Buffalo, New York and Laguna Woods, California.
How many of these have I lived through.
Everyone offers thoughts and prayers and ways of stopping the madness, but nothing, NOTHING WILL BE DONE.
Not a damn thing.
We'll have another massacre in another American city and President Biden or another American president will fly to that city and say comforting words and still NOTHING WILL BE DONE.
Why do presidents even bother to go? It's a kind of sick ritual that is meaningless (except for the victims' families, I suppose) because NOTHING WILL BE DONE.
We're a country obsessed with the sacrosanct 2nd Amendment that enshrines the right for any individual, sane or insane, to own and use weapons of mass murder for any perceived prejudice, transgression or outrage; and everyone knows that is the problem.
Other countries don't have a right written into their laws that gives maniacs, crazies, white supremacists, and the like the right to own these weapons of mass murder and then to act out their neuroses, their hatreds, their manifestoes. Those countries don't have recurring massacres by individuals with firearms on the scale that America does. America doesn't want to be like those other countries, so NOTHING WILL BE DONE.
In a few weeks or months another mass shooting will happen; more hand-wringing will follow -- with useless "thoughts and prayers;" -- and the POTUS will fly to the unfortunate city, speak comforting words, and talk to the victims' families, but when the rituals are over, NOTHING WILL BE DONE.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
It's hardly worth writing about anymore since those of us who know something CAN and SHOULD be done also know that nothing WILL be done. We feel defeat after defeat after defeat and a stomach-churning dread waiting for the next shooting.
America is in love with its culture of death.
I don't see it changing now or in the near future.
23 comments:
"In a manifesto, the suspect detailed how he viewed Black people as “replacers” of white Americans. The massacre at the grocery store on Saturday trained a harsh light on the “great replacement theory,” which the authorities say he used to justify an act of racist violence — and on how that theory has migrated from the far-right fringes of American discourse toward the center of Republican politics."
“We live in a country, and I don’t know when it happened, where an 18-year-old boy goes into a gun dealership to buy an assault weapon, and it’s a routine transaction. Under the same legal system that won’t let a person buy a six-pack of Bud Light because it would be dangerous, but an assault rifle, that’s routine. Now, the implication is that 18-year-old boys go into that gun dealer and buy weapons of war regularly. When a cable news host opens his show with a red-faced rant about white people being replaced, that’s considered a typical episode of that show — routine and typical.” — SETH MEYERS
The disgusting racism aside with the current mass shooting, I barely pay attention to these mass shootings anymore. I've basically become numb. I feel terrible saying that but after Sandy Hook where 26 people died including 20 children under seven and even THAT could not stir anyone in power to take ANY action whatsoever, I agree that nothing will ever be done.
While it wasn't a mass shooting, my closest friend was a victim of gun violence back in 1992 here in Washington, DC. He went out on a Saturday night with friends and never returned home. His body was found a week later in secluded woods. He had been shot in the head. His killer was never found and his case remains open. My life has never been the same and can basically be split in two--the time before Paul's death, and the time after his death. I absolutely loathe guns...
The first one I remember was the guy who shot from a tower on a Texas campus. I don't even remember the year. These nuts will always be with us. We give them more deadly weapons to use so than can kill more people quickly. The president's words (if you heard him speak today) were right on, but that won't stop these nuts. In a free society it is easy for these nuts to plan and kill. Thoughts and speech are hard to criminalize so catching these nuts before they kill is impossible.
Chilling. Great Replacement Theory iis nothing more than the racist driven paranoia of the white nationalists and white supremacists of America. And now we have a major political party wading into that bunk?
What in hell is this nation becoming? At 70 years old my country is becoming unrecognizable to me. As well as making me embarrassed to admit I'm an American anymore.
It wasn’t the migrant caravan, not the BLM supporters, nor Antifa that murdered 10 POC in Buffalo. It was a radicalized right wing white supremacist filled with evil hate.
You use the term assault rifle which is about as accurate as assault knife because it can kill multiple times. This term is a favorite of the radical left which shows either their basic misunderstanding of firearms or their intentional misuse of a term to incite people. A rifle is a rifle and as such can be used to assault several people. A fully automatic F16 is an assault rifle which is not in personal ownership. A car driven into a crowd should be termed an assault car and a knife used to maim several people should be termed an assault knife not just a knife.
Guns don't kill people, cars don't get into accidents and knives don't inflict harm. It takes a person so lets address the hate in the country and not blame everything on the instrument a person uses. All this does is shift blame and if you followed this sicko's history you would see he was examined and found OK so that should indicate how far we have to go in our examination process.
I do agree that it is worthless for any president to go to one of the scenes. All it does is provide a photo op and give the illusion that they care. As to their ability to do anything is unrealistic because they are not the prosecutor or the judge just a politician seeking reelection.
