joaquin olver parkland shooting
The virtual Joaquin Oliver
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We first encountered Manuel and Patricia Oliver outside the NRA convention in Dallas in 2018. Their son was one of the 17 people murdered at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida earlier that year. Mr. Oliver, an artist, painted a mural in front of a crowd of supporters and the media to demonstrate the need for more gun control in America.

Manuel Olver NRA mural gun control
Dan Z. for TTAG

The finished mural said, We Demand a Fair Game.

The Olivers created a confusingly named gun control advocacy operation they call Change the Ref that they say uses “urban art and nonviolent creative confrontation to expose the disastrous effects of the mass shooting pandemic.”

Now as part of the Change the Ref effort, they’re promoting another site they’re calling The Unfinished Votes. It asks the families of victims of “gun violence” to submit the names and photos of their deceased loved ones as part of the push to elect more candidates who support stiffer gun control laws.

What’s noteworthy is how they’ve chosen to call attention to their Unfinished Votes thing. The Olivers have produced a video featuring an animated likeness of their dead son, Joaquin, whose avatar makes the case for voting for candidates who will enact more restrictions on civilian gun ownership.

Here’s the video:

 

Yo, it’s me. I’ve been gone for two years and nothing’s changed, bro. People are still getting killed by guns. What is that? Everyone knows it, but they don’t do anything. I’m tired of waiting for someone to fix it.

The disturbingly lifelike, virtual Joaquin (whose nickname was Guac) asks his audience to vote for anti-gun candidates this November because he can’t. (If only he’d lived in Chicago.)

Vote for politicians who care more about people’s lives than the gun lobby’s money. Vote for people not getting shot, bro. I mean, vote for me. Because I can’t.

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90 COMMENTS

      • I have no idea the context of that anime. But it’s still friggin’ hilarious to me. Even most so given that I listened to an audiobook of the Communist Manifesto the other day, just for the same of trying to educate myself. And you know, it really is just idiotic BS. Marx and Engels were just obsessed with the middle and upper middle class people in society and blame them for everything. And even in the manifesto they openly declare that the revolution will require despotism. Next time I hear some looser say that they support ‘democratic socialism’ I’m going to go tell them to pound sand.

        • Yup, Marx, Engles, later Lenin and so many others. Bunch of damned sick minded fools who’s idea of a utopia for the working man would have destroyed the world had it been permitted to run to its ultimate unintended consequence.

        • Heh, they lived off money made by Engel’s father, never worked a real job as far as I know. What can you expect? Anyway, the leftist raised fist sure seems to show up often among gun control activists. Imagine that.

        • Anime is called “Saga of Tanya the Evil”. Short version: Atheist dies, finds out the hard way; gets reborn as a little blonde girl in Magic!Imperial Germany. Decides her best hope for survival is climbing the military career ladder through being an utter bastard. Unfortunately, commanding officers keep mistaking her horribleness for competence (I did say Germany, right?) and putting her into the front.

          And with all that, it STILL makes more sense than the gun control video.

        • “Democratic socialism” is one of those terms that confuses issues nicely: on the one hand it includes things that are just common sense, such as Social Security, while on the other hand also including heavily taxing corporations — a futile exercise since all costs for corporations are ultimately paid by the customers.

          Any time someone uses it my reaction is to point out it’s too broad a term to be meaningful, so what do they really mean? Not surprisingly given how crappy public schools have been for thirty years at least a third of them have no idea what they mean!

          Then when I point out that democracy was seen by our Founding Fathers as a necessary but dangerous tool to be kept chained they react like the typical democracy-worshipper: totally blank, as though of course democracy is better than anything else because “one man one vote” — and when I ask just how that is any better than only one man getting one vote (totalitarianism) they’re again blank.

          Oh for the days when students had to memorize the Bill of Rights!

        • “… a futile exercise since all costs for corporations are ultimately paid by the customers.”

          @Dan Zimmerman…

          I call for complete banishment of this person from the forum. We cannot have this kind of dangerous truth careering around the environment. People are convinced that corporations are punished by taxes, and that the law prohibits passing those taxes onto the customer through price increases. Disturbing the general peace with actual fact is injurious to the psyche and slumber of the masses.

