Things that make me go hmmmm

One Minute in Dayton. Nine Minutes in Bondi. One Country Tightens. One Shrugs.

In Dayton, in August of 2019, it took a mass shooter less than a minute to permanently alter this city.

I heard it happening, my bedroom window was open. I knew immediately what had happened. I knew people who were there.

In Sydney, at Bondi Beach, it took longer. It was still horrific. People died. Families changed forever. But the mechanics of the violence, and the policy reaction afterward, reveal something Americans keep refusing to face.

Technology matters. Law matters. Accountability matters.

And in the United States, we keep choosing the side that guarantees we will do this again.

Dayton, Oregon District, Aug. 4, 2019: speed kills

The Dayton attack is a case study in what “efficiency” looks like when you pair a crowded nightlife district with rapid-fire capability.

Here are the core numbers that matter:

• Timeline: the shooter was killed by police roughly 32 seconds after the first shots.
• Rounds fired by the shooter: 41 rounds fired into the crowd in less than 30 seconds.
• Magazine capability: investigators described a 100-round magazine used with an AR-15-style firearm.
• Victims: 9 murdered, 17 wounded by gunfire (plus others injured in the chaos).

This is what high-capacity, fast-cycling firearms do in the real world: they compress mass casualty events into seconds, leaving almost no time for escape, intervention, or medical response. One shooter.

We talk about “mental health” because it is comfortable. We should also talk about throughput.

Bondi Beach, Dec. 2025: still slaughter, but less “efficient”

Australia just lived through its worst mass shooting in decades, and it immediately reopened the gun-law debate.

What we can responsibly say from accessible reporting:

• Scale: authorities described it as Australia’s worst mass shooting in almost 30 years and officials moved toward stronger gun measures.
• Weapons reported: early reporting and subsequent summaries described long guns including a straight-pull or bolt-action style rifle (and other firearms).
• Rounds fired: widely repeated open-source summaries put it at about 83 rounds fired by the attackers (and additional rounds by police), but the round-count is not consistently published in primary, official statements that are easy to verify in full-text right now, so treat this as an estimate, not gospel.

Even if the precise round count shifts, the broader point does not: when a weapon system is slower to reload and slower to fire accurately, it changes the casualty curve. That does not make it “safe.” It makes it less instant. And there were 2 shooters.

Here is the part that should embarrass Ohio

Australia’s political system, for all its flaws, still has a reflex Americans have lost: if a horror reveals a gap, close the gap. National cabinet met. Leaders publicly discussed strengthening gun laws.

Ohio’s reflex has been the opposite.

In June 2022, Ohio made it legal for many adults to carry a concealed handgun without a license (permitless carry).

Read that again.

After Dayton, where we asked the Governor to “DO SOMETHING” after so many “this time will be different” speeches, Ohio did not tighten gun laws, Ohio loosened them.

So when the next Dayton happens, and it will, the script is already written: “thoughts and prayers,” “bad apple,” “not the time,” “we need more guns,” “we need more security.”

Never: “We designed this outcome.”

We refuse to take responsibility for reading the entire 2nd Amendment: “”A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.

Tell me the last time the shooter was a member of a well-regulated militia, unless you are talking about our police who seem to be able to shoot first and ask questions later without running risks of personal responsibility most of the time.

The Sherrone Moore Question: Why do consequences land on some people and slide off others?

Now take the same lens and aim it at consequences.

Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore was fired after an investigation found “credible evidence” of an inappropriate relationship with a staff member, and prosecutors later charged him with felony home invasion and misdemeanor stalking/breaking and entering in connection with allegations involving that staff member.

Donald Trump was found guilty by a New York jury of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records connected to a hush money payment scheme involving an adult-film actor. He’s had multiple bankruptcies, he incited an attack on the capital, he’s currently breaking laws left and right and trying to start a war with Venezuela

One man is effectively terminated as a major institutional leader in days.

The other keeps running our country like he’s a king and is treated like this is all legal just because he said so.

So yes, it is fair to ask what you asked:

• Is the difference race?
• Is the difference money?
• Is the difference the ecosystem that protects power in America?

And if you want the most brutal version of the question:

If “moral character” is disqualifying, why is it only disqualifying for people who cannot buy the outrage machine?

(And no, this is not me saying Sherrone Moore should run for president. It is me saying America’s standards are not standards. They are weapons, selectively applied.)

Christian Black: The county paid $7 million, but nobody did anything wrong?

Finally, let’s bring it home.

Christian Black died after being restrained in the Montgomery County Jail. The coroner ruled the death homicide, caused by mechanical and positional asphyxia.

The county agreed to a $7 million settlement with the family.

Then a Montgomery County grand jury declined to indict jail employees connected to the death. We have no way to tell what the Grand Jury was told, or if this was even how they voted. We’re just supposed to trust the system. You know, like the way we trusted it to prosecute Montgomery County Clerk of Courts who seems to be able to reverse a plea deal like no one else, “manifest injustice” be damned.

So your question is not only fair, it is unavoidable:

Why did we pay $7 million if no one did anything wrong?

Here is the answer nobody wants to say out loud: because the civil system and the criminal system are not designed to produce the same outcomes.

• Civil settlements are often risk management. They can reflect exposure, optics, and the cost of losing at trial, without any admission of guilt.
• Criminal charges require proving specific crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, and in custody-death cases, institutions are structurally advantaged: control of evidence, control of narratives, professional “benefit of the doubt,” and a political culture that treats uniformed negligence as an unfortunate error instead of a prosecutable act. It’s why the jailers who beat the living crap out of Khalid Mustafa also did nothing wrong, despite their own words suggesting different.

What does that mean in plain English?

It means we can officially call it homicide, pay out millions, and still end with nobody held accountable.

That is not “justice.” That is the system run amok.

What is wrong with this country?

Three stories. One pattern.

1. We build a gun environment optimized for rapid mass killing. Dayton proved it in 32 seconds.
2. We apply consequences selectively, based on power, wealth, and the political utility of outrage.
3. We spend public money to make catastrophic failures go away, while the system refuses to name perpetrators, because naming perpetrators would require changing the system that protects them.
4. We still believe in “thoughts and prayers” although they’ve been proven not to do a damn thing.

That is what is wrong with this country.

Not that we have bad people.

That we have built institutions that protect bad outcomes.