“As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”
An anguished and angry President Joe Biden called for new restrictions on firearms Tuesday night after a gunman killed 18 children at a Texas elementary school. https://t.co/gri29JI8es pic.twitter.com/zPOm5Nms2c
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 25, 2022
Vice President Kamala Harris, reacting to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas, said the country must have the courage to take a stand against gun violence.
"Our hearts keep getting broken," Harris said. https://t.co/cPur6V91kW pic.twitter.com/OUsNIOvhgJ
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 25, 2022
Generations of women came together for a May 14 protest against the U.S. Supreme Court’s anticipated ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Amnet Ramos was there with her 12-year-old daughter.
“If this is who I’m going to pass my torch down to, I feel good.” https://t.co/wHigoSHfmP
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 24, 2022
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny lambasted President Vladimir Putin in a live court hearing, casting him as a madman who had started a 'stupid war' in Ukraine based on lies https://t.co/Id4tUJBM4x pic.twitter.com/GvVKVZ6ttb
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 25, 2022
Read the full story here: https://t.co/jVhn9f0ECh
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) May 24, 2022
>>All We Can Do Is What We Must
👍
I see the Republicans on my Facebook page sending out their ptayers. The retired elementary school teachers are the ones who disgust me the most. It could have been them.
Triple blech.
This is the price white supremacists and their enablers are willing to pay. They would rather live in a country where their children could be shot dead at school rather than share it with those they deem inferior.
Republican party represents the will of these people and nationwide that represents a majority of white people.
Teri Kanefield had an excellent thread about the origins of the second amendment. It all comes down to race, always. You need guns and militias to be a successful slave owner.
My kindergarten teacher DIL finished her school year yesterday. I’m deeply grateful
I’m nauseated by the gun fetishists I see on social media today. Politicians who refuse to pass sensible gun legislation have blood on their hands and so does anyone who votes for them. Enough.
I see the NRA is holding a big meeting in Houston on Friday. I’m hoping for giant demonstrations outside the venue
ETA: Holy crap, an edit button. Thanks, WG!
I’m with Ruben Gallego on this one
@Dorothy A Winsor: Agree. I think simple messages are best. I got over my language choice a long time ago.
I think it’s time for another NRA lawsuit.
@Dorothy A Winsor: Saw that tweet from Gallego. Good for him. I rarely donate money out of state, especially in primaries, but if he runs against Sinema, I will make an exception.
From the Guardian:
“Law enforcement officers “engaged” the suspect when they saw him emerge from his crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and a handgun. But the gunman nevertheless managed to charge into the school building and open fire, Texas department of public safety (DPS) Sgt Erick Estrada said on CNN.”
So much for good guys with guns stopping the bad guys with guns.
@OzarkHillbilly May 25, 2022 at 8:58 AM
Holy crap! I didn’t realize that they could have had him before he entered the building.
ETA: Also, too,
>>Sgt Erick Estrada
Poor guy.
@ Schrödinger’s cat: “Teri Kanefield had an excellent thread about the origins of the second amendment.”
I can go looking for it, but do you happen to have the link handy? Would like to read that.
Mornings after a massacre, I am both numb and angry. This has to stop. There are more of us. And we deserve to live in a safer world. The Second Amendment is destroying the First Amendment. Enough.
But if we’d only armed the teachers, they could have stopped him the way the police weren’t able to. /s
Also Fuck Joe Manchin for already standing athwart any chance and saying “I’ll do anything for gun control, but I won’t do that” (change the filibuster)
Martin put up a comment last night, about the teachers unions walking out until their classrooms are safer. It may come to that. And the rest of us could walk out or be “a day without a sane American”. A week without.
This happened in Uvalde. It could have happened anywhere.
The backstory is a bullied and lost kid, with a drug addicted mother, was living with his grandmother (whom he shot first). Lost one friend because he told him he wanted to join the Marines to go kill a bunch of people.
And: turned 18 and went and bought himself an assault rifle. And, a week or two later, and …
Enough. It is the guns. It is the guns.
