Act now to get your Trayvon Martin shooting range target

[Manuel Royal]

I've been friends with several gun enthusiasts. They're decent people, not bigots, and basically enjoying a hobby, not making a sociopolitical statement.

But, stories like this make me think the stereotype of the scared, racist little gun nut, mentally wanking to his pathetic power fantasies, has a basis in reality.

[muravyets]

Originally Posted by Manuel Royal

I've been friends with several gun enthusiasts. They're decent people, not bigots, and basically enjoying a hobby, not making a sociopolitical statement.

But, stories like this make me think the stereotype of the scared, racist little gun nut, mentally wanking to his pathetic power fantasies, has a basis in reality.

Of course it has a basis in reality. All we have to do is look at the white supremacist running for sheriff who recently murdered his Hispanic girlfriend and her family and killed himself in a probable domestic incident, and the arsenal that was stored on his property, for a real-life example of the "scared, racist little gun nut" -- together with mention of his like-minded friends.

The problem is that it's too easy to lose sight of the fact that such people do not represent all gun owners, users or enthusiasts. In my personal opinion, it becomes too easy to lose that detail because organizations like the NRA make it hard not to lose it.

[Yorkist]

There are newsletters and whole stores devoted to this kind of person. It's not just a handful of people; it's a whole market.

It even has a name, though I can't remember what that is.

[nighttimer]

Originally Posted by KTC

Some days I just want to bury my head under my pillows and weep.

Not me. Some days I want to take my metal baseball bat and beat some motherfucker to death.

This is one such day.

A person selling gun range targets modeled after slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin says that their “main motivation was to make money off the controversy.”
WKMG’s Mike DeForest reported on Friday that the unidentified seller told him that the targets “sold out in 2 days.”


“The response is overwhelming,” the seller said.


While the item appears to have been removed from GunBroker.com, a cached version of the page was still available at the time of publication.


Photos of the item, which was titled “10 Pack Trayvon Martin Targets,” showed crosshairs over a hoodie similar to the one Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February. The figure has a bag of Skittle in his pocket and is holding what appears to be a can of iced tea, similar to what Martin had purchased before being gunned down. The pack of 10 targets was being sold for $8.



“Everyone knows the story of Zimmerman and Martin,” a description on the targets reads. “Obviously we support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug. Each target is printed on thick, high quality poster paper with a matte finish! The dimensions are 12″x18″ ( The same as Darkotic Zombie Targets) This is a Ten Pack of Targets.”

A few months ago another member sent me a message asking me why was I so angry. I sincerely hope he doesn't ever ask me that question again.

It's not a Black thing and you wouldn't understand. It's being a decent fucking human being thing and everybody understands that.

[muravyets]

If everyone understood that, there would be no such thing as a "Trayvon Martin Target." The thing that leaves me feeling defeated sometimes is that there are so many, and I wouldn't know where to start handing out the ass-kickings. Who is the more disgusting and horrifying -- the miserable, money-grubbing scumbag who made and sold that filth, or the many, many more murder-fantasizing shits who bought it?

[Rufus Coppertop]

Originally Posted by Yorkist

There are newsletters and whole stores devoted to this kind of person. It's not just a handful of people; it's a whole market.

It even has a name, though I can't remember what that is.

Ghoul memorabilia? Forensic something, maybe?

[Torgo]

Originally Posted by Rufus Coppertop

Can anyone think of a superlative that encapsulates the concepts of greasiness, cheaply opportunistic vileness and worthless, putrid, shallow bottom-feedery all neatly wrapped up in one word?

I can't and it's annoying the hell out of me. If there is such a word, it needs to be written on the big, fat, semi-thawed fish that this "entrepeneur's" face needs to be slapped with.

I'm partial to 'shitheel'.

[Kaiser-Kun]

Pricks R' Us?

[Torgo]

Originally Posted by Yorkist

There are newsletters and whole stores devoted to this kind of person. It's not just a handful of people; it's a whole market.

It even has a name, though I can't remember what that is.

'Shitheelery'?

[Kitty27]

Typical.

