The Trump gang does not want us to talk about climate change in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. They don’t want us to politicize climate change: that is a privilege they reserve for themselves, with the generous assistance of the fossil fuel industry.
Granted, there have been a few other things going on lately, like the destruction of much of Houston, Florida and our federal government. But lost among the news blitz is the fact that eight people were shot to death last Sunday night in Plano, Texas.
The same playbook is pulled out whenever there is a mass shooting in the United States: Those who find the use of guns to kill people morally abhorrent are cautioned against politicizing the tragedy of a mass killing out of respect for the dead—and the NRA. We are supposed to follow the Republicans’ lead and restrict ourselves to offering thoughts and prayers in lieu of doing the hard work of discovering the causes and possible cures for the underlying issues.
Well, since climate change is out, let’s talk about Plano, and the domestic terror that resulted in the shooting of eight people who only wanted to enjoy a Dallas Cowboys football game.
On Sunday, Meredith Lane Hight hosted her first party as a single woman after leaving her husband of six years. What had started out as a happy marriage disintegrated over the past few years as he lost his job and the family discovered his drinking problems.
Meredith filed for divorce in July. It was then that she told her parents that Spencer had been violent at least twice — including a time last fall when he slammed her face against a wall. But Lane said her daughter hadn't reported the incidents to police.
They separated in March, with Meredith remaining in the Plano house that the couple purchased in 2015. The 27-year-old woman invited friends over for a cook-out and a party to watch the Dallas Cowboys’ football game on Sunday. The afternoon began with the Atlanta Falcons/Chicago Bears game before the Cowboys took on the New York Giants.
Around 8 PM that evening, Meredith’s estranged husband, Spencer Hight, showed up at her home. Crystal Sugg, an employee at a nearby nursing home, heard a loud argument outside the Hight home.
"The arguing is what brought me outside," she told FOX 4. "You could tell it was getting disturbing -- that something was about to happen."
Sugg said that the man pulled out his gun after the woman had turned to go back into the house and "just started releasing."
“I heard a lot of screaming,” she continued. “A lot, a lot of screaming. … Nobody was running … All you heard was just shooting. Just shooting. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”
When the firing stopped thanks to the intervention of a lone police officer who went into the house without back-up and confronted and shot Spencer Hight, nine people were dead. Another was seriously injured. The victims were all young friends who ranged in age from 22 to 33.
Anthony Michael Cross, 33, was from Waco, Texas.
“He was boisterous, vivacious and had a laugh that you knew came from the core of his being and made you want to laugh that hard with him,” said his friend Rachel Vinyard, who has known him since she was 14. “He was himself 100 percent of the time: fun and genuine. The world needed a Tony Cross.”
“He was a great guy – big into four-wheeling, hanging with friends, and an amazing 3-D animator,” said Cross’s friend Chris Griesemer who worked with him in the past. “The world is less without him.”
Olivia Nicole Deffner was 24.
Olivia Deffner graduated from University of Texas at Dallas in 2015 with a marketing degree and also studied abroad in Vienna as an exchange student in 2014.
After graduating, she landed a job with Texas Instruments, where she worked as a digital marketing program manager.
Darryl Hawkins, 22, worked as a sales consultant for an Acura dealer in Plano. He failed to show up for work on Monday.
“Little by little I started connecting pieces and unfortunately, it led me here. It led me here to find out that he’s not with us anymore,” she said.
Romo left flowers on the ground nearby and said a prayer.
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Romo said his personality brought people together. “He had such a positive vibe,” said Romo.
Myah Sadie Bass, 28, had just moved with her husband to the Dallas area after spending four years working as a cosmetologist in El Paso. Her best friend from those years, Celina Butt, now living in Germany, shared a matching tattoo.
“We promised we’d be there to see each other's best and worst moments like friends do, " Butt said. "You want to see your loved ones succeed in life, just want to be there to celebrate their victories no matter how small and try and support them when they are down."
Bass is survived by her husband, Marcus Bass, who is a wheeled vehicle mechanic sergeant in the Army Reserve and served 10 years on active duty in the Army, according to GoFundMe.
Rion Morgan, 31, was a graduate and employee of the University of Texas, Dallas.
Matt Ontiveros said he had been friends with Morgan since they were 7 years old.
"He was my longest friend that I had,” Ontiveros said. “To say he was a wonderful human being and friend is an understatement. He was so happy, always smiling, cracking jokes, and fiercely loyal to his friends. He came from a beautiful and loving family that raised him to be the great man he was. He loved his family very much. Rion was one of the greatest men I've ever known. It's truly tragic his time was cut short by this.”
