Conservatives To Elementary School Kids: Throw Yourselves At The Next Gunman
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Conservatives — two, at least, notable writers — in wildly flawed and frightening attempts to find ways to avoid gun control, are now suggesting, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, that a classroom-full of, say, six-year olds, should throw themselves at the next gunman armed with a Bushmaster rifle, and that “some of the huskier 12-year-old boys” should have thrown themselves at Adam Lanza.
Yes they are.
Take, for example, libertarian writer Megan McArdle, a special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
In, “There’s Little We Can Do to Prevent Another Massacre,” McArdle takes the typically right-wing position: change is bad, and thus, there’s little we can do to prevent another massacre. McArdle laments the possibility of gun control laws, or any new law restricting (nefariously-called) “gun rights”:
My guess is that we’re going to get a law anyway, and my hope is that it will consist of small measures that might have some tiny actual effect, like restrictions on magazine capacity. Â I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Â Would it work? Â Would people do it? Â I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.
[Bolding ours]
Alrighty then.
You have to just love the idea of someone advocating group suicide — which is what gang-rushing shooters effectively is — then proclaiming she has no idea if it would work.
Instead of “duck and cover,” let’s teach “leap and smother.”
Right.
If that’s not disgusting enough for you, take the National Review’s Charlotte Allen. But first, a reminder about the National Review.
The National Review used to be a bastion of respected conservative intellectualism. Founded by the revered (and, yes, reviled) William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955, the magazine wasn’t a home to conservative writers, it actually defined what conservatism should be — and what it should not be.
The “not” included Ayn Rand, the John Birch Society, George Wallace, and ultimately, Pat Buchanan. (Clearly, they lost much of that battle.)
Now, the National Review Online is home to racism, homophobia, bigotry, Maggie Gallagher, and Charlotte Allen.
“Like most people, I’ve been thinking and thinking about the Sandy Hook massacre. I’ve even pored over a map of the school and its killing sites — and studied a timeline of the incident, which appears to have unfolded over about 20 minutes,” writes uber-conservative Charlotte Allen:
I have three observations:
There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist†— were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.
Remember, this is a conservative.
The main point of Allen’s ignorant idiocy, as Zack Beauchamp at Think Progress writes, is the Sandy Hook “Shooting Occurred Because Women Ran The School.”
There’s more disgustingness in Allen’s editorial, but I cannot even begin to address it without wanting to hit my head against the wall.
So, first of all, every man, woman, and child in America who isn’t Charlotte Allen but who does listen to the news knows that the school was kindergarten through fourth grade, Not, “it was a K–6 school.” That’s just stupid at this point, and anyone who been paying the least bit of attention knows this. And Charlotte Allen is paid to know this, or to find out, so, fail.
Second, there was a “male janitor” in the school, and a male fourth grade teacher, so everything she wrote there is pure malarkey.
“Kevin Anzellotti, the head custodian at Sandy Hook, is a man,” Dave Weigel, in, “The Stupidest Thing Anyone Has Written About Sandy Hook,” at Slate reminds us. “Theodore Varga, a fourth grade teacher, also possesses XY chromosomes. I just did the research Allen didn’t do, and it took all of fourteen seconds. Beyond that, though — why does no one who writes this way look into the circumstances of other massacres?”
Weigel then, again, reminds us of the men who were heroes who tried to save others at the tragic Gabby Giffords shooting. They died.
“Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza,” Charlotte Allen writes.
Yes, let’s stop and think about what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.
First, there were no 12-year old boys, because 12-year old boys are in sixth grade. And there was no sixth grade.
Second, let’s pretend her statement isn’t pure garbage and vile and offensive and play along.
Adam Lanza had a Bushmaster AR-15 and two handguns and more than enough bullets for every one of the 450-600 students in Sandy Hook Elementary.
What that would have looked like is a lot of 12-year old boys and male teachers lying on the floor, dead.
Lanza put up to eleven bullets in some of the six and seven year old children.
And when, pray tell, does having a penis outweigh having a gun?
Charlotte Allen and Megan McArdle deserve to go down in history as two of the most fatuous, self-ndulgent, and just plain ignorant writers in America.
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Image: “Memorials abound in Newtown….this one on road into Sandy Hook,” by Al Jones, via Twitter
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
