Responsible Gun Ownership (Rubbish Remix)

So, this is what we’ve got:

→ Man drives van onto garbage fire in attempt to quell flames.

→ Van happens to be loaded with guns, ammunition, and full tank of gas.

↳ Vans don’t put out fires.

Or, as Ian Cummings explains for the Kansas City Star:

The deputy learned that the owner had been burning garbage in the field and accidentally let the fire get out of control. In an attempt to put the fire out, he drove his van back and forth over the flames.

This made matters worse, as the tires of the van caught fire. Realizing that the van was loaded with firearms ammunition and a full tank of gas, the driver evacuated the area for safety.

And to make sure we cover the really important stuff, Clay County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jon Bazzano pointed out that the owner did not make a report for an insurance claim because, “It seems like he’s just going to have to take a loss on that vehicle because I don’t think they’re going to cover it”, and that’s all well and fine, but there is another aspect worth considering.

Something about responsible gun ownership goes here; the van owner was not cited for criminally dangerous stupidity, and perhaps that’s just how the law works and such, but, you know, really. Responsible gun ownership. What part of driving a van full of firearms and ammunition into a garbage fire coincides with the idea of responsible gun ownership, and what does that intersection actually look like?

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Image note: Composite ― Two images from Clay County (Missouri) Sheriff’s Office, 13 October 2015. A local resident inexplicably attempted to put out a garbage fire with a van full of firearms and live ammunition.

Cummings, Ian. “Man tries to put out garbage fire by driving over it in a van loaded with ammunition”. The Kansas City Star. 13 October 2015.

American Terrorism

We should not be surprised that anti-abortion terrorists are offering bounties.

Laura Bassett of Huffington Post gets the unfortunate duty of explaining:

According to abortion rights advocates, Joseywhales’ post is just one example of an alarming spike in death threats and violent acts against abortion providers, clinics and companies that work with them since the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood were released. Two Planned Parenthood clinics have reported arsons, anti-abortion protesters are showing up in large numbers at doctors’ homes, and commenters on conservative websites and online forums are calling for the bombings of abortion clinics across the country, according to Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation. Saporta is so alarmed by the escalation of threats against providers that she asked the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigations to intervene.

“In my 20 years at NAF, I have never seen such a volume, intensity and escalation of hate speech, threats and criminal activity, and we would like to prevent a serious violent act from occurring,” she told The Huffington Post in an interview. “We have enlisted law enforcement’s help.”

If history is any indication, death threats against abortion providers should be taken seriously. Two abortion doctors have been murdered during Saporta’s tenure at NAF: Dr. George Tiller in 2009 and Dr. Barnett Slepian in 1998. Slepian was shot in his home after returning from synagogue, and Tiller was shot in the head while attending church services on a Sunday morning.

Saporta had worked with them both.

And that’s the problem; it easily sounds like the kind of big talk many enjoy around the internet, a manner of vice and hatred that allows one to feel better for ephemeral and illusory sensations of empowerment.

But there is history.

“I’ll pay ten large”? Yeah, it sounds like someone has been watching too much television, or something. That a certain business executive “should be hung by the neck using piano wire and propped up on the lawn in front of the building with a note attached”? Yes, at some point it is problematic that this is what a person so needs to say in order to feel better about life, the Universe, and everything, otherwise known as self.

Except for the fact that we know where this goes. Arsons and shootings and even that weird aspiring mass murderer in Wisconsin a few years ago.