I am not surprised in the least and this is why I have had "The Talk" with my ten year old son. Sad that I had to start years earlier than I did with my oldest son but I felt it was necessary as the "safe" age for Black boys is being lowered by the day in this country.

The people buying this filth are full of hatred and anger at their loss of 1960's style privilege in this world. Of course,they target Blacks as they feel we should be under their heels or some other nonsense. The person selling them is mighty bold but won't reveal their name. Typical racist behavior of throwing the stone and then hiding their hand.

I give it a couple of days before Internet sleuths out them.

[Williebee]

It's being a decent fucking human being thing and everybody understands that.

Would that this were true.

[Yorkist]

Originally Posted by Torgo

'Shitheelery'?

Ooh, nice.

Originally Posted by Rufus Coppertop

Ghoul memorabilia? Forensic something, maybe?

No, it's more than that.

You can't separate this white supremacy stuff from the "separationist" stuff and the right-wing terrorist cultish stuff and a certain aspect of southern identity construct narrative thingies that are often co-opted by folks in this same market. It's all the same market, you see. The same narrative. The same story. The same stores.

Not everyone interested in A is all that interested in or invested in B, but it all naturally fits together. Think of characters and setting as the ideas and notions, and plot as the whole story that binds them together.

I've spent enough time in Ruralsville, the South, to have seen it up close and personal once or twice more times than I care to admit a lot. I've thought about this a lot because it stares at me in the fucking face all the time. It disturbs me just as much as it does you guys, I'm just not at all surprised by it. Even as much as I've attempted to understand it, it still makes me angry every single time I see it.

Gun enthusiasm doesn't have to have anything to do with this, any more than southern identity has to have anything to do with this. I've got a strong southern identity, and the fact that I'm socially liberal is probably noticeable. Mine's all wrapped into hospitality and the blues and jazz and the land and food; I mean, I love all sorts of food, but iced tea and redfish and collards and sweet potato fries and po'boys and red beans and rice and the proper kind of barbecue (Memphis), they taste like home. Y'know? I've got like, a relationship with it.

Ooh boy, sorry, that was almost a dangerous derail.

It's like the Confederate battle flag issue. Northern people don't get this. There's a certain segment of the population down here that uses the Confederate flag in a totally racist way, and that comes in part from the KKK co-opting the battle flag back in the 60's as a symbol for white separatism. But there's another aspect that it took me a long while to figure out, because I have some very good friends that are genuinely not in any way white supremacists (and I've known these guys for 10+ years, I think they'd have let it slip by now) that have flags inside their own homes, not on their cars or whatever (if they're smart enough to realize that some people constitute this as a threat; most do where I live). They're all boys, and I spent a while trying to figure this out because it makes no sense to me, but it's got something to do with their male southern identity and their families, and their ancestry and stuff, and their relationship to the South. I've got the same construct but I relate to the women in the story; the soldiers (and consequently, the battle flag) mean little to me.

Basically, so far as I can tell, there are two ways for them to logically work the history and the facts into their narratives:

(1) I love my southern identity, and the south is allegedly racist, so racism must be good.

(2) I love my southern identity, and maybe not everything about the South, or myself, is perfect but that's okay. The South doesn't mean racism; racism is an impulse, not a character or a person. (This narrative tends to embrace other races' cultural contributions to the great shared story.)

(Here's the important part. When you say that the South is racist, when you say that the South is horrible, and people can't negotiate that with their construct, they tend to revert from Narrative #2 to Narrative #1. Because if you're telling them that the very essence of who they see themselves as as people is evil, they get angry. This is why you can't fully separate the proto-militia crap from white supremacy and southern identity and racism. It's all wrapped together and the vehicle of delivery for that package is anger.)

By the way, the fact that Nixon exploited that and helped script narrative #1 ("states rights") and made it worse IMO makes me hate him with the fiery power of a million trillion suns because this is my home. Fuck. Nixon. I don't want to derail because this is something that'll turn me into a raving psychopath. I try to intentionally stay away from these things.

