"There are so many crazy people out there" was what I heard on All Things Considered from a woman in Texas about why she was going to carry her concealed weapon everywhere from now on. Will anyone find it strange to carry a concealed weapon into a memorial for a person killed by a deranged person with a gun? Then on the radio program 1A today on WAMU had an awful man from the group Texas Carry who represents the most extreme views on violence in America. He claimed cities were being burnt down and talked about the large number of rapes and violence in our society. He was describing a country that I do not recognize, and I don't know who would say that Americans are just more violent when compared to the rest of the world. I appreciate the producers for giving these extremists who want a gun in the hand of every person because I would never hear these far right members of our society.
It does bring up a question, where do these extreme views come from. Certainly, Faux News is a big part of this division and extreme painting of the United States. The right wing radio talk shows that dominate the AM band also present the horrible face of the country. I suspect the local news also has a lot to do with the dim impression of the United States. If it bleeds it leads over and over and over has to have an impact. If you saw 12 minutes of murder, rapes, and corruption every day, you would have an over-exaggerated impression of the bad side of America. Finally, Facebook has to have some impact on why people feel the country is failing. The Shares, Likes, and news feed are not all cat photos. The Russians sowed division with advertising (like the one above) that Americans then shared and amplified to amazing effect.
The Texas Attorney General wanted to clarify the law to make it clear that Texans can bring a concealed weapon into a church to stop these attacks in the future. Ken Paxton said, "This is a, you know - obviously unsolvable in some ways. But there are ways to make it more likely that more people are going to live." This does not match the research, which shows that very few times even when there is a person present with a concealed weapon are they able to disrupt an armed aggressor. What a strange thing to be concerned about at a time of extreme sorrow, and every other developed country would beg to disagree that this is an "unsolvable" problem.
The President was asked in South Korea a wonderful question about "extreme vetting" for those who want to own a gun in the US. It was an extremely strange response with exaggeration and falsehoods thrown in. He said that "hundreds" would have been killed if a neighbor had not had a gun. “If he didn't have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead.... Not going to help.” This is factually not true and does not answer the question. No one said that the neighbor should not have a gun even if there was extreme vetting. But everyone agrees that the killer should not have had a gun since 2012. Also, he was only engaged after the church massacre--after all 26 had died. We will never know what he would have done if the neighbor had not engaged him. Most likely he would have sought out the subject of his anger his mother-in-law. Then the President pivoted to Chicago and the large number of gun deaths with a fairly tough gun laws. Again, a strange comparison since Chicago is not the first place one thinks of with regard to mass shootings.
In another slam of the extreme right wing, Stephen Colbert had a good monologue about the importance of voting against candidates who support arming every citizen. “You wanna do something, but nothing gets done. No one does anything,” said Colbert. “Nothing gets done about what happened in Las Vegas. They can’t even pass a restriction on gun stocks, those bump stocks that turn a semiautomatic weapon into almost a fully automatic weapon. Nothing gets done to control the guns that kill 10,000 people a year around America—not just in these mass killings.”
How could Dems be sweating in Virginia? After one year of Trumpism, it is insane that anyone would vote for a Republican ever again. How much more proof do you need that they only care about their rich donors?
Finally, if you need proof of God there was one today. CNN reported that 45 tried to go to the Korean DMZ today. They loaded up the helicopters with press and got within 5 minutes of touchdown on the most dangerous property on the planet. We all know that Trump would have said something monumentally inappropriate. Most likely causing a cold war to turn hot with North Korea. God intervened at the last minute with a deep fog that prevented the helicopters from getting near the DMZ and they had to turn around. There could not be any clearer that God prevented a nuclear showdown today.
by Brian Davis
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