Seventeen people killed, fourteen others wounded in the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida yesterday.
Thirty mass shootings (i.e., where 4 or more people are shot), including eighteen school shootings, so far this year.
So here we are yet again, in a country ruled not by popular will, but by a handful of gun manufacturers, their lobbyists (if you want to talk about "pure evil," look no further than the National
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, from the State where the gut- wrenching Sandy Hook school massacre occurred in 2012, speaks for us:
Don't tell me tomorrow isn't the appropriate time to debate gun violence. If you're a political leader doing nothing about this slaughter, you're an accomplice.— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 15, 2018
BONUS: Sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump's FY 2019 budget would cut the funding for the Federal gun background check system by 16% ($12 million). They're consistently evil.
BONUS II: Former Florida Republican Rep. David Jolly on CNN--
“The idea of gun policy in the Republican party is to try to get the speaking slot at the NRA and prove [to] that constituency that you’re further right.”He further urged that, to have any hope of sane gun laws, voters must "First, flip the House. Flip the House."
BONUS III: Bess Kalb (a writer for Jimmy Kimmel) has responses to Twitter reactions from Republican pols, noting their NRA payoffs.
BONUS IV: Here's why Florida is such a welcoming place for gun violence.
What is the answer to school shootings? We know that the shooters are most often young white males with troubled backgrounds who have access to guns. They are often outsiders, bullied or rebelling against others in their group. Their profiles are remarkably related.
ReplyDeleteThe killings haven't been knives or bombs or karate chops. They've been guns, assault weapons, and lots of ammo. The problem is troubled teens or men who want revenge on society and they want to either capture headlines as a badass who will never be ignored or die in a blaze of gunfire. And they can easily get their hands on any guns they want.
Sadly, the NRA has bottomless pockets and are willing to dump billions of dollars into furthering their Second Amendment dreams. We've had the majorities in the House and Senate and still haven't been able to stop the gun proliferation. A school filled with little kids became a slaughterhouse and we did nothing. A concert, a church, more schools...all filled with injured and dead human beings. And all we get is “thoughts and prayers”.
What can we do? What will work? I never want to be complacent or feel like these murders are the price we pay in modern society. Other countries don't have this problem. We have got to make it stop.
donnah - There's such a resilient gun culture in this country, propped up by the gun manufacturers and their coin-operated pols, that it's hard to see the "genie" ever fully put back in the bottle. It seems that at the now rare times when "we" get control of government (president, House and 60+ Senate majority) there are either other priorities (economic crash), and/or there are just enough fearful Democrats who will cave to the gun lobby and join Republicans to foil even the most tame gun control measures. It's hard to imagine now, but remember, we had a ban on assault weapons (like the AR-15) and large capacity magazines in this country from 1994 - 2004. Seems like a million years ago and a million miles away.
ReplyDeleteBut we have to start somewhere, and hope more sane policies prevail someday. We have to keep the pressure on and getting others to be single- issue voters like the gun humpers are.
Australia had an increasing gun violence problem and put stricter gun laws in place, including a gun buyback program. I know we've had local level gun buyback programs across the country with mixed success. Sometimes people just want cash for decrepit old military guns or handguns or discarded weapons, but there are legitimate trades as well. We have to look at all of the possible ways to decrease the number of guns and the access to them. We can't let these killings be “normal”.
ReplyDeletedonnah - You're right. Perhaps most of the pushback will have to be on the state and local level, even with modest or imperfect methods. So far we're in a losing fight to keep the carnage down, but even saving one life is worth the efforts.
ReplyDeleteWe threw in the towel after Sandy Hook. The sight of children in Florida running from a school with their hands up to show they have no weapons is a truly horrifying, to say nothing of hearing the number of victims. How many more before November? We NEED the House!
ReplyDeleteDiva - if Sandy Hook wouldn't move those vile jackasses, nothing would. Time's up for them.
ReplyDelete