Cade Horton

Round 1 (7): RHP Cade Horton – 6’1 211, Age 20 – Oklahoma

BONUS SLOT VALUE: $5,708,000

A red shirt sophomore, Cade Horton shot up draft boards in the 2nd half of the 2022 collegiate season, finishing the year with a terrific postseason run for the Sooners beginning with the Conference title game and continuing through the College World Series.

Per Cubs:

Cade Horton went 3-0 with a 2.61 ERA and 49 strikeouts (6 walks) in five postseason starts this year for the Sooners.

July 18, 2022

Cade Horton set a MCWS Finals record with 13 K’s against Ole Miss.

(via @NCAABaseball) pic.twitter.com/vl9nYxch1n

July 18, 2022

It was an amazing ascent given Horton originally went to Norman as a two-sport prep star, who competed with the Sooners football team in 2020, before giving it up and concentrating on baseball in 2021. He ended up needing to take a redshirt season because of an elbow injury which required TJS in the spring. He opened the 2022 season still recovering and was used mostly as a 3B/SS before finally making his debut on the mound in March. His numbers early on were ugly (even with his terrific final 5 starts his overall ERA remained elevated at an 4.86).

But the raw tools were there (mid-to-upper-90s heat, high spin rates on breaking ball, as well as his plus athleticism), and even as he struggled he was garnering strong draft interest. It was when Horton developed a new slider during the season that things took off for him. It’s a nasty pitch, which generates good horizontal and vertical break that makes it an effective pitch against both right and left handed batters. There is also some deception as Horton pitches from a lower arm angle that makes his vertical drop seem unusual.

Data loves the slider Cade Horton developed late this season. #Cubs

Averaging 85, up to 90, and generating ~9″+ of horizontal mvmt.

Most harder sliders are thrown w/ more backspin & less horizontal. Not many SPs with that shape – Carlos Rodón comes to mind (obviously a LHP).

July 18, 2022

And at 88 mph in this particular example (reportedly ranges from 86-90) the total amount of break is truly impressive. Nasty pitch, which should play against hitters from both sides of the plate.

July 18, 2022

Once that pitch was in place it was bad news for opposing hitters the rest of the way. By the time the College World Series ended Horton was widely considered the best college pitcher available in the draft (with the caveat that some of his potential competition suffered injuries during the 2022 season to take them out of the running).

Enjoy all of Cade Horton’s (@cadehorton14) strikeouts v Notre Dame in one minute.

I call it, “T̶h̶e̶y̶ Gone in 60 Seconds.”@OU_Baseball #Sooners pic.twitter.com/F5RwM4eCmB

June 21, 2022

Cade Horton was disgusting in Omaha.

So cool to see his climb down the stretch. @Cubs got a great one.

July 17, 2022

The Cubs pitching development infrastructure has been making big moves over the past couple of years generating big velo jumps from prospects, and showing improved ability to refine breaking pitches (including teaching the trendy sweeping slider). What’s been missing is a stockpile of high end raw talent with which to mold a potential TOR starter. Horton brings that.

Big arm, high character and performed best on the biggest stage. @cadehorton14 ➡ @cubs https://t.co/iEMj7fYYKD#Sooners Reply to this comment

The least surprising thing in America happened again on Sunday: a mass shooting. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and gun violence. Ain’t that America?

Of course it is. Mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in any other country on Earth. We kill big groups of innocent people with guns better than anyone. It’s part of our freedom.

This time the shooter opened fire in a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. The police say that a civilian with a handgun heard the shooting, fired at the gunman, and killed him. But not before three people were killed.

That sound you hear in the distance is the cheering of NRA gun fetishists. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They’ll try to convince us that gun restrictions are a bad idea because they only prevent good people from getting guns, and if that good guy couldn’t get a gun, then the body count would have been higher.

Which of two fantasy worlds – one where everyone had a gun or one where no one had a gun – would be safer? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? We’ll never get rid of every gun, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward doing so. The toothpaste is out of the tube on America’s gun problem to an extent. Thanks to the monsters at the NRA, and the finest senators that their money can buy, we’ve created a country where guns have more rights than women.