Anyway. There's this store around here that sells the more innocuous confederate flag stuff (in most of the places I've lived, Narrative #2 tends to beat Narrative #1, at least amongst folks anywhere near my age; some others decidedly not). My friends and I ran by a store like that to get something entirely unrelated (middle of nowhere and I think we needed fishing stuff or something), and the guy told us where we could buy the KKK memorabilia and shit (ETA: uh, we didn't ask; perhaps we prompted by examining something in the store for oddness) - the unapologetically vile, unambiguously racist stuff.

The markets overlap.

The newsletters that cater to this sort of market (while they might keep racism out of it on the surface) you can find at gun shows and maybe even gun stores.

Again, the markets overlap.

It just so happens that this market is disturbing and scary and evil in its lack of human sympathy. But that doesn't stop me from trying to understand it, when I'm calm about it. Because of course I don't want this here. I hate it. I've tried to understand it for years because I want to change it for every person I meet who is susceptible to it.

But I can't remember the damn name of the market. Next time I talk to my BFF, I'll ask him.

[Rufus Coppertop]

Okay. That sounds genuinely scary. Interesting, but scary.

[Yorkist]

Rufus, ya appear not to live anywhere near here. No reason for you to know.

It's weird, I know lots of gun enthusiasts that hate racism just as much as I do. A friend, Jason, is one such guy. He once talked to me about how someone approached him at a restaurant and said something horribly, vilely racist and he was like, "I just don't understand why anyone would feel it's okay to say that to me."

To which I replied: "That happens to me all the time, but I'm a woman and these people are probably sexist as all hell."

To which he replied: "So why me?"

To which I did not reply: "I think they get gun nut vigilante fumes off ya, dude." Overlapping markets.

[Lady Goddess]

Originally Posted by RichardGarfinkle

I don't see that making a profit justifies exploiting the suffering of Trayvon Martin's parents and friends when they see targets with his picture on them.

It's probably legal, but that in no way makes it moral.

Unfortunately some people define their morals by what is legal and what isn't. The only reason they don't do something is because they could go to jail for it. Example: The KKK would go nuts if the law didn't say they couldn't murder people of other races that they hate. But there are always little cracks for them to slip between. They still preach hate and support people who do things that they, themselves, wouldn't do because they don't want to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

This article is another example of slipping between the cracks. Making these targets and selling them is wrong in the sense that it's inhumane and disgusting, but it's not illegal. And that's why he'll get away with it.

[Monkey]

Originally Posted by Yorkist

I've spent enough time in Ruralsville, the South, to have seen it up close and personal once or twice more times than I care to admit a lot. I've thought about this a lot because it stares at me in the fucking face all the time. It disturbs me just as much as it does you guys, I'm just not at all surprised by it. Even as much as I've attempted to understand it, it still makes me angry every single time I see it.

I snipped this post for brevity, but I agree with it.

I love the South. I was born on Galveston Island, raised in East Texas, and now live in South Texas. I've visited or at least driven through all the southern states from here to Florida, but New Mexico's as far as I've gone in the other direction. I think Arkansas is lovely.

Iced tea (sweet and un), sweet potato fries, fried okra and cornbread with black-eyed peas on the side... yum. I do feel invested in this place, and love it here.

And like Yorkist, I've seen the strong correlation between the rebel flag waivers and pro-gun folks and the racists.

There's a saying around where I grew up. I'm sure it exists everywhere, but there it has a sort of sanctity to it and a very particular way it is said:

That's just the way I was raised.

It's inarguable. It's seen as the ultimate defense, needing no explanation and inviting no comment. Questioning this is questioning the speaker's Mama and their Daddy and their whole family, right up their tree of ancestry. When someone says this, it generally means the discussion is over, because if you go past that, it gets personal.

The people who say "That's just the way I was raised," tend to be upstanding folk, in a lot of ways. They have high respect for tradition and family. In my experience, most of them are very religious--in a deep, personal way rather than just a sit-in-church-every-Sunday way, although they do sometimes do that, too.

