Curmie was going to respond sooner to the latest (please, God, let it be the latest) school shooting, the one in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday of this week. But the interwebs were already cluttered with charges, counter-charges, conflicting timelines, and incessant posturing from politicians, cops, and everyday citizens.
On the one hand, there were members of the “do something”
crowd, who had little but grief and indignation to offer. On the other hand, there were the “price of
freedom” brigade, the ones who really do seem to believe that a few more dead fourth
graders is a reasonable price to pay for being able to strut around with a
weapon designed for one purpose only: to kill our fellow travelers.
Curmie usually responds to these situations with great
sadness. This time, though, sadness took
a distant second place to insensate anger.
I’m not sure why the difference—the proverbial last straw? the fact that
Curmie has literally dozens of former students, many of them now close friends,
who teach in Texas schools? or was it the coincidence of timing that this event
happened as a virtual warmup act for the annual ritual fellation of the NRA by
every GOP pol who can get to Houston this weekend?
Indeed, the comment that really struck home with Curmie was this one from one of those former students mentioned above. (It was on a friends-only Facebook post, so I’ll not identify the author beyond that.)
Teachers are sharing their active shooter kits and plans on social media so we can keep our students as safe as possible. Remember that the next time politicians try to make us the scapegoats. We are doing everything we can think of to stop the potential loss of life and they are getting ready for the NRA convention.
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| Police doing about the same thing at a makeshift memorial as they did when kids’ lives were on the line. |
A few hours later, ABC claims to have “confirmed” that Salvador Ramos was “approached by one Uvalde ISD school resource officer. No gunfire is exchanged.” Guess what? Either way, the people whose job it is to protect the citizenry allowed a teenager carrying a semi-automatic rifle and literally hundreds of rounds of ammunition to stroll into an elementary school. (There are conflicting reports about where Ramos dropped a backpack containing more ammunition—just inside or just outside the building.)
Parents and neighbors literally screamed at police to enter the school. Why didn’t
they? Cowardice? Certainly virtually every cop Curmie has ever
encountered is a Big Damn Deal, at least in his own mind, if he’s the only one
with a gun… but perhaps not so much under other circumstances. Lack of a clear plan? Well, welcome to the real world. Or was it just coffee break time? (Dammit, Williams, it was your turn to bring
the donuts.)
Eventually, police “pin down” Ramos in a classroom
(presumably the one in which he’d killed all the legitimate inhabitants), but
they don’t enter the room until over an hour and a half later, in part because
they can’t get the door open; eventually, a staffer with a key (what a clever
idea!) lets them in. How many of those
kids bled to death or suffered injuries that would have been serious instead of
fatal if the cops had their act together, entered the room immediately, and
gotten the kids medical treatment?
(Remember, Ramos shot his grandmother in the face; at last report, she
was in serious condition but still alive over two days after the attack.)
Several of Curmie’s FB friends have alleged that at least
some of the local cops got their own kids out of other classrooms after Ramos
was “pinned down” before anyone did anything more than that. There’s no link to a credible source that
Curmie can find, but the fact that he even looked rather than dismissing the
story as beyond credibility says something about Curmie’s respect for
small-town cops in Texas. We can be grateful that the threat was finally
eliminated, but no one with an IQ above room temperature is going to start
singing “One Shining Moment” in honor of the cops on the scene.
Anyway, a good deal of the current round of finger-pointing
centers on the fact that a kid who had just turned 18 was able to purchase two
AR-15-style rifles and 375 rounds (that we know of) of ammunition. He can’t buy a beer, but semi-automatic
rifles are fine. Priorities, after all.
Curmie will grant that many of those imploring authorities
to “do something” don’t have a lot of specifics about what exactly to do. But there are certainly things that can be
done: outlawing semi-automatic weapons altogether would be Curmie’s preference,
as they exist only to kill people (or to compensate for under-sized male
appendages). If we can’t to do that,
then real, honest-to-God background checks, waiting periods, application
processes, licenses, required training.
A Friend of Curmie noted in a recent Facebook post that he’d had to fill
out copious paperwork, demonstrate personal responsibility, and wait three
weeks before he was allowed to adopt a couple of kittens. It should be easier to get a kitten than a
lethal weapon.
Ah, but there’s a litany of responses from the
gun-obsessed. Let’s look at those
arguments.
“They’re coming for our guns.” No, that actually isn’t true. Sure, there are a couple of outliers; there
always are. But Curmie has seen nary a
politician call for the elimination of all guns. Stop with the Straw Man arguments, please.
The Second Amendment!
Oh, puh-leeez. Does Salvador Ramos
seem like a member of a “well-regulated militia” to you, Gentle Reader? Even leaving aside that troublesome phrase,
there are a number of other problems with this rationale. Curmie will grant that the US Constitution
and the accompanying Bill of Rights is among the most important documents ever
written. Still, there’s not a lot of
concern about quartering of soldiers (Third Amendment) these days, and the Seventh
Amendment’s reference to values “over twenty dollars” rather expands the
original meaning a little, given the roughly 3000% inflation since the
ratification of the Bill of Rights. Times
change. Slavery is outlawed now; women
can vote.
Weaponry has changed, too.
