What about you?
Saturday, I pulled into a parking spot at the local grocery store where I do most of my shopping, and I did something I can't remember ever doing before. I sat there listening to the radio for a few minutes, contemplating whether or not I wanted to go inside. I did some things I've never done before when I went there. I made myself completely aware of my surroundings. I found myself sizing up people who were going inside, trying to notice things that I know for sure I never paid any attention to before the shooting in Buffalo. I took nothing for granted, went in, got what I needed as fast as I could and got out.
My stepmother, who is 94, was a regular shopper at a Topps Friendly Market in Buffalo when she was more active. She's a cheerful woman, always smiling, and would take neighbors from the senior apartment complex where she lived to the store with her. The store they shopped at, just a few blocks from her apartment, was less than five miles from the one where the attack took place. I cannot imagine even thinking about them being inside with an active shooter. Many of those in the store who were shot were elderly and I can't help thinking about how their children, grandchildren and extended family members must feel at this point.
Add to that the news of the church shooting in California, and then, the attack on Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and I'm at a point now where I can't even describe what I am feeling. I'm an elementary school principal myself, and for the past two days, I've watched parents drop their kids off, lingering a little longer as they enter the building, giving an extra hug or kiss, a few of them keeping kids home during these last days of the school year.
I watched the interviews with the family members who lost loved ones in the store shooting in Buffalo. How do you wrap your mind around the sudden loss of someone you love, imagining their last moments on the floor of a grocery store? And then, Savannah Guthrie's heart-wrenching interviews with the parents of some of the kids who died in the Uvalde massacre. Both of those videos should be required viewing for every single member of Congress, every cabinet member, governor and every state legislator in the country. They should watch until they get it.
It Was Preventable
The fact that an 18 year old can, on their 18th birthday, purchase the kinds of weapons this kid did, is a complete and utter failure of our elected officials, specifically the governor and state legislature of Texas. In a state that leads the nation in random, mass shootings, where people have died in school classrooms and church auditoriums in large numbers, common sense would indicate that there would be some kind of legislative response. In Texas, the response has been to make it even easier to get high powered weapons because of the flawed logic that doing so will prevent mass shootings like these from happening.
Look at the record and see how well that's worked out.
A background check requirement would not have prevented this shooter from eventually getting his hands on a weapon, but it would have delayed the process and that would have very likely diffused the situation. There's no clear explanation at this point, but if he was acting on impulse, and didn't have the ability to get his hands on high powered weapons, would he still have been angry or upset enough to go to the school several days after whatever triggered him had passed?
Of course, a law restricting the purchase of this kind of weapon and firepower would be the most sensible thing to do, not in any way a violation of any intention of the second amendment, a discussion I will have later, but these kids and their teachers would still be alive if such a law had been on the books.
There's some question about the police response to the situation, the length of time it took, how the guy managed to get into the school past armed security, which is the Republican cure-all for gun crime. If you look at the school layout, you can see that it is a cluster of buildings, about half the classrooms open to the outside, to exterior sidewalks and the approaches to the school are open. It's a small town with a small police force and this obviously was not anticipated. What is obvious is that the firepower possessed by the shooter rendered the armed security precautions useless.
Gun Laws in the US Are Based on a False Interpretation of the Second Amendment
The failure of our educational system is criminal in and of itself, especially when it comes to serving as the means by which our democracy is preserved, which is one of its claimed purposes. The fact that an entire political party, and a good segment of the population, have absolutely no understanding of constitutional liberty or law is one of the reasons why things like this happen in the United States, but they don't happen almost anywhere else in the free, democratic world where the right to bear arms is a guaranteed freedom.
The "right to bear arms," a constitutional guarantee in the second amendment, pertains to a "well regulated militia." The United States did not maintain a regular, standing army in 1789, when the Constitution was drafted. Each state had its own militia, some of which fought against other states over various issues. Militia were made up of men who were called to service when there was a need for them. By the time the Constitution was drafted and headed for ratification, militia were becoming outdated. But at the time, a "call to arms" because of a potential attack from a foreign nation, which, in the case of the United States meant Britain, France or Spain, most likely, required men to own their own weapons and keep them close by in case they were called upon to use them. That, my friends, is the long and short of the "right to bear arms."
The establishment of a standing military has made private ownership of military-style weaponry obsolete. Oh, there are populists who shriek about "tyranny" and who own a variety of weapons because they can, but the United States no longer has a "well-regulated militia" requiring private citizens to own weapons. The National Guard is the closest thing we have to that, but even they provide their service men and women with weapons.
Here, we are driven by profit motive and money, plain and simple, and acquiring that has become more important than the sanctity of human life. We have a difficult time learning things from other people. Other countries have the same rights, but they do not see enforcing accountability as an interference with that right. And for political conservatives, who seem particularly bent on control when it comes to protecting the unborn, the callous disregard for potential victims of gun violence makes hypocrites out of politicians who claim to be pro-life.
Simply put, no argument can be made to justify someone carrying a high powered weapon into any venue they please. That is not what the second amendment means. And the interpretations of it, reflected in our laws, testify to the ignorance of the law and the constitution of the lawmakers who pass and enforce this legislation, and to the voters who put them there. It is contradictory to complain that abortion legislation protects the "sanctity of human life" when there's no willingness to protect children in school from mass shooters. The bottom line is money. Gun manufacturers make a lot of it. Protecting school campuses costs a lot of it. There you have it.
VOTE
"Doing something about it" means not voting for those politicians who permit this to occur. It means actively working for the defeat of politicians like Greg Abbott, who is looking out for his own interests, and who, just hours after visiting Uvalde and speaking with victims, was back on the campaign trail raising money for his campaign. In Uvalde County, voter registration lags behind some parts of the state, which is typical for predominantly Latino counties in Texas. There is voter suppression and intimidation, for sure, that goes without saying. In a county where 72% of the population is Latino, but Latino voters make up less than 50% of the total voter registration, something is wrong and something needs to change.
There's ideology that is being promoted and supported by Republicans that is behind at least some of what is going on. Clearly, the shooting in the supermarket in Buffalo was racially motivated, by the idea of "white replacement theory," which many Republicans refuse to disavow and which some support, a few publicly. It is a ridiculously ignorant way of thinking, covered up by more ridiculous, ignorant thinking in their distortions of and opposition to CRT.
I was very impressed that Beto O'Rourke went to Uvalde, right into the press conference and confronted the governor and the mayor. We need more of that to wake people up and activate their participation in democracy. Voter registration in Uvalde needs to reflect the population, as it does in other parts of Texas. If the murder of 19 children and two teachers can't motivate participation in the process for change, what will?
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