Women’s bodies: Regulated. Guns: Not regulated.

But just because the toothpaste is out of the tube doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t clean it off the counter.

To clean up America’s gun problem we need to stop listening to the NRA and their supporters. They’ve lost all credibility. Letting these firearm-worshipping extremists hold us hostage has led us to their current “wisdom”: we’ve all got to arm ourselves because we’re the only ones who can stop a bad guy with a gun.

But more of their “wisdom” – the “right” for everyone to carry their guns openly in public, and the “constitutional right” to carry a gun without a license – means that the only way we can differentiate between a madman with a gun and a “law-abiding citizen” simply deciding to exercise their “rights” and carry a gun while shopping at JCPenney’s is to wait for the armed lunatic to start shooting. And that’s when the “good guy with a gun” steps in.

Put another way, rather than create a society where anyone with a gun in a public place can rightly be assumed to be a madman, the gun fetishists have created a society where we can’t tell if someone’s a madman until they’ve already shot someone. Translation: protecting the “right” of some “good guy” to pretend he can be some superhero vigilante is more important than protecting the actual life of a human being.

The irony of such an incident occurring on the same day that a report on the Uvalde school shooting is released can’t be overlooked. A bunch of “heroes” who are supposedly “brave” and “well-trained” stood by and did nothing rather than confront a madman killing children. A police officer at the school shooting in Parkland, Florida hid outside rather than confronting the gunman inside.

Good guys with guns.

Like most of what the NRA and their supporters have said since fringe radicals took over the organization in 1977, the Good Guy with a Gun argument is bullshit. Expecting some mythical good guy to stop a shooting after a lunatic has already shot someone, rather than trying to prevent the shooting from happening in the first place only makes obvious the toxic reality of the NRA and the guns rights lobby: they value guns more than humans.

America has a gun problem, and if we’re going to do anything about it we have to stop listening to those who created the problem: the NRA and gun rights advocates. We’re not in a position today to repeal the Second Amendment, but if we ever want to actually become a great country, we must do it someday.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU’LL ALSO LIKE: My Other Posts about Gun Violence

Wasn’t that well-written and fun to read? The only way to make sure you know when I’ve written something new is to subscribe to my blog. Facebook won’t show you all of my posts, but if you subscribe we’ll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. I won’t send junk, and you can opt-out anytime.

Late last week ATTOM released their Midyear 2022 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report which basically shows that the pandemic did not have any sort of lasting effect on the foreclosure market. In the graph below the first half of this year is almost identical to the first half of 2020 and 2020 was depressed by the foreclosure moratorium.

Yet, Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM, still seems to think that we’re going up a bit further from here: “While overall foreclosure activity is still running significantly below historic averages, the dramatic increase in foreclosure starts suggests that we may be back to normal levels by sometime in early 2023.”

I think he’s wrong. We’re already back to normal levels. First, he must be calling 2019 normal – probably because of the moratorium imposed during the first half of 2020. However, in all likelihood foreclosure activity would have been heading down even without the moratorium, given the historic trend. Also, the “dramatic” increase in foreclosure starts that he’s talking about is relative to 2021, which was extremely depressed by the moratorium. In fact, foreclosure starts were only up 19% from the first half of 2020 and, again, 2020 was artificially depressed.

Rick goes on to make the exact opposite argument:

It’s important to note that many of the foreclosure starts we’re seeing today – in fact, much of the overall foreclosure activity we’re seeing right now – is on loans that were either already in foreclosure or were more than 120 days delinquent prior to the pandemic. Many of these loans were protected by the government’s foreclosure moratorium, or they would have already been foreclosed on two years ago. There’s very little delinquency or default activity that’s truly new in the numbers we’re tracking.

OK…so now he’s saying that there’s not a lot of evidence of rising foreclosures – e.g. delinquencies. And that’s correct. Black Knight’s May 2022 Mortgage Monitor Report shows that new lows in the delinquency rates are being hit on a regular basis. The May rate was only 2.75%, just a tiny bit better than the April rate.