          Free the Whales !
          Free the Internet !
          Free Big Macs !
          Free guns !
          Viva Che’ !
          Viva Max !
          Workers of the world unite !

        • What’s funny is that Marx and Engles were both sons and heirs to successful businesses established by their fathers. The communist manifesto is literally them pouring out their daddy issues because they had poor paternal relationships and had class guilt from never having to work a day in their lives for their wealth. They decided their fathers were mean guys exploiting the poor and boom, Commie Manifesto.

  1. Pimping out their dead son is somewhat reprehensible, these people are sick. Sorry for your loss, but I won’t be abrogating my natural, civil, and Constitutional rights.

    • I am NOT sorry for their loss.

      Sound like Illegal Alien Garbage running away from the same kind of Communism they advocate. Same thing happens with the DROVE of Cuntifornians leaving the FAILED SOCIALISM EXPERIMENT OF CALIFORNIA.

      Parkland, Florida is as Communist as it comes. Lots of NE transplants still stupid.

      • The problem with that Parkland shooting is it fall all back onto that sheriff that was in office at the time he failed to do his job more than once when they were called to his home because he was unstable and threatening and need to be checked out but no they left him along and at home and there were no reports filed that would put him on the gun ban list that all falls back on the sheriffs office

    • I’ll bet anything that he, and most of the other people murdered, were wishing they had their own guns as they were being killed.

  2. You could toss a gun to these people behind cover as a terrorist was slowly approaching emptying a ak47 at them and they would let it hit the ground in disgust and chose to be a victim. Fair to them is a peaceful utopia that exists only in their little liberal delusional minds while the rest of us live in reality.

    • Perhaps, but I’m betting most of them would fight to preserve their lives. And, if they succeeded, probably come out the other side with a renewed vigor to ensure that others would not be able to do the same in similar circumstances.

        • Lol… principles…. PRINCIPLES!!!!!!…… You idiot….

          This guy is the one who sabotages everyone else with his “principles “…. if you listen to people like this, you might at as well stick your head between your legs and prepare to meet your maker…

  3. Yes let’s all lay our guns at the feet of Jim Crow Gun Control joe Biden and his running mate the antifa butt kisser kmoola Harris.
    Everyone should join hands with gun control zealots and show their unwavering support for a demonic agenda rooted in racism and genocide.
    If a Black American is caught with a gun we can get a rope and lynch them or if they are Jews we can hose ’em down and send them to the gas chambers or make decorative lampshades out of them…bro.

  4. I’ve been around a number of parents who lost a child to sudden, violent or traumatic death. There’s no understatement possible to say that the pain and grief of that can fuck up a parent’s mind. To that extent I sympathize and have enormous compassion for them.

    Problem here is these parents and families are being abused by the cultural and mental illness of Hoplophobia. Which sadly has some wealthy backers behind the falsehood that humans do not do violence, inanimate objects do.

    The gun did not slaughter their child. A human being did that. A human being who was known to be very mentally ill. A failed system of mental health care that ignored the severity. A failed law enforcement organization that ignored numerous warning signs and even the actual attack itself.

    If you want to solve the problem of people shooting people you have to work on the people problem.

    Or just go on failing.

      • “(If only the same was true of many of your other comments.)”

        Being 1 percent correct is still 99 percent wrong.

        An occasional aberration is no indicator of a trend…

        • There’s TWO possibly 3 “enuf” nom de plumes. Hence the confusion. Oh and I have NO sympathy for these creepy parents. I feel for the kid…hey they had a “gun buyback” in Chiraq today. On the Westside. A hundred bucks for a “real” gun. Only $5 for a BB gun or airsoft. Don’t they know you can rob folks with a lookalike gat?!?😋😋😋😋

        • The enuf I always see has user name hyperlinked to Biden 2020 url.

          I have no problem if someone supports another candidate besides Trump. I’m a reluctant Trump supporter myself. But if you want to log a protest vote, then vote libertarian or write in. Don’t actively support someone with the same (or worse) moral character as Trump. If you support a creep towards authoritarian socialism, you are my enemy.

