Former Supreme Court Justice, John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment:

Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.”

During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

He's been saying this for a while now.

"If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks and they will be stoned."

Arm Students with Rocks

So, who is buying all these guns—and why?

The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

A wise man was one attacked for saying this:

"They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Science just proved him right, mothafukkahs.

(h/t)

Stark maps ... 50-state view of 2016 vote in gun vs. non-gun households via @SurveyMonkey pic.twitter.com/0NB0L3fYj1

— Jon Cohen (@jcpolls) October 2, 2017

If only gun owners had voted in the 2016 election, then Donald Trump would have won every single state save Vermont. If only people who don’t own guns had voted, then Hillary Clinton would have won every state, save West Virginia and maybe Wyoming.

SurveyMonkey, which conducted the poll reaching these conclusions, found that the voting divide between gun owners and non-owners was starker than divides between white and nonwhite Americans, between working-class whites and the rest of the nation, and between rural and urban voters. “No other demographic characteristic created such a consistent geographic split,” the New York Times’s Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy write.

That doesn’t mean that gun ownership is more important in explaining American political behavior than race or class or gender. But it does mean that gun ownership has an extremely strong correlation with conservative, pro-Republican voting.

Not owning a gun isn’t a particularly powerful identity. But gun ownership is, enough so to drive the gap seen in the map above.

A Lakewood man was arrested after he posted a threat on social media that he would open fire with a machine gun on a rally calling for stricter gun laws, authorities said.

Shane Steele, 42, was charged with one count of terroristic threats after he was arrested on Friday, Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato announced in a statement.

Authorities were alerted to the post on Facebook from a tip to the Manalapan Police Department from a concerned citizen, Coronato said.

"Steele allegedly authored a post on Facebook stating he intended to open fire with a machine gun at a 'March For Our Lives' rally," the statement said.

As a former teacher, I am confused. When the person with the AR-15 comes down the hall firing dozens of rounds in seconds, is the teacher armed with a handgun supposed to open the classroom door and expose the children to rapid gunfire while she tries to shoot the guy spraying her with bullets?

Do you think the children's screams would distract her from getting a good shot? Or is she supposed to hide the children in closets and cabinets before opening the door to the guy with the semi-automatic weapon?

Is she wearing the handgun all day every day? Is it loaded? Is it concealed under her clothes or in a holster on her waist? Could a child with impulse control issues grab the loaded handgun from her and use it against her or the other students? I cannot imagine handling a gun in such circumstances.

The less they stay the same.

2013:

"The White House’s recent announcement they will use executive orders and executive actions to infringe on our constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms is an unconstitutional and unconscionable attack on the very founding principles of this republic," Stockman said in a statement. "I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment."

Today:

Mr. Trump suggested taking the guns "early" from people who display serious signs of mental illness, and then "due process" in court can come later.

"I like taking the guns early," the president said. "... Take the guns first, go through due process second."

This declaration that Trump wants to violate the only Constitutional right the GOP actually cares about did not result in furious calls for Trump's immediate impeachment. Oddly.

Vox

Parents are expressing concern after a church announced it will hold a ceremony next week, and worshipers are encouraged to bring assault weapons with them, and the ceremony will be just down the road from an elementary school.

"This will be a big thing for us. It's a new stage for us because it incorporates the rod of iron, as it is in Revelations. Revelations talks about the returning Christ ruling with the rod of iron."

Sanctuary Church and Rod of Iron Ministries are one in the same, run by the Moon family from South Korea who started the controversial Unification Church.

...

Moon is the son of the late Sun Myung Moon, who founded the controversial Unification Church that drew national attention in the 1970s and '80s. The Rod of Iron Ministries is an offshoot of that religious organization focusing on what it believes is the right of families to defend themselves with assault weapons.

"This rod of iron is the AR-15, in today's terms."

The Moon family also owns Kahr Arms, a gunmaker that moved to Pike County a couple years ago. Newswatch 16 was at the opening ceremony at that time in Blooming Grove Township.

LOL. People can be so fucking stupid.

In a letter sent to families and published on schools' social media sites, Rhodes said students would face a three-day, out-of-school suspension if they joined in growing protests nationwide over the shooting at a Florida high school last week.

"Life is all about choices and every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative. We will discipline no matter if it is one, fifty, or five hundred students involved," Rhodes wrote. "All will be suspended for 3 days and parent notes will not alleviate the discipline."

I think I'd choose suspension, and wear it with honor for the rest of my life.

Rhodes can die mad about it.