Every day I have a direct view of a sniper’s nest. It’s the University of Texas Tower, the most prominent landmark in Austin, the state’s capital.
On August 1, 1966, Marine veteran Charles Whitman murdered his wife and mother, then went shopping. He bought a rifle, a shotgun, spare magazines and ammunition, before returning home to collect more weapons and bullets. Armed to the teeth, he headed for the tower and unleashed the deadliest mass shooting in America at that time.
Fifty years later the Republican-dominated Texas legislature commemorated the massacre by enacting a “campus carry” law, permitting students to bring concealed handguns to class. The law became effective on the anniversary of the bloodbath. It was a giant middle finger to all who oppose Republicans’ nihilistic gun mania.
They don’t give a damn.
Today Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant-Governor Dan Patrick, US senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and their cabal of cosplay cowboys trooped to Uvalde, Texas, to sprinkle their “thoughts and prayers” on the shattered community. The screams of bereaved parents still hung in the air. It was a sickening spectacle.
Midland-Odessa. El Paso. Santa Fe. Sutherland Springs. These Texas towns have all been devastated by gun violence during Abbott’s tenure. Each time the same GOP pantomime is rolled out. It’s a routine so rehearsed that everyone knows it by heart:
Step one: issue hollow thoughts and prayers;
Step two: praise law enforcement and civilians as heroes;
Step three: attack those demanding action on gun safety as exploiting a tragedy;
Step four: block all reform.
Republican officials repeat this playbook nationwide after every killing spree. Buffalo, New York. Boulder, Colorado. Parkland, Florida. Las Vegas, Nevada. Orlando, Florida. San Bernardino, California. Charleston, South Carolina. Over and over.
Americans don’t want to live like this. Contrary to the common perception that the United States is a land of gun-toting vigilantes, six in 10 adults live in households without firearms. Half of all guns are owned by just 3% of the population. Polls show that Americans of all political stripes support stricter gun safety laws, including universal background checks for all gun purchases, limiting assault-style weapons and magazines, banning sales to people with histories of mental illness or domestic violence, and a national firearms registry.
But thanks to voter suppression and gerrymandering, Republican politicians are impervious to public pressure because they don’t answer to the American people. Instead they work for big donors and lobbyists. That’s who they listen to, and whose interests they represent. And no group carries more sway than the National Rifle Association.
By macabre coincidence, the NRA’s grip will be on full display in Texas this weekend as Houston hosts the association’s annual convention. The Republicans crying crocodile tears in Uvalde today will trek there to repledge their fealty. Abbott, Cruz and Cornyn are all scheduled keynote speakers. