UVALDE, TX—In the hours following a violent rampage in Texas in which a lone attacker killed at least 21 individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Idaho resident Kathy Miller, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
See also: Buffalo, Milwaukee, Dayton, Indianapolis, Boulder, Atlanta, San Jose, El Paso, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Thousand Oaks, Santa Fe, Virginia Beach, Bakersfield, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, San Bernadino, Roseburg, Isla Vista, Charleston, and this could go on all evening, but I'm tired of typing.
Addendum: So who's to blame???
“It’s the parents,” Pollack told Ingraham. “It’s your responsibility where you’re sending your children to school … You need to check where your kids go to school. You need to go back to school and see. Is there a single point of entry? Do you have guards at the school?”He went on to suggest that it’s better for parents to take their kids out “of public school and put them in a private school because a lot of these private schools, they take security way more serious … Parents it’s your responsibility where you take your children.” Ingraham was very pleased with that analysis. “Andrew is exactly right,” she concluded.Pollack has previously expressed the idea that regulating guns is not the answer to preventing school shootings, and has advocated for schools to put in more “safety” measures like barriers, bulletproof glass and security officers. Ingraham pressed him on that point, stating that “[schools] still don’t have those safety mechanisms in place”.There you go: it’s all the parents fault! If you don’t have the money to send your kids to private school then it’s your fault if they get shot!
Here's another analysis of absurd claims and conspiracy theories.
Related: Tearful Uvalde Residents Thank Police for Protecting Parking Lot from Gunman.
The same song, the same dance. We will never learn.
ReplyDeleteI would not oppose Australian-style gun reform, but that hardly gets to the question of a culture/society producing more psychopaths. Assuming these mass shooting incidents are the tip of an iceberg of deep dysfunction, which I'd argue they are: https://www.zurich.com/en/knowledge/topics/global-risks/decline-human-empathy-creates-global-risks-age-of-anger
ReplyDeleteThe same Pro Lifers, the same people who vote against mental health programs are the same folk who refuse to save the lives of children lost to assault weapons
ReplyDeleteand blame it instead on mental health.
The same Pro Choicers, the same people who vote against mandatory minimum sentences for handgun violations, are the same folk who refuse to save the lives of children lost to handgun violence and blame it instead on inequity.
DeleteThe public schools in a city near me held a memorial yesterday for the 12 children killed this year by gun violence. No assault weapons were used (the state has a ban on assault weapons). All were African-American, as were most of the more than 300 people killed or wounded THIS YEAR in the city. More than 1,000 people shot last year. Mr. Biden has not visited nor given an impassioned speech. Illegal possession of a handgun in the city is a misdemeanor. This city and state has been run by Democrats for many decades. You could wave a magic wand and make all assault weapons vanish (wouldn't that be grand) off the planet, and still more than a thousand people will be shot in the city this year.
Everyone can play the blame game, but it does not accomplish anything...
You must not be talking about Chicago, a few miles from the Indiana state line where almost all of the guns involved in crime in the city are bought, because that state has not 'been run by Democrats for many decades' (there have been more Republican than Democratic governors in the past 50 or so years, many of whom have spent time behind bars). Nor are you really talking about pro-choicers when you say they are against mandatory sentences for handgun violations, although some small percentage may be. It's almost like the violence we're seeing has nothing to do with those strawman arguments but instead comes from systemic racism (the actual historical reason for police forces, gun wankery, etc. in the U.S.), which is why so many inner-city black and brown children suffer and die.
Delete"Nor are you really talking about pro-choicers when you say they are against mandatory sentences for handgun violations, although some small percentage may be."
DeleteOh yes, I am really talking about pro-choicers. In a state where abortion is legal at any point in a pregnancy (and has been for more than 25 years), the city council (all democrats) recently voted to set aside funds for people who wish to come here for an abortion. The funds will pay for lodging and food. At the same time, the city delegation to the legislature again refused to push for a bill to make illegal possession of a handgun a felony, with a mandatory minimum 2 year sentence. Neither the mayor nor any member of city council supported the bill. One of the former mayors was recently released from federal prison. And yeah, they blame systemic racism for any and all violent crime. The last Republican mayor of the city was elected in 1963. No Republican candidate since that time has received even 25% of the vote in a general election. 7 of the last 8 mayors are Black.
But yeah, close to 7,000 people have been shot in the city in the past 7+ years because Republicans won't vote to ban assault weapons. It would be nice if they would, but how would that stop the violence in many major cities?
If I may repost a comment on the tragedy from user skyblueand black from Reddit:
ReplyDelete"Yeah, what I find concerning, as an archaeology student, is there are plenty of ancient civilizations that practiced child sacrifice from time to time, but in several cases, we find that at some point, it ramped up. Just a few years ago, for example, the remains of more than 200 sacrificed Chimú children were unearthed in Peru. This didn't happen over the course of decades, it was a single event (though it must have taken days) about 500 years ago. It's the largest known example of mass child sacrifice, but hardly the only one. We've probably all heard of King Herod's Massacre of the Innocents, though we don't have any good sources for numbers on that.
"My point is that when a society gets to the point where killing large numbers of children is acceptable as the price of that society's success, that society is doomed. The Chimú lasted maybe a few decades after the slaughter of their children before being conquered by the Inca. Herod's reign -- and life -- was already running out when he gave his mad order. There have been 27 school shootings (not churches or markets, just schools) in the US this year alone, and I can't shake the feeling that the US is awfully close to the event horizon of societal collapse, if it hasn't already crossed it."
It's an uplifting story, really.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theonion.com/tearful-uvalde-residents-thank-police-for-protecting-pa-1848982023
It's still there - I just effed up the link. Fixed. Tx.
ReplyDelete