Better Grasp of Words than I Have

Bobservation: We Don't Care 

"....Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, who doesn’t think gun control, gun licensing, gun registration, a full ban on assault weapons will stop these mass shootings was paid $442,000.00 from the NRA; that’s a lot of money to keep getting you reelected while children are gunned down.

Louisiana GOP Congressman Steve Scalise has $396,000.00 reasons to not vote for stricter gun laws, thanks to the NRA.

Senator GOP John Cornyn of Texas earned some $340,000.00 while kids in his state are murdered. GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, pocketed  $284,000.00 from the NRA to look the other way, while GOP Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky took in $247,000.00 in blood money. GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, GOP Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California, GOP Congress man Pete Sessions of Texas, and GOP Senator Steve Daines of Montana, also padded their election coffers with nearly a quarter of a million dollars each from the NRA.

Notice that the politicians raking in the most money from the NRA, and the ones most adamant about having no need for gun control, sensible, responsible gun control, are all Republicans.

Money talks, children die; we don’t care.

And those in the GOP who don’t work in politics and don’t cash NRA checks offer up their own solutions … Maureen O’Connell, a former FBI agent, says schools should invest in “ballistic blankets” and in obscuring windows, to keep shooter at bay. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton thinks teachers should be armed. Not a single word about stopping the flood of guns  into murderers’ hands, just ways to sell more guns.

Don’t stop the shooter; don’t stop the lunatic with the gun.

The hypocrisy of Texas’ GOP Governor Greg Abbott waging a war against face masks in schools during a pandemic, but who cares nothing about keeping guns out of the hands of madmen who shoot schoolchildren isn’t lost on me.

The hypocrisy of GOP and their war against abortion this week, talking about fetal heartbeats, when they don’t care at all about the dead 19 school children, each of whom had … had … a heartbeat isn’t lost on me.

The hypocrisy of the GOP who have traded out their ridiculous “thoughts and prayers” responses of for a new message about “lifting up in prayer” the survivors and the families of those whose children and loved ones were murdered isn’t lost on me."

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2022

yes, the problem IS the guns

We are a violent people. We are a violent people that loves guns more than we love our friends, neighbors, more than we love our children. This country has been at war, and sometimes more than one war at a time, for nearly every year of our national existence. We have more guns in this country than people, approximately 120 guns to every 100 people and we protect those guns far more than we protect our citizens. We worship guns, churches bless them, families' Christmas photos show every member brandishing a gun, after every mass murder the answer is not restricting guns but always more guns. Nineteen elementary school children and three adults were murdered yesterday and right on cue the gun nuts clamor that the solution to school shootings is not restricting sales or requiring background checks or instituting a waiting period between purchase and acquisition or requiring training or requiring insurance or outlawing semiautomatic weapons and high capacity magazines or any other measure to reduce the ridiculous amount of guns but giving the teachers guns to protect the children because of course that's all that's needed, never mind that once gunfire erupts it's absolute chaos as people try to flee. Never mind that trained security guards with guns on site of these mass shootings are always killed. It's not like these shooters announce their intention before they open fire.

We have unrestricted access to guns, you need only be 18 to buy one legally. I've been to estate sales where guns were sold no questions asked and the only restriction to buying a gun from an individual is having the right amount of money. In Texas almost anybody can carry a gun without a permit thanks to our governor. Guns are not the problem, they like to tell us. It's mental illness. And then they fight against national health and mental care. But we don't have any more mental illness than any of the other affluent first world nation and they do not have the gun violence we do. A gun cannot walk up to person and discharge itself, true, but all the gun violence victims would still be alive if guns weren't at hand. So yes, guns are the problem. Guns and hate and violent rhetoric from politicians, even some religious pastors, against those who aren't white straight christian conservative males fearful of losing their supremacy. Our national identity, our history, is war and violence and cruelty born out of imperialism and racism and sexism and demonization of other religions. Already we have more mass shootings than days of the year this year. This is not mental illness, this is a society where violence and murder against the other is seen as an acceptable response to annoyance. How many people would still be alive if that 'good guy with a gun' hadn't had a gun at hand when his anger flared or a cold blooded response rose to irritation? Because these shootings aren't committed by criminals. They are fueled by hate and anger and some misplaced feeling that they are being oppressed. Well, everybody with a gun is a good guy with a gun until that moment they aren't, when they consciously become criminals. It is rarely the oppressed who commit these atrocities. Where are we as a nation when the most recent ex-president is openly calling for a civil war because he was not re-elected.

So what's the answer? The obvious answer that has worked in every other country is to severely restrict guns; who can have them, the kind they can have, the amount they can have, and what they need to do to have them but that will never happen here because our politicians are cowards. They want that money from the NRA more than they want to protect our children, they want to keep their jobs more than they want to do their jobs regardless of what the people want. And unfortunately and to our detriment, a good portion of our population is just fine with all this gun violence as long as it doesn't touch them or their guns, so long as they can continue their own violence, hatefulness, and racism unimpeded.

The fact is, we are not safe in this country, none of us. We are not safe in our homes when stray bullets zip through, we are not safe if we park our car on a public street, we are not safe in our cars from someone we inadvertently cut off, we are not safe at a concert or a nightclub, we are not safe in our workplaces or schools, we are not safe hanging out listening to music with our friends, and now not even our democracy is safe from those with a gun and a bone to pick. Getting rid of weapons no citizen needs or should have a right to won't get rid of the hate and anger and innate violence Americans harbor but it will end these mass shootings. We have only to look at other nations with strict gun control laws to see the truth of this.

We are a nation rotten to the core when murdering 19 children only elicits 'thoughts and prayers' from the very people who allow it to happen. We are a nation rotten to the core because this isn't the first time or even the second time but just the latest in a long string of such atrocities.

It didn't used to be like this in this country. Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter today is on the history and rise of gun ownership and gun violence in this country. You can read it here.

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