The number of people killed by cars has gone up as the number of cars has gone up. The number of people killed by guns has gone up as the number of guns has gone up. The number of wackos in society has gone up as the total population has gone up. Cars can kill unintentionally just as guns can kill unintentionally, just as humans can kill and not be in their right mind. Anyone who kills on a mass basis is not in their right mind no matter how intentional they thought their act was.
It's way past time to cancel the 2nd amendment. Or at least rewrite it so it's not so vague. If you want a gun you have to join the national guard in your state. And no you don't get to take your gun to the grocery store.
Anonymous @5/18/12:18
"Despite being the world's most populous country, with 1.4 billion residents, China only records a few dozen gun crimes a year. And more broadly, violent crime has continued falling, reaching its lowest level in 20 years in 2020, according to state-run news outlet Xinhua.
Meanwhile, the US reports hundreds of mass shootings with four or more victims every year. Though there have been growing calls for gun control across the country, violent crime in general is on the rise."
So your hypothesis about population increases accounting for increases in firearm deaths doesn't hold up, except here in the U.S. because other countries with larger populations don't have this scourge of massacres with firearms. China being an example.
Also, other countries have people with mental health issues, but they don't have the number of massacres with firearms that we do in the U.S.
The gun lobby, the NRA, and the insane policy of allowing 18 year old kids, whose brains are not fully developed until 21 or 22 y.o., to get their hands on weapons of mass killing is deranged.
The U.S. has a gun death cult. Period. No other country suffers massacres by firearms like the U.S. does. And that's because we've allowed the gun lobby and cowardly law makers to prevent any meaningful gun legislation to pass.
Sorry, skud, your reasoning is poor.
How many cars being run into crowds do we suffer per year?
"The massacre in which 10 people were killed in a Buffalo supermarket on Saturday was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States so far this year.
The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization, counted at least 201 such shootings, defined as one in which four or more people were injured or killed, through mid-May. Of those shootings, nine involved four or more fatalities.
The group recorded 693 mass shootings last year, with 28 involving four or more fatalities.
THE LIST, SO FAR THIS YEAR, IS HERE.
Knife stabbings, and cars running into crowds don't come near the number of massacres that firearms cause each year. There's no comparison.
We have the highest number of firearms massacres on the planet because we're a gun death- cult country.
Tweets from House Freedom Caucus members about the racially motivated mass murder in Buffalo:
BOEBERT- none
GREENE- none
GAETZ- none
GOSAR- none
BIGGS- none
BROOKS- none
JORDAN- none
STEUBE- none
CLYDE- none
HICE- none
MILLER- none
CAWTHORN- none
GOHMERT- none
ROY- none
From an article on CNBC's website in 2018:
"Yet exactly what constitutes an “assault weapon” is a contentious issue and something that riles up some gun advocates. In fact, many of the large gun groups consider “assault weapon” a made up and ambiguous term invented by the anti-gun lobby in the 1980s, maintaining that guns don’t actually “assault” people.
That said, the gun industry’s traditional definition of an “assault rifle” is a weapon the military generally uses and has “select fire capabilities,” or the capability to switch between semi-automatic or a fully automatic mode. However, the civilian AR-15s do not have the select fire capabilities, only semi-automatic settings, so the firearms industry insists they are not an actual assault rifle or assault weapon.
To be clear, though, the federal government usually refers to a military-style weapon capable of firing multiple rounds, either semi-automatic or a fully automatic firearm.
Regardless, the controversy over the AR-15-style rifle stems from its widespread use in some of the nation’s worst mass shootings.
The AR-15 weapon used by accused shooter Nikolas Cruz at a high school in Parkland, Florida, is a semi-automatic version of the U.S. military’s M-16 rifle and was included in a ten-year ban signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994. That law also banned the semi-automatic weapons used in other mass shootings, including the Oct. 1 massacre in Las Vegas and the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut."
Possumlady
Folks who obsess over the correct names of these weapons of massacres are like the people who look at someone pointing at a grisly murder scene and only see the finger. What the hell difference does what we call the deadly weapons? They maim and kill human beings.
"...a semi-automatic version of the U.S. military’s M-16 rifle and was included in a ten-year ban signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994."
And GWB let that ban lapse after promising in his campaign for the presidency that he would renew it.
"Louis Klarevas, a research professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, studied high-fatality mass shootings (six or more people) for his 2016 book “Rampage Nation.” He said that compared with the 10-year period before the ban, the number of gun massacres during the ban period fell by 37 percent and that the number of people dying because of mass shootings fell by 43 percent. But after the ban lapsed in 2004, the numbers in the next 10-year period rose sharply — a 183 percent increase in mass shootings and a 239 percent increase in deaths.
