I don’t have time today to write about this properly, but here’s something to think about. Y’all already know about Jerad and Amanda Miller — the young married couple who shot and killed two Las Vegas police officers as they were having lunch, then proceeded across the street to kill another person in a Wal-Mart before killing themselves. But did you know this?
Police believe the couple walked the four miles to CiCi’s Pizza, where Officers Alyn Beck, 42, and Igor Soldo, 32, were having lunch in a booth.
Let me repeat that. They walked four miles before they started shooting. And further, did you know this?
[A] neighbor who saw them set off on foot Sunday morning with a red shopping cart carrying weapons and ammunition was not alarmed enough to call police.
So think about this: these two people walked for four miles to a busy shopping area on a Sunday, while carrying a shotgun and several handguns, and pushing a shopping cart holding “hundreds of rounds of ammunition” — and nobody they passed by felt any need to notify the police. Why?
The murdered Las Vegas police officers
Because Nevada is an ‘open carry’ state. Because it’s perfectly legal in Nevada to go wandering around with firearms and a shopping cart full of ammunition. Because until they walked into the pizza restaurant and opened fire, they were presumed to be responsible gun owners. Didn’t matter that Jerad Miller was a felon who wasn’t allowed to own a firearm, didn’t matter that these two had espoused hateful ideologies and talked about killing police officers, didn’t matter at all.
Wayne LaPierre, NRA spokesman
I’ve written about these ‘open carry’ fuckwits before. You cannot tell the difference between an armed Second Amendment fuckwit and a mass murderer by looking at them. You can’t tell them apart until the bullets start flying. We can thank the National Rifle Association for that. The NRA and the cowardly greedhead legislators they’ve paid off through campaign contributions.
Two police officers dead. And pretty soon it’ll happen again. And then again, and again and on and on. Because that’s the world the NRA has given us. And unless we, the people, stand up on election day and frogmarch every last one of these conscienceless bastards out of Congress, nothing will ever change.
gregfallis.com 
Kinda reminds me of this:
“Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” – George W. Bush, Cincinnati, OH, October 7, 2002
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Kinda. The difference is that threat was imaginary. This threat is real.
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I intend to yet again address this very subject in my blog. This is precisely what many Texans feared when the Open-Carry advocates came into southeast Texas, but not a one of the gun-toters was willing to address this. Yet they are the ones so proudly proclaiming we here are “too stupid and naive to realize the danger” we are in.
BULL-SMUCKERS!
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Another sad aspect of this event is that the third person to die was a CCW holder, who decided he’d be a good guy with a gun and stop the bad guy with a gun — and got himself killed instead. It’s an object lesson in CCW reality (as opposed to NRA fantasy); carrying a concealed firearm doesn’t turn you into Bruce Willis.
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This was another falsehood on the part of the CHL holder who was killed. He was allowed to protect himself, but he attempted to intervene on the part of others. In doing so, technically he broke the law. Further, in his haste to protect others, he failed to recognize there was an accomplice … who was the shooter who killed him.
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So sad, there’s got to be a better way.
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Oh, there are definitely better ways. To begin with, a more effective and universal background check. Jerad Miller was a felon; he wasn’t allowed to legally buy a firearm. And yet he had at least two with him.
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What makes you think Miller acquired his weapons from a source where even a basic background check was required?
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Amen to that!
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