Once again Illinois had the highest foreclosure rate of any state and the Chicago metro area was among the top 5 nationwide. I have the monthly data for the city of Chicago plotted below going back to 2009 and broken down by foreclosure stage. You can see the steady decline over time and there are no signs that a resurgence is imminent. In fact, we are currently running below the level we were at pre-pandemic. And defaults are about at the same level that they were before the pandemic.

As a side note ATTOM’s foreclosure market report shows that the amount of time it takes to complete a foreclosure remains ridiculously high.

Chicago Shadow Inventory

The number of Chicago homes in foreclosure has been gradually rising for the last 12 months but very slowly as you can see in the graph below. Nothing really to get excited about so I don’t think this will impact the real estate market in a significant way.

#Foreclosures #ChicagoForeclosures #Coronavirus

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

Lately, Chicago police officers have discovered a different kind of donut being made after hours on the streets of downtown. Many young people are hosting pop-up gatherings where they spin their cars in the middle of an intersection (making the donut shape) and throw fireworks at the police. For the past month, it’s been an issue and residents of those neighborhoods are getting fed up. According to recent media coverage, it appears to be a state of emergency. Yet, news reports haven’t made it clear about how to stop these gatherings. In my opinion, it comes down to which factors influence this behavior the most.

Life Imitates Art

Drag racing and late-night motorcycle clubs are not new to Chicago. In fact, they tend to be in the city’s impoverished areas (including Greater Grand Crossing on the South Side). However, police tend to be a bit aggressive in low-income areas. Therefore, the “Fast and Furious” youngsters tend to take their business to downtown Chicago. They appear to be mimicking what they’ve seen on TV and film–to the chagrin of neighbors who just want a peaceful night’s sleep. (You can’t blame them when most of them are paying $2,000 to $3,000/ month for cramped apartments or upper 6-figures for overpriced condos.)

For the affluent residents of the South and West Loop, these car clubs are only a nuisance when “Average Joes” put them together. When the Illinois Film Office allows Hollywood to close down streets to do the same, there isn’t much of a stir. We’ve had Batman and Transformer movies make the same noise for longer periods of time. There wasn’t a stir about it; some people didn’t like the noise, but most thought it was cool. At this point, it feels as if these car club kids need to find a way to compromise with the city. If you push them from one neighborhood, they’ll just move their gatherings to the next area.

From Clickbait to Collaborations

Chicago journalists need to focus more on solutions than just the problem. We don’t want this to continue as a routine news item. Real news is centered around hope. If all reporters do is alarm the public, the problem is not going to go away. Journalists could do investigating to find out who is organizing these gatherings. From there, they can help present ways to allow people to enjoy our downtown areas without causing much of a ruckus.

Tyler Schlaffer (photo by Stephanie Lynn)

MLB

Injuries, Updates, and Trends

Daniel Norris was DFA to make room on the roster for reliever Erich Uelmen. Norris had developed into a good reliever a couple of years ago before struggling in 2021. The Cubs hoped they could help him bounce back, but it just wasn’t happening, and they’ve now moved on. With veteran lefty Steven Brault finally healthy and rookie Brandon Hughes pitching well, they apparently feel better about their depth from that side. Sean Newcomb is also showing signs of turnaround in Iowa. At this point it seemed unlikely Norris could gain enough traction prior to the trade deadline, so there was no further point in trying.

As for Uelmen, he’s looked sharp the majority of the season in Iowa. Attacking from a low 3/4 arm slot, there has always been some platoon concerns with him, and its no doubt a major reason why he was moved to the pen last season. The 2017 4th rounder has sharpened his slider and changeup, which has helped him battle lefties better this season, but we’ll have to see how it goes at the MLB level. He’s held LHB to a sub-.200 batting average this season, but he’s allowed a high OBP because 17 of the 23 walks he’s issued have come against lefties.

AAA

Iowa 6, Buffalo 4

Game Recap

DARIUS HILL WALKOFF HOMER!

First walkoff dinger for the @IowaCubs since 2019 gives them a 6-4 victory and a series split with the @BuffaloBisons.

