I’m hesitant to post about the most recent mass shooting–this one in a Texas elementary school. After all, what is there to say that hasn’t been said a million times before? As one commentator sadly noted, we’ll now hear Democrats talk about gun control and Republicans talk about mental illness.
Then, of course, there are Republicans like the odious Ted Cruz, who responded to an unspeakable tragedy in his state by asserting that the answer is to arm teachers. Not fewer guns, but more…and in the hands of people who, as a group, are least likely to want to own or brandish weapons.
A Rand report looked at the pros and cons of arming teachers, and a fair reading suggested that gun manufacturers would experience the only “pro”–more sales of weapons. (Just what we need….) The relevant paragraph:
Arguments against arming teachers and school resource officers highlight the elevated risk of accidents and negligent use of firearms as more adults in schools are armed. The Associated Press reported, for instance, that there were more than 30 incidents between 2014 and 2018 that involved a firearm brought to a school by a law enforcement officer or that involved a teacher improperly discharging or losing control of a weapon (Penzenstadler, Foley, and Fenn, 2017). This compares with around 20 active-shooter attacks at schools over a comparable period (Cai and Patel, 2019). When even trained police officers have been found to successfully hit their intended targets in just 18 percent of incidents involving an exchange of gunfire (Rostker et al., 2008), critics question whether teachers can be expected to effectively return fire without inadvertently injuring the children they mean to protect (Vince, Wolfe, and Field, 2015). Finally, if teachers are holding guns or engaged in gunfire, it may make the job of law enforcement officers more difficult and dangerous when they arrive at the scene. Officers could mistake the teacher for an active shooter or could themselves be inadvertently shot by the teacher.
If silly things like evidence mattered to today’s GOP, we have mountains of it. I’m not going to bore you with links to the years of studies demonstrating the idiocy of America’s current gun culture–a google search will bring up more research than most of us want or need to read. The Republican mantra, on this issue as with so many, many others is: “don’t confuse me with the facts,” so marshaling those facts and using them as the basis of an argument is doomed before it begins.
The United States is the only modern country where mass murders are a routine experience. (I once met with a delegation from an African country that had only recently emerged from a bloody civil conflict, and was embarrassed to learn that the members of that delegation feared more for their lives on American streets than they had during their own civil unrest. They’d watched the shoot-em-up movies glorifying violence, and read the media reports about our routine carnage…)
Like so many others, I am bone-tired of writing about this insanity. Back in 2017, in a more analytic, less furious mode, I wrote:
There are 300 million guns in this country. We aren’t going to get rid of them–couldn’t if we tried. Furthermore, the vast majority of gun owners are responsible people–hunters, sportsmen, people hoping to protect their homes. It’s true that a significant number of the 30,000 plus gun deaths in America each year involve those responsible owners: suicides, domestic abuse, children accidentally shooting themselves or others. These deaths are tragic, but I’d draw an analogy to highway deaths–we don’t ban or confiscate cars because they can be lethal.
If we continue with the car analogy, however, there are lessons to be learned. We don’t let just anyone drive; in order to get a license you must pass a test. Your license can be revoked if you repeatedly break the rules. Academics study traffic deaths and issue recommendations for making our roadways safer–and legislatures, by and large, take those recommendations seriously. With guns, Congress has prohibited government from funding research on gun violence, and state lawmakers are constantly attacking and rolling back even the most reasonable firearm regulations. Congress even refused to pass a measure that would have prohibited individuals on the no-fly list–-people with demonstrable connections to ISIS–from owning guns.
The history and interpretation of the Second Amendment has been twisted beyond recognition. If self-proclaimed “originalists” are really interested in the original meaning of the Amendment (I have my doubts), they might find this explanation by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens edifying.
I don’t know whether our legislative “gun nuts” are really as ideological and twisted as they seem (speaking of mental illness…), or whether–undoubtedly like Cruz–just deep in the pocket of the gun lobby.
And I don’t know how or where this ends.
