I’m hopeful this time is different.
This time, the many precious victims remain front and center. This time, even the more strident “my rights” gun owners are touched. This time, We The People may finally force change with or without a Congress so inept, so incompetent, so corrupt, so bound by arcane procedure, it’s incapable of the major changes essential to ending this.
If We The People delegate this to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, then expect nothing. They’ve proven again and again their worth is only as errand boys for wealthy contributors. Shredded children aren’t a priority, unless, of course, they can somehow leverage them for a campaign gift.
How then, do we end these atrocities? Through Courage and Commitment. March. Write. Call. Speak up. Speak Out.
And Learn…which is why I waited to write this post. Needed to control the anger and tears that come every time I see the Buffalo and Uvalde victims. Needed time to filter the varied reactions. Needed to sit out until more facts were revealed.
So, 12 days after Uvalde, my SEVEN Takeaways:
Takeaway 1 - In Uvalde, there’s an ongoing cover-up of law enforcement negligence.
How did we get from the fantastical claim of “exchanging gunfire” to the fact that police waited outside while children pleaded with 911 operators for help? Feels like people conspiring to get their story straight.
Fact: Cops lie with a muscle memory frequency that codifies their institutional corruption. They falsify reports. Plant evidence. Conspire with prosecutors to exaggerate crimes. Cover their asses. It’s as common as 100-degree day in Arizona. Illegal. Unethical. Ugly. Nauseating. Unforgivable in this case.
As an editor, I’ve seen this stuff in just about every police action we’ve covered. In my short time as a law enforcement PIO, I played some of the word games that are part of it. Not proud of that.
No. I’ve never run toward gunfire. To do so takes extraordinary courage I’m not sure I have.
But, I don’t put on a badge everyday with the express mission to “protect and serve.” Don’t train with firearms. Don’t drill on tactical responses. Those heavily armed officers from Uvalde, CBP, Texas Highway Patrol, and the Texas Rangers do. They failed those children. Failed their families.
We won’t learn the how’s and whys for a long time. Whenever we do, the penalties must account for the immensity of this loss of innocents.
Takeaway 2 - Enough with the fantasy of making elementary schools “hard targets.”
The FOX News "experts" conjuring legions of retired commandos patrolling halls protected by trip wires and interlocking doors is pure B.S.
Reality check. Retired military are, well, retired. Police recruits are in short supply. State legislatures aren’t spending anything for a public education system they intend to dismantle. A 110-pound kindergarten teacher with a Glock loses the confrontation with the angry man and his AR15.
This stuff sounds (again) like the guys at the end of the bar who have it all figured out. They don’t. They’re drunk.
Takeaway 3 – In both Buffalo and Uvalde, Republican talking points of “unstoppable crazed gunmen” are a cowardly excuse.
Indeed, we do have many mentally unbalanced armed people in our midst. Quite a few of them serve in Congress. I’m looking at you Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Lauren Bobert. A trade off allowing you to strut around with your big guns at the expense of innocents is unacceptable. Let’s make mental health a priority above dismantling democracy, get people the help they need, and certainly eliminate their access to firearms of any kind. Yes, you can actually do this.
Takeaway 4 - Arizona Democrats are ethically and morally bound to end to this.
Senator Mark Kelly needs to take the lead. Sure, it’s a politically dangerous place for a person trying to retain his Senate seat. But, if Kelly is truly the courageous soul who flies fighter jets and leads space shuttle missions then he’s up to it. Kelly and his wife Gabriel Giffords know the consequences firsthand. Kelly lacks the seniority power of Sinema, but he’s an excellent communicator and a more credible voice on the issue.
“It’s fucking nuts,” he told reporters in Washington, “not to do anything about this.”
Correct. Take your case to We The People, Senator Kelly. Now is the absolute right time to put Senate decorum aside, pound the table, and yell at the top of your lungs.
Takeaway 5 – Understand the Big Business of gun manufacturing and its influence.
The pathetic response from Daniel Defense and Bushmaster, the manufacturers of the AR15’s used in both Buffalo and Uvalde, signals their resistance. Again, Congress is oozing toward some sort of public dressing down of the blood-stained executives before allowing them to continue what they’ve always done.
Big profits and big bonuses come with owning and investing in peddling weaponry. Big money buys government. We The People need to speak and act and drive at this fact. The weapons merchants must be held accountable.
Takeaway 6 - Any reform will be impossible without confronting the armed White insurrectionists who threaten our democracy, many of whom sit in Congress and the Arizona legislature.
For them, this isn’t a debate over background checks, or age appropriate gun ownership, or urban gun violence, or their “right” to own a flesh shredding machine gun. They’re spoiling for a civil war.
Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher sees it in TV ads in Republican primaries, telling NBC’s Meet The Press, “We can't decouple sort of what's going on with guns from what we see – the nationalist movement in this country. It is frightening to think that we are mixing easy gun access with the rise of nationalism and this toxic sort of hate, grievance politics, replacement politics.”
Investigative journalist Frank Smyth, who literally wrote the book on the NRA, says the gun group’s ideology seeds a coming armed revolution.
“The pandemic for a lot of gun owners and people on the right seemed prophetic. The government is collapsing, is no longer able to protect you. ….the notion that you can’t rely on the government for anything, you have to rely on yourself, that led to run on guns and ammunition,” Smyth told NYT tech columnist Kara Swisher.
“American ammunition factories cannot make enough ammo to keep up with the demand, which are civilians buying it up, stocking it up in preparation for some kind of Civil War, race war, some kind of major conflict, which many have groups on that side of the spectrum really believe is coming.”
Takeaway 7 - Any meaningful reform must include managing disinformation and the toxicity that is social media.
The ongoing efforts by the platforms themselves aren’t adequate and border on insulting. Twitter under Elon Musk will become an even more toxic cesspool. Zuck and the gang at Facebook/Instagram don’t give two shits about democracy or the mental health of teens. Right Wing entities fire up conspiracy and chaos with Tucker Carlson adding the kerosene. Both the Buffalo and Uvalde shooters drank the Kool Aid they found in these spaces. Gotta fix them.
Let’s end this post where it started.
Buffalo and Uvalde must be the high water mark for the Gun Rights lobby, for the White Nationalists who’ve use the 2nd Amendment to arm for their Race War, for the cowards in Congress who’ve enabled and exploited these misguided passions for money and power.
Courage and Commitment. March. Write. Call. Speak up. Speak Out.
You and I … We The People are the only ones who can end this here.