In a more recent study co-written by him and published by the American Journal of Public Health in 2019, Klarevas also measured the impact of banning large-capacity magazines and concluded that such bans end up saving lives. “When LCMs were involved, the average death toll for gun massacres increased by 62 percent,” he said. “Jurisdictions that did not have LCM bans in place experienced a 129 percent increase in the incidence rate and a 206 percent increase in the fatality rate of gun massacres.”
We all know what causes these horrific deaths by shooters. We all know what can be done to mitigate them. But we live in a country that has a minority group of people hysterical about aborting a collection of cells but have no problem with allowing a proliferation of high capacity firearms to flood this country and massacre men, women, children, and babies in increasing numbers.
I'd look at that fact and describe it as a kind of insanity.
“What the Democrats need to do — and it’s so obvious at this point — is brand them with it, is basically take this Replacement Theory and now make it the Republican Racist Replacement Theory,” Deutsch said.
“Make every Republican answer, ‘Do you believe in it or not?’ Brand every Republican. This is the party of replacement theory. Take what is a sliver [of the Republican Party] … and make it the entire raison d’être of the Republican Party.”
There's nothing wrong with this. Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable news show has been selling the Replacement Theory on his show for months.
Here are some of Carlson's quotes on Replacement Theory:
TUCKER CARLSON: They can embrace the issues the middle class cares about, or they can import an entirely new electorate from the Third World and change the demographics of the U.S. so completely they'll never lose again.
Democrats know if they import enough new voters, they'll be able to run the country forever.
Dramatic demographic change means many Americans don't recognize where they grew up.
As with illegal immigration, the long-term agenda of refugee resettlement is to bring in future Democratic voters.
Illegal immigrants are the key to their power.
The point is to import as many new Democratic voters as possible.
The whole point of their immigration policy is to ensure political control, replace the population.
This policy is called the great replacement, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries."
(cont.)
"The U.S. has a gun death cult."
Exactly. We are a different people than the others you cite. We have been a violent people since the beginning. Different cultures have different characteristics, and our culture is a violent character and always has been. Comparisons are futile.
"So your hypothesis about population increases accounting for increases in firearm deaths doesn't hold up, except here in the U.S." So I am correct as far as America goes. Do we really want to be a dictator society like China? Whay do Chinese not have guns, because their government dictates that even against the peoples will.
Freedom brings all sorts of good and bad. It takes the people to promote that good, or bad. The people elected the leaders like Trump that stain or character. The people elected the leaders who allow dangerously loose gun laws. The people want their guns. And our courts back up that want through their legal decisions.
The over 300 million guns in America are not just owned by Republicans. Democrats support gun ownership. The difference is Democrats support sane gun restrictions and legislation the Republicans do not.
NO! In todays world there is no escaping the disgusting wrath of the Progressive Left. No matter what we say we are "neo-Hitlerian to the Progressive Left. My suggestion is to rebuff them or ignore them. Even a fool appears wise when he stays silent. Arguing with morons accomplishes nothing to change their "STOCKHOLM SYNDROME" thinking and belief system - an insidious form of "group think."
I no longer believe their is hope for the Progressives they are just too far gone.
Anonymous
There has to be a middle ground besides being a "dictator society like China" and a free-for-all gun society where 18 year old kids can get weapons easier than buying a six pack of beer.
Look at other democracies and see how they handle it. They're not like China.
Right now our politicians don't even want to expand background checks.
I'm for registering all guns, mandatory insurance, no sales to anyone under 21, and treating guns the way we treat motor vehicles.
I don't worship guns, nor do I worship the 2nd Amendment.
But I think it's too late. Once we, as a country, accepted babies in kindergarten being slaughtered by a deeply disturbed kid whose parents got him guns, I knew we were a lost country.
Nothing was done then, and nothing will be done now.
AOW troll
You pasted and copied from that blog. She would never come here!
But it is interesting to read her comment.
I do remember reading her comment after the 2020 election. She said anyone who voted for Joe Biden is her enemy.
She's obviously marinated in Trumpian hate.
Hate sells well to the haters. That site's hostess, along with who knows how many others (her commenters for sure), see eveyone who does not worship their preferred idealogue as their enemy.
Sheeple following the their deluded ram down the trail of hate.
Yeah,, AOCOW is one nasty old heifer and , of course, she thinks of herself as a 'good Christian'. HA.
Occam’s razor says that the simplest solution is likely the correct solution.
How come we can’t figure it out? Of course we figured it out.
What is preventing us from taking the steps to enact the simplest solution?
It it money?
Is it party policy?
Is it a warped interpretation of the Second Amendment?
Those who want guns can have as many as they want, but how about eliminating assault rifles?
Oh. I forgot. They aren’t assault rifles. They’re “modern sporting arms.”
Please explain why we shouldn’t call them what they are? Assault rifles designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
Please add permitting and registration for all firearms. Why are gun owners rights protected but mass shooting victims only get thoughts and prayers?
Post a Comment