After a 1996 mass shooting, Australia bought the damn things and got them out of their society. Nobody can confuse Australia with a left wing haven. They did the right thing and got the weapons of war OUT of their society. It CAN be done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_of_Australia
Last evening I blogged & tweeted:
To: Sen.Todd Young. Did you accept almost three million dollars ($2,897,582) from the NRA? That was the number in a 2019 report of the Brady Campaign. Did you return any of that money? Was that the total you received from the NRA since taking office in the Senate to 2019? 1/4
That’s about a million bucks a year. A Senator makes a Hundred Seventy-four Thousand Dollars ($174,000). What does a Senator do to earn money at a rate over five times the pay from the U.S. public? Have you received any NRA money since 2019? Well, not exactly “NRA” money. 2/4
Perhaps you are unaware but in April, 2018, the NRA admitted it received money from Russian individuals. How quickly do you take a call from someone with the NRA? What is the going rate for a “thought” or a “prayer” from a U.S. Senator to survivors of a mass shooting? 3/4
But maybe you gave back that NRA money & didn’t accept more. Yeah, like I believe in the Easter bunny. I’m Mark Small: pro-choice, pro environment, pro-civil rts & anti-gun GOP candidate for Indiana House Distr 86. I approve of this blog. Hell, I wrote it. 4/4
I believe the NRA’s annual meeting is also in Texas this week – ironic? They are also complaining about going bankrupt due to the loss of members and lawsuits.
But hey, both political parties just sent $40 billion to the war industry so they could take the war from Ukraine to Russia. At least we now understand their true motive.
Meanwhile, Biden toured the South Pacific. while tossing eggs at China, or doing the bidding of the MIC and weapons industry.
Even Tom Cruise’s movie is hyping killing commies and nothing gets Americans hyped up like Hollywood heroes kicking bad-guy ass.
You also have the senile Soros at Davos selling war against China and Russia, yet warning that climate change might do more damage to the planet.
If the socialists keep growing their message from the coasts, the unions won’t be able to stop them this time. And there is no FDR in Washington either. Vive la revolution!
A visual for Washington: Perhaps displaying photos in the halls of congress would be of some benefit. Side by side photos. On the left, a bright shining child. On the right, a shredded corpse due to the shooting. SHOW it to these idiots. SHOW them what they are doing. Make them LOOK at these babies. LOTS of them It might help to break through their denial.
Cruz pulls in over 300,000 per year from the Gun lobbies.
The glory mongers in DC have been exceptionally spared that none of these deaths have been one of their family . Maybe the walls of the Capitol should be lined by pictures of all the deceased, from all the shootings. Maybe those photos would haunt them into doing what they know they should.
The populace has asked for stricter gun control for decades. It is so obvious that the politicians do not care about the people who elected them. I challenge each of them to prove me wrong.
Gun worship is both idolatrous and mental illness. I’m off to my volunteer gig at the local K-3 elementary public school for last day of school festivities. I’ll have to paste a smile on my face. Wish the kids, staff and I safety.
I agree with Justice John Paul Stevens. I’ve been thinking the same thing for years.
Also, if the government was not restrained from being efficient, we’d be able to quickly reduce the number of mentally ill people who have access to firearms … by simply cross-referencing existing computerized databases. And this action alone is estimated to reduce mass shootings by about 50%.
Reasonable gun restrictions would help stop and/or reduce the death toll of these mass shootings, and that’s important. But it would only affect them at the margins. Republicans are not wrong about that.
These shooters want to be famous and have their cause promoted. In particular, they want to be on TV. TV networks oblige and give them exactly what they want. We shouldn’t be surprised then that these mass shootings continue.
While the First Amendment prevents government from limiting TV network coverage of these events, there is nothing stopping TV networks from voluntarily limiting their coverage so they don’t specifically identify these shooters or publicize their cause.
You deprive these shooters of fame and publicity, you’d see the shootings almost completely stop.
“Reasonable gun restrictions”????? What the blazes are they?
We need to look a little deeper than the gun lobby, to the why of the fight. Guns are a symbol of masculine power– the ability to provide for and protect your family. Unless a person lives in the country, far away from towns and cities, where guns are still essential tools, guns are nothing but symbols. Granted, they are powerful symbols, but symbols just the same. The oligarchs who control the GOP know this and use it to to keep society distracted. This is why we don’t have adequate gun safety laws.
What better to distract us from the voting rights fight or tax reform than 19 slaughtered 4th graders. Most of our problems in this country can be traced to the fact that a tiny part of our population is capturing an inordinate quantity of our gross national product. They want to keep it that way. So we have gun safety fights, abortion fights, and culture wars to keep people fighting battles that are only peripheral to our core problem.