        • I am aware that one or two people here, at least, use my “Enuf” name. I’m fairly sure who one of them is, or at least I was until I realized that the person in question has two distinct writing styles. Which leads me to believe there are maybe two or three people using that person’s name too. This is a weakness of the forum software being used.

          I do not link only to Biden’s website. The Lincoln Project, GOA, The Firearms Blog, Repair45.org and Cure Violence (cvg.org) have all been linked by me. Lately, it’s mainly the Biden one, because of the time we are in.

          As I have written before, Biden is a bitter pill against the Trump disease that threatens our Republic. Thousands of people folks here would normally look up to are saying such, but the core of the Trump cult ignores it. Thinks “Fake News” and other delusional nonsense.

          The claim that Biden is a socialist is laughable. He’s merely an old, liberal leaning politician with bunches of much more left wing people not liking him one bit. He has opposition from actual socialists (and again, there are multiple types of socialists and socialism). Same sort of opposition the Affordable Care Act nearly got killed by under Obama. Or do people here still tell themselves the big fib that all the lefties loved Obama?

          By the way, how’s that conspiracy doing where Obama is going to make himself President For Life?

          Haven’t heard so much on that one of late.

          Anyway, as I’ve said, all Biden is, is that response against Trump. A response that unlike voting for Evan McMullin in 2016 actually has a chance of defeating Trump and restoring our Republic to a secure representative democracy.

          With Barrett going to the Supreme Court voting against Trump is a safer move that it would otherwise be.

          If Biden wins, which is hardly a certainty, money then goes to pro-gun groups. That’s my plan anyway,.

        • “The claim that Biden is a socialist is laughable. He’s merely an old, liberal leaning politician”

          Joe is whatever the voters want him to be. Biden has been in politics since before I was born. You would think people should know exactly what he stands for by now, but we don’t. What’s his signature stance/idea/policy again? He’s a lump of clay willing to be molded into whatever the Left wants. Why do you think 99% of dem politicians suddenly turned on Bernie and decided to support Joe in the primaries? Do you honestly believe it was because of Joe’s brilliant ideas?? No, Bernie was on his way to win the nomination. It was a strategic decision for The Party. The democrats knew they could never sell crazy Bernie to the general public like you. However, they were quite certain they could fool plenty of people…like you. Joe’s on his last leg mentally. He won’t be in control. That is an actual threat to the Republic.

          You keep talking about how Trump’s a threat, yet you never articulate why. We’ve had four years, where’s that wannabe authoritarian we were warned about? As we’ve seen the only wannabe authoritarians have been democrat governors. Joe would have a national mask mandate and more lock downs. We’d see MORE videos of parents with their kids being arrested in deserted parks.

          Speaking of a threat to the Republic. Whatever happen to the peaceful transfer of power? Are you okay with an outgoing administration spying on political opponents, pushing a conspiracy theory so far, that it ends up with a special counsel investigation? You do realize that it has come out that the FBI knew this allegation was false back in 2016, right? That means the Mueller team knew the allegation was false when they began in 2017. This was the REAL election interference. The media and the democrats hyped up the Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory to a fever pitch by the 2018 mid term elections. They were running their campaigns based on holding the “traitor” accountable. How soon we forget. THAT is a threat to the Republic, but you’re okay with that because “OrAnGe Man BaD!”

      • Here, try this one. The most up to date count of the dead in the fake news pandemic is 211,975.

        But remember, Trump says it’s no big deal. Except when he says it’s a dead killer to Bob Woodward. But otherwise, nothing to worry about. Except now Trump has it too and his people are leaking info he was on oxygen before going to the hospital.

        Remember when Fauci and Birx put up those charts and said if we handled it properly we could come thru it with far fewer deaths than the best case estimate?

        Well, thanks to Trump’s utter and complete failure as a leader, we sure the hell blew that one out of the water!

        • “By the way, how’s that conspiracy doing where Obama is going to make himself President For Life?”

          No, it is their Messiah, Donald Trump, who has ‘joked‘ about not leaving office when his term is expired. A true constitutionalist, hey?

