Posted on 05/27/2022 4:34:37 AM PDT by DoodleBob
I don’t have anything of value to add about Uvalde and I’m as heartsick and angry as you are.
But I do want to try to impose some reality in our thinking about guns: This will happen again, and again. Because guns are a problem that cannot be fixed.
Three reasons:
(1) The Second Amendment, like it or not, provides cover that makes reforming gun laws difficult to do and then more difficult to legally sustain.
(2) Guns are more popular than you probably realize and our political system gives so much leverage to one particular political party that if this party holds a position with roughly 45 percent support in the populace, it’s basically impossible to pull back.
This leverage which our system currently affords to the Republican party— which is a new, but so far durable feature of American politics—makes it so we have results like this: Gun reform is favored by a slim majority made up primarily of Democrats and independent voters, so it is impossible to enact.
But while 64 percent of the country is opposed to overturning Roe, overturning it and restricting the practice of abortion is favored by a minority made up primarily of Republicans.
Which is why Roe is likely to be overturned and gun control is unlikely to be achieved.
If you believe that this state of affairs is suboptimal for our republic, then maybe Democrats should have made the District of Columbia a state instead of spending their political capital on an infrastructure bill.
That wouldn’t have fixed the gun problem, but reducing the leverage that rural voters have over the rest of the country is a necessary precondition to any progress on this front.
(3) Even if we reformed gun laws, the sheer number of guns in circulation would continue to contribute to tragedies and shootings for years—probably decades—to come. Guns don’t expire and there are some 400 million of them circulating in our country. We are off the charts globally in terms of number of guns owned per resident.
I don’t want to give in to despair here. I’m just trying to be realistic about what would be required to meaningfully reduce gun violence.
And because these requirements are so large—breaking the Republican hold on the Senate and hence the Supreme Court; crafting laws that are aggressive but pass constitutional muster; then embarking on a generational task to remove guns from circulation—I don’t think it will happen.
I mean, for God’s sake: We had an actual insurrection in America 17 months ago and Democrats still haven’t passed Electoral Count Act reform.
So what can we do? Maybe in blue states there are incremental reforms that could help at the margins. But that’s about it. Even a measure as modest and full of compromises as the Manchin-Toomey bill is a dead letter in our political system.
Nothing will change until the system is rebalanced, either through the passing of laws or the shifting of demographics.
Guns were already 100% banned in that school. Just as they were in all the other schools that have been the sites of mass shootings. Such gun bans kill people. So far, zero mass school shootings in schools that allow the staff to be armed - and such schools do exist
An unauthorized individual entered Elmira High School
This happened yesterday.
Disband federal alphabet agencies and 90% of the problem would be solved.
There’d be no one to enable the psychopaths.
If someone complains about some guy killing 21 people all at once, ask them if it would be OK if instead he killed two people a day for 10 day.
They’ll shriek “Of course not - that would be horrible”.
Then tell them that that’s what happens in Chicago CONTINUOUSLY, and ask them why they aren’t horrified by that.
Author is focused and lamenting on guns. The problem is not guns. I’ll say it again. We were able to harden airports as a soft target after 911. Why is the same approach not taken for schools where our most vulnerable are gathered?
An armed security guard, some armed and trained teachers, and layered outside/inside parameter defenses including smart camera systems, lock down doors, and active shooter response plans. All of these would work and none take away our fundamental rights of self defense.
Are guns the only way to kill people? Funny, I always thought machetes, flamethrowers, bombs could be just as effective but I guess I was wrong. According to democrats if we just ban all guns all killings will immediately stop forever and Utopia will be here forever after.
Why are liberal idiots so focused on guns? Do they really believe guns were the primary reason for the tragedy in Uvalde? Silly question, of course they do.
As they completely ignore the societal problems that caused this massacre. As they ignore the mental illnesses that liberalism openly encourages, such as transgenderism and an open border policy
Gun violence is far far down on our list of national emergencies. Only if and when we address liberalism, which as we know is a mental disorder, will we begin to restore sanity and normalcy to our country.
A sign reading, “Teachers and staff are armed” would do much more to dissuade attackers. But it would be hard to virtue signal while working there.
....or purposefully provoke them, outright.
Change the entrance to these buildings so a person has a door in front of him and behind him...and is visible via monitor. Then use speaker phone to decide if this person can enter.
These setups are on all the apartment buildings in my area.
For the first hour of the school day and at the end of the day, have an armed guard and metal detector setup. Stupid cheap. Get rid of two worthless counselors to pay for it.
The only change to gun laws that will make a difference is to eliminate all excapt the 2nd amendment.
This guy is way beyond a never-trumper. He's a closet communist.
An excellent point. In one weekend, one can read of an equivalent number of deaths in Chicago. "Chicago's most violent weekend of 2021: 104 shot, 19 of them killed. 13 kids among the wounded."
Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/7/3/22561910/chicago-weekend-shootings-july-2-5-homicide-gun-violence
The article's writer plays with numbers, as if a deadly episode numbered in the tens makes for his being "heartsick and angry."
Examining another form of mass killing, one can examine abortion which he mentions (Roe). Here is a simple and sourced bit of comparative information.
"An estimated 54,000 to 63,000 U.S. abortions per year occur at 15+ weeks of pregnancy" says the Guttmacher Institute.
Source: https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2021/estimated-54000-63000-us-abortions-year-occur-15-weeks-pregnancy
Using the lower estimate of only those U.S. abortion after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, one can calculate a per day result.
( 54,000 / 365 days ) = about 248 deaths per day, every day.
It is assured that the writer is neither heartsick nor angry at such deaths, because....
That, too.
Uvalde Will Happen Again
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Yes, Uvalde will continue to happen as long as the left and their mainstream media accomplices continue to offer these ghouls fame and immortality in exchange for helping them demonize firearms.
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