DesertDrifter -- per the NRA's Wayne LaPierre at CPAC this morning, today's boogeyfolks are 'socialists' (read 'communists') who 'hide' behind the 'Democrat' and 'progressive' 'labels' and are determined to take away all rights and end this this country as it has been
in other words -- we are our Christo-fascists' not new but freshly openly-stated literal targets for them to shoot with all of their guns and ammo
this is not, and for quite some time now has not been, a drill
Remember This Week: It’s the Beginning of the End of the NRA’s Reign of Terror
Yes, it’s been said before, and no, it won’t happen fast. But this time it really is different. And the Parkland Kids are leading the charge.
Joy-Ann Reid 02.23.18 1:40 PM ET
Shun the NRA. Shun the assault weapons manufacturers. Shame and vote out the politicians who take their money and do their bidding. That’s the strategy that activists for firearms sanity have finally seized on, after decades of losing to the most bloodthirsty lobby in America.
The rise of the Parkland students, and their #NeverAgain movement following the slaughter of 17 of their classmates and teachers by a 19-year-old former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County Florida, presents the most existential threat to the gun lobby in my lifetime. These kids, aged 15 to 18, have spoken more clearly, more forcefully, and more effectively than any activists or politicians, who for decades have pleaded for laws prohibiting the amassing of personal military-style arsenals by American gun fetishists.
What these young people have is special. They are too hurt and shocked and angry to be told to calm down. They are too social-media savvy to be fazed by bots and trolls and insane conspiracy theories. They were born in the post-9/11 age and are too fearless to be made to back down by bullies like the NRA’s resident Cruella de Ville Dana Loesch and her fellow travelers on the right. And they can easily spot the BS of a president, who has to hold a palm card to remind him to care when he speaks to them about their terrifying experiences.
And what they are demanding is so rational it’s impossible to argue against it: an end to the ability of a teenager who can’t legally purchase Sudafed, rent a car or buy a beer to obtain a weapon of war, and to turn his anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts into mass slaughter.
The statistics are damning. Since 1966, when a gunman turned the clock tower at the University of Texas into a sniper’s nest, killing 17 people before police killed him, 1,077 Americans have been murdered in mass shootings, including 162 children and teenagers. According to The Washington Post, which examined 150 mass killings in which one or more gunmen participated and four or more people died, 167 of the 292 guns used by 153 mass murderers were obtained legally, and only 49 illegally (the sources of the rest are unknown). The problem is not “illegal” guns. It’s the ones that are perfectly lawful to obtain.
And by the way, mass shootings represent a fraction of the overall gun deaths that are unique to America, which lost more than 1.5 million lives to gun homicides and suicides between 1968 and 2015 – more than have perished in all the wars America has been involved in combined.
And the gun lobby aims to keep the cash registers ringing. With gun sales on the decline, particularly without the black bogie man President Obama to send the “war games in the woods” militia ranks soaring, they are constantly looking for new ways to terrify existing gun owners into hoarding even more.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
