15-Year-Old Arrested in Shooting Death of 11-Year-Old Girl — usnews.com Give the poor kid a break. He was shooting at a 13-year-old boy and missed. The girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Murder
Who is to Blame for Buffalo?
From Kevin D. Williamson: Before the blood was even dry in Buffalo, Democrats were asking the most important question: “How can we well-heeled white progressives most effectively use the murders of all these black people to our personal and political advantage?” The murderer in Buffalo didn’t kill anybody you’ve ever heard of, and so the first thing to do if you want to exploit the deaths of all these people — and that is what Democrats intend to do — is to connect the crime to some famous name or prominent institution. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t any actual connection: Just assert it, and that’s good enough for the newspapers and the cable-news cretins and the impotent rage-monkeys on Twitter. The usual suspects: social-media platforms, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Fox News, the National Rifle Association, etc. The shooter was actually well known in advance as a… Read more →
It’s Time to Ban Things That Are Already Banned
My 4-year-old just FaceTimed to ask what I’m doing to “help the people in Buffalo” and “why did the bad man do this?” Absolutely gutting. This cannot be his normal. It’s time to BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS. #EndGunViolence — Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) May 16, 2022 “Assault weapons” are already banned in New York. New York has every gun law you could possibly want, including a “red flag” law. Do you have a more serious suggestion than “It’s time to ban things that are already banned”? BTW, the replies to this dubious tweet are hilarious. A couple examples: In the middle of enjoying her after-dinner all-natural watermelon fruit bar popsicle, my 5-year-old leaned back in her chair, looked me dead in the eye and asked, “What will we ever do to escape this inflationary spiral in which this country currently finds itself.” I’m shook AF. — Will Stafford (@WillStaffordLSU) May 17,… Read more →
I’m the Damn Paterfamilias!
He couldn’t have just turned off the set? Read more →
Dirty Laundrie: How NOT to Commit the Perfect Murder
I have long maintained that the best way to kill someone and get away with it is to push them off a cliff. While hiking, for example. It’s simple, clean, no need to dispose of evidence, and proving beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that the deceased didn’t just fall off the cliff accidentally is almost assuredly impossible. Unfortunately, the opportunity to push someone off a cliff is no longer on the table for me, having published in advance my admiration for cliffs as a murder weapon, but I’ve got other ideas as well. That said, the worst way to murder someone is to take them on a cross-country road trip, document the whole thing on social media, then drive home by yourself and disappear. Read more →
On the Infanticide Marie Farrar
Marie Farrar: month of birth, April Died in the Meissen penitentiary An unwed mother, judged by the law, she will Show you how all that lives, lives frailly. You who bear your sons in laundered linen sheets And call your pregnancies a ‘blessed’ state Should never damn the outcast and the weak: Her sin was heavy, but her suffering great. Therefore, I beg, make not your anger manifest For all that lives needs help from all the rest. — Bertolt Brecht, “On the Infanticide Marie Farrar” A translation of the entire poem is available here, among other places. Read more →
Hiding the Facts from Readers Is the Opposite of a Journalist’s Job
From the National Review: As you may have heard [I actually didn’t hear, for reasons that will soon become clear], on Friday night there was a mass shooting in Austin, Texas, in the Sixth Street entertainment district. Fourteen people were shot; as of this writing, one has died. This apparently wasn’t one of those loser-shoots-up-his-school mass shootings, but one of the more common shootings involving “some kind of disturbance between two parties,” as the police put it. So the shooter didn’t kill himself or wait around for the police and force them into shooting him. He fled, and the police, naturally, put out a description of him. The Austin American-Statesman, the local daily, refused to publish that description. Instead, it put this editor’s note at the end of its report: Editor’s note: Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning. The American-Statesman is… Read more →
And That’s the Truth: Anti-Asian Racism
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth — PE] The media dont give a goddamn about Asians unless they can fit em into a narrative that they like and thanks to some idiot in Atlanta shooting up massage parlors, Asians can be fit now into two narratives. The guy in Atlanta said massage parlors gave him a sex addiction so he had to shoot eight people. Six of em were Asian women. I dont know if’n youve noticed this but theres a lot of Asian women in massage parlors. But the narrative is white supremacy and he hates Asians. So why did he shoot the other two people? Does he hate Asians but he caint tell is someone Asian or not? And the other narrative is wealth disparity. See, you got them crazy rich Asians and then you got the Asians who aint rich… Read more →
See You in Hell, Violent Idiots
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals! I was reading about the shootings that occurred in Atlanta last Tuesday. The author says, “Eight people were murdered. Six of them were Asian-American women. It seems impossible to feel this as anything other than anti-Asian and misogynistic violence.” Here’s a tip: Whenever someone prefaces an opinion by saying “it’s impossible to feel differently about this than the way I feel about it,” the speaker is full of shit. State your case. Hit me with some evidence. If the shooter had opened fire in a supermarket like the violent idiot in Boulder, he could have killed anyone he wanted to. Had he killed mostly Asian women, then I’d say you’ve got a good case for anti-Asian, misogynistic violence. But the guy in Atlanta shot up massage parlors. He blamed them for turning him into… Read more →
I Don’t Think I Would Be Allowed to Run a Store
The convenience store where I buy sodas in the morning has literally four signs at the entrance saying wear a face covering if you come in the store. This morning a guy comes in with no face covering and a cup. The girl at the register says to him, “You can’t come in without a face covering.” “I’m just going to get a cup of water,” he says. So there’s another problem, which is that nobody knows the provenance of that cup and he’s going to push it into a public water dispenser. “You can’t be in here without a face covering,” the girl says a little more loudly. “I said I’m just going to get a cup of water!” Which he does. When I get to the register, I say to the girl, “I don’t think I could run a store because I would pick up the gun that… Read more →
