Here We Go Again

 

     I had an article in the pipeline yesterday about the successful rise of fascism in this country, and it will come out soon, when the news broke about the shooting at Robb Elementary School. Being a political and social issue blogger, it just didn't seem right to let this pass another day without even mentioning it.

     Salvador Ramos, the shooter, murdered 19 small children and two adults after shooting and critically injuring his grandmother. The parallels between Uvalde and Sandy Hook are startling. (Adam Lanza shot and killed his own mother before killing 20 children and six faculty members.)

     From what's been gathered, Ramos was possibly gay, as he wore eyeliner and spoke with a lisp. As one can expect, especially in Texas, he was bullied in school about that. And, while we can and should have a meaningful dialogue about the toxic fallout from bullying, that, of course, isn't the discussion we should be having. It's the discussion the NRA-owned right wing always says is never the time to have, the 8000 ton elephant in the room that no one wants to notice,

     We should be talking about gun safety and gun control.

     Now, I would love nothing more than to see every gun disappear from the bedrooms and arsenals of every person who doesn't have the maturity to own and store them. But that's magical thinking and is not ever going to happen. And what's also never going to happen is the government coming in and grabbing guns. That's just asking for cops to get killed (The deadly standoff at Mt. Carmel in Texas started out just like that- Firearms violations that wound up costing four federal agents their lives).

     And Ronnie Jackson has already begun flapping his gums on Fox, dragging out the same old hoary right wing talking points one inevitably hears after a school shooting- It's the fault of video games and rap music, anything, anything else but the nonexistent gun control laws in Texas and elsewhere that made it legal for Ramos to purchase two semiautomatic rifles just days after his 18th birthday.

     Up until 2019, it wouldn't have been possible for Ramos to do so in the state of Texas. Prior to that time, it was impossible for people under 21 to purchase such weapons until the Texas Legislature and Greg Abbott made it possible.

     New York, which used to have the strictest gun control laws in the country, especially in the city, is now so lax that Payton Gendron, the Buffalo supermarket shooter, was able to get a semiautomatic rifle for $960 because he wasn't ever institutionalized but had been only under observation.

     And yet, Republicans insist that even common sense gun safety laws such as background checks that would weed out violent criminals or locks on guns is akin to totalitarian, Marxist gun-grabbing and that the real solution is more guns. Which is like pouring gasoline on a fire and hoping that eventually the deluge of liquid will extinguish the fire.

     After Sandy Hook, Wayne LaPierre, the world's worst safari hunter, lost his fucking mind and doubled and tripled down on the NRA's rhetoric and coined the now-infamous phrase, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

     Here are some problems with that:

     #1, it's impossible to know who the bad guy with a gun is until they snap and it's often impossible for law enforcement to know the difference.

     #2, the good guys with guns aren't always up to the task. When Nikolas Cruz, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas gunman, entered the school in which he'd kill 17 people, the lone resource officer cowered outside because he was close to retirement.

     #3, Payton Gendron shot and killed a retired police officer who was working security at Tops.

     #4, Ramos was observed by cops after he crashed his car into a ditch and tried to engage him before he ran into Robb Elementary. Obviously, they failed. It took a SWAT team to take him down but not before he killed 21 innocents.

     So, where were the good guys with the guns? Busy getting shot up. Ramos shot and wounded three cops.

     Gee, what do I know? But it seems instead of flooding the streets of Texas and elsewhere with more guns, maybe those kids would be alive if Ramos was barred from getting the guns that he had.

     Instead, we live in a country in which we have more guns than people, the only country with that distinction. And it's a country that's alarmingly comfortable with kids getting slaughtered by the score as long as it results in loose to nonexistent gun control laws for the unspecified "good guys with guns."