If conservatives started blaming mass shootings on the existence of public schools, I wouldn’t be surprised. Their logic:
All kids should be either homeschooled and sent to highly exclusive private schools because government is bad.
Only reckless, foolish parents send their kids to schools where any maniac can come in and shoot up the place.
Conclusion: It’s like going to the ghetto at night carrying a bunch of cash and then crying when you’re mugged. It’s like getting drunk at the frat party and then crying when you’re raped. If you’re too lazy to mitigate known risks (by homeschooling or sending your kids to a private school), then you lose the right to cry when your son or daughter gets attacked by the inevitable gun man our society somehow has to learn to live with because of the 2nd amendment.
“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!” – Our Scumbag In Chief, Donald Dump
That’s so cool! Blame the victims.
And meanwhile the right wing and Russian bots are spreading the manure fast and thick.
Troll and bot-tracking sites reported an immediate uptick in related tweets from political propaganda bots and Russia-linked Twitter accounts. Hamilton 68, a website created by Alliance for Securing Democracy, tracks Twitter activity from accounts it has identified as linked to Russian influence campaigns.
What’s the position of the Russian bot army? Solidly pro-NRA and against any regulation of guns. The biggest “fact” being pushed by the Russian bots following the Valentine’s Day shooting is a story about how we’re over-counting school shootings … because the statistics are adding in just plain old murders at schools instead of being limited to instances where the shooter intended to commit mass murder.
Additional stories being pushed by the Russian bot-farms attack the same point that Russia specialized in during 2016: Fear of the other. These stories paint the shooter as a member of some foreign terrorist group and paint him as sympathetic to Muslim extremists.
And there’s another favorite target the Russian bots are attacking.
Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter’s ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group.
The Associated Press article shows the shooter’s true allegiances.
The leader of a white nationalist militia called the Republic of Florida said Cruz was a member of his group and participated in exercises in Tallahassee. That’s right, while Trump wants us to focus people with brown skin, yesterday’s school shooting was the second perpetrated by a white supremacist in the last two months.
I think you missed the part where arresting people for illegal gun possession would not actually have stopped this most recent school shooter, who purchased his gun legally.
Same for the Las Vegas shooter, and the Sandy Hook one, and dozens more. Gun massacres in this country are not primarily an illegal-possession problem.
I think you’re quite right that this will be a favorite talking point between members of the right. It will get a lot of play from the usual suspects on Fox and talk-radio.
What will be interesting, is the extent to which they try to express the idea ‘these deaths are the fault of the parents, for sending their kids to public schools’ to general audiences–on mainstream news and in political campaigns, for example. I suspect the theory may not play so well outside of the warm, welcoming right-wing bubble.
If that’s true, why didn’t America’s gun laws change after the Pulse Nightclub shooting? Or the San Bernardino attacks?
Fact is, although the rhetoric may differ depending on the ideology (note, ideology, not race) of the perpetrator, there is literally no force on Earth powerful enough to change America’s gun laws. Sandy Hook proved it, and Las Vegas proved it again. The only possible solutions are pre-emptive intervention and/or beefed up security in schools. Both of those are shit, but they’re the only things I can think of which are even remotely politically viable.
As with all ideas like this, the real risk is not that people will swallow them but that it’ll shift us towards more Just World thinking when it comes to mass shootings. We’ll be less likely to question a system that allows a 20 year-old unfettered access to assault rifles, and more likely to fault his former classmates and teachers for not doing more to get him institutionalized.
Trump’s latest tweets show we’re already at this stage.
Of course gun laws didn’t change. What people wanted to change were immigration laws. To keep “people like that” from coming into our country. Because it is because of “people like that” that we have gun violence, I guess.
Y’all are absolutely right! This is all nothing but PR and hype. If someone shoots out the windows of my child’s bus with a BB gun, big effing deal. Stray bullets hitting school buildings-- who cares? As for people who bring guns to school and shoot themselves, I’m fine with that, too. If no one else is killed, what’s the big deal? Your kid is probably going to be fine. Maybe. Yeah. [/bitter sarcasm]
Perhaps someone already said this upthread, think about this.