          Hypocrisy, thy name is Conservative.

        • I notice you never actually answered the question Dude actually asked. You just went off on a covid rant. Btw i guees u would be ok with the white house just running the entire country directly to impose all those expert directives and federalism be damned.

    • That is the truth, it’s the people not the guns, these people need to do a sample test to realize the truth, buy a firearm any kind a.r.,a.k., submachine ,some ammo, put the gun an ammo in their bed are hang it on the wall, but somewhere were they can keep a eye on it, and if the ammo jumps from the box runs over to the gun an the gun picks them up and loads it’s self, gets outer bed or off the wall, walks or drive’s it’s self to a school, store, anywhere even. Aims its self and starts shooting people, I will help them make gun control laws, but until they do without the help of people, then I can not see were they are coming from, .

  5. I vote for your family to go back where they came from BRUH…!
    Change your own mother country before you screw with mine… BRUH…,
    “””FREE KYLE”””
    & give him back his GUN….BRUH…!!!

  6. This explains a great deal of how our education system has failed us. How people grow to be parents themselves and end up teaching their children lies, half truths, and hate. It’s no wonder it happened there.

    They know not what they do.

    • “They know not what they do.”

      A little humor to lighten things up after that bummer video :

      Sister Mary and Sister Ellen were walking back to the convent after a day of shopping.

      Two thugs grabbed the nuns off the city street and dragged them into a dark ally where they violently raped them.

      Sister Mary cried out – “Forgive them, Father! They know not what they do!”

      Sister Ellen panted – “Shut up! This one does!”

      (I’ll get my coat… 😉 )

      • Groan…

        Geoff, I often express agreement with your comments, and sometimes a chuckle or two, but that was not some of your better material.

        R*pe is never funny. So as your friend, here’s your coat. Go home and sleep it off.

      • Two Irish nuns were sitting in their car at a traffic light when a bunch of rowdy drunks pulled up alongside.
        “Hey, show us your tits you bloody penguins!” shouted one of the drunks.
        The Mother Superior turns to Sister Margaret and says “I don’t think they know who we are. Show them your cross!”
        So Sister Margaret rolls down her window and shouts, “Sod off you little fuckin wankers before I get out and rip your goddam balls off!”
        Sister Margaret looks back at the Mother Superior and asks, “Was that cross enough?”

  7. If this is all you’ve got, it’s because the facts are against you. This is a new low in standing on your child’s grave in an effort to make others just as defenseless as he was.

    Someone should counter this with a series of ads featuring people who survived an assault because they had a gun. I wonder if having Kyle Rittenhouse as the first example would be too much of a poke in the eye.

  8. Well, the shooter is in jail awaiting trial, the Sheriff ignoring and dismissing the shooters violent behavior has been rejected by the county and the last meaningful action would be to dismiss the School Superintendent that designed the program that protected criminal kids. He has been rewarded by receiving a pay raise. This makes the county folks themselves guilty.

        • Free clue – Kids in High School today have mustaches in a lot of cities…

        • Geoff. I don’t know how old RGP is but in my time they had dress codes at a lot of schools. Part of that code was clean shaven.

          Of course when I went to school teachers and admin could still dish out corporal punishment.

        • Dress codes at a public school can fuck right the hell off.

          It’s bad enough they force parents to pay for and kids to attend a flat-out shitty “education”.

          If they told me to shave over acne my sophomore year they’d have gotten an actual kick in the nuts.

    • Even my very conservative rural Midwest HS allowed facial hair way back in the Dark Ages of the mid- to late-70s. They also allowed pocketknives and folders though a fair number of guys wore fixed blade belt knives, which weren’t really allowed but generally tolerated and racked or trunk kept shotguns during deer season. Oddly enough nobody was either shot or stabbed at school. I did have a lower classman football teammate who ended up in hot water for riding his horse to school but that was more about the mess it made and the distraction.

  9. Oh, please.

    How many laws did the shooter break? A new, different, improved, jumbo-sized gun control law would have made the difference? Will make the difference?

    The loss of an innocent life is a horrible tragedy, regardless of the cause. However….