I bring this up because this is another overlapping group with the ones Yorkist mentioned. Not only will they proudly waive a Confederate flag if their ancestors fought for the Confederacy, but their views in general are likely to come from a few generations back. They will also tolerate things in their friends that most of us wouldn't, on the principle that their friends are just acting as they were raised to do... in other words, even if they aren't racist, they are likely to not care if their friends are or not. This really is a form of open-mindedness...but it makes it easier for them, when they go to purchase that Confederate flag, to shrug at the KKK stuff on the next shelf.

It's a "You do what you do, I do what I do," sort of attitude. And I do think it's somehow ingrained in a certain part of the southern identity.

Personally, I'm a heathen and don't believe you should take much of anything on your elders' say-so. And I'm from here, too...so the usual disclaimers of "not everyone/not all" definitely apply.

[backslashbaby]

I often jump in about folks using 'the South' as a term, since Southerners know as well as anyone that huge places like 'the South' are way more complicated than that.

I don't hear a lot of 'that's how I was raised' unless it's talking about good manners where I come from. You do hear it that way a lot

This one, though: "It's a 'You do what you do, I do what I do,' sort of attitude. And I do think it's somehow ingrained in a certain part of the southern identity"

I think that is very, very familiar to the South that I know, yes! And clearly there is good and bad in that sort of philosophy.

You hear a lot of 'just ignore it; they aren't worth your time' about things you'd like to get in someone's face about, imho.

[Yorkist]

Backslash, of course all southerners know that "the South" is not a monolith. I think that goes without saying. There are commonalities; they manifest differently. Different parts of the South influence each other, react against each other...

Originally Posted by Monkey

I snipped this post for brevity, but I agree with it.

I love the South. I was born on Galveston Island, raised in East Texas, and now live in South Texas. I've visited or at least driven through all the southern states from here to Florida, but New Mexico's as far as I've gone in the other direction. I think Arkansas is lovely.

I love Arkansas, but I find Georgia and South Carolina and Kentucky the most beautiful states. *swoon at west Kentucky*

Oh and this goes without saying but besides my own, of course.

Iced tea (sweet and un), sweet potato fries, fried okra and cornbread with black-eyed peas on the side... yum. I do feel invested in this place, and love it here.

*strongly supresses impulse to derail*

There's a saying around where I grew up. I'm sure it exists everywhere, but there it has a sort of sanctity to it and a very particular way it is said:

That's just the way I was raised.

It's inarguable. It's seen as the ultimate defense, needing no explanation and inviting no comment. Questioning this is questioning the speaker's Mama and their Daddy and their whole family, right up their tree of ancestry. When someone says this, it generally means the discussion is over, because if you go past that, it gets personal.

Yes. Good point, observation, and illustration. I get into trouble all the time because I have zero patience for that idea. I've spent the last few, more adult years trying to get over that impatience, and try to shape the cultural narrative as #2 whenever and wherever I can.

Incidentally, it's the impulse behind the big WIP constantly on my mental backburner, because I'm not good enough at writing yet to do it, nor am I patient or objective enough as a person. I'm too close to it and it upsets me too much.

The people who say "That's just the way I was raised," tend to be upstanding folk, in a lot of ways. They have high respect for tradition and family. In my experience, most of them are very religious--in a deep, personal way rather than just a sit-in-church-every-Sunday way, although they do sometimes do that, too.

I bring this up because this is another overlapping group with the ones Yorkist mentioned. Not only will they proudly waive a Confederate flag if their ancestors fought for the Confederacy, but their views in general are likely to come from a few generations back. They will also tolerate things in their friends that most of us wouldn't, on the principle that their friends are just acting as they were raised to do... in other words, even if they aren't racist, they are likely to not care if their friends are or not. This really is a form of open-mindedness...but it makes it easier for them, when they go to purchase that Confederate flag, to shrug at the KKK stuff on the next shelf.

Yes. This drives me nuts. I don't even tolerate it from my own family. Every time I detect a whiff of racism - I say, that's wrong, and this is why it's wrong. And my family loves me so they are forced to reckon with me.

I don't know if that's the right way to do things or not. Probably not, because it's likely to lead to suppression rather than true change. Again, as a grown-up, I try to shape the narrative into #2.

What drives me nuts is that you can't have a southern culture without African-American culture. The South -(minus) African Americans, both present and historical = the Midwest or something, definitely not here. We're all in this together, you know?