Heck of a way to finish the first half!

July 17, 2022

Top Performers

Darius Hill: 1-5, HR (2), 2 R, 2 RBI (.326)Dixon Machado: 2-2, 2 R, RBI (.309)Levi Jordan: 2-4, 2B, R, RBI (.234)Jared Young: 2-4, 2B, RBI (.254)John Hicks: 2-4, R, SB (4) (.257)Cayne Ueckert: 1.1 IP, H, 0 R, 0 BB, K (7.36)Michael Rucker: 2 IP, H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K (0.68)Blake Whitney: 2 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 0 ER, BB, 2 K (1.86)Ben Leeper: IP, H, 0 R, 0 BB< 2 K (W, 1-2, 4.78)

AA

Biloxi 7, Tennessee 1

Game Recap

Jordan Wicks got his first AA start. It wasn’t great, wasn’t bad. Lots of traffic during his three innings of work. Wasn’t a great day for pretty much anyone on the Smokies, outside of Matt Mervis, who reached base four times. Jeremiah Estrada was the only one of the five Tennessee pitchers to not allow a run.

Jordan Wicks with 3 strikeouts through 2 innings. pic.twitter.com/Dfw6aTMILi

July 17, 2022

Top Performers

Matt Mervis: 1-2, R, 3 BB, SB 92) (.300)Luis Vazquez: 1-3, 2B, HBP (.227)Jeremiah Estrada: IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, K (2.08)

High-A

South Bend 3, Peoria 1

Game Recap

Luis Devers delivered a strong pitching line yesterday. Between watching the big league club close out their 1st half and the draft happening, I didn’t get a chance to watch any Minor League action, but I would assume Devers pounded the zone and changed speeds effectively, because that’s what he does pretty much every time out, and zero walks issued is a pretty good indicator.

South Bend got some great work from its pen too. Michael McAvene has been on a roll which he kept going. Riley Martin has also been sharp since coming off the Developmental List, throwing more strikes, and that also continued.

Michael McAvene in July after today’s outing….5 games5.2 IP9 Ks0.00 ERA0.90 WHIP———————–.133 BAA heading into today. pic.twitter.com/jRGAcv6Qe4

July 17, 2022

Top Performers

Luis Devers: 5 IP, 4 H, R, 0 BB, K (W, 1-0, 0.84)Riley Martin: 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K (4.50)Michael McAvene: 1.1 IP, H, 0 R, 0 BB, K (2.38)Eduarniel Nunez: IP, 0 H, 0 R, BB, 3 K (S, 2, 3.67)Jordan Nwogu: 1-5, HR (6), R, RBI (.238)Yohendrick Pinango: 2-3, 3B, R, RBI, BB (.294)Pablo Aliendo: 2-4, SB (2) (.254)Scott McKeon: 1-3, R, BB (.165)

Low-A

Myrtle Beach 5, Fayetteville 1

Game Recap

I did catch the final inning of this one, to see Alfredo Zarraga close out the Pelican’s second combined no-hitter of the season. But unfortunately I missed the early game action where starter Tyler Schlaffer and piggyback Luis Rodriguez combined to punch out 14 batters through the first six innings. Gregori Montano and Angel Hernandez kept the no-hitter going with an inning apiece before handing the reigns to Zarraga in the 9th.

“THE SPECIAL SEASON CONTINUES TO GET BETTER!”

This. Team. pic.twitter.com/VUTHeq6JHp

July 18, 2022

Another special night in a special season.

