As I mentioned briefly last week, it has happened again. Another deranged shooter with a military-style weapon and a mountain of ammunition. This time the target was a high school campus in Florida; last time it was somewhere else that didn’t expect it. The young people who emerged in one piece from that atrocity have demonstrated an emotional and intellectual maturity, an eloquence, and a remarkable facility for organizing that puts us all to shame. When I see them, I hang my head – we, the older generations, simply are not good. Let them take the reins.
Our cheese-headed president had some of them over on Wednesday, along with survivors of other mass shootings, for a “listening session”. What has Trump taken away from this heinous remake of previous atrocities? Well, he is telling Beauregard to look into banning bump stocks, again. That is something the Justice Department has been working on for months, since the Las Vegas massacre. The problem is that the administration is probably barred from doing so without action by the Congress, so Trump’s NRA patrons can rest easy. He also suggested arming teachers, janitorial staff, and, I believe, students, claiming that that Gym teacher could have ended the whole shooting rampage if he had had a gun.
Okay, well … I may be the only American to remember this (I hope not), but back in the seventies, this latter suggestion was put forward as a joke on All In The Family – the right-wing caricature Archie Bunker was invited to do a guest editorial on television, and he advocated stopping airline hijackers by arming all the passengers. What was a joke in 1972 is now consider a serious policy proposal. That’s how far we’ve come, people. And this is how far political leaders will go to avoid dealing with an issue. The money is all on one side, and our kids are on the other. If we leave the decision to our current crop of politicians, the kids don’t stand a chance.
Sure, there are something like 10 to 15 million AR-15 style weapons in the United States. That doesn’t mean we can’t do something about this. First thing is to stop selling them. Second, in my opinion, you should be required to register military assault-style weapons and handle it in an appropriate way (i.e. lock it up at appropriate times). If you don’t register it, you can’t keep it. They are simply too destructive to treat like a 30-30 hunting rifle. Third: extensive background checks for all gun purchases (since Trump loves the concept of “extreme vetting,” this shouldn’t be a problem for him). Fourth, no more high-capacity clips and new limits on ammunition sales.
That’s where we need to go if we’re serious about protecting kids. Up to us, people. Elect a Congress and a president that will do it.
luv u,
jp
He certainly deserves it, even if the detente between the two Koreas falls apart. At a time of almost unprecedented tension, and despite the overbearing patrimony of their American “ally”, the South Korean president agreed to what was a stunning demonstration of unity in the midst of one of the most broadly watched sporting events in the world. Sure, it was symbolic, but symbolism can be powerful and it can drive policy. North and South Koreans marching in under a unified flag provided such a stunningly memorable image, I am likely to remember this Winter Olympics far longer than any previous ones. (And I have seen far less of it, as it happens.) The Trump administration seemed flummoxed over this; they deployed Pence, spouting some bellicose rhetoric, but it fell kind of flat.
Based on the evident facts of the massacre in Las Vegas, it’s way past time to move that line a bit south from where it’s been over the past couple of decades. I know my gun enthusiast friends bristle at the thought of restricting “assault rifles”, largely on the basis of the fact that the term is not sufficiently defined and, like all terms, highly subject to interpretation. Fair enough. But it seems to me we are in need of restrictions on the actual firepower represented by these weapons (particularly when modified, as the Las Vegas shooter’s rifles were, to operate as automatic weapons) rather than the specific design. Nine rounds a second seems kind of excessive, for instance. Is there any earthly reason why someone using a gun for self-defense, hunting, or other varieties of personal amusement would need to shoot more than a round or two per second?
God, I’m sick of this grisly movie, running over and over again – innocents cut down in large numbers by some psycho bastard with an easily obtainable assault rifle. The graves are not even filled in before AR-15s start flying off the shelves, hastily purchased by paranoid hobbyists who see black helicopters everywhere. One dealer in California, I believe, claimed that while he normally sells 15 of these death machines a day (!), that rose to 15 an hour after Orlando. Bonanza, in more ways than one.
The shooting cannot surprise us, any more than extreme weather can in the wake of Sandy and Katrina. We go through this process every few weeks. We see the head shaking, the somber tones of voice, the promises to do more … and then we’re back at the beginning again. In America, each day is a new beginning; yesterday is forgotten with the next sunrise. Some see this as our promise as a nation, but it’s more of a curse. We keep tripping over the same fold in the carpet, again and again. Somehow, we are helpless.