“Look, maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God’s name in vain, we wouldn’t have the mass killings like we didn’t have before prayer was eliminated from school.”
“If I lost one of my children I’d be pretty devastated, especially in a way that is so senseless and seemingly has no purpose. I think … I would just have to say, if I had the opportunity to talk to the people I’d have to say, look, there’s always a plan. I believe God always has a plan. Life is short no matter what it is. And certainly, we’re not going to make sense of, you know, a young child being shot and killed way before their life expectancy.”
Children flee Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022.
They’re like recurring allergies – they just keep hitting over and over. But we have a bevy of cures for allergies. We don’t seem to have many for the sickening epidemic of mass shootings in the U.S.
On the other side, far left gun control proponents want to eliminate all firearms for private citizens; believing that – in this violent, imperfect world – we only need herbal tea and kind words to solve every crisis. These are the same people who get so emotional it’s almost painfully embarrassing to watch them recount their ordeals. I understand these are horrific events, but the time for tears and anguish has already passed.
And that’s what I want to communicate to liberals. Stop crying! It’s time to get mad, stand up and yell back at these idiotic gun nuts whose only resolution to firearm blood baths is another weapon and a few thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers serve as little more than toilet paper for the carnage.
In the immediate aftermath of both Buffalo and Uvalde, as more talk of gun violence and gun control arose, we heard the usual cadre of right-wing loudmouths more worried (as always) that the rights of “law-abiding gun owners” could be desecrated.
Spare me the narrow-minded anxiety!
People have more of a right to live than anyone has a right to own a gun. And no, they aren’t equally significant. But conservatives campaigning for public office consistently point out one characteristic: they are pro-Second Amendment. I see these ads every election cycle, especially here in Texas. They always skip over the First Amendment, which ensures free speech and peaceable assembly and guarantees the right to vote. Again, the twisted priorities of the conservative mindset.
Last year, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed several pieces of legislation into law that declared the state to be a “Second Amendment sanctuary”, I wasn’t shocked. But I was angry. This is the same governor who oversaw blatant attacks on the right to vote by dismissing the reality of gerrymandering in the state and allowing for partisan poll watchers. In older days, partisan poll watchers across the South carried guns and would deliberately intimidate (mostly non-White) voters. Conservatives steadily bemoan the myth of rampant voter fraud, while ignoring the very real pandemic of gun violence.
For the first anniversary of the 1999 Columbine school massacre, a national news network interviewed several of those first responders. One man stated that he was particularly upset that the perpetrators (two teenage boys) had included girls among their victims. He said could understand them shooting boys, “but they shot girls, too.” I literally stopped when I heard him say that. Aside from the shock value of the verbiage, that he could differentiate between the genders of the victims and therefore categorize his horror level proved how complacent people in this country have become towards violence. It certainly was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
The outrage continued in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, when the U.S. Senate held a hearing on gun violence in the nation and the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre sat with a scowl on his face and became defensively hostile with every question lobbed at him. And, as usual, liberals wept, while conservatives grunted. And then…nothing. Nothing happened. No new legislation to address gun violence; no new funding for mental health counseling…nothing. With that, it seemed the gun violence debate in the United States ended. We’d accepted the murder of helpless children and thus, nothing more could be done.
At this point, I really don’t hold out much hope for any kind of movement on the legislative front. Politics has gotten in the way of public service. So, what’s new?
I remain as tired of the crying from liberals as I am of the concern for gun owner rights from conservatives. If only the latter group understood the extent of the damage caused by bullet wounds, then perhaps they’d rethink their commitment to ensuring gun rights over human rights. It’s time for we progressives to get mad and shout down the right-wing extremists who proudly pose with their firearms for family holiday photos the way most normal-minded folks pose with their children and pets, armed with little more than smiles. The saccharine responses from the horrified won’t result in any considerable change. They’ll just fade into the morass of national traumas.
Then we’ll have another mass shooting – in a school or some public venue. And the cycle of tears and excuses will begin all over again.
