If you believe that an AR-15 is worth more than a child

Another mass shooting at a school. This one at a Christian school at Nashville. Six dead, three of them children, plus the shooter, who was killed by police. Again, an AR-15 was involved. Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that the Nashville shooter appears to identify transgender. Yeah, Republicans latched onto that detail. More in a moment. Eleveld also reported that analyses done by both Mother Jones and the Violence Project found 95% of shootings are committed by cisgender (not trans) men. I’m not sure of the numbers that Mother Jones and the Violence Project used – their database of mass shootings seems way too small. Even so, their conclusion that the vast majority of shooters are cis males is accurate. Eleveld added:

Fixating on the shooter's gender identity is just Republicans' latest attempt to jingle their keys in front of Republican voters rather than address the real issue: Anyone of any gender can get their hands on assault weapons in this gun-laden country, and anyone of any gender can use those guns to massacre people.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reviewed what happened when reporters talked to Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican from Tennessee in Congress. Here’s a condensed version of what he said when asked about the mass shooting in his state:

We’re not going to fix it... Criminals are going to be criminals... [repeating his father talking about WWII] Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, then there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it...

As for, you know, doing what Congress can do: “I don't see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly.” So don’t you want to protect your own daughter? “Well, we home-school her.” He said all that on the day he commented on the drag queen ban in his state: “We don’t put up with that crap in Tennessee.” Back to Republican’s learning the shooter was trans, Laura Clawson of Kos reported some of what they said. Marjorie Taylor Green: “Everyone can stop blaming guns now.” JD Vance, Senator from Ohio: “Giving in to these ideas isn't compassion, it's dangerous.” Sen. Josh Hawley is concerned this was a hate crime perpetrated by a trans person – after voting against a hate crime bill. Clawson included a quote from Oliver Willis saying a pro Nazi paper in the 1930s laid the groundwork for the Holocaust by linking every crime to Jewish people. Then Willis included the front page of Murdoch’s New York Post with screaming headline, “Transgender killer targets Christian school.” I’m sure there were extra points for the trans v. Christian angle. Clawson quoted Michelangelo Signorile:

Transgender people are actually those among us who are more likely to be the target of violent hate crimes across the country every day—because of this very kind of demonization—and the actions of GOP politicians and MAGA commentators will only further embolden the hate that leads to violence.

John Leguizamo, taking a turn as the host of The Daily Show, had a few things to say about Burchett’s interview: You’re a Congressman. If you have no ideas about keeping kids safe, get out of the way. No respect to your father, but going to school should not feel like fighting WWII. He also responded to Greene:

Here's the thing, Marjorie. I agree with you. I don't think trans people should be allowed to own assault rifles either. So let's stop them. But just to be safe, we should also ban non-trans people from owning assault rifles, okay? Just in case they become trans, okay? You know what I mean? No assault weapons for anybody. That'll show them.

Eleveld reported that Justin Kanew, founder of the progressive Tennessee Holler, walked the state Capitol trying to ask Republican lawmakers whether they supported any gun safety legislation. He got a lot of deflections, non-answers, and silence. Rep. Jeremy Faison wanted it clear that “there were no weapons of war.” Actually, yes there were. Sen. Becky Massey she had a bill for gun safety classes for everybody. Monty Wolverton tweeted a cartoon:

Tennessee Logic? Drag Queens Guns Which one is a leading cause of child death in the US?

Leah McElrath tweeted:

The NRA exists to facilitate the international trade of illicit weapons. Money laundering, illegal drugs, and human trafficking are part of the global arms trade. The NRA does NOT exist to protect our civil rights—yet we allow it to bribe politicians and direct policy.

And responding to Sen. Rick Scott’s suggestion of an automatic death penalty for schools shooters, she added:

An automatic death penalty is not a deterrent for people who know they’re either likely to get killed by police—as the shooter in Nashville was—or plan to kill themselves. Rick Scott has an A+ rating from the NRA, and he spouts nonsensical propaganda like this on their behalf.

