Another mass murder at a high school.
Shootings are occurring at schools with a frequency that is almost beyond imagining:
We're only 20 weeks into 2018, and there have already been 22 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed. That averages out to more than 1 shooting a week.
The horror of children being gunned down is met with callous indifference, not only from the NRA and its political instrument, the GOP, but by all of those who keep voting in support of them
I first posted this diary after the mass murder at Mary Stoneman Douglas High School, and will until this message gets through to enough people--
Several outstanding, poignant diaries have been written about the mass murder committed at Mary Stoneman Douglas High School. There are inspiring stories of young people, in the aftermath, standing up for their very lives, standing up to craven, despicable politicians and to the purveyors of violence, the NRA.
We are watching the emergence of a spontaneous political movement, and seeing smart, determined, passionate leaders of that movement, many of whom aren’t even old enough to vote. They have given this middle-aged parent of three young adults more hope than anything I’ve seen or heard in the past two years.
But of course, we are seeing this nascent, burgeoning political movement because seventeen people— three faculty, and fourteen students— were murdered, and at least fourteen more wounded, by a young man who was able to arm himself more heavily than the typical member of Army infantry. The youngest students murdered were only fourteen. This was the seventeenth shooting in a school this year, the sixth with casualties.
Seventeen shootings in six weeks. About three shootings in K-12 schools each week.
After the mass murder in Las Vegas four months ago— and yes it was only four months ago— I wrote this:
My kids go to concerts. I have to worry if they’ll come home alive. So yeah, let’s take guns away. (Oct. 3, 2017)
Whatever pleasure you take from holding a firearm does not justify every other person living in fear for their life on a daily basis.
If that feels like an inconvenience, an imposition, or an intrusion on something you deem important, I find it an intrusion on something I deem important that I have to worry whether one of my adult children might not come back alive if they decide they want to go to a concert. I shouldn’t have to worry about that, and they shouldn’t have to think twice about just living their lives as they choose, just so you or anyone else can fire off 30 rounds without reloading.
For the GOP, this is the acceptable price, not of freedom, but of political power, and personal enrichment. The price they are content to impose on all of us. Make no mistake, there is no political principle involved when Marco Rubio or Dana Loesch disgorge word salad about the 2nd Amendment.
The ‘problem’ with gun violence is not Congress— it’s the GOP, at the state and federal level. It’s the GOP that blocks any sane legislation, promotes truly insane policies, and packs the courts with NRA vetted Roland Freislers.
Of course, since they operate without any principles, without any evidence of moral conscience whatsoever, they cannot be engaged on that level. Neither Marco Rubio nor Dana Loesch, Wayne LaPierre nor Mitch McConnell.
But none of them would have any authority, any leverage, any voice in this discussion, if not for every person who has voted for a GOP candidate in the past half century, and any that would still vote for them.
While the funding from groups like the NRA (which is of course, largely counted in denominations of rubles) is the lifeblood of the GOP racketeering operation, there could be no operation if not for those willing to pull the lever for GOP candidates, at every level of government, election after election, year after year.
Without those votes, there would be no GOP legislative majorities, nor governors or presidents to sign sanctioned murder legislation:
Our results indicate that Stand Your Ground laws are associated with a significant increase in the number of homicides among whites, especially white males. According to our estimates, between 4.4 and 7.4 additional white males are killed each month as a result of these laws… [o]ur results are robust to a number of specifications and unlikely to be driven entirely by the killings of assailants. Taken together, our findings raise serious doubts against the argument that Stand Your Ground laws make America safer.
It is these voters, who ignore mass murder with casual, callous indifference (as long as it doesn’t happen to their children), who regurgitate NRA talking points, who generally show no indications of self-reflection or the capacity for empathy, who need to be the focus of our outrage. They are the obstacle to preventing mass murders happening with ever increasing frequency.
We need to see them in this light, and assign to them, publicly, what is theirs by virtue of their choices, their actions, their decision to vote GOP: culpability.
School shootings happen more often than the GOP voter who is your family member, friend, neighbor or co-worker goes to the grocery store. Each and every one of them is complicit, and they need to hear it.
Every day.