OMG. Gosar is a sick, sick man.
https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-shooting-uvalde-paul-gosar-touts-false-claim-transgender-woman-2022-5?op=1&scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
“Following Tuesday’s mass shooting at a Texas elementary school, Arizona GOP congressman Paul Gosar spread a false and transphobic claim that the suspected shooter was a “transsexual leftist illegal alien.”
Gosar tweeted the claim even though authorities had already identified the suspect as an 18-year-old male resident of Uvalde, where the shooting occurred.”
There is nothing more useless than prayer. At least if you said “I’m gonna wish on a star”, people would understand that you’re talking nonsense, and not consider it as any kind of positive response to the situation.
@ Scout 211:
It looks like we have our next Madison Cawthorn.
Maybe: a day without a consumer. For as many days as possible.
This country runs on consumption. Hit them in their pocketbooks. Keep your money at home. Tell them why. Corporations own the Republican party. TIme for them to step up and reign it in.
Corporations are the kind of people the Republican Party worries about.
And Abbott and TFG are still planning to appear at the NRA convention this week because of course they will. 😡
https://www.businessinsider.com/greg-abbott-texas-nra-guns-school-shooting-trump-2022-5
“ Just 72 hours after at least 18 children and a teacher were shot to death at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, numerous Republican lawmakers are set to address a National Rifle Association meeting about 300 miles away in Houston, including Gov. Greg Abbott and former President Donald Trump.
The NRA has long opposed efforts to restrict access to guns. In 2011, it sued Texas in a failed effort to force the state to lower the legal age for possessing a handgun to 18 from 21.
Law enforcement said the gunman Tuesday attacked Robb Elementary School using a handgun and possibly a rifle.
The NRA meeting, hosted by the group’s Institute for Legislative Action — its self-described lobbying arm — is scheduled to begin Friday. It is open only to NRA members and runs through the weekend.
Additional scheduled speakers include Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota. No Democrats are set to address the meeting.”
@Scout211: Maybe the good people of Houston could give that gathering of death merchants and corrupt politicians the welcome it deserves?
Washington Post: “All victims killed were in the same fourth-grade classroom, official says”
19 kids, 2 teachers.
He murdered almost everyone in the room.
Apparently this is easy to do with an AR weapon.
I feel only impotent rage.
Republicans want this to keep happening. They’d rather see people die, than be inconvenienced in anyway.
Also, to add to SC’s comment about the 2nd Amendment being based in white supremacy, I think all these expansive gun laws exist to keep the white supremacist militia types heavily armed.
*************
Thank you for putting this together. I underestimated how much I’ve come to rely on Balloon-Juice as a social outlet.
@Jinchi
The fact that all that happened in an enclosed space the size of an elementary school classroom is even more horrifying.
Had already planned to take today off as a general “mental health and wellness” personal day, so I’m glad to not have to be on the job and keeping up a professional appearance. Between this latest horror and the ongoing saga of my mom’s health issues, I need a minute. Have a telehealth counseling session lined up for this morning and a massage this afternoon. Day drinking may also be involved, who knows.
The modern Republican Party in America needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth. They embrace fascism, racism, and every other piece of rotten stupidity one can imagine. Children shot to death? Sacred zygotes? No social safety net? No taxes on the rich? That’s all great as far as they’re concerned.
And don’t forget they plan another coup to install the Fat Orange Clown as our dictator for life.
There’s a Twitter thread with photos of the kids who were murdered. It’s just unbearable.
https://twitter.com/ndelriego/status/1529302566911213568
ETA: Photos of the kids while they were alive, not crime scene photos.
They’ve created a world where anyone can kill anyone else with ease anytime they’re in public. We’re all hostages.
I think it can be sold to anyone still in the mushy middle that **that isn’t the sort of world we want to live in.**
I think this tweet sums the conservative position on gun control up best
“DPRK News Service @DPRK_News
·15h
United States conservatives support right to abort fetuses through 57th trimester, so long as abortion is performed by firearm.”
