The murderers get to shoot first

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data updated on Wednesday. The situation might be improving. In new cases per day the peaks for the last four weeks are 3475, 4093, 3978, and 3673. That means we’re in a slight decline from a peak two weeks ago. That’s not what it looked like last week. The peak for last week had been 4807 and was adjusted down by over 800 cases. The number of cases for the week before were adjusted up by 100. Last week the deaths per day were mostly in the single digits and the week before they ranged from 8 to 17. That remains pretty good. David Neiwert of Daily Kos reported on what the far right media machine has been doing with the Uvalde, Texas school shooting. The first claim was that the shooter was a transgender woman. They tried to prove their point with a photo. That was debunked by the actual transgender person in the photo who was nowhere near Texas at the time. The lie spread through the media machine anyway. Another attempt was to claim the shooter was an illegal immigrant. Why the transgender line of attack? It is to portray trans people as mentally ill – so ill they’ll shoot up a school. One source of this lie (who I won’t name) said:

What drives an 18-year-old to murder innocent children? I don’t know, but judging by the photos of him cross-dressing, we can assume there were plenty of signs he was mentally disturbed and abused by adults in his life. An adult man that wants to dress up like a female is a glaring symbol of mental disease. A society driven by cowardice prevents this topic from being discussed honestly and openly. All of our children are at risk [because] we refuse to acknowledge—and instead encourage—mental illness.

A reminder there is no photograph of the shooter dressed as a female. And the rest of what this person wrote is pure bunk. As for the claim of being an illegal immigrant that was made to reinforce the lie that immigrants are inherently scary. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about what is (and isn’t) going on in Congress. She began with:

It’s been 23 years since Columbine. Nine-and-a-half since Sandy Hook. Four since Parkland. Dozens of other schools scattered throughout the grim list in the past two decades. We don’t even have to explain why those place names are seared into the collective conscience. More than 300 shootings during school hours in those decades, and at least 185 children, teens, teachers, and staff slaughtered. More than 311,000 children have directly witnessed gun violence at their school, and millions have been forced to imagine—and act out—what they will do when it happens to them.

Sen. Cory Booker said, “We are caught in the most perverse version of Groundhog Day.” Democrats try to negotiate something. The usual Republican suspects pretend to try to negotiate. That game continues until the news spotlight turns to something else and they end the charade. Until the next time. Hunter of Kos reported that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blamed “mental health” for the school shooting. That’s one of the Republican talking points whenever there is a mass shooting. Hunter calls that out, and a few other things. And, yes, he’s annoyed. He wrote:

In Actual F---ing Fact, Greg Abbott and his Texas Republicans have done exactly the harm to "mental health" programs that every pro-gun Republican hack always does. NBC News politely reminds Abbott that when it comes to access to mental health care, Texas ranks Dead. F---ing. Last. It is the worst state. And, not content with being the worst of the worst but wanting to add their own special Texas capper to it, just last month Abbott and his craven pro-murder Republican buddies hacked a whopping $211 million from state mental health programs. Abbott just cut the very programs he now says were the solution that would have kept these children alive. So Abbott? You're a liar, you're an asshole, and even if we were supposed to believe your stupid bulls---ting attempts to evade responsibility for yet another day of mass deaths, you still just pinned yourself, personally, as The Reason This Happened. ... We're done. Greg Abbott has personally bragged of his efforts to bury his state in murder weapons. He has made it a central plank of his campaigns and of his very personality. He says “mental health” solutions are needed to keep American children alive while cutting programs to provide those solutions.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that some dear unnamed soul listed all the “solutions” to school shootings mentioned on Fox News in 24 hours. The list has 49 items on it. There really aren’t many categories of ideas. The main ones are: give more guns to more people, turn the schools into fortresses, and crank up belief in God. And one more: raise your children properly (yeah, blame the victim). Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the growing story that police assumed the shooter barricaded in a classroom with students was a hostage situation even while gunfire meant that it was an active shooter situation. When there are hostages the plan is to talk the perpetrator out of doing something bad – and wait for reinforcements when necessary. But in an active shooter situation the police need to act promptly to prevent more carnage. Sumner wrote:

For everyone claiming that “more armed officers” at schools is the solution, a reminder that this is far from the first time children have died while police stood by. At the Parkland, Florida, shooting in 2018, a police officer on scene was charged with negligence after hiding rather than confronting the shooter in a mass murder that left 17 people dead.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, had several important quotes. First from Liz Smith of the New York Times who listed the things Republicans voted against: the American Rescue Plan, infrastructure, capping the price of insulin, stopping oil company price gouging, importing baby formula.