James Dunlop was 29 years old and Caleb Edwards was 25.
More than one-half of all mass shootings involve intimate partner violence, as Melissa Jeltson of Huffington Post reminds us. It was earlier this summer, during the Memorial Day weekend, that another mass shooting went largely ignored by the media:
In May, Sheena Godbolt was at her mother’s house in rural Mississippi, also having a cookout and enjoying time with her family. She had left her husband, Willie Cory Godbolt, a few weeks earlier. He showed up at the house, and allegedly opened fire, killing her mother, her older sister and aunt, and a deputy who responded to the scene. He then drove to two other houses where he allegedly killed other members of his wife’s family. By the end of the night, eight people were dead. He is currently awaiting trial.
Almost two years ago I wrote an article titled “The ultimate domestic violence: Men who murder their families”:
According to USA Today, public mass killings like the ones we saw in Oregon and Newtown only represents one in six mass murders. Most mass killings—53 percent—are familial murders, and of those, 80 to 84 percent happen in the home. They may generate national headlines, but rarely do they seem to attract the same attention as do public mass murders.
The USA Today report, "Behind the Bloodshed: The Untold Story of America's Mass Killings," found that 77 percent of mass killings involve the use of firearms. In 72.9 percent of those killings, the killer carried a handgun, in 18.5 percent he had a rifle, and in 8.6 percent he had a shotgun. Males accounted for 94 percent of the shooters.
A group of researchers studied the Danger Assessment Test to see if it could help identify women who were at risk of being murdered by their intimate partners. The Journal of the NIJ published a report titled "Assessing Risk Factors for Intimate Partner Homicide."
...
They also found that:
”...women who were threatened or assaulted with a gun or other weapon were 20 times more likely than other women to be murdered. Women whose partners threatened them with murder were 15 times more likely than other women to be killed. When a gun was in the house, an abused woman was 6 times more likely than other abused women to be killed.”
The emphasis is mine, because, according to Plano Police Chief Gregory Rushin, “multiple guns of different types were found.”
On Wednesday morning, at a high school southeast of Spokane, Washington, a student opened fire on his classmates, killing one and injuring three others. From the AP report:
Michael Harper, a 15-year-old sophomore, said the suspect had brought notes in the beginning of the school year, saying he was going to do "something stupid" and might get killed or jailed. Some students alerted counselors, the teen told AP, but it was unclear what school officials did in response.
A call to the school was not immediately returned.
Harper said the shooter had many friends and was not bullied, calling him "nice and funny and weird" and a huge fan of the TV show "Breaking Bad." He also said the suspect was obsessed with other school shootings.
You may not have heard much about this one as school shootings now average one per week. Since 2013 there have been 293 school shootings, according to EverytownResearch.org. Can’t help but wonder if there is a magic number of people killed, or of individual shootings, that will trigger action. What will it take?
A few weeks ago I tripped over an open suitcase resulting in no serious damage, but much bruising and bleeding. I surveyed the damage and put the suitcase in the basement where it belonged, so that I would not trip over it again. I also restocked my first aid kit with new, larger bandages and more Neosporin. It did not occur to me at the time that I was actually examining a problem, discovering its root cause, taking steps to prevent its recurrence, and preparing for any similar accidents in the future.
We all do this automatically, without giving it much thought. We correct a situation that could, if unchanged, result in harm. Why is it asking so much for our political leaders to do the same? We know that the presence of guns in the household of a batterer is likely to result in the murder of the victim. So why do we make it so easy for the guns to be there? In two words: the NRA.
Why, when we know that climate change is contributing to increasingly warm water temperatures that feed more powerful storms, do we refuse to take steps to examine the cause (and in Rick Scott’s Florida, refuse to even use the words) of our changing climate and take steps to slow, if not reverse the warming? In four words: the fossil fuel industry. We aren’t even supposed to talk about it amongst ourselves lest we “politicize” the issue.
But it is political.
Most Republicans are happy to offer thoughts and prayers to the bereaved. Mr. Trump appears incapable of even that small gesture. But Trump is not an anomaly. He is a Republican stripped of civility. He is the hard-core desire of that political party, Grover Norquist’s wet dream.
He is a barbarian with no heart, intellect, or curiosity, but instead an avid thirst for wealth, prestige, and all things superficial. He is unwilling and unprepared to do the hard work of leading this nation, just when we most need wise leadership.
And we could have had Hillary.