You do have to admire the oligarch’s tactics. They keep getting richer while the rest of us are at each other’s throats about symptoms rather than causes.
Something specific to highlight the absurdity of what Gov Abbott disclosed yesterday. He said there was no
meaningful background to prohibit sale of AR-15 and ammunition. What the Governor did not say is that in the State of Texas, as in many other states, juvenile records by statute are sealed at age eighteen.
“Officers could mistake the teacher for an active shooter or could themselves be inadvertently shot by the teacher.”
The quote above is the most intelligent argument AGAINST arming teachers or employees in businesses as a protective measure. I will be sending another campaign donation to Beto; I’m sure he will be more closely watched by authorities now to prevent another “debate” between he and Abbott. Republicans have been claiming for at least THIRTY YEARS that the Democrats are coming for your guns; if this is true I can only ask “What the hell are the Democrats waiting for?” Thinking people know the Republicans lie; why do they repeatedly reelect them to office?
My daughter-in-law works at a Catholic school and church on the east side of Indianapolis; she got to work this past Monday morning to find a bullet hole in the 4th grade classroom window, the shells were found in their parking lot near the Priest’s car. There was a shootout in front of the school the week before; the apartment house next to the school and church is filled with drug addicts and criminals. A few times every week they have to call police to remove the apartment residents from trying to force their way in the school doors and sleeping (or passed out) under bushes. They are removed by police and that ends the action; how long before it escalates and the school is the victim of another mass shooting because Republicans say there is no way to prevent these horrors from happening. I cannot count the number of times police have been at the same few homes in my small neighborhood (only 1 way in and out, only 4 streets) but no one is ever arrested. At 2 residences there are armed, open carry men involved. I have watched this for over 17 years now; the undercover police following the attacker and getaway driver who mugged, permanently injured and robbed me on my own driveway at 11:00 in the morning, somehow lost sight of them on my 5 minute drive home from Kroger.
About the Texas massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers; the report this morning that some parents have been asked for DNA to identify some of those small victims so blasted to pieces that they cannot be identified otherwise. I had to turn away after watching Anderson Cooper’s interview with the young father who learned of his daughter’s death wile talking to a blood covered little girl who told him her best friend was dead. He asked for her friend’s name and learned his daughter was dead. The children who lived through this latest disaster will never fully recover emotionally or mentally from the sights and sounds of their friends being blasted apart and themselves being covered by their friend’s and teacher’s blood.
Indiana’s lax gun laws probably draws more people here than for the 500 Mile Race. When I worked in the Probation Department I had to research criminal histories of some of our probationers. At that time there was only ONE computer in the building with the app to check NCIC, it was located in the police department and we had to schedule a time to use it. Now we can Google names and research any information, including criminal history, pay a dollar and get the information. I receive regular reports from the Marion County Sheriff’s Department regarding registered sex offenders moving into my general area; I also receive reports tracking specific sex offenders who are of personal interest. Republicans claim their is no preventive measure to be taken to stop these killings; accessing information and action by police would be a good place to start.
Many of today’s statements on the blog are spot on and contribute to the social disruption and pending disaster we all face. The inside of Todd’s medicine cabinet, though, needs some rearranging.
Geraldine’s assessment is most poignant. I was a classroom teacher in Colorado Springs on the day the Columbine killings occurred. The cousin of one of my students was a murder victim. The son of one of my wife’s law partners was a student at Columbine that day and escaped harm. So yeah. When it’s that close you feel it.
Colorado Springs is, politically speaking, not unlike Texas: Republican. Backward thinking. Pseudo-conservative. There was talk immediately following Columbine to arm teachers. It horrified me to think of our 90 pound, 65+ year-old art teacher trying to steady her .357 magnum pistol and shooting straight. I decided that if I was asked to take gun training (I already had served 6 years in the U.S. Army) I would quit teaching and deliver pizzas or something.
The cowardice of this issue goes from stem to stern. The shooters are too cowardly to face life, so they find a shooting gallery of small children. The stern is the political environment. Greg Abbott told a steady stream of lies, memes and obfuscations at his “news” conference (Read free photo op. for his campaign). He is the ultimate coward when it comes to doing anything for “those people”. Having lived in Texas for 15 years, I saw first-hand the utter and complete corruption of the state’s politics and the brain-dead constituencies that keep electing them. SPOILER ALERT: The legal, Hispanic-named citizens have the lowest voting registration/turnout of any other demographic there. Maybe that will now change and the white Uvalde mayor who called O’Roark a sonofabitch will be dispatched and Uvalde’s 80+% latino/a population can be better represented.