My older daughter is an elementary school teacher. She is not doing well today.
@Elizabelle
I don’t want to hear about our mental illness problem unless we’re now defining all angry, bullied losers who struggle in school as mentally ill. Oh, wait, that’s a huge percentage of the population?
Look, I know people, we all do, who if we found out who did something terrible, we would not be surprised. I used to work with a dude who would flip out on a coworker at least once a quarter, and he often complained about the company policy that he couldn’t bring his gun into the office. Who do I report the guy to? Is it anonymous? Do I get a restraining order? Who takes his guns?
I am increasingly pessimistic about keeping the country together, because I feel like half of the country actively wants me and my children dead, or at least doesn’t give a shit. No coalition politics gets us out of that.
@Betty Cracker
May 25, 2022 at 9:35 AM
There’s a Twitter thread with photos of the kids who were murdered. It’s just unbearable
__________________
I’m not clicking because I don’t need to see a Disney snuff film to be on the right side of the issue.
But some have speculated that photos are a good thing to keep people from hiding their eyes about guns. We’ll see, I guess.
https://twitter.com/andallya/status/1529454404885176322?s=21&t=nrg2-c57VKkZwujkP4CnBg
@andallya
It is very possible, necessary even, to recognize democrats as the better party while still demanding better of them.
Baud – they’re photos of the kids taken *before* yesterday.
My Facebook feed today is full of comments from non-nuts conservatives lamenting yesterday’s shooting. Yet, none of them (like millions of others) will do anything to rein in the déplorables.
@lowtechcyclist
Gotcha. I guess folks can go back to burying their heads in the sand then. (Not talking about us, obv.)
@ Baud”But some have speculated that photos are a good thing to keep people from hiding their eyes about guns. We’ll see, I guess.”
There might be something to that. I noticed the conservatives on twitter were acting like they’ve been poleaxed last night.
IDK, I do get the sense the needle is slowly moving. Emphases on slow.
@gene108: “Republicans want this to keep happening. They’d rather see people die, than be inconvenienced in anyway.” — This is literally true and some of them are perfectly happy to say so out loud. Evil, there is no other word for it.
@Edmund Dantes May 25, 2022 at 9:44 AM
>>@andallya
It is very possible, necessary even, to recognize democrats as the better party while still demanding better of them.
>>
___________________________________
I think we need to accept the fact that it just isn’t possible for a large number of people, not all of whom are on the right.
I noticed that the current Gun Nut talking point is it’s Rap’s fault we have these shootings because Rap glorifies gun violence. How very 90s of them. But, no, that rubbish, it was the Westerns that glorified guns as the American way of conflict solution and romanticized gun violence as something clean and noble – like Westerns did with stealing Native American land.
@Baud & @lowtechcyclist: Yes, good God, family photos, not crime scene pictures (I edited the original comment to make that clear). Jesus. I would never post a link to something like that, though I do understand the argument for rubbing people’s faces in what these goddamn fucking guns are doing to children’s bodies. But none of us here need to be convinced in that manner.
I think every news channel, this week, should pick a time. All do this at the same time. Broadcast a photo of an empty classroom the size of Uvalde’s. A still photo. And run a soundtrack of the assault weapon gunshots. Just the sound. For the amount of time it took to kill all those people.
Americans: how do you like your chances against THIS?
And bookend the video with silence. Pure silence. For a minute on each side.
No yapping from the anchorweasels. Just silence. I think the 24/7 news channel system is there to enevate us, to desensitize us. To talk something to death, and assure us that action is impossible.
@Betty Cracker May 25, 2022 at 9:52 AM
Thanks! Sorry for the misunderstanding. Those photos of smiling kids are heartbreaking.
@Baud: “Those photos of smiling kids are heartbreaking.”
Which is why I will avoid it. I just don’t have the strength.
@ Suzanne: it’s the guns. It’s the guns. It’s the guns.
@OzarkHillbilly
There’s only one child in my social circle, and she will enter kindergarten in the fall, so the moral issue is no longer an abstract one for me.