Why? Because they want to impose as much misery as possible on the American people so that voters blame Biden and vote Republican in November. It’s really cynical, dark stuff. And then when they win, they want to criminalize abortions and ensure that we never have free and fair elections again. That’s my rant.

I think it is less they want to impose misery so voters blame Biden, and more they want to impose misery. Dworkin quoted Carl Hulse of NYT who quoted Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. He said Republicans refuse to do anything about guns because they believe voters will throw them out of office. Dworkin also quoted Nicholas Kristof of NYT, who suggested talking about gun safety instead of gun control.

For example, consider the minimum age to buy or possess a gun. The suspects in both the Texas and the Buffalo shootings were only 18, and that’s not a surprise. Americans ages 18 to 20 account for 4 percent of the population but 17 percent of those known to have committed a murder.

On to Akela Lacy of The Intercept:

As the number of school resource officers has ballooned over the last two decades, so has the number of school shootings. There is no evidence that police have the ability to stop these shootings from happening. “The idea that a standard armed school police officer is gonna stop someone in that situation has proven not to be true, time and time again,” said Alex Vitale, a sociologist at the City University of New York and the author of “The End of Policing,” who noted that police and security guards are often the first casualties in mass shooting events.

Finally to a poll reported by Politico. The poll asked about several restrictions on guns and reported on those who approve, those who disapprove, and the net approval, which is the difference between the approval and disapproval scores. Some of what they found: Require background checks on all gun sales: Approve 88%, disapprove 8%, net approval 80. Create a national database about each gun sale: net approval 57. Ban assault weapons: net approval 42 And, alas, equip teachers and staff with guns: net approval 20. Hunter took on more of the Republican talking points, the same ones that get put on display every time there is a mass shooting. Hunter’s lambasting reinforces the idea I mentioned a couple days ago that Republicans and conservatives in general want the mayhem and want the deaths from guns. Texas Republicans say the answer is more police and more guards in schools. But if they believed that they would have done it. They talk about “here’s what we should do” but never follow through. The say we should “harden” schools – bullet resistant doors, bullet resistant backpacks. But that costs money, as does the pay for all those guards. And they won’t adequately pay teachers. All those costs would promote big government, which they oppose. Of course, one way to not have big government is to not have schools. Hunter, with help from tweets by Derek Thompson, countered Sen. Ted Cruz’ claim that more law enforcement will keep kids safe. Studies say when armed guards are present the rate of death is 2.83 times greater. Hunter wrote:

The actual data shows that the more guns you put in schools, the more children end up shot. Putting professional, trained law enforcement officers on guard inside schools results in more children being shot; one can easily imagine the outcome if the other Republican murder fantasy, in which every school teacher in America keeps a loaded gun on their hip or in their desk, came to pass.

Hunter included tweets of David Waldman with headlines of students shot by security officers. Hunter again:

Over, and over, and over. The same story unfolds every day. Putting a loaded gun in a home results in more children dying of gunshot wounds. Putting a loaded gun in a school results in more children dying of gunshot wounds. The less training a parent or security officer has, the more children die of gunshot wounds—while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott brags about his success in making sure his state’s newest gun owners need no training to begin with. ... This is due in large part to the rules of American engagement: The murderers get to shoot first. They get to walk into any business, any public place, shouting and fully armed and ready to kill a dozen or a hundred, and police aren’t allowed to interfere with those unencumbered and holy "gun rights" until the man planning to kill those around him has gotten where he wants to be, raised his gun, and moved his finger to the trigger. Whatever security guards Ted Cruz fetishizes as Our American Solution then die, but as "heroes," or are forced to flee, leaving the gunman to his devices until more militarized forces can arrive on the scene.

Then there are the gun advocates that brag about how they’ll respond if anyone tries to take their guns. Hunter says they are promoting fantasies of good mass murderers ready to get rid of the opposition. They then promote these good murderers as the patriots.

And stop pretending you give a flying damn about our dead children following decade after decade of new laws meant to make it easier to kill them in more places, and faster.

They have a mass murder fantasy. They want the mayhem. They want the deaths.