Congratulations to these five pitchers for the combined no-hitter, and catcher Ethan Hearn with his second no-hitter of the season behind the plate. #MBPelicans pic.twitter.com/3OKJCoSvQX

July 18, 2022

Top Performers

Tyler Schlaffer: 3 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 6 K (3.82)Luis Rodriguez: 3 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 3 BB, HBP, 8 K (W, 5-1, 3.40)Gregori Montano: IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, K (0.00)Angel Hernandez: IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, K (4.40)Alfredo Zarraga: IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K (2.51)Ezequiel Pagan: 2-4, 2B, HR (9), R, 3 RBI (.296)Juan Mora: 3-3, 2 2B, R, BB (.282)James Triantos: 1-4, 2B, R, 2 RBI (.276)Kevin Made: 1-4, 2B, R (.266)Kevin Alcantara: 1-3, R, BB, CS (2) (.267)

Injuries, Updates, and Trends

The Pelicans staff has been putting up some impressive numbers of late:

The Myrtle Beach Pelicans have struck out 75 hitters in their last five games. Good for 15 strikeouts per nine and a strikeout percentage of 53.6.

They’ve struck out over 50% of the hitters they’ve faced. And threw a no-hitter today. @Pelicanbaseball

July 18, 2022

The least surprising thing in America happened again on Sunday: a mass shooting. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and gun violence. Ain’t that America?

Of course it is. Mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in any other country on Earth. We kill big groups of innocent people with guns better than anyone. It’s part of our freedom.

This time the shooter opened fire in a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. The police say that a civilian with a handgun heard the shooting, fired at the gunman, and killed him. But not before three people were killed.

That sound you hear in the distance is the cheering of NRA gun fetishists. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They’ll try to convince us that gun restrictions are a bad idea because they only prevent good people from getting guns, and if that good guy couldn’t get a gun, then the body count would have been higher.

Which of two fantasy worlds – one where everyone had a gun or one where no one had a gun – would be safer? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? We’ll never get rid of every gun, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward doing so. The toothpaste is out of the tube on America’s gun problem to an extent. Thanks to the monsters at the NRA, and the finest senators that their money can buy, we’ve created a country where guns have more rights than women.

Women’s bodies: Regulated. Guns: Not regulated.

But just because the toothpaste is out of the tube doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t clean it off the counter.

To clean up America’s gun problem we need to stop listening to the NRA and their supporters. They’ve lost all credibility. Letting these firearm-worshipping extremists hold us hostage has led us to their current “wisdom”: we’ve all got to arm ourselves because we’re the only ones who can stop a bad guy with a gun.

But more of their “wisdom” – the “right” for everyone to carry their guns openly in public, and the “constitutional right” to carry a gun without a license – means that the only way we can differentiate between a madman with a gun and a “law-abiding citizen” simply deciding to exercise their “rights” and carry a gun while shopping at JCPenney’s is to wait for the armed lunatic to start shooting. And that’s when the “good guy with a gun” steps in.

Put another way, rather than create a society where anyone with a gun in a public place can rightly be assumed to be a madman, the gun fetishists have created a society where we can’t tell if someone’s a madman until they’ve already shot someone. Translation: protecting the “right” of some “good guy” to pretend he can be some superhero vigilante is more important than protecting the actual life of a human being.

The irony of such an incident occurring on the same day that a report on the Uvalde school shooting is released can’t be overlooked. A bunch of “heroes” who are supposedly “brave” and “well-trained” stood by and did nothing rather than confront a madman killing children. A police officer at the school shooting in Parkland, Florida hid outside rather than confronting the gunman inside.

Good guys with guns.

Like most of what the NRA and their supporters have said since fringe radicals took over the organization in 1977, the Good Guy with a Gun argument is bullshit. Expecting some mythical good guy to stop a shooting after a lunatic has already shot someone, rather than trying to prevent the shooting from happening in the first place only makes obvious the toxic reality of the NRA and the guns rights lobby: they value guns more than humans.

America has a gun problem, and if we’re going to do anything about it we have to stop listening to those who created the problem: the NRA and gun rights advocates. We’re not in a position today to repeal the Second Amendment, but if we ever want to actually become a great country, we must do it someday.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU’LL ALSO LIKE: My Other Posts about Gun Violence

Wasn’t that well-written and fun to read? The only way to make sure you know when I’ve written something new is to subscribe to my blog. Facebook won’t show you all of my posts, but if you subscribe we’ll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. I won’t send junk, and you can opt-out anytime.