I read today that one of the Parkland survivors is giving Biden a hard time because the young man thinks an executive order is what’s needed to reduce gun violence. Most people don’t have any idea of exactly what an executive order is and how limited it is in addressing most issues. An executive order can only impact Federal Government employees or contractors. It does not and can not make law. If we are to solve our gun crisis, the solution has to come from the House and Senate. We need the Dems to hold the House and get 4 more seats in the Senate. Why only 4? Because you don’t need 60 votes to change the rules. If Dems had 4 more they could let Manchin and Sinema (and maybe 1 or 2 more Senators) sit back and still have the votes to do the job.
Just the facts, m’am. “If you see something, say something”. The “something”….
“There are now an estimated 393 million guns in civilian hands in the U.S., the equivalent of 120 firearms per 100 citizens. That’s more than twice the per capita gun ownership rate of any other country in the world, and it means about a third of all the civilian guns on the planet belong to Americans. All told, more than 81 million Americans — an estimated 44% of all U.S. households — now own guns, with the average gun owner claiming five firearms for him- or herself. About 40 million guns are sold in the U.S. each year.
The toll of all these firearms is real. In Canada, 37% of all homicides involve guns. In Australia, that number is 13%; in the U.K., it is 4%. In the U.S., it is 79%.” No doubt the suicide stats are similar.
But guns don’t kill people, people kill people. And correlation doesn’t prove causation…it is just “suggestive”.
Another reason, if you need one, to move on to another country…
More guns=more shootings=more deaths
No gun ownership for anyone under the age of twenty-one.
We set age barriers to legal alcohol drinking and it works fairly well. We should be able to control gun sales.
The second amendment rights are not taken away just delayed until one reaches maturity.
Bill,
The Second Amendment “rights” are meant for maintaining a militia…at least as far as assault rifles are concerned. The Amendment was included to assure the slave-holding states had the legal right to arm themselves agains slave uprisings and to form posses to chase down runaways. It’s original inclusion was a codification of slavery and its economic preservation. Imagine, if you can, if the southern plantation owners had to pay 2-3 million people to harvest cotton. American cotton would no longer have been competitive on the world market. As it was, once GB abolished slavery and the revolution began, American foreign cotton sales plummeted, creating still more “hardship” for the white people owning the plantations.
Turns out that only a distinct minority of southern whites owned slaves; maybe 10%. So how did all the other white guys and girls in the South decide to die for the sake of the richest 10%? Sound familiar? How do 15% of the voting population manage to stay in power enough to disrupt our nation’s progress? That’s in today’s headlines. Geraldine is right. The gun stuff, abortions and MAGA bullshit are all distractions while the top tier grab for control over everything.
More simply put the 10% of today give not a single damn about the people. They care only about money and power. Their Greek Tragedy moment will come when they realize that their power came from exploiting others and that the “other” will rise up and kill them all. The Bolshevik uprising of barely 100 years ago showed the world how well those things work out.
It’s all about slavery and maintaining white superiority, to this very day.
The irony is, of course, that it is the actual inferiority of white culture and religion that causes the conflicts. We have an inferior white problem.
Two problems that every developed economy in the world but the US has fixed are personal arms regulation and health care delivery. Every one but us. One hundred of us die every day from lack of killing machine regulation and who knows how many from health care redistribution up?
We also know why, the root cause, our campaign finance regulations that promote wealth over voting as our government representative hiring and firing mechanism.
We have democracy, that should be the fix, but not as long as we get our electoral information from entertainment networks and vote what they tell us so we will feel good about being so smart.
Being smart is work, not entertainment.
Pete – you must have read “Entertaining Ourselves to Death” by Neal Postman. If not, you (and all) should. I just finished it and it explains a lot….from 1984, ironically….
Fascinating gun stuff…back at you NRA
https://news.yahoo.com/switzerland-stunningly-high-rate-gun-221301534.html
Mark Small,
You mentioned the NRA taking money from Russians. Did you know that when Trump could not get any mainstream money in his Primary run for president in 2016, that the NRA gave $40 million to the campaign?
