: that politically motivated killing is OK, and that politicians are more focused on pandering to political pressure than protecting people’s lives.

During Perry’s trial, it emerged that in the weeks before he killed Foster, he had shared white-supremacist memes and talked about how he “might have to kill a few people” who were demonstrating outside his house in 2020. He also compared the Black Lives Matter movement to “a zoo full of monkeys that are freaking out flinging their shit”. And days into nationwide protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Perry sent a text message saying: “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”

Perry described shooting Foster as an act of self-defense. Yet according to trial testimony about the day Foster died, Perry had seen the predominantly Black group of protesters gathered across the street from him, ran a red light and drove his car right into the middle of the protest. When Foster – who was legally carrying a firearm but had not, according to some eyewitnesses, threatened Perry – approached Perry’s car, he shot him dead and sped away.

In rehashing this horrendous incident, the question on my mind is: how do you justify “pardoning” a person like this? Condemning Perry’s release isn’t about believing in carcerality or wanting to keep people in prisons, mind you; it’s about how we get to this point as a society, whom we grant permission to kill, and how we treat the people involved in a tragedy like this in its aftermath.

Abbott – who rarely issues pardons, and has generally only pardoned low-level, nonviolent offenders – had faced pressure from conservative media figures to grant Perry one. Rightwing pundits like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and even Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi squeezed him publicly about Perry’s conviction. It doesn’t seem like Abbott needed much convincing, though, seeing as he directed the parole board to review Perry’s case just one day after he was convicted.

There’s also the question of how we got here. Foster’s death and his killer’s subsequent pardon are the direct result of a government that’s more beholden to wealthy gun lobbyists than concerned with commonsense legislation that literally saves lives. Foster’s death was, in part, the result of a tragic meeting of Texas’s notoriously loose stand-your-ground self-defense laws, which Perry’s supporters claim he was upholding when he shot Foster, and the state’s “open carry” laws, which Foster was legally exercising when he had his rifle slung over his shoulder during the protest.

Alan Bean, the executive director of the Texas-based civil rights advocacy group Friends of Justice, summed up the implications of Perry’s case succinctly.

“If one guy with a gun feels threatened by another guy with a gun, murder is permissible. If both men felt threatened, the resulting tragedy would technically be ruled a no-fault double-homicide,” he wrote after news of the pardon went public.

Even Texas police aren’t blind to the ways that open-carry laws are exceptionally dangerous and nonsensical. “We were completely opposed to ‘license to carry’ because anytime there’s more guns, there’s a problem,” Ray Hunt, executive director of the Houston police officers’ union, said back in 2021.

If there was any doubt that Abbott doesn’t care how problematic these laws are, even after what happened to Foster, consider that he used his pardon announcement to reaffirm that “Texas has one of the strongest ‘stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney”.

These are scary words to hear from your elected official after a tragedy that could have been avoided with better gun laws. Abbott continues to signal to gun-toting rightwingers that they can go around murdering people they don’t agree with, and that they will have the full force of the law to back them up.

Foster’s mother, Sheila, spoke to the New York Times after the pardon, and her words are haunting in their truth. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said over the phone. “It seems like this is some kind of a political circus and it’s costing me my life.”

In 2005, Rodriguez made a video of himself calmly loading a gun and preparing other weapons, praising the Republicans for their lax gun laws and explaining to the camera that he was abused as a child, had contemplated suicide ever since, and that his mother must pay for the things she'd done.

"Zealot: A Book About Cults" - Jo Thornely

Was just gonna post this but, the rest of the exchange I've got here is just a great setup for showcasing the ignorance of this dude

guy responding was nicer than I would have been, as soon as the guy said that bit about the 1920's I would have launched into a history lesson about the city of Chicago and certain parts of NYC, rum runners too.

Glad they got to the bit about all guns being legal with no restrictions till 1934 part.

The Conservative Supreme Court Vision That Means Inequality for Women

“I'm trying to understand if there’s a flaw in the history and traditions kind of framework to the extent that when we're looking at history and tradition, we're not considering the history and tradition of all of the people but only some of the people, as per the government's articulation of the test?”

--Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, regarding United States v. Rahimi

This is a gift🎁link that anyone can use to get past the NY Times paywall to read this entire column about how the championing of "a history-and-tradition-bound method of constitutional interpretation" by the conservative SCOTUS justices will most likely limit women's rights. As the authors Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw point out, at the time the Constitution was written, "the principle of 'coverture' [that] gave husbands legal authority over their wives" was part of common law. So (perhaps by design) an originalist constitutional interpretation will result in second-class status for women.

The requirement that present-day gun laws resemble gun laws of the distant past prioritizes history and tradition in much the same way the Dobbs court looked to the historic regulation of abortion, pregnancy and birth to support the view that the Constitution did not protect a right to abortion. [...] The history-and-tradition methodology privileges laws enacted in eras like the 1780s, when the original Constitution was ratified, and the 1860s, when the 14th Amendment was drafted and ratified — moments in time when neither women nor people of color were able to fully join the political community and played no official role in enacting laws. Should a method that privileges eras of extreme democratic deficit be relied upon to determine contemporary constitutional meaning? [...] As an amicus brief...explains, in common law, the principle of “coverture” gave husbands legal authority over their wives, including the prerogative to “correct” or “chastise” through force or violence. There is active debate regarding how domestic violence was perceived in the 18th and 19th centuries. But arguing on these terms still embraces a fundamentally antidemocratic principle — that history alone, at whatever level of generality, can determine whether contemporary laws are constitutional. Although the history of domestic violence enforcement was extensively discussed and debated in the briefs, it was only glancingly referred to in oral argument. This too is notable. If the terms of the debate are history and tradition, whose history and traditions will get priority? [color emphasis added]

Maybe I’m not qualified to speak about gun control or gun laws but I can say with 100% honestly that I know what it’s like to look around a classroom and wonder. Wonder where I would hide, wonder if I could fit my friend next to me, wonder what I would text my parents and siblings and friends in different parts of the building. Wonder if fighting would be worth the risk, wonder where I would run if I could escape, wonder if there’s anyway for me to escape from the 3rd story window without accidentally snapping my neck. I am a sophomore in Highschool. I am sixteen. I haven’t got my drivers license, haven’t even got my permit. And the thing is I’m not even scared anymore. I’m just numb

“don’t worry if you comply they won’t try and take out guns”

Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children in the USA.

Every developed nation has people with mental illness, video games, disgruntled ex-employees, alienated people, homicidal and suicidal persons, etc. Why does the U.S. have the problem it

does?

It's the same things it always has - the number of firearms, access to them, fetishism surrounding the 2nd Amendment, and the immense political power of the firearms industry.

Not a single politician has the courage to step up.

Texas just passed HB2744 out of committee to raise the age to buy a gun to 21. I had to look out my window to make sure it wasn't snowing.

An American gun fanatic: If you don't support guns, then post a sign in your front yard that says; "Proudly gun free house." and see how that goes over.

Me: I'm literally a Finnish person whose neighborhood consists of a few pensioners and a family with little kids and virtually nobody in my home city owns a gun. Try again lol