Late last week ATTOM released their Midyear 2022 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report which basically shows that the pandemic did not have any sort of lasting effect on the foreclosure market. In the graph below the first half of this year is almost identical to the first half of 2020 and 2020 was depressed by the foreclosure moratorium.

Yet, Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM, still seems to think that we’re going up a bit further from here: “While overall foreclosure activity is still running significantly below historic averages, the dramatic increase in foreclosure starts suggests that we may be back to normal levels by sometime in early 2023.”

I think he’s wrong. We’re already back to normal levels. First, he must be calling 2019 normal – probably because of the moratorium imposed during the first half of 2020. However, in all likelihood foreclosure activity would have been heading down even without the moratorium, given the historic trend. Also, the “dramatic” increase in foreclosure starts that he’s talking about is relative to 2021, which was extremely depressed by the moratorium. In fact, foreclosure starts were only up 19% from the first half of 2020 and, again, 2020 was artificially depressed.

Rick goes on to make the exact opposite argument:

It’s important to note that many of the foreclosure starts we’re seeing today – in fact, much of the overall foreclosure activity we’re seeing right now – is on loans that were either already in foreclosure or were more than 120 days delinquent prior to the pandemic. Many of these loans were protected by the government’s foreclosure moratorium, or they would have already been foreclosed on two years ago. There’s very little delinquency or default activity that’s truly new in the numbers we’re tracking.

OK…so now he’s saying that there’s not a lot of evidence of rising foreclosures – e.g. delinquencies. And that’s correct. Black Knight’s May 2022 Mortgage Monitor Report shows that new lows in the delinquency rates are being hit on a regular basis. The May rate was only 2.75%, just a tiny bit better than the April rate.

Once again Illinois had the highest foreclosure rate of any state and the Chicago metro area was among the top 5 nationwide. I have the monthly data for the city of Chicago plotted below going back to 2009 and broken down by foreclosure stage. You can see the steady decline over time and there are no signs that a resurgence is imminent. In fact, we are currently running below the level we were at pre-pandemic. And defaults are about at the same level that they were before the pandemic.

As a side note ATTOM’s foreclosure market report shows that the amount of time it takes to complete a foreclosure remains ridiculously high.

Chicago Shadow Inventory

The number of Chicago homes in foreclosure has been gradually rising for the last 12 months but very slowly as you can see in the graph below. Nothing really to get excited about so I don’t think this will impact the real estate market in a significant way.

#Foreclosures #ChicagoForeclosures #Coronavirus

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

The least surprising thing in America happened again on Sunday: a mass shooting. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and gun violence. Ain’t that America?

Of course it is. Mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in any other country on Earth. We kill big groups of innocent people with guns better than anyone. It’s part of our freedom.

This time the shooter opened fire in a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. The police say that a civilian with a handgun heard the shooting, fired at the gunman, and killed him. But not before three people were killed.

That sound you hear in the distance is the cheering of NRA gun fetishists. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They’ll try to convince us that gun restrictions are a bad idea because they only prevent good people from getting guns, and if that good guy couldn’t get a gun, then the body count would have been higher.

Which of two fantasy worlds – one where everyone had a gun or one where no one had a gun – would be safer? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? We’ll never get rid of every gun, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward doing so. The toothpaste is out of the tube on America’s gun problem to an extent. Thanks to the monsters at the NRA, and the finest senators that their money can buy, we’ve created a country where guns have more rights than women.

Women’s bodies: Regulated. Guns: Not regulated.

But just because the toothpaste is out of the tube doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t clean it off the counter.

To clean up America’s gun problem we need to stop listening to the NRA and their supporters. They’ve lost all credibility. Letting these firearm-worshipping extremists hold us hostage has led us to their current “wisdom”: we’ve all got to arm ourselves because we’re the only ones who can stop a bad guy with a gun.

But more of their “wisdom” – the “right” for everyone to carry their guns openly in public, and the “constitutional right” to carry a gun without a license – means that the only way we can differentiate between a madman with a gun and a “law-abiding citizen” simply deciding to exercise their “rights” and carry a gun while shopping at JCPenney’s is to wait for the armed lunatic to start shooting. And that’s when the “good guy with a gun” steps in.

