Once again I’m going to talk about some stories that either didn’t make it into this week’s Friday Five or that broke after I posted the weekly round up of links, or the add new information to something I’ve posted about before. Some of this stories feel awfully familiar. Because first up we have a few different news about school shootings. A topic that we all wish would stop being relevant, but I refuse to become ho-hum about them, so let’s get into this:

Suspect wounds teacher, fellow student in 23rd school shooting in 2018. So, we’re up to 23 of these for the year, and please note that that isn’t 23 mass shootings, it is specifically 23 school shootings. At least this one didn’t go as horrifically as some of the previous ones, I guess that’s good news? Teacher credited with disarming student in Indiana school shooting.

Moving back in time a mere week, there’s been some developments in the Texas school shooting: Texas school shooting victim family sues attacker’s parents. And I applaud this. Technically, they shouldn’t have to do this, because Texas already has a law on the books making the owner of a gun that’s used in a crime liable if they can’t prove that they adequately secured it. The problem is, that we have this really stupid mindset about parents whose kids get hold of guns. When a small child gets hold of a gun and it goes off, often killing the child, we never charge the parents. We say this stupid, “They’ve been punished enough.” No, no they haven’t. Because we refuse to treat those incidents at the acts of criminal negligence that that are, people think of them as senseless tragedies. As if an unsecured gun were the equivalent of on earthquake or some other natural phenomenon. If we started prosecuting this parents, it would change the perspective.

I’m especially in favor of this since the shooter’s father has been going on news shows and telling people that his son is the real victim here. No, that teen-ager harassed and stalked a girl for four months, then murdered her and nine other people. He isn’t a victim, he is a murderer. Of course it’s not just the father that I think needs punished. A lot of headline writers do, to. It isn’t that his victim refused his advances. The headlines should say, “Shooter Harassed His Victim for Months Before Killing Her.”

Meanwhile: Publix will suspend political donations after protest by Parkland students. Good. Donating to the NRA or to politicians who refuse to enact that laws such as universal background checks including for private sales (supported by 77% of gun owners, and 87% of people who do not own guns) or closing the boyfriend loophole should be a toxic act that gets you shunned from polite society.

Let’s get away from depressing topics and move to some good news: Hawaii becomes 12th state to ban ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ youth. Hurrah! This so-called therapy is actually torture, and has been proven to lead to suicide and self-destructive behavior. And it never works. State-by-state we’re getting this insanity banned. Which is sort of amazing given the current political climate. We need to keep this fight going!

Finally, an interesting series of developments in the case of the lone man who accused George Takei of sexual assault last year: Exclusive: George Takei’s Accuser Has Changed His Story of Drugging and Assault. And it’s not that he merely was inconsistent with details, he admits that he lied about several things. The story goes into great depth about things such as: the lack of additional accusers, the victim’s story isn’t consistent with medical facts about drugs available at the time, when that is explained to him by two doctors the victim agrees that there probably never was an assault, a prosecutor’s analysis of the victim’s story is that no assault occurred, and more. My favorite thing is that the accuser’s boyfriend at the time (who was also an acquaintance of Takei) said his boyfriend never mentioned it for years. Also, the four people other news sources mentioned (but never named) who “corroborated” some of the accusers story, well, not so much. “He’s been telling it like a joke for years that time the Star Trek actor made a pass at him.”

As the reporter points out, in other cases of accusations of sexual assault, once the first report was made, dozens or more other people came forward to tell similar tales, and even more people came forward to say that they had been warned about the harasser. Not one single person has come forward with a similar tale about Takei. No one. No whispers, no rumors.

And now the only accuser says it was all a misunderstanding…