Mass Shootings

[2ndRyan]

"the mature ones seem to understand that we can't protect them" That is a quote from a text from my son, a sixth grade language arts/social studies teacher in Philadelphia of whom I had asked how did you talk about Uvalde today. In place of "can't", I would substitute "won't". To the NRA and its like-minded gun rights crowd, the dead angels of Uvalde and so many other places are inconvenient collateral damage. They have no intention of changing their course.

I may write a few more politicians (as I've already done). As far as I know, I have never voted for anyone that's taken a dollar of NRA "blood money". For that is what it is: avert your eyes from the slaughter in which we are complicit.

In the meantime, I will continue to pray for my son and his unprotected 11 year olds.

[Massholya]

May 25, 2022 9:01:48 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

May 25, 2022 7:32:02 GMT -5 tashoya said:

Most teachers I know can't teach and they went to school to learn to do that. Sure, just give them guns. I'm sure that'll go well.

The MAGA GOP is so confused. Apparently, the demented MAGA GOP wants to arm the very same teachers who they have accused of "grooming" children for pedophilia and teaching "critical race theory"?? Huh?

And never mind the fact that armed police encountered the guy outside BEFORE the shooting and those “good guys with guns” DIDN’T stop the “bad guy with a gun”. So, yes arming teachers is surely the answer. The real answer couldn’t possibly be keeping a bad guy from ever getting a gun in the first place.

[Massholya]

Someone should take a projector and project images of the dead children on the building where this NRA event takes place later this week.

[2ndRyan]

"the mature ones seem to understand that we can't protect them" That is a quote from a text from my son, a sixth grade language arts/social studies teacher in Philadelphia of whom I had asked how did you talk about Uvalde today. In place of "can't", I would substitute "won't". To the NRA and its like-minded gun rights crowd, the dead angels of Uvalde and so many other places are inconvenient collateral damage. They have no intention of changing their course.

I may write a few more politicians (as I've already done). As far as I know, I have never voted for anyone that's taken a dollar of NRA "blood money". For that is what it is: avert your eyes from the slaughter in which we are complicit.

In the meantime, I will continue to pray for my son and his unprotected 11 year olds.

[SSHoya]

Watching that hypocrite POS Gov. Abbott in his press conference - the guy who signed the bill in Texas allowing an 18-year old to buy guns without any license, training or background check. Texas LEOs were opposed to the bill. And Abbott will be addressing his NRA overlords this weekend in Houston. Not one mention of gun control or the availability of guns.

Save your crocodile tears, Abbott is just another MAGA GOP cultist.

You Texans get the state govt you deserve by voting in MAGA GOP cultists. Your govt is an effing joke.

Good for O'Rourke's interruption.

[tashoya]

May 25, 2022 11:46:23 GMT -5 Massholya said:

May 25, 2022 9:01:48 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

The MAGA GOP is so confused. Apparently, the demented MAGA GOP wants to arm the very same teachers who they have accused of "grooming" children for pedophilia and teaching "critical race theory"?? Huh?

And never mind the fact that armed police encountered the guy outside BEFORE the shooting and those “good guys with guns” DIDN’T stop the “bad guy with a gun”. So, yes arming teachers is surely the answer. The real answer couldn’t possibly be keeping a bad guy from ever getting a gun in the first place.

[SSHoya]

Pro-death MAGA GOP hypocrites. Enjoy your NRA convention.

In the hours after at least 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., in the deadliest mass shooting at an American school in nearly a decade, Republicans in Congress joined the world in mourning the latest gun massacre.

But as some offered their thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims, critics have been quick to point out the millions of dollars that GOP lawmakers have taken from the National Rifle Association in contributions over the years.

Nineteen current or recent Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Joni Ernst (Iowa), have taken at least $1 million each in campaign contributions from the NRA over their careers, according to data compiled by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in 2019.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/25/school-shooting-uvalde-republicans-nra/

[tashoya]

May 25, 2022 14:08:27 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Pro-death MAGA GOP hypocrites. Enjoy your NRA convention.

In the hours after at least 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., in the deadliest mass shooting at an American school in nearly a decade, Republicans in Congress joined the world in mourning the latest gun massacre.

But as some offered their thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims, critics have been quick to point out the millions of dollars that GOP lawmakers have taken from the National Rifle Association in contributions over the years.

Nineteen current or recent Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Joni Ernst (Iowa), have taken at least $1 million each in campaign contributions from the NRA over their careers, according to data compiled by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in 2019.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/25/school-shooting-uvalde-republicans-nra/

Correct. In the eyes of "Republicans," the real tragedy is them having to hear about their hypocrisy with regard to guns.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/o-rourke-confronts-abbott-at-press-conference-on-texas-school-shooting/ar-AAXHzQp?li=BBorjTa

[SSHoya]

Good column (and I'm not generally a fan of Sally Jenkins).

