And so we go through this once again, where somebody guns down a large number of people and Republican politicians scramble to find any reason to blame other than the one that stares them in the face and that is the easy access to high-powered weapons. What is clear is that the present system of background checks is utterly inadequate to prevent such carnages because it takes only one person with just one weapon to cause so many deaths.
One thing that has happened is that the politicians favored refuge statement offering ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the victims is being increasingly mocked right to their faces as the evasive tactic it clearly is, as this video shows.
The Newtown murders a little over five years ago was for me the watershed moment because it revealed so clearly how these legislators had sold what can laughably be referred to as their souls to the gun lobby. If the murder of 20 white, middle class six-year olds (plus six teachers) was not going to get them to do something, it was clear that almost nothing will.
We have seen that mass deaths of white people, people of color, very young children, adolescents, middle class, and poor have all failed to sway the legislators to defy the gun lobby and institute reasonable limitations on gun ownership. There is only one class of people where mass deaths have not occurred, and that is rich and powerful people. And these are the only people who matter in America today.
It is clear that it does not matter in the least what happens to the country or to the people at large who live in it. As long as this narrow class of people is unaffected, it may as well have not happened. This cartoon by Bruce McKinnon gets it exactly right.
Jimmy Kimmel excoriates the excuses given by politicians.
Since I don’t live in the USA, my first reaction to the news was just about the same as my reaction to the report of a suicide bomber in Damascus or a car bomb in Kabul. It happens.
I am horrified by any of the three but they happen all the time and one becomes a bit inured to them.
That I am inured to mass shootings in the USA probably should be worrying as I live in Canada but until the US starts seriously dealing first, with the guns floating around the country and second, with some of the social and cultural issues that seem to underlie these atrocities I’ll continue to wake up to a news report about another mass murder in the USA and I’ll shrug and go on making the tea.
I’m not sure even that will be enough, given that a Republican Congressman has been shot without causing much in the way of actual concern from the politicians owned by the gun lobby:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting
A teenage boy is in the news, in New Zealand, for having been prosecuted for a plan he had to run people down with a car (which he didn’t execute because he couldn’t figure out how to kill as many as he wanted).
Reported as ‘radicalised online’ (not a lot of details attendant) it has been commented by some that had we weapons as easily available to children as the U.S he would probably have executed a mass killing by that easy means.
Regulating the availability and storage of weapons works.
Jenora @2 has it dead right, I thought of the same incident. They don’t even care if *they* die on this one, weirdly. I guess it’s nice they believe in something that strongly, but it makes me wish they were called to prove it more often.
Jenora @#2 and Great @#4,
I thought of that incident too but no one died so by US standards, it did not really matter.
no one died so by US standards, it did not really matter
A rather sad indictment of the country.
What amazes me is the remarkable insularity of US politicians. Far too often they claim that more restrictive gun laws would be ineffective, it’s nonsense. There are numerous international examples of effective firearm regulation. Of course foreigners don’t matter, it’s all about the US.
@ 7 rjw1
But, but …
Those restrictive gun laws in Australia turned the country into a dictatorship. Refugees fleeing the Australian tyranny are washing up on California beaches as I type.
rjw1@7,
I call it OWHITUSAC syndrome. (Only What Happens In The USA Counts.)
Way things are going you might yet get a really radical left going in the USA. You’ll know when that’s happened when the class of people above have good reason to fear not only for themselves but for loved ones too.
Not saying that’s desirable but if nothing else works, what you going to do? A question Americans are going to have to ask themselves increasingly often if the far right become further entrenched.
Only in America is a conservative party bought and paid for by the obesely rich labelled leftist. I refer to the Democratic party. The other party has been taken over by the criminally rich largely by pandering to undereducated rural hicks telling them they don’t need no lernin stick to yer by bulls.
Just what is the intersection between young earth creationism and the Trump base? Rhetorical question.