In the late 18th century, you had a rifle. You fired it once and then had to
re-load. The revolver wasn’t going to be
invented for nearly a half century. Now, an 18-year-old kid can fire off 30 or more shots in less than a minute, with a
weapon that has no value for hunting or sport.
No one takes an AR-15 into the woods to hunt for deer. Perhaps the Constitution not only could, but should,
adapt to the realities on the ground.
You know, like President Biden said: the Second Amendment isn’t
absolute.
Biden, of course, caught a lot of flak from predictable
sources for saying that, mostly because it’s true. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of
speech, but still allows for prohibitions against the proverbial “crying ‘fire’
in a crowded theater,” as well as libel, treason, and incitement to riot. Similarly, although the gun lobby pretends not
to acknowledge it, the Second Amendment still does not allow a private citizen
to own a nuclear submarine, a tank, or surface-to-air missiles (among
other things). No one seems to be up in
arms (literally or figuratively) about this. In other words, there is no absolute right to
own whatever weaponry an individual can afford to buy. The line is already there; we’re talking
about moving it, not inventing it.
But… but… Freedom!
Sigh. Apart from the absolutism about
the Bill of Rights argument, we get two variations on the theme: the fact that
the US grants its citizens rights that other countries don’t grant theirs, and
a parallel argument that those evil Democrats want to deny us our freedoms,
just like they did with the response to COVID-19.
OK, it’s true that as Americans we can do some things that
our friends even in other First World countries cannot. Usually, that’s a good thing. But the freedoms in question could reasonably
be applied to, say, the freedom to attend elementary school without fear of
being shot. No, huh?
As for COVID-19, the brouhaha about masks and vaccinations
can be traced directly to the Trump administration’s colossal mishandling of
the pandemic, largely based on misinformation being propagated by POTUS himself. Newsflash: the outbreak didn’t disappear on
its own when the weather got warm two years ago. But insisting that students be vaccinated against
COVID was an infringement on personal freedoms akin to the Holocaust, to listen
to some of the loonies on the right. Of
course, vaccination against meningitis to even enroll in college (let alone to
appear on campus) is required by a law passed by Texas’s Republican legislature. But that, you see, is a highly contagious
disease that can lead to permanent damage to vital organs or even death. COVID, on the other hand, is a highly
contagious… Oh… Wait.
But Gun Control Won’t Solve All the Problems. Of course not. The reason we have laws is to reduce the
likelihood of bad things happening.
There are laws against murder, rape, and burglary: all those things still
happen, and with grim regularity. But,
as has been demonstrated time and again with reference to this specific topic,
those restrictions help. There’s a meme
circulating now about how there was a single incident in Dunblane, Scotland,
some 26 years ago. Britain tightened its
gun laws, and there hasn’t been a school shooting since. Curmie checked it out. It’s true.
In the US, there have been over 160 school shootings that
resulted in at least one death since the turn of the century. (This is from the Wikipedia list; some incidents
may be included or excluded from what you might think appropriate, Gentle
Reader, but this is a pretty good ballpark figure.) Given that school shootings happen when
school is in session, roughly 180 days a year, that works out to… pretty damned
close to one every 26 days. None
in 26 years vs. one every 26 days.
Inevitably that means, according to the gun lobby and their minions in the GOP, that there’s literally never a good time to discuss gun control legislation, because we’re ALWAYS in the immediate aftermath of a lethal shooting. Please note that the numbers cited here refer only to school shootings: if you get shot at the grocery store, or at a nightclub, or attending a country music festival, or literally any place that isn’t a school, that doesn’t count.
Plus, of course, we must remember the Onion’s greatest ever headline: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
Yes, But Freedom. As
noted above, there are many things to prefer about the American system than
even those other countries where Curmie has spent a lot of time: the UK,
Ireland, and France. But this isn’t one
of them. We don’t have to join the EU to
think that maybe, just maybe, they might have this one idea that works better
than anarchy.
Well, He Was Mentally Ill. Oh, OK, so spending more money on mental health concerns should be a national priority. Oh. No? They’re all faking it? Got it.
You Don’t Even Know What You’re Talking About! No, Curmie doesn’t know a lot about
guns. But the banshees have never had a
student angry about a bad grade reach into their backpack and… In Texas, I’m forbidden by law to restrict
that student’s right to have a concealed handgun, even in my allegedly private
office, and they can legally have one without a license. More to the point, it’s reasonable to have an
opinion about something without needing to be an expert in the field or being directly
affected. Men can have an opinion about
abortion; atheists and religious zealots alike can have an opinion about the
church/state relationship; pacifists can have an opinion about gun rights.
Curmie has even seen the argument that if you don’t know
what the “AR” in AR-15 means, you’re not allowed an opinion. Anyone?
Bueller? No, not “assault rifle.” ArmaLite Rifle, after the company that
originally made them. And if you didn’t
know that… who fucking cares? We all
know what a USB port is, and what a URL is.
Perhaps you’ve invested a few dollars in a company that’s listed on the
NASDAQ. Surely you know the general
terms of the PATRIOT Act, right, Gentle Reader?
But if you can tell me, without cheating, what all of those abbreviations
stand for, you are, like Gunga Din, a better man (or woman) than I am.
But You’re Being All Emotional. You’re goddamned right, I am. That’s not all I am, but I sure as hell am that. Deal with it.
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