Tuesday, June 7, 2022

SOME PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSPARENT STUPIDITY



 


 

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, District of Columbia v. Heller

It appears that most advocates for more guns, not less, to deal with mass shootings, are oblivious of the concept, “cause and effect”.  The reality that more guns, in any fashion, does little to reduce gun violence has been established by numerous careful studies.    Add to this the easy access Americans have to obtain them, and it becomes crystal clear why the U.S. gun death rate is “at the top of the list for countries with high Socio-demographic Index.”

Lewis Toland would have us believe that it’s simply a loss of traditional mores and feminist antagonists who run off their husbands that contributes to the increase in mass murderers.  However, he cites earlier mass murderers from past eras without connecting their deranged atrocities to low morals and absent fathers. 

Immoral, fatherless young men have been with us throughout history and some likely engaged in taking innocent lives in part because of their deprived fate.  But unlike today’s homicidal bunch, none had the easy access to abundant, more deadly firearms to make this an existential threat to American society as it has become today.  As of June 3rd, there had been 20 more mass shootings since Uvalde.

Could this violent epidemic of gun killings really be just the result of those who haven’t found Jesus in their life and grew up without a dad?  Perhaps the Tolands of this world should take a hard look at their own tribe

Tom Nichols, a self-proclaimed Never Trump conservative observed that “Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes”.

Nichols’ view of today’s Republican fits those who insist that more guns are needed to combat mass shootings.  It is another knee jerk reaction in the style of Tucker Carlson to automatically blast any idea that emanates from liberal Democrats or others who don’t align with their nutty, perverse ideas

 

Nutty ideas like Senator Ted Cruz’s “one door” solution that has “one door into and out of the school, and have … armed police officers at that door.”  Even 2nd amendment zealots who want too find plausible counter arguments to gun reform legislation have to be somewhat mortified by this dangerous approach that puts teachers and students in harms way when a fire or bomb threat evacuation is needed in rapid order.  Fox News contributor Judith Miller argued that Republicans have become "the party of egregious mass shooting and uncontrolled guns" following the Uvalde, Texas school massacre.

It is lunacy that portends that reasonable and sane gun reform measures threatens to take away guns from those conscientious gun owners who practice reasonable gun safety.  It is an idea fostered by the NRA who advocate for more gun sells on behalf of the gun industry.  To believe that ideas like banning AK-47’s, expanding background checks and enacting Red Flag laws will not reduce gun violence is to ignore how effective these measures have worked in other developed countries

Innocent men women and children will continue to die at the hands of desperate and disturbed people who’ve easily obtained guns because the gun industry and their lobbyist, the NRA, have advanced a paranoid idea that serves their financial interests. 

The laws that enable this insanity are the results of voters who continue to re-elect the handmaidens of the gun industry and fail to call them out after each mass shooting. It’s a classic example of Einstein’s definition of insanity