And what also drives me nuts is that, well, you're supposed to come to a point in your adult life where you realize that your elders were wrong about some things, but that doesn't make them idiots or evil. In other words, some of this is just arrested development. It's like the whole South refuses to grow up.

I'm still in the process of trying to get it. Can't change it if you don't understand it.

[Monkey]

Originally Posted by backslashbaby

I often jump in about folks using 'the South' as a term, since Southerners know as well as anyone that huge places like 'the South' are way more complicated than that.

You're sooo right. In truth, when I think of "The South," in my head, I'm not even including all of Texas. That top bit, where it gets all cold, is as foreign to me as New York.

I'm thinking of South and East Texas--the two places I've spent the vast majority of my life--and parts of Louisiana and Arkansas.

And even then--not a monolith.

But where I'm from, "That's just how I was raised" is something I've heard a LOT, generally when I've questioned someone about an issue like race or the Confederate flag and the conversation has started to get to the point where I'm like a child, continually asking "Why?"

[Williebee]

Much of West Texas doesn't claim being "the south" first, certainly not over being from the Republic of Texas.

[Yorkist]

Originally Posted by Monkey

I'm thinking of South and East Texas--the two places I've spent the vast majority of my life--and parts of Louisiana and Arkansas.

Alligator sauce piquante is one of the great loves of my foodie life. Incidentally.

But where I'm from, "That's just how I was raised" is something I've heard a LOT, generally when I've questioned someone about an issue like race or the Confederate flag and the conversation has started to get to the point where I'm like a child, continually asking "Why?"

I ran into many problems throughout my childhood and adolescence because I wasn't afraid to say, in one way or another, "Hey. Maybe the way you were raised was bullshit."

There's got to be a better way to say that.

I'm afraid that a lot of the ways that this has previously been illustrated in fiction manifest as "white people save black people" stories. And occasionally that's not entirely fair, e.g. The Help and A Time To Kill, and occasionally that's totally correct, e.g. The Blind Side (film) *seethes* where the narrative self-congratulates its narrator for not being racist.

There's gotta be a better way. Eventually this is something I want to get to.

/tangent

[Zoombie]

I don't know, I think "maybe the way you were raised was bullshit" is the right way to go about it.

[Alpha Echo]

Originally Posted by Yorkist

Basically, so far as I can tell, there are two ways for them to logically work the history and the facts into their narratives:

(1) I love my southern identity, and the south is allegedly racist, so racism must be good.

(2) I love my southern identity, and maybe not everything about the South, or myself, is perfect but that's okay. The South doesn't mean racism; racism is an impulse, not a character or a person. (This narrative tends to embrace other races' cultural contributions to the great shared story.)

(Here's the important part. When you say that the South is racist, when you say that the South is horrible, and people can't negotiate that with their construct, they tend to revert from Narrative #2 to Narrative #1. Because if you're telling them that the very essence of who they see themselves as as people is evil, they get angry. This is why you can't fully separate the proto-militia crap from white supremacy and southern identity and racism. It's all wrapped together and the vehicle of delivery for that package is anger.)

Very interesting, and I appreciate you sharing that, because I've always wondered. I live in Northern VA, and we're not entirely southern, but we are considered a southern state. And it may not be extremely common, but it's not uncommon either, to see the Confederate flag. On the back windshield of some pimped out pick-up, usually, which I think it just an arrogant thing and quite possibly an example of your #1.

But this was an informative post, and I appreciate it.

[JimmyB27]

Originally Posted by Maxinquaye

Wanker.

As someone who's been single for a really long time, I find the use of this word as a pejorative quite offensive.

I have nothing to say on topic except that my faith in humanity has just slumped a little lower.

[backslashbaby]

Originally Posted by Williebee

Much of West Texas doesn't claim being "the south" first, certainly not over being from the Republic of Texas.

I don't consider Texas 'the South', lol. They are just Texas, where their barbecue is made of beef, strangely enough

I must use the Mississippi as my guide. That would make sense, being a good Southerner who has watched fireworks over it many a time