Timothy Mcveigh uses a diesel oil and ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixture to kill people in Oklahoma City. As a result, as I understand it, the formulation for that fertilizer has been changed, and ID is required when buying more than a small amount.
Someone tries to use a “shoe bomb” to kill people on a plane, so now we have to take our shoes off for inspection when going through the TSA checkpoint.
The Unabomber sends bombs through the USPS that kill and maim people. As a result, the streetside mail drop boxes now have a note that any item over thirteen ounces has to be dropped off at the post office counter.
But mass shootings come and go and nothing is done to prevent them.
Ugh. Maybe we fight firefight with firefight? Shoot the NRA leader, then shoot the replacement, then the next one. Then maybe they’ll all cry Uncle (Sam) and give up the fetish? Separate license for ammo? Limit = one bullet per month?
You know what this nut did or was thinking how? And deranged, potty mouthed, hysterical loons like yourself are what’s contributing to this society being, in many ways, dysfunctional.
We also have information from the leader of a local white nationalist group that he participated in paramilitary drills with them.
Gee, octopus, that’s quite some bothsidesism you’ve got going there. “I mean sure, on one hand we’ve got a weapons-obsessed toad-stomping white-nationalist-paramilitary MAGA-hat-wearing mass-murdering ‘nut’. But on the other hand, we’ve got the likes of Czarcasm angrily using profanity on an internet messageboard! Really, is it any wonder our society’s in so much turmoil? When will they ever learn?”
I got into it (as civilly as I could) with one of my nieces on FB after I criticized Ryan for praying but doing nothing else. She defended him on the grounds that prayer works, the shootings are a “hearts problem,” and gun control “doesn’t work” and people should be able to buy what they want as long as they don’t have a criminal background.
siiiiiiighhhhhh
There is absolutely no number of dead kids or dead adults or dead anybody that would ever be high enough to change the NRA leadership or any politician in bed with them/taking donations from them.
I’ve never really understood how it’s been determined what arms are legal to bear and which aren’t.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it illegal in every state to own working hand grenades? If someone is caught with pipe bombs, isn’t he or she arrested and charged for illegal weaponry no matter what state it happens in? If the arrestee goes to court and says, “Yes, I had the grenades/pipe bombs, but I wasn’t going to use them,” the judge is not going to say, “Well, that’s all right then. You’re free to go. Collect your weapons on the way out.”
If so, why is it so fucking hard to rule that the right to bear arms doesn’t apply to semi-automatic weapons or bump stocks or silencers? How is the line drawn? Why can’t it be drawn without a constitutional amendment to be more restrictive?
OK, of course this shooting could have occurred if Cruz was armed with a hunting rifle. But I don’t think that in that case there would be 17 dead. So while it may not be at all a solution, it sure as hell would be an improvement.
Or is it pretty much happenstance that some weapons are forbidden in every state? If so, what would happen if, say, Kentucky decided that any weapon whatsoever was legal to own? I mean, goshdarnit, the Constitution says you have the right to bear arms so who are we to tell you what kind of arms you can bear? So, if you have the smarts and the ability to scrounge together the parts and the dream of your very own nuclear weapon, well, then, go for it, boy! And if your crazy Uncle Charlie steals it and destroys most of Lexington, we’ll throw his ass in jail. But not you, of course, because having your weapon stolen is something that could happen to anybody.
I’d think even Indiana would have problems with that scenario – but could the Hoosiers actually do something about it?
And I think that’s a non-starter. The Amendment can’t be removed without the culture changing, and, if it changes, removing it becomes unnecessary.
I wouldn’t really mind it if got removed, as I don’t think it would really hurt the right to actually own a gun. But I don’t think it’s a goal worth fighting for, except maybe as a “big ask” so that what we really want seems small by comparison.
All I want is a culture where we can enact reasonable restrictions without the NRA lying about it being about taking away all guns and those who listen to them believing it. Heck, that may be the solution: have reasonable gun owners infiltrate the NRA.