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-24-2022
Like cars the death rate for guns needs to tackled like a public safety issue. Here are stats and some reasonable suggestions about what needs to happen, and this should not be behind a pay-wall.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/06/opinion/how-to-reduce-shootings.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUyYiZ_tU1Gw5CRWySB4B-8Vrf3L-Xnvs7nn74LS-TDjZF0KEJBM2a9kvQbqcmfNs02CiaQtBadr8zQfg4hsluA3tQcSj66J2VhMZCZCQztY-pV2gq3ozAGr1p-jPgNzm1bbonnbf64krcOn25DKCMzXQldlln9pRkJQup2WcahfuQSp4D0dl-2P8iB596VG1AMHHM56-0fk04bNaWbRjc6R00X_VZXVzQmN2a47EHeWZCGA6MDSM_sStntoQqaJ5AN73_LhUgZMP6nbwbb2RuJ4qiDJE6LJPGoUV7vWTUTJbU1AqfyXOwNQ&referringSource=articleShare
A friend posted on Facebook, concerning accusations from the far right that this shooting was actually done by 1. a trans woman, 2. and immigreant, or 3. a Democrat, that she wondered what they were trying to distract us from.
This is what I replied.
I think part of the functioning of the far right/Trump cult is that it generates craziness, which is part of the whole distraction that keeps people from figuring out that there is a conspiracy to replace our democracy with an authoritarian government. But it can also be to distract us into trying to defend immigrants, trans people and Democrats, instead of fighting for gun control. But from the perspective of the people running this authoritarian conspiracy, shootings are also a way to distract us from what they are trying to do. Charles Koch and his ilk only care about school shootings at all because they distract us from trying to save our democracy. The complexity of all of this is amazing until you remember that this has been going on since Columbus landed on Hispaniola. But until recently the right wing autocratic rich have been he happy with a democratic oligarchy. It has always been about distraction and control. To understand this better, read one of the more fascinating and most terrifying books I’ve read. Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States”.
So many good comments, so many bad congresspeople being fed money by the NRA. It reportedly gave $30m to Trump, in ’16, and other millions to Cruze. No wonder he always has some idiocy pouring out of his oral orifice!
Alongside the pictures that ought to be spread throughout the halls of congress, ought to be this note: “These children were the fetuses you so adamantly wanted to protect just a few years ago!!!!!!!”
Within the Uvalde situation, Ramos, having been confronted by police outside the school, to no avail, is living, or dying , proof of the falsehood of the NRA’s idiocy about a “good guy with a gun, can stop a bad guy with a gun.”
As a former high school teacher and currently a college professor, my students and I would be in much greater danger if I carried a gun to class – not just because I could discharge it accidentally causing injury or death to a student – but because I am a small woman and a large student could easily wrestle a gun away from me. Rather than arming teachers, maybe all students and teachers should go to school wearing body armor including helmets with full face shields? If people scream about wearing masks, they would scream about this.
Realistically, until teachers nationwide decide to elect officials who are serious about gun control, this will continue. This is possible since they got Tony Bennett out of office in Indiana. It may take a general nationwide teacher strike to do this but it may have to come to that.
Geraldine’s macro look today at what is really going on is accurate. The rich and corporate class in our country and probably in most countries are unconcerned with guns, poverty, race etc. only insofar as such atrocities affect their ability to prosper. Matter of fact, and though they would never admit it, they may welcome such distractions as school slaughters and abortion politics since such distractions provide cover for their only concerns, the acquisition of power and money. Example: Corporate profits are now at an all-time high and wages have gone up somewhat but such increases have been recaptured by increased pricing of guess who? The rich and corporate class – via inflation.
Thus the working class with their WSJ trumpeted wage raises amid labor shortages may have more money in their pockets but have more money going out of their pockets and may be worse off than they were before making more money (which, incidentally, also exposes such wage slaves to greater rates of state and federal taxation). So the deal is stacked in favor of the rich and corporate class (especially in monopoly areas) in that they can increase prices at will (which causes inflation and, uh, profits) but the working class has no corresponding means of evening the wage/price ratio which, incidentally, may explain the hostility to such as the Musks and Bezoses to unions.
Vern’s reference to cheap cotton due to free labor in the American South has a history. The looms of Leeds and Manchester depended upon such cheap cotton and we almost had a third war with England when Yankees blockaded Southern ports during the Civil War. The colonizing English were forced to instead import their cotton from Egypt.