Davig Hogg of March For Our Lives responded to an NRA tweet. First, the NRA:

If you want to ban AR-15s, you are an enemy of the Second Amendment. That’s it. That’s the tweet.

Hogg replied:

If you believe that an AR 15 is worth more than a child you are an enemy of the American people That’s it. That’s the tweet.

Diana Butler Bass included a photo tweeted by Shannon Watts of Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles, whose district includes the school where the shooting happened. The photo shows the Rep., his wife, and teenage son and daughter, all holding guns as they posed in front of the Christmas Tree. Only the pre-teen daughter doesn’t have a gun. Bass wrote, “This is what grooming looks like.” Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon: “Vote based on what they hold dear:” Candidate A holds children. Candidate B holds AR-15s. Hunter of Kos discussed a history of the AR-15 published by the Washington Post. Summary: it’s good, but pulls its punches, not quite addressing how much death it causes. For a long time the AR-15 was a combat weapon, not a sport gun or a self-defense gun and not available to the public. It is designed to kill quickly, to spray bullets faster than the enemy, and do so with minimal skill. The 9/11/2001 attacks made America more paranoid, aggressive, and bigoted with a president mandating hegemony at gunpoint. Terrorists might be coming to your town! And Americans wanted what they saw soldiers using. People wanted to be like a soldier or police but without the training and responsibilities. They wanted to combat organized terrorists, “urban” looters (see Hurricane Katrina), and the government (see Obama as president). And for that a handgun wasn’t enough. The reason for owning a gun had switched from defense to offense. Every mass murder using an AR-15 boosted its sales as buyers saw their targets had no chance of escape. Supposedly attempts to ban it also boosted sales, but there hasn’t been a serious attempt to ban it since Sandy Hook. So why do we believe gun companies when they spout that reason? Hunter wrote of AR-15 buyers:

They gravitate toward the weapons that have proved themselves useful in the precise scenario gun extremists claim as the reason they "need" the offense-focused models: • There are a large number of people who presumably need killing. • I need to kill them quickly, before they can fight back. • I need to be able to stand my ground even against armed law enforcement officers in order to continue that killing. It is the militia model, one-to-one. Sales of AR-15s spike after each instance in which a mass murderer lives out the stated militia goal of killing many human beings quickly in service to a cause that the rest of society likely does not share. Even if there is no plausible chance of new gun restrictions, sales still spike. ... The story of the AR-15 in America is the story of an industry that seized on white nationalist and xenophobic fervor after 9/11, saw opportunity in the expiration of an assault weapons ban even as America entered a new era of polished, flag-waving militarism, and invented, out of all those things, an entirely new reason for gun ownership that premised itself specifically on a new supposed need for Americans to take paramilitary action against their neighbors, against outsiders, or against government itself.

All that gun company marketing is to deflect from their seeing paranoid private militarism as a big pot of money. Now a bit from me: I’ve believed for quite a while now, though the voices I quoted in this post – especially the history of the AR-15 – highlight it yet again, that Republican lawmakers at the national and state levels, want that. They want the carnage. They want the deaths and don’t care that some of them are children, even white Christian children. Yeah, the money from the NRA is nice, but that’s not why they are going along with they NRA. Guns are the ultimate symbol and tool of supremacy and Republicans are all about supremacy. The only purpose of a gun outside of sport hunting is to enforce the social hierarchy. It is supremacist to say I have the power to kill you. I have the power to organize society so that I can kill you without my fingerprints being on the weapon. Seeing such belligerent displays of supremacy day after day is exhausting. Oh, please, not more of it! For the loudest ones, and likely all of them, their purpose in life, their only task, is to assert and flaunt their position in the social hierarchy. All that carnage, all those deaths, all that feeling of terror, all that grief at losing a loved one – they want that.