I saw the headline briefly on my way out of my office walking to my car last night. I got sad, only sad. Not scared, not angry, just sad. And I said to myself “Right-this could also be a way that I lose my child”, cried for a second, and drove home. Cooked dinner, had a glass of wine, paid some bills, watched This is Us, and went to bed. Just another day. Sandy Hook killed me, really. That was the last time I got mad, and it’s the last time I got scared. It seemed for a few days like this is it, we are ready to end this now. But, nope. Now it’s like a car accident or cancer. You hope it won’t happen to you or your loved ones, but you know it could, and its just something we accept.
Oh, Betty C., my heart breaks at those tiny faces.
@Elizabelle
I also think it’s toxic masculinity (+ guns), but are we now defining that as a mental illness?!
I observe a lot of toxic assholes. About three months ago, I was taking Spawn the Younger to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. We were in the car and stopped at a red light. All of a sudden, a young man (maybe 18-20) jumped out of his car, as did another young man in the adjacent car. One ran to his trunk and grabbed a baseball bat and started swinging at the other. I did not wait for the light to turn green, I just immediately drove away and pulled down an adjacent street. There’s no way I was going to get involved. Odds are that at least one of them had a gun. Both of them need to be away from polite society for a long time. But there’s a lot of terrible behavior like this.
Seeing photographs takes them out of the realm of numbers, and it’s always easy to deal with horrible things when they’re just numbers.
I think the photos should be projected in the Senate Chamber. Make them SEE what their negligence or ignorance has cost the country.
@Baud: I have granddaughters, 4 and counting. I almost lost both my sons, stood next to a blood spattered gurney praying to a god I don’t believe in to take me and let my son live. I watched a man kill his wife and then literally blow his brains out. Then I had to pick up the broken pieces (metaphorically) of their children off the sidewalk. I can still hear their screams.
It has been very real for me for a long time. I’m done for today. I think I’ll go work in the garden even if it is raining because at least there, things still make sense.
Given that we have a gun culture nation, is there any value in looking at Switzerland’s gun culture for help on structuring gun ownership mores and values? From what I can tell from reading about it, there’s a sense of responsibility and self control and pride in skill there that would be a huge improvement over what the US has now.
@OzarkHillbilly
Oh, Ozark. 💕
Thinking about the comment about white supremacy: every time a massacre like this happens, WE are all traumatized as well. Not being able to do anything about this — it is “bow down before your armed superiors.”
It is crazy. If we could break their back on this, and on Roe, we could live in a better world.
Ozark, I am so sorry. A good day to garden (in the rain) and hang with the lucky puppies and kitteh.
After Sandy Hook, my friend the FBI agent said an AR weapon in a classroom would turn those 6 year olds into hamburger, that even identifying the bodies could be difficult. This is what Republican politicians almost universally support
The 2nd Amendment protects a right to bear arms, but not (SFAIK) a right to manufacture them. You want a gun? Fine. Make it yourself. Bullets? Ditto.
Outlaw the manufacture of assault rifles.
My wife is going for bargaining as part of the teacher’s union – I might suggest that but it’s been a difficult year, and I think they should finish off the contract first. She’s been leading the diversity, equity and inclusion work .
Back in the early 60s, my Judge grandfather tried a case, a shooting outside a restaurant. A guy went after his wife and her boyfriend. He used a .22 revolver, he missed his wife, the boyfriend was wounded, and a 61 Plymouth Fury suffered superficial wounds. Imagine if today’s weapons were available…
@CaseyL:
They already are making their own. They are from kits and parts you can easily buy online. They are called ghost guns and they are no solution because, by the fact of their homemade nature, they are impossible to trace. At least with manufactured guns, there are records and serial numbers and such that allow for tracing.
A better option, IMHO, is the repeal of the legislation giving manufacturers immunity and also a requirement to have liability insurance for every gun you buy. And maybe some ammo limits just as a cherry on top.
