The slaughter in a small town Texas elementary school hit me hard today. Not only because of the unspeakable tragedy of 18 sets of parents having to prepare for the unspeakable , burying a child, and the families of 3 adults having to come to grips with saying a final goodbye to a loved one. It hit me hard because I also am a community survivor.
On October 1st, 2p17, I was sitting at home, watching a movie when Teri came home to tell me to turn on the local news. A deranged gunman had smashed out a window that the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, taken an automatic weapon upgraded with a bump stock, and slaughtered 59 people at the Route 66 Country Music Festival across the street. I was stunned. What the fuck was happening in my adopted home town?
The town came together, as such towns do. There were calls for blood donations to help to treat the survivors, and people lined up around the block, only to be fed and watered by local merchants showing up to support them. My most haunting memory is of a LVPD detective talking about wandering over the festival grounds after the shooting, hearing the incessant ring tones of phones that would never be answered. And my heart broke more.
But October of 2017 was also a supposed cause for joy in Las Vegas. Our brand new NHL expansion team, the Golden Knights, were launching their inaugural season. They opened on the road in Dallas, and blew out the first 2 games. They returned home to a raucous welcome for their inaugural home game. They held a dignified pre game ceremony featuring first responders to the Route 66 massacre. They went on to win their first 9 NHL games on the way to becoming the first team in NHL history to reach the Stanley Cup Finals in its first season.
But we grieved. A California man fashioned 59 simple white crosses with the names of each victim carefully painted on each. The city placed them in the spare space in front of the iconic Welcome To Las Vegas sign on the south entrance of Las Vegas Boulevard South. It quickly became a tourist hot spot, and eventually the crosses were forwarded to the families of the victime.
But because this is Vegas, Baby!, the fun never stops. A couple of years later, a deranged, mentally ill woman put her toddler in a car seat in the middle seat of her mini van, jumped a curb, and drove down the sidewalk of Las Vegas Boulevard South in the middle of the Strip, bowling over pedestrians like bowling pins. And again the community rose up to support and assist the survivors, ancd mourn the dead.
My point is this. I’m right there with the survivors of the Buffalo shooting, as well as the Texas school massacre. Because I’ve been there and done that, twice now. I know what it feels like to feel the shock and horror of an ect of domestic terrorism visited on your local community. I know what it feels like to kiss your wife goodbye at the door in the morning, and have that nasty little itch that you just might never see her alive again. I know the twitch of walking into a store wondering if I’m about to be greeted with the sound of gunfire while I get my sliced mushrooms. Domestic terrorism has a way of doing that to you, it strips away your basic feelings of safety and security, And it has to STOP!Â
Is this enough for Murdoch/Tucker? The ultimate hero.A young hispanic/latin x man kills children,majority same background helping them along the “replacement theory” path? How will they spin this since it wasn’t a young “mentally ill” white young man,who was just misunderstood? I’m sick.Sick of mourning.Sick for this country.Sick that republican now =all the $ i can get for myself,in your face and to hell with everybody/thing else…and the idiots who support them are too ignorant to know they’re victims of the same or just don’t give a shit.Hooray for all the billionaires.Last i saw it’s a rarefied but growing field,mulched with everyone else. Love your truth telling Murf.Don’t stop. Just had to vent,and vote,and march,and whatever it takes.Will not go quietly.
Take Federal control of the NRA. Make it an adjunct of the National Guard, perhaps twisting the “militia” language of the Second Amendment. Replace all the management with serving Regular Army personnel. Give this reorganized NRA monopoly control of sales / dispensing of all ammunition: provided free for use during NRA-recognized events (all currently-organized shooting meets, as done by local Clubs); membership training proficiency demonstration requirements to earn out-of-event use ammunition receipt vouchers (limited to reasonable amounts); sales to individuals in regulated quantities upon presentation of a NRA membership card with ammunition receipt time & quantity limit punchouts; control would not only cover finished ammunition, but also reloading supplies and muzzle-loading supplies.
Yes, there are people who currently have huge ammo supplies that would laugh at these strictures, but their supplies won’t last forever and then they’re stuck.
Ah, but the Supreme Court’s NRA-appoved members decided the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated militia” bit didn’t mean what the Founders meant when they wrote the Amendment; they did that over a decade ago in the Heller decision (and added to in the McDonald decision from 2010).
I mean, for all their haughty rhetoric about “original intent” and “the Constitution means exactly what it says, no more and no less,” Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and current members Samuel Alito and Clarence “My Wife Informs Me How to Vote When She Gets Involved in a Case” Thomas completely chose to ignore their “long-held” belief in “originalism” when it came to the Constitution. No right to privacy because it’s not explicitly protected in the Constitution but when the Constitution explicitly says something certain Justices don’t agree with, they’re ready to throw out the whole concept of original intent. (Not to mention their whole “no legislating from the bench” shtick was tossed out with the decision. We all got to see just how “judicial activism” is perfectly fine and dandy with right-wingers when it’s activism they support.)
Just do it, citing the militia language. Force the current Court to say it again, if they’re up to it, thus further reducing the Court’s standing in many of our views and increasing the likelihood of future jury nullifications of SC opinions.
Forgot to say: The mission of the takeover of the NRA would be to get it out of its current political activities and return it to what it was in the era before, roughly, 1955, when it was focused on gun safety and pre-military, youth marksmanship training, coming out of the WWII experience.
Well I’m sorry to say that it’s up to 19. This is becoming a blasé thing. And they said another child was in critical condition and not expected to make it. What is wrong with people. Other countries have a mass shooting and they fix it and it doesn’t happen again. With us it’s just another day.