A Lot of Controversies Are Spoiled By a Guy Who Actually Knows What He’s Talking About
I saw this headline today on theroot.com: A Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism The author of the article is someone named Michael Harriot, whose bio describes him as a “world-renowned wypipologist.” (Look it up.) The section that caught my attention was where the author proposes and rejects other explanations for the number of black people in prison. An excerpt: “White people make up roughly 74% of the Massachusetts population while accounting for 58.7% of cases in our data,” the study explained. “Meanwhile, Black people make up just 6.5% of the Massachusetts population and account for 17.1% of cases.” Of course, that could only mean that Black people commit much more crime, right? Nope. That’s it. No further explanation. No link to relevant data. Just “Nope.” I added a comment to the article: “Of… Read more →
Traffic Stops and Swimming Pools
We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow When I was younger (we’re all very well-behaved now 🙂 ), I had several friends and family members who had unpleasant run-ins with police, where they were cuffed or arrested or beaten, the common thread being not that they were black (they were all white), but they were all wise-asses who didn’t respect authority and couldn’t find it within themselves to be compliant to a police officer. One day my 9th-grade gym teacher told us (again, all white boys) to be excessively polite to police officers — yes sir, no sir — have your day in court if it came to that, but better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6. In my experience, the narrative that only… Read more →
“Mostly Peaceful”
Portland mayor says protesters are ‘attempting to commit murder’ and helping Trump’s reelection campaign — Los Angeles Times I’m not sure how those two things go together but look, Mr. Mayor (is this the “Summer of Love” mayor or is that in Seattle?), you’re not going out on a limb by taking a stand against murder. Pretty much everyone is opposed to murder. But if you’d enforced at some point over the last couple months the laws against lesser offenses like assault, theft and destruction of property, the state of affairs in your city wouldn’t have deteriorated to this point. You now look like a fool saying “Someone should do something about this!” Like who, the mayor? Read more →
Milwaukee Police Chief Accused of Being Inattentive. His Response May Surprise You!
Protests Considered Harmful?
I saw multiple people on TV this weekend looting stores, running out with a “Black Lives Matter” sign in one hand and stolen merchandise in the other. Maybe we should stop having these Black Lives Matter protests. The majority of the TV coverage is black citizens stealing things and setting things on fire, which doesn’t improve anyone’s lives and probably, in terms of prejudice and race relations, makes things worse. In this case, the George Floyd case, I haven’t heard one person say that kneeling on someone’s neck and killing them is good police work. So it’s really a protest against no one, except the one guy who did it and he’s already been fired, arrested, charged with murder and condemned by everyone from the president of the United States on down. There’s no opposing viewpoint to protest against. The mayor of Atlanta, who is a black woman and therefore… Read more →
Why is Michael Bloomberg a “Racist”?
Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city. That’s an old quote from Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, cited in “The Notorious Michael R. Bloomberg: His racist stop-and-frisk policy as New York mayor can’t be forgotten.” in the New York Times. My first thought is, instead of jumping right to calling the man a “racist” (translation: “anyone who disagrees with me”), run the numbers and tell us if the statement is true. My sense is that he might be a little off on the numbers but not a lot. And my second thought is that the statement is both sexist and ageist but to my knowledge no one has objected… Read more →
What is the Goal of Background Checks?
What is the goal of background checks? To prevent murders? The Odessa shooter, to cite one example, couldn’t pass a background check, but he got his hands on a gun anyway. If you’re trying to get a gun for the purpose of murdering one or more persons, why would you care about passing a background check? Has anyone ever said “I was planning to go on a murderous rampage but I didn’t want to do it with an illegally obtained firearm.” So for Odessa, charges would include seven deaths, 19 wounded, plus illegal possession of a firearm?! Is that a deterrent? Read more →
Praying for Protection
Texas state lawmaker calls for ‘praying for protection’ instead of gun reform in wake of mass shooting CNN Let me ask you: what is “gun reform”? Why would it be better than prayer for preventing mass shootings? Pray for protection and if you get shot, take comfort in knowing it was God’s will. Can I get an amen? Read more →
Jim Leavelle, 1920-2019
You don’t know his name, but you know who he is. He’s one of three people in the foreground of one of the most famous photos in American history. Leavelle is the man in the light-colored suit escorting Lee Harvey Oswald through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters when Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby. Notice the difference in the position of Oswald relative to Leavelle in the photo below, before the gunshot. Leavelle, who was handcuffed to Oswald, said when he saw Ruby with the gun, he tried to jerk Oswald behind him, but Ruby was so close by that time that all he was able to do was turn Oswald sideways. Leavelle died this week at the age of 99. RIP Jim Leavelle Read more →
Mass Shootings, Thwarted and Unthwarted
Arresting some knucklehead on a weapons charge and saying you “thwarted a mass shooting” is a speculative fantasy. Meanwhile, since El Paso there have been 25 actual unthwarted mass shootings (per Mass Shooting Tracker), which don’t make the news because they don’t fit the preferred narrative. For example, four of the shootings occurred in Chicago, where in each case the shooters fired into a crowd of people. By my count, about half the victims were women. I can’t find any reporting on this in Mother Jones, which is pretty shocking given their obvious interest in mass shootings. They’d rather report on imaginary mass shootings by white males than on the actual mass shootings of Chicago residents . Read more →