Gin & Tonic
One of our daughters is also an elementary teacher, as I posted earlier. This is what she said on Facebook today. She was distraught when I saw her last night.
“I sit in a school today willing to take a bullet for any one of these students but sick to my stomach that it should even be a part of my job description/thought in my mind. If you call yourself pro-life but you don’t care about gun control, you are not pro-life. If you only care about an unborn child but not a child who went to his last day of school just to have it end this way, you are not pro-life. You are pro-you. You are pro-it’ll never happen to me so why should I care if it is happening to others. You are pro-turn a blind eye to reality.”
Mrs. Betty Bowers has a brutal tweet on this.
https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/1529321473088921600
@Ozark, I listened to the segment on CNN when the police officer discussed the time line. It needs to be repeated, because good guys with a gun could not stop him.
@JeanneT – I think we’ve missed the boat by a few decades, or maybe centuries, on developing a gun culture similar to Switzerland’s.
I think Switzerland’s example was the inspiration for Robert Heinlein’s claim that “an armed society is a polite society.” Yeah, the abundance of guns has made America SO polite. Fuck you, RAH.
@ geg6:
Absolutely agree. Musk won’t get a pass on those exploding cars; why should gun manufacturers or gun dealers?
Grand Imp number one is attending a Montessori school and it’s on seven acres, and not easily accessible. Grand Imp two is in daycare until he’s eighteen months and then will be old enough for the Montessori School.
This morning it dawned on me that it’s the daycare at risk.
Age doesn’t matter for the 2nd Amendment assholes.
Both parents are advocates of public education and plan to enroll the boys when they are old enough. I pray something changes by then.
I had a thought just now: evangelical Christianists make up a big portion of the pro-gun crowd. And of course they’ve got their own schools and stuff.
The ‘arm the teachers’ bullshit is exactly that, but I say: let them try it first. They can run their own experiment in their own schools, and let the rest of us see how it works out.
@lowtechcyclist – I fear you are right, (and agree about Heinlein’s stupidity) but the Swiss do seem the closest thing to a people with a “well regulated militia” of armed citizens, and I keep thinking there should be something we can emulate there.
From Mediaite
WATCH: MAGA Crowd at Herschel Walker Event Laughs and Cheers When Tucker Carlson Mocks Biden’s Uvalde Speech
https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-maga-crowd-at-herschel-walker-event-laughs-and-cheers-when-tucker-carlson-mocks-bidens-uvalde-speech/
I couldn’t watch.
Texas recently passed a law that allowed the 18-year-old to buy the gun.
He bought it legally, so maybe the first thing the Governor can do is ask Congress to rescind that law. nah Abbott would never do that.
@JeanneT I recall reading that in Switzerland, every male citizen up to something like age 55 is a member of the military as a militia, and all the weapons are kept at an official location, locked up but they all have a key and access. They have required annual training and drills, so that helps instill the necessary professionalism. What they don’t have is Murdock media and the Russian -supported NRA.
I think Putin’s funneling of money to the NRA was a brilliant move on his part, exploiting and widening our existing divisions. Such an excellent return on investment for such a small cost compared to a military confrontation.
Among the reasons we will never learn from the Swiss example.
In Switzerland, there is compulsory military service. Completing your required service grants you the right to purchase fire arms.
Guns have to be carried muzzle down unless you are at a certified shooting range or engaged in military training.
Loaded guns cannot be carried in public, even by military travelling to training sites.
There IS no such thing as legal concealed carry in Switzerland.
What are the laws on body armor? Buffalo shooter and Texas shooter were both confronted by Security and didn’t get dropped by their bullets. Guns are madness but body armor is sick. Didn’t they watch the video where it took an entire police department in North Hollywood to drop those two shooters?
the ONLY way we’re going to get gun control in THIS country is if people start killing Republicans and their donors. the same way that kids in classrooms or people shopping are. The rest of us are expendable. period.
@Dorothy A Winsor: IIRC the investigators needed DNA to identify some of the kids who were shot. The AR weapon is why. That’s horrifying.