February 14, 2018: Another School Massacre - "Now is Not the Time."

 

2/14/18: Valentine’s Day! Donald ♥’s Melania. Donald really loves Donald ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Donald + Donald = ♥.

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SUDDENLY, THE DAY TURNS UGLY. At 2:21 p.m., a 19-year-old Florida man walks into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Armed with a military-style AR-15, he opens fire. In a little more than six minutes he kills fourteen students and three teachers and leaves more than a dozen wounded. 

According to Fox News the shooter casts aside his weapon and blends in with fleeing students. 

By 2:28 he has exited the building. 

Now is the time; stricken parents in Parkland.

____________________ 

“Now is not the time.” 

Press Secretary Pinocchio Sanders

____________________ 

 

This is the third massacre in the United States, involving military-style weapons in six months. Last October a killer in Las Vegas poured fire into a crowd at a country music festival. Relying on an arsenal of ten AR-15’s and other military-grade firepower, well-stocked with 100-round magazines, intent on inflicting maximum human destruction, he was able to fire thousands of rounds before police could locate his shooting position in a hotel room thirty-two floors above. This firepower allowed him to kill 58 and wound 422 human beings. 

(That toll does not involve those who were injured trying to flee; it includes only those struck by bullets.) 

Sadly, but predictably, Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress did nothing at the time. Well: besides offering “thoughts and prayers.” Press Secretary Pinocchio told reporters the next day that “now is not the time” to have a debate about guns in America. Sen. Milksop Mitch McConnell concurred. “What is clear now,” he said, “is that this is a moment for national mourning and prayer.” 

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas wasn’t focused on the guns and blood. Cornyn was angry because Democrats were “politicizing” the shooting. This, he proclaimed, was “beyond disgusting.” 

He probably forgot all the times that Republicans politicized the gun debate and warned the gullible that President Obama was going to take away all the guns – even though he never took away any – and even though paranoid gun lovers rushed out and bought another 150 million guns while he was in office. 

Cornyn must have forgotten the times Candidate Trump politicized the debate, warning that if Hillary were elected the Second Amendment would be dead.

 

In November 2017, a gunman, armed again with a military-style Ruger AR-15, the weapon of choice of modern mass murderers, shot up a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26.

 

More “thoughts and prayers” were offered by the man in the Oval Office and Republicans in Congress.

 

Now was still not the time for a discussion about guns. Thoughts and prayers would have to suffice.

 

Now a third massacre stuns the nation. It’s not quite like Sandy Hook, which was even more terrible (December 2012). In the aftermath of that slaughter right-wing crazies politicized the discussion in the most repugnant manner imaginable. Cornyn probably forgets that, too. Alex Jones first claimed the killing was an inside job, pulled off by the government to raise a “false flag” and justify taking away citizens’ guns. Later, he claimed the Sandy Hook story was “a hoax.” No one had seen any bodies.

 

The massacre had been “staged.”

 

(One might wonder what kind of ghoul would want to see the riddled bodies of six-year-old children and their teachers.)

 

It hadn’t been the “right time” to talk about gun massacres in July 2012. That was when another heavily armed man, supplied with military-style firepower and large magazines, killed and wounded 58 in an Aurora, Colorado theater.

 

It wasn’t the “right time,” when a terrorist used the same kind of firepower to attack the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida in 2016. The toll in that massacre: 49 dead, 58 wounded.

 

It was, however, always the “right time” according to Republicans, often heavily funded by the N.R.A., to talk about the Second Amendment. It was always the “right time” to shout that any restrictions on gun purchases would mean an end to our cherished freedoms. It was always the “right time” to howl that anyone who offered up contrary opinions hated the Constitution. It was always the “right time” to offer up stupid pro-gun arguments. Stones can kill, too, gun-lovers proclaimed. Did we want to outlaw stones? What about cars and knives?

 

Hell, I could do better than that. I could argue that there are all kinds of options for those intent on perpetrating mayhem. Baseball bats and crowbars can kill! And pitchforks! Did we want to disarm farmers? Don’t forget croquet mallets. You could run down a victim with a riding lawnmower. And mulch them. A fork to the throat might do the job. Did we want to ban cutlery?

 

The only way to stop a bad guy with a fork or stone or riding mower was a good guy with a fork or stone or riding mower, we were told. Americans had to buy more guns (and keep mower blades sharp) if they expected to be safe.

 

They bought those guns, just as the N.R.A. claimed would be prudent, but they found too late, they were not safe.

 

You could dodge a psychopath on a riding mower. You could run from a man with a stone. If someone attacked you with a fork you could parry with a fork – or maybe brain them with a dining room chair or a plate.

 

You could not easily stop an armed killer with an AR-15. Kindergartners at Sandy Hook were torn apart in a hail of fire. The shooter in Las Vegas fired from a position hundreds of feet above. He could have had a giant pile of stones and couldn’t have done much damage to anyone save some unlucky individual directly below. At Stoneman Douglas one of the wounded was hit five times and survived. Another victim was struck nine times and did not.

 

Now was the time to discuss guns in America.

 

And what made it different this time was that’s exactly what many of the teen survivors decided to do.

 

Naturally, faced with all the carnage and pain and tears, the right-wing crazies decided the best defense was to claim the left had coached the students and their parents to attack the Second Amendment.

 

Shameless.