“Unfortunately, they’re trying to blame inanimate objects for all of these tragedies. When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri, so something has happened to our society and I go back to abortion. When we decided it was okay to murder kids in their mother’s wombs, life has no value to a lot of these folks.”
“Salvador Ramos, who is Hispanic, clearly had a lot of mental issues going on, as was shown with him wearing eyeliner, cross-dressing. I think some of the most dangerous people in America are trans-terrorists because these are the people who want to groom your children and talk them into changing you gender.”
“This bullshit you get from this guy about mental health and evil. The only evil that exists is when the leader of this state has a problem and is a problem of epic proportions.”
“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”
A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.
“No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”
Matt Schruers, President of Computer & Communications Industry Association, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling temporarily blocking Texas’ HB 20 from being enforced
A lower court will resolve a preliminary First Amendment challenge to the statute, also known as Texas’ “social media law”.
Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute. This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”
Schruers added, “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute. This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law. We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law.”
“This is not an academic conversation. This is a very real conversation where people’s lives could be destroyed by these criminal prosecutions. In Texas, you’re an adult at 17. We are looking at the prospect of a 17-year-old girl who has an unplanned pregnancy and is seeking an abortion [being] subjected to first-degree felony charges — up to 99 years in jail — and that’s just absolutely unacceptable.”
Vela is proposing a resolution that would direct the city’s police department to make criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation of abortions its lowest priority and restrict city funds and city staff from being used to investigate, catalogue or report suspected abortions.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz doesn’t want to contend with the brutal honesty of a Sky News reporter, so he reacts how cowards always do – he walks away.
Steve Kerr is the head coach of the Golden State Warriors professional basketball team. In this video, he delivers a personal message following the Uvalde school shooting.
In 2019, Abbott signed into law a bill allowing gun purchases without a license. Two years later he signed another bill into law lowering the age requirement for a firearms purchase from 21 to 18.
In the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting, there were so many idiotic comments made by conservative politicians and other right-wing dumbasses it was tough to highlight them all. But here are a few.
“The President of the United States. Frail, confused, bitterly partisan, desecrating the memory of recently murdered children with tired talking points of the Democratic Party. Dividing the country in a moment of deep pain, rather than uniting. His voice rising, amplified only as he repeats the talking points he repeated for over 35 years in the Senate. Partisan politics being the only thing that animates him. Unfit to lead this country.”
Tucker Carlson, responding to President Biden’s comments after the Uvalde school shooting
“I want to be very, very clear tonight. President Biden appeared on camera tonight for less than eight minutes, not because he believed that his words would comfort the families or the friends of the victims, not because he believed that he would calm what are obviously frayed nerves of a worried nation, parents who are worried. And he didn’t do it to unite America in this time of grief. No, he did not. He spoke tonight because politics is selfish. Because in today’s twisted world, it’s considered perfectly appropriate to exploit the massacre of innocent little kids in order to try to turn around your own sagging poll members. Today, Reuters/Ipsos has Biden at the lowest approval of his presidency, 36%. So this attempt at political resuscitation on Biden’s part, it’s despicable.”
“We need to celebrate our culture. We need to celebrate Americanism, we need to celebrate the Judeo-Christian principles that went into the founding of this nation. And if you’re not Jewish, you’re not Christian, there’s no reason to take offense. You came here, a family member came here because of the nature of the country. You fled. You don’t have to be Jewish or Christian but facts are facts. It was founded on a Judeo-Christian belief system which embraces Western civilization and the Renaissance, the Reformation, and all these things. It’s not so terrible to have a prayer in school, is it? Even a silent prayer. To think about a higher authority, learn the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are common sense.”
“Having one point of entry and making it more difficult for people even to get in that point of entry and having – potentially – teachers and other administrators who have gone through training and who are armed because first responders typically can’t get there in time to prevent a shooting. This is just not possible unless you have a police officer on every campus, which for a lot of these schools is almost impossible. You’re going to have to do more at the school because it typically involves very short periods of time and you have to have people trained on campus to react.”
Chief Writing Wolf 