Put another way, rather than create a society where anyone with a gun in a public place can rightly be assumed to be a madman, the gun fetishists have created a society where we can’t tell if someone’s a madman until they’ve already shot someone. Translation: protecting the “right” of some “good guy” to pretend he can be some superhero vigilante is more important than protecting the actual life of a human being.

The irony of such an incident occurring on the same day that a report on the Uvalde school shooting is released can’t be overlooked. A bunch of “heroes” who are supposedly “brave” and “well-trained” stood by and did nothing rather than confront a madman killing children. A police officer at the school shooting in Parkland, Florida hid outside rather than confronting the gunman inside.

Good guys with guns.

Like most of what the NRA and their supporters have said since fringe radicals took over the organization in 1977, the Good Guy with a Gun argument is bullshit. Expecting some mythical good guy to stop a shooting after a lunatic has already shot someone, rather than trying to prevent the shooting from happening in the first place only makes obvious the toxic reality of the NRA and the guns rights lobby: they value guns more than humans.

America has a gun problem, and if we’re going to do anything about it we have to stop listening to those who created the problem: the NRA and gun rights advocates. We’re not in a position today to repeal the Second Amendment, but if we ever want to actually become a great country, we must do it someday.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU’LL ALSO LIKE: My Other Posts about Gun Violence

Wasn’t that well-written and fun to read? The only way to make sure you know when I’ve written something new is to subscribe to my blog. Facebook won’t show you all of my posts, but if you subscribe we’ll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. I won’t send junk, and you can opt-out anytime.

The least surprising thing in America happened again on Sunday: a mass shooting. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and gun violence. Ain’t that America?

Of course it is. Mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in any other country on Earth. We kill big groups of innocent people with guns better than anyone. It’s part of our freedom.

This time the shooter opened fire in a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. The police say that a civilian with a handgun heard the shooting, fired at the gunman, and killed him. But not before three people were killed.

That sound you hear in the distance is the cheering of NRA gun fetishists. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They’ll try to convince us that gun restrictions are a bad idea because they only prevent good people from getting guns, and if that good guy couldn’t get a gun, then the body count would have been higher.

Which of two fantasy worlds – one where everyone had a gun or one where no one had a gun – would be safer? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? We’ll never get rid of every gun, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward doing so. The toothpaste is out of the tube on America’s gun problem to an extent. Thanks to the monsters at the NRA, and the finest senators that their money can buy, we’ve created a country where guns have more rights than women.

Women’s bodies: Regulated. Guns: Not regulated.

But just because the toothpaste is out of the tube doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t clean it off the counter.

To clean up America’s gun problem we need to stop listening to the NRA and their supporters. They’ve lost all credibility. Letting these firearm-worshipping extremists hold us hostage has led us to their current “wisdom”: we’ve all got to arm ourselves because we’re the only ones who can stop a bad guy with a gun.

But more of their “wisdom” – the “right” for everyone to carry their guns openly in public, and the “constitutional right” to carry a gun without a license – means that the only way we can differentiate between a madman with a gun and a “law-abiding citizen” simply deciding to exercise their “rights” and carry a gun while shopping at JCPenney’s is to wait for the armed lunatic to start shooting. And that’s when the “good guy with a gun” steps in.

Put another way, rather than create a society where anyone with a gun in a public place can rightly be assumed to be a madman, the gun fetishists have created a society where we can’t tell if someone’s a madman until they’ve already shot someone. Translation: protecting the “right” of some “good guy” to pretend he can be some superhero vigilante is more important than protecting the actual life of a human being.

The irony of such an incident occurring on the same day that a report on the Uvalde school shooting is released can’t be overlooked. A bunch of “heroes” who are supposedly “brave” and “well-trained” stood by and did nothing rather than confront a madman killing children. A police officer at the school shooting in Parkland, Florida hid outside rather than confronting the gunman inside.

Good guys with guns.