Vernon Turner,
Absolutely insightful today! You hit a lot of nails square on the head. I agree with all of it!
JoAnn,
For what it’s worth, I’m liking your comments more and more everyday.
Everyone else, very good points.
Lester,
Right on! I like it.
Of course this is all being used to distract! When we’re talking about babies being murdered in school? Well, you’re not thinking about too much else. And, when you can keep things coming at the population, hot and heavy, a person doesn’t have time to analyze much. Misdirection the old switcheroo shell game. Something has to be a distraction to make people forget about that little thing called an insurrection! Or???
With no time to analyze the situation, not that it needs analyzing, the liars and obscurantists will filter more conspiracies out there in the midst of this tragedy claiming they have proof of whatever they might concoct in their mind. That will get people even more riled up. Because nobody is really digging into what happened. No one’s really digging into the real reasons behind any of this stuff. Dan brought out the Russians? Absolutely, they’ve been online on well-known blogs, and obscure blogs. Planting the seeds of hatred to speed up the decline of society here. It’s payback time for the collapse of the Soviet Union! After all, why would all of these Russians be into the NRA in the United states? Why would they invite individuals to Russia talking about gun rights? There are no gun rights in Russia! Just follow the money. The United States could obliterate most of Russia’s military in the Ukrainian region in a day! Do you think those generals will say, “yes comrade leader, I will push the button?” I think they know that would be suicide. And I’m sure they don’t want to destroy their own country, and bring about the death of everyone they know or love.
As I mentioned yesterday, or maybe it was the day before yesterday, why is Joe Biden saying, if Taiwan is attacked we will react militarily? But then turn around and allow the Russians to blockade the food and let it rot in the Ukraine. The Ukraine, the largest supplier of wheat in the world! Somebody’s giving out bad advice or someone’s off the rails, or, maybe it’s just time for these things to happen! I wouldn’t know, I’m not a sage! But I believe in history and, I believe in prophecies connected to it, that actually seem to be coming true right now. So, when you combine the two together, there is a real understanding of why things are happening. And, how to stop it! But, it won’t happen.
Greed and power is actually a suicide pact.
It’s like those that hunt monkeys in the congo, they put a big piece of fruit in a clay jar, the monkeys come along and stick their hand in the jar, they grab the fruit! But the fruit with the monkey’s hand around it will not fit through the mouth of the jar. The hunters just walk up to the monkey, and the monkey’s freaking out trying to pull his hand out with the fruit, and they whack them in the head! Then while he’s still wiggling around they cut the top of his head off and eat his brain. And honestly, I think a lot of these politicians have had their brains eaten! This next pandemic whether it’s monkeypox or whatever, is not being talked about! There’s a lot of reasons to have misdirection, obfuscation and lies!
patmcc, I sent an email to President Biden to do exactly what you suggested. I remember Emmit Tull’s mom being so angry that she had an open casket of her beloved son. I want to see more righteous action. Blur the faces, but don’t be afraid to show our representatives exactly what those guns do to a delicate, child’s body. If it were me, I would show my child’s body to the public. This is what the country needs — the truth – – which is often not pleasant.
Lester, thanks for the recommendation. Just borrowed it from the library. It seems full of exciting useful perspective on what has changed us culturally.
watched most of perrys propaganda from Uvalde. didnt relize the person who got in his face was Beto. the action and words from the guy in the blue shirt,on the stage(im guessin he was Uvaldes mayor) seems to confirm,hexas doesnt accept others opinions,unlesss its the ones who are white,and in control. the confrontation was not accepted,and the guy in the blue shirt on the stage,made a reference as, well, less than worthy, and defending the hexas goverment as we do as we please. the whole news confrance was a sham of indignities and plain ol we dont care how you think,this is our stage and presence. ive been in and out of hexas for decades.dealing with people who are less than worthy of the office they hold. its all a closed society and no one gets in unless you pull the bullshit like they do. when the head of the DPS started to rattle on about whatever he had to say, there were other channels. i was out working and didnt hear about this until after dark, but,one thing struck me froma black background commercial with some words about? but the bottom line,its too late, little did i know what it was about. that immediate reaction and getting it to a major channel was a feat ive never seen, maybe we need more. one thing i saved was a pic of cruz holding his head down like he was ashamed,or,praying? ill have that enlarged for a dart board. perry is a asshole, his whole legislature except for a rare few are no less. the mass bullying and confrontation that is everyday life in hexas is front and center. just drive their highways and witness lawnessness at its finest, ill take the jersey turnpike anyday.at least theres some enforcement there. everyone is armed who is white,like its some kind of merit badge, your over 18. the bigotry os emence, and i can see why some one could snap. the metal health was taken away by republicans because they dont see it as a health issue. maybe they need a therapist to deal with why they cant afford to, well, see the above. im sure hexas new,,,mental health is top of the line,and plenty to go around. hopefully its next to the govenors office..
