It’s May 25th, a day after a teenager armed with AR-15 shot up an elementary school. People are upset. Those who don’t want to see more kids die from bullets are upset that this keeps happening. Those who want more bullets are upset because it raises questions they don’t want to answer. The winner in all this is the gun lobby because, in their mind, any press is good press – and the NRA will see a spike in donations just like they do after every good massacre.
Texas loves its guns. The kid that bought them didn’t have a mental health record, and owned them legally because he was of age. I would argue that given those circumstances there really wasn’t a way to prevent him from killing people. What I can argue is that if he didn’t have a semi-automatic with high-capacity magazines he wouldn’t have been able to kill as many people.
But that’s moot because already Ted Cruz has extra NRA dollars rolling in by claiming that it’s not the death of 19 kids and two adults that’s the issue, but that it makes gun ownership look bad and the real evil is the renewed call for gun control.
He doesn’t mean it of course, what he means is “give me money, I like being in power.” Whatever.
There really is only one way to change that attitude, and that’s to encourage people who want to exercise their right to a bullet-enabled massacre to stop targeting schools. Politicians don’t care if kids die – they don’t vote, they don’t pay taxes, they can’t even own guns.
Now if someone were to go after a political rally, or heavens forbid, a state seat of government… well, that could possibly result in a slightly different reaction from those who could actually do something about it.