    “In 2017, 2,364 teens in the United States aged 16-19 were killed, and about 300,000 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes.1 That means six teens aged 16-19 died every day due to motor vehicle crashes, and hundreds more were injured.”
    (https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/teen_drivers/teendrivers_factsheet.html)

    “10 years. 180 school shootings. 356 victims.” [2009-2018]
    (https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-school-shootings-trnd/)

    • Yes but driving is a privilege, the ownership of a firegunm is a right. They cannot deny someone’s privilege over someone’s right, that’s not how it’s worked.

      • “Yes but driving is a privilege, the ownership of a firegunm is a right.”

        Agree. I was pointing out that school shootings aren’t a crisis, but teenage traffic deaths are. Refusing to see/understand that teenagers are at tremendously greater risk of death involving an automobile, but ignoring that and focusing on school shootings is hypocritical. Especially when people want to ban firearms, but not teen driving (or automobiles).

        In the end, stats can never overcome emotion. If there were not firearm related casualties among school aged children and teens, the anti-gun mob would still agitate for gun confiscation….outside inner-city zones.

  10. These left wing idiots that dont blink an eye to the millions of babies being slaughtered and then sell their baby parts for big money!!

    Here they are using their own son in this manner just makes me sick!!! These are sick depraved people to do this!!! It show us the insanity of the left!!!

  11. Sorry Oliver parents but you still can’t have my guns. Using a likeness of your dead son to lecture me is really sick too. Your loss has obviously caused you mental illness.

  12. I didn’t kill your son…nobody I know killed your son…I haven’t done a damn thing wrong…I’m damn sure not giving up my rights or my guns because some criminal – who was allowed to roam free by the stupid democrat politicians you elected – killed your son.

    • “I didn’t kill your son…nobody I know killed your son…I haven’t done a damn thing wrong…I’m damn sure not giving up my rights or my guns because some criminal – who was allowed to roam free by the stupid democrat politicians you elected – killed your son.”

      Ok, perhaps you are really new here: subtlety and understatement do not work on this audience. Be more direct; tell us what you think, in plain words.

  13. I wonder how much Artificial Intelligence will be used in the future to deceive people like it was in this video. That was sick that the parents would do such a video.

    I wonder where he is now. Is it better than living in America with guns or worse?

    This world is temporary, eternity is not!

  14. Of course they voted for Scott Israel and every other gun grabbing leftist. They will vote for anyone who supports the destruction of the US Constitution. They will likely deny that they are Communists, but that is simply being in denial.

    I for one will view an attempt to steal the election or end the filibuster or pack the Court as the equivalent of the Intolerable Acts. Just remember that it was attempted gun and ammo confiscation that actually started the American Revolution. Eventually the left will try the same thing King George did, keep your powder dry.

  15. Alas Josef Stalin said it best: “A Single death is a tragedy, a Million deaths are a statistic”. The one death used to promote a Cause or Ideology bears greater importance than the Many who died without Remembrance.

  16. The parents should instead be mad at the government, school, media, the music industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and hollywood.

    The government and school made you, your son, and school staff unarmed and unarmored, and allowed a sociopath to rampage unchallenged.

    The media has been brainwashing you and everyone in your circle for decades to accept this as the norm. That you are helpless, a victim, and not responsible for yourself.

    The media has also pushed mass shootings for ratings. This is no secret, and no fringe conspiracy theory.

    The music industry and Hollywood has brainwashed several generations of youth to disrespect and destroy the culture of the United States, and western philosophy in general.

    All of these things have created an “existential crisis” in the minds of most people under 50. They destroyed the base of civilization. Nihilism has often replaced faith, patriotism, family, and responsibility.

    Mass shootings and high rates of suicide are apart of the same problem that results from a destruction of culture, family, and nationhood.

    • “The parents should instead be mad at the government, school, media, the music industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and hollywood.”

      We often overlook the obvious truth: without firearms in the hands of the public, the shooting could not happen. That is a significant belief of gun-grabbers. It is also inescapable on its surface. And that superficial belief is strong. Changing a belief system is extremely hard work. Rather than try to convert the believer, we need to politically smash them down, and never let them up.