hey Houston,, that NRA confrance,lest all join them, in mass,maybe that would keep the bigots and assholes,from getting in to spew more lies..
Beto,ya got a donation coming,,thanks,,, cya a whataburger…
A dream … that NRA decided to change its model after the example set by the American Automobile Association. Focus on safety on everything involving auto travel.
john sorg; it is worth a lot, thank you!
Joanne Classick; I totally agree with your comments, have always wondered why there is usually a battle to get pictures of crime victims entered by the prosecutors. That is why they are there, that is what the victim suffered, that is the crime. These latest mass shooting victims are now suffering from being in the public eye in political battles. I just read a news post that the husband of one of the murdered teachers has suffered a fatal heart attack. The victimization of those victims and their families continues and escalates before they have all been identified.
This is no longer an America to be proud of when none of us is safe anywhere in it.
Terry Gross had an outstanding interviewee on NPR today. Find it, absorb it, and learn from it. We are the choir, of course, but even the other side is not safe. You’ll want to hear the young woman’s story. Beyond chilling!
As an active Gun Violence Prevention advocate for many years I have always tried to keep the issue focused on one thing. It IS the gun. Any argument that does not address that singular topic moves the issue towards alternate realities.
The vast majority of honest and safe gun owners have brought this on themselves. The gun makers need to pay for all this new reality.
I propose we start showing the images of the murdered children in congress to those republicans who are opposed to regulation.
Start here!
Just like cars, guns need to be registered.
Just like cars, gun owners need to attend and pass a safety course. Hands on course.
Just like cars, owners need to have insurance. Accident insurance. Liability insurance.
Repeal PLCAA – if you don’t know what that is look it up. I am tired of explaining it to everyone
Close ALL loopholes about gun purchases and require 10 day waiting period with a complete background check.
It is the gun. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The purpose of a gun is to shoot a projectile at something.
Steve Bartram
PS Terry’s radio program is “Fresh Air.”
I agree with Steve that yes, it is the gun.
However, I’ve long felt that we should stop drawing a comparison to cars (safety, licensing, etc.) as there is no Constitutional guarantee for driving. The Constitution does address voting.
Looking at Indiana, there are the following requirements, which could also make common-sense requirements for gun ownership:
Registration is required to vote (so, registration could be required to own a gun, no?)
An individual must be a U.S. citizen who has resided in the precinct in which the individual will be voting for at least 30 days preceding the next election.
The individual must be at least 18 years old by the time of the next general or municipal election.
Proof of residence is required to register.
The deadline to register to vote is 29 days before the next election. (this sounds like a 29 day waiting period to me.)
Indiana requires voters to present photo identification at the polls (so, ID could be required to purchase a gun or ammo, no?)
Identification must meet the following criteria:
Identification must include a photo of the voter.
Identification must include a name that conforms to the voter’s registration record.
Identification must be current.
Identification must be issued by the state of Indiana or the U.S. government.
This only addresses registration for owning and to govern purchase of weapons. This doesn’t begin to address *which* weapons should be sold or owned. But it seems to be a completely logical, and legal, way to address an issue that, at least in Indiana, has been thrown out the window.
With any luck the American people will wake up and realize that many members of Congress are there to serve their own egos and not to serve the American public. I wonder just how quickly Congress would enact gun control of any sort if their own children or granchildren were injured by a school shooter. Realizing that better background checks and banishment of assault weapons will not stop these unnecessary deaths entirely, surely they would be a movement in the right direction. Hopefully, all voters will think about the safety of their own family members when it comes time to either return or dismiss the current members of Congress who continue to send “thoughts and prayers” and do nothing else about this horrendous issue.