In Memoriam: The Innocents of Uvalde

I have no words for this unspeakable horror, only tears. And rage at the unspeakable politicians who allow these massacres to go on and on, and do nothing about it.

FYI:  Contrary to what President Biden and Senator Chris Murphy have said today, these mass shootings do not happen "only in America."  They have been happening all over the world in the last quarter-century, even in totalitarian states like Russia.  But other countries have done something about it.  Here are a couple of Wikipedia articles for further reading and reflection:

• Mass shooting (with links to articles on individual countries) 

• Overview of gun laws by nation 

• The Gun Violence Archive has a wealth of verified statistics on mass shootings in the U. S.

Update:  See hotheaded Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke get in the face of bobbleheaded Governor Greg Abbott:

 

And watch the running sore known as Senator Ted Cruz flee from questioning by a British newsman:

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At the Intersection of Hate and Murder

I am still trying to take in what happened in Orlando, but although I've read numerous accounts of the massacre, I still feel strangely numb - I think it's just too big and too horrible to comprehend.  And too much of the same old hate, hate, hate we have all endured for a lifetime, a nightmare fear now brought to a terrible reality.

But I offer a couple things to my readers today, for consideration. First, I am irritated with the media-manufactured controversy on whether it was terrorism or a hate crime, or whether it was directed at gays or at Americans, and yada yada yada. Of course it was ALL those things at the same time, and more. I couldn't find an image to convey what I mean, so I made up this simple graphic of what seem to me to be the four main causes of this crime:

It's important, very important I think, to see ALL these factors as valid causes of this tragedy; human beings are complex, and people rarely do anything just for one simple reason.

If you don't believe me, just ask yourself why you ate what you ate for breakfast this morning, or for dinner last night - whatever you put in your mouth, was it because you were on a diet, or falling off one, because the cupboard was bare or overflowing, because you were sick or well, tired or inspired, or because you ate alone at home or out with friends, or, or, or - what?

And perhaps a few more causes could be added to my graphic; for example, I just read this brief but highly significant report in the Orlando Sentinel:

Gunman Omar Mateen visited gay nightclub a dozen times before shooting, witness says

Was he casing the joint, or was he locked in a closet of self-loathing and trying to break out?

And I am quite touched by this interview with the murderer's father - despite my anger and grief, I see a man struggling to come to terms with his own enormous pain and loss, and not yet quite understanding the part he played, at second hand as a parent, in this massacre:

Father of Orlando Mass Murderer Apologizes, Clarifies

(Video not embeddable by me)


The Orlando victims have been remembered around the nation and the world: in New York, the Empire State Building spire went dark in mourning, while the World Trade Center spire was lit in rainbow colors last night:

Embed from Getty Images

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In Sydney, Australia, the harbor bridge was lit in rainbow colors too:

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Crowds gathered at the Eiffel Tower in Paris:

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One man held a sign saying, "We are a 'certain idea of the world,' never targeted 'by chance'" - a riff on a famous quote by Charles de Gaulle:

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The Eiffel Tower was lit in the colors of the rainbow:

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While an illuminated balloon bore the colors of Old Glory:

Amsterdam also remembered at the Royal Palace:

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Crowds gathered in Seoul:

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And on a beach in India:

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And in London, a vigil was held in Soho:

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Will it ever end?  A chilling report from the Guardian: 1,000 mass shootings in 1,260 days.

Obama: "Freedom Is More Powerful than Fear"

Last night, the President addressed the nation from the Oval Office for only the third time in his presidency, speaking about the threat of terrorism and the means to overcome it:




As might be expected, prominent Republicans immediately denounced the speech.

Full text of the President's remarks here.


Update, 7 p.m.: Adam Glopnik writes about Obama's speech and Republican double-talk in the New Yorker, concluding:

If the gun lobby ever spoke honestly, what they would say is that of course we are broadly responsible for these killings, but regular mass killings of innocent people is the price we pay for the liberty to own whatever guns we want, in order to be protected from a phantom threat we cannot name. That is their actual belief, although one sees, on examining it, why they never want to state it quite so clearly. So there will be ever more mass gun murders, some to be accepted blankly as the cost of liberty, others to become the occasion for surrendering liberty to a militarized state. Like the song says, only in America.

The New York Daily News front page referred to in Gopnik's article:
who is a terrorist, exactly?

Ten Dead in Oregon Shooting

Again, again, again.  And the shitheaded Republican Party, God's Own People (TM), refuses to do one damn thing about it.

Excerpt from President Obama's remarks at the White House today:

Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We've become numb to this.

We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.

And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: We need more guns, they’ll argue. Fewer gun safety laws.

Does anybody really believe that? There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country --they know that's not true. We know because of the polling that says the majority of Americans understand we should be changing these laws -- including the majority of responsible, law-abiding gun owners.

There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don't work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.

We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours -- Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.

Full text here. Video:

Obama: "A Shameful Day in Washington"

In a rare display of political emotion, President Obama spoke to reporters in the Rose Garden of the White House yesterday, lambasting a cowardly Congress and a lying gun lobby after the Senate failed to pass a bipartisan gun-control bill drawn up in the wake of the Newton massacre.  The President went on to call upon the 90% of the American people who do favor the bill to let their representatives know how they feel.



Full text here.

Alex Koppelman in the New Yorker:

It was always going to be hard to get a gun-control measure through Congress, even one as popular as background checks. So it wasn’t just the vote to block Toomey-Manchin that was so disheartening—that a minority of the Senate, representing a minority of Americans, was able to vote down legislation that had been so watered-down as to make it utterly unobjectionable. It wasn’t just that the Republican-controlled House would never have passed the bill, even if there had been sixty votes for background checks in the Senate. It was watching the whole process, realizing again so vividly and on an issue that matters so much, that the people who make the laws for three hundred million people are often cowards or fools or both.

The unfortunate truth is that so many candy-ass Democrats and liberals are very good at being whiny little bitches about things that concern their own wonderful little selves, but shy to speak up and slow to do anything about issues that affect others.

If you do give a damn about gun contol, however, write or call your senators and representative at USA.gov.

Shootings in Orlando

One dead, six wounded. By a guy who was fired two years ago from an engineering company, where he returned today with a gun.

Jeezus. How do you keep guns out of the hands of crazy people? Here, Ft. Hood, Virginia Tech, and all the other incidents.  And even if they are perfectly sane when they buy a gun, how do you know they won't go postal one day far down the road?

I've never had very strong feelings about gun control one way or the other, but I'm starting to question that. Maybe it's the part of the country I grew up in. If you live way out in the woods you're a fool if you don't have some kind of firearm on the property, for several reasons.

And I've known little old ladies who lived in town who slept much better at night, living alone, because they kept a pistol on the night stand by their bed.

But from Columbine to now - this is ridiculous. I don't know what the answer is exactly, but we just can't go on this way.