  17. >>” People are still getting killed by guns”

    I know right? I mean whoever decided to give guns sentience should be locked up! There are too many guns running around, just wantonly shooting innocent people. I say we deport all guns! Or–or–or arrest them! Yeah! Lock them up! Put them in solitary confinement! Take away their ammo so they all starve to death!

    YEAH! The only way to stop gun violence is to take away a gun’s sentience, once and for all! People are worried about guns, well I’m worried about guns going around killing people! It’s a war! Guns want to wipe us all out!

    For those of you too stupid to realize the above is hyperbolic sarcasm, that’s what it is. It’s to highlight how abjectly mentally retarded people who use the phrase “gun violence” are. They’ve never been assaulted, raped or mugged by someone bigger and stronger than they are. They don’t realize that there is evil in this world, and words cannot mollify or placate evil. Ban guns, and bad people will still acquire/manufacture them, leaving a disparity (monopoly) on force in their favor. First they need to grow up, then they need to wake the fuck up. A world without guns is literally how things were in the Dark Ages–where the strong subjugated and repressed the weak.

    A utopia cannot ever exist. Human nature will forever prevent that because there will always be avarice, greed and disregard for others’ well-being, no matter how much they want to pretend like that dark side of humanity is just a fairy tale.

    It’s us, adults, and it’s physically matured children, them. Nothing new under the sun. “Higher education” is great to expose young people to the beauties of the world and cultures, but shields them from the horrors of genocide, war and authoritarianism. If they want to truly expand their horizons, they should head over to quite a bit of Africa, or any banana republic/communist dictatorship of their choosing. That *will* wake them up.

    • Agreed Anton. Anyone who believes humans are inherently good has zero concept of reality. They have a sin nature and do bad things from birth. They have to be lovingly raised with discipline to have any hope of becoming productive citizens. And the only way a person becomes “good” is through the blood of Christ.

  18. The anti-gun crowd is one gigantic appeal to emotion. You are batting your head against a wall if you try to argue facts with them.

    • “The anti-gun crowd is one gigantic appeal to emotion. You are batting your head against a wall if you try to argue facts with them.”

      Three little words: Y. E. P.

  19. What is Psychosis?

    The word psychosis is used to describe conditions that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality. When someone becomes ill in this way it is called a psychotic episode. During a period of psychosis, a person’s thoughts and perceptions are disturbed and the individual may have difficulty understanding what is real and what is not. Symptoms of psychosis include delusions (false beliefs) and hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that others do not see or hear). Other symptoms include incoherent or nonsense speech, and behavior that is inappropriate for the situation. A person in a psychotic episode may also experience depression, anxiety, sleep problems, social withdrawal, lack of motivation, and difficulty functioning overall.

    For more information about psychosis, please visit our Questions & Answers page.

  20. Why are his parents STILL living in Florida.
    There are plenty of demtard run cities and states, ALL with restrictive laws against legal firearm ownership.
    Move to Chicago or Baltimore you idiots, your Utopia awaits.
    And stop with the BS line that “you” used CGI to create that vid, George Soros dollars created the vid, and you cashed his check for using your sons likeness. Way to pimp out your son after his death you horrible parents.
    Enjoy those 30 pieces of silver now!
    May be able to pimp him out to Honda next you POS parents. I’m thinking a Fast N Furious style CGI vid, with him saying “V Tech just kicked in yo”.

  21. What are disgusting video…Maybe his parents should go back to wherever the hell they came from…Then they can have gun control

  22. Yeah…. as stated above….. it’s obvious these parents aren’t Americans….. so they think it’s their place to demand submission to their cause by Americans…. the same Americans who allowed them to escape the apparent $hithole they crawled from….
    Typical of minorities living in America … they can’t get their way so they want AMERICANS to suffer for the minorities shortcomings…….? Yeah ok, watch how fast I kneel before you…. lol

  23. Shameless disgusting exploitation.

    Changing the subject sightly. Exactly how did the dems get virulent Covid cultures on to Trumps debate mic, and podium, and were the cultures new strains from Chinese labs?

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