Like most of what the NRA and their supporters have said since fringe radicals took over the organization in 1977, the Good Guy with a Gun argument is bullshit. Expecting some mythical good guy to stop a shooting after a lunatic has already shot someone, rather than trying to prevent the shooting from happening in the first place only makes obvious the toxic reality of the NRA and the guns rights lobby: they value guns more than humans.

America has a gun problem, and if we’re going to do anything about it we have to stop listening to those who created the problem: the NRA and gun rights advocates. We’re not in a position today to repeal the Second Amendment, but if we ever want to actually become a great country, we must do it someday.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU’LL ALSO LIKE: My Other Posts about Gun Violence

Wasn’t that well-written and fun to read? The only way to make sure you know when I’ve written something new is to subscribe to my blog. Facebook won’t show you all of my posts, but if you subscribe we’ll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. I won’t send junk, and you can opt-out anytime.

The least surprising thing in America happened again on Sunday: a mass shooting. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and gun violence. Ain’t that America?

Of course it is. Mass shootings don’t happen with such regularity in any other country on Earth. We kill big groups of innocent people with guns better than anyone. It’s part of our freedom.

This time the shooter opened fire in a mall in Greenwood, Indiana. The police say that a civilian with a handgun heard the shooting, fired at the gunman, and killed him. But not before three people were killed.

That sound you hear in the distance is the cheering of NRA gun fetishists. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They’ll try to convince us that gun restrictions are a bad idea because they only prevent good people from getting guns, and if that good guy couldn’t get a gun, then the body count would have been higher.

Which of two fantasy worlds – one where everyone had a gun or one where no one had a gun – would be safer? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? We’ll never get rid of every gun, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work toward doing so. The toothpaste is out of the tube on America’s gun problem to an extent. Thanks to the monsters at the NRA, and the finest senators that their money can buy, we’ve created a country where guns have more rights than women.

Women’s bodies: Regulated. Guns: Not regulated.

But just because the toothpaste is out of the tube doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t clean it off the counter.

To clean up America’s gun problem we need to stop listening to the NRA and their supporters. They’ve lost all credibility. Letting these firearm-worshipping extremists hold us hostage has led us to their current “wisdom”: we’ve all got to arm ourselves because we’re the only ones who can stop a bad guy with a gun.

But more of their “wisdom” – the “right” for everyone to carry their guns openly in public, and the “constitutional right” to carry a gun without a license – means that the only way we can differentiate between a madman with a gun and a “law-abiding citizen” simply deciding to exercise their “rights” and carry a gun while shopping at JCPenney’s is to wait for the armed lunatic to start shooting. And that’s when the “good guy with a gun” steps in.

Put another way, rather than create a society where anyone with a gun in a public place can rightly be assumed to be a madman, the gun fetishists have created a society where we can’t tell if someone’s a madman until they’ve already shot someone. Translation: protecting the “right” of some “good guy” to pretend he can be some superhero vigilante is more important than protecting the actual life of a human being.

The irony of such an incident occurring on the same day that a report on the Uvalde school shooting is released can’t be overlooked. A bunch of “heroes” who are supposedly “brave” and “well-trained” stood by and did nothing rather than confront a madman killing children. A police officer at the school shooting in Parkland, Florida hid outside rather than confronting the gunman inside.

Good guys with guns.

Like most of what the NRA and their supporters have said since fringe radicals took over the organization in 1977, the Good Guy with a Gun argument is bullshit. Expecting some mythical good guy to stop a shooting after a lunatic has already shot someone, rather than trying to prevent the shooting from happening in the first place only makes obvious the toxic reality of the NRA and the guns rights lobby: they value guns more than humans.

America has a gun problem, and if we’re going to do anything about it we have to stop listening to those who created the problem: the NRA and gun rights advocates. We’re not in a position today to repeal the Second Amendment, but if we ever want to actually become a great country, we must do it someday.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU’LL ALSO LIKE: My Other Posts about Gun Violence

Wasn’t that well-written and fun to read? The only way to make sure you know when I’ve written something new is to subscribe to my blog. Facebook won’t show you all of my posts, but if you subscribe we’ll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. I won’t send junk, and you can opt-out anytime.