Never mind whether you agree with him on gun reform. What matters is that unlike a lot of siloed athletes, the Golden State Warriors coach has actually lived the grief of which he speaks, not merely played out false dramas on courts or in demonstrations, and he has struggled mightily for every ounce of self-possession he has. When it wavers, as it did Tuesday night after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Tex., when his voice cracks and his palm hits the table, you remember what’s under there, and it renews your respect for the healing resolution he has found for himself in the game.

www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/25/steve-kerr-shooting-father/

[DanMcQ]

[SSHoya]

Every other democracy makes some considerable effort to keep guns away from dangerous people, and dangerous people away from guns. For many years—and especially since the massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School almost a decade ago—the United States has put more and more guns into more and more hands: 120 guns per 100 people in this country. The years of the pandemic have been the years of the greatest gun sales in U.S. history: almost 20 million guns sold in 2020; another 18.5 million sold in 2021. No surprise, those two years also witnessed a surge in gun violence: the spectacular human butchery of our recurring mass slaughters; the surge of one-on-one lethal criminality; the unceasing tragic toll of carelessness as American gun owners hurt and kill their loved ones and themselves.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/uvalde-texas-robb-elementary-school-shooting-gun-violence/631649/?utm_term=2022-05-25T20%3A56%3A40&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1i1buT3hIW2pvamK_v_3KpYmMyUCB8j86ae16dRGgjIBL2q_L8lZFSqDM

[SSHoya]

Excellent take down of the hypocrisy of the MAGA GOP and gun control.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/25/republican-deceitful-dodges-gun-control-man-traps-ballistic-blankets-more-guns/

[hoyarooter]

May 25, 2022 11:51:24 GMT -5 Massholya said:

Someone should take a projector and project images of the dead children on the building where this NRA event takes place later this week.

There's no reason to stop with the most recent bloodbath (and it likely won't be the most recent when the convention actually takes place). How about including all of the victims of gun violence just from this year? Plus Sandy Hook.

[hoyarooter]

May 25, 2022 8:25:19 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Good kernels of truth in this abstract. A culture change is needed. It took over 50 years to change the tobacco culture and it will take as long to change the gun culture as much like tobacco, the NRA, gun industry and MAGA GOP have conflated guns and the 2nd Amendment with "freedom and liberty." The exact same marketing scheme was employed by Big Tobacco.

This article compares the landscape of tobacco regulations to the landscape of gun regulations, with a focus on regulations that target youth. This article argues that guns are significantly less regulated compared to tobacco, despite the frequency with which each product causes significant harm to both self and other.

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-medicine-and-ethics/article/abs/gun-regulation-exceptionalism-and-adolescent-violence-a-comparison-to-tobacco/A220D5EBD38427BEAA60D54CAAD9D508

Not that long ago, cigarettes were completely woven into American culture. The Marlboro Man, posters telling us: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette,” even the armrests on planes and all our cars were designed for smokers.

“While tobacco companies — like gun manufacturers — spent a lot of money trying to create a narrative that those working to reduce tobacco use were depriving people of their ‘right to smoke’ or at least their right to ‘choose’ to smoke, they were never able to mobilize smokers because so many of them regretted ever having become addicted,” Myers said.

Gun manufacturers don’t want to talk about dead kids in schools; they’re framing the issue as one about individual rights and freedom.

www.washingtonpost.com/local/can-americans-ditch-guns-the-way-we-ditched-cigarettes/2018/05/21/c5394db0-5cfd-11e8-b2b8-08a538d9dbd6_story.html

50 years may not be enough. The tobacco lobby didn't have a grossly misconstrued 2nd Amendment to fall back on.

[DanMcQ]

[DanMcQ]

Shame on the power hungry politicians who enabled this. Shame.

[DanMcQ]

[SSHoya]

Nothing more repugnant and vile than the MAGA GOP. The pro-death cult.

In the years after Sandy Hook, the NRA has been hollowed out and weakened by scandal. But no matter. The gun lobby as it exists today is a citizen-grounded movement that retains a stranglehold on the Republican Party. Instead of moves to tighten gun laws, legislatures in Republican-led states, among them Texas, have acted to loosen them.

These actions further enshrine the gun culture as part of America’s heritage, all in the name of the Second Amendment, though it’s questionable that the Founders envisioned the constitutional right to bear arms serving as such a shield in the face of mass shootings of children.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/25/americas-new-norm-why-are-we-willing-live-with-this-carnage/

[Elvado]

May 26, 2022 7:57:08 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Nothing more repugnant and vile than the MAGA GOP. The pro-death cult.

In the years after Sandy Hook, the NRA has been hollowed out and weakened by scandal. But no matter. The gun lobby as it exists today is a citizen-grounded movement that retains a stranglehold on the Republican Party. Instead of moves to tighten gun laws, legislatures in Republican-led states, among them Texas, have acted to loosen them.

These actions further enshrine the gun culture as part of America’s heritage, all in the name of the Second Amendment, though it’s questionable that the Founders envisioned the constitutional right to bear arms serving as such a shield in the face of mass shootings of children.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/25/americas-new-norm-why-are-we-willing-live-with-this-carnage/

I am quite sure the Founding Fathers never contemplated the protection of a “well-regulated” militia as insuring private ownership of guns or the protection of automatic or other semi-automatic weapons.

And warts and all, I cannot fathom that the Founders would ever have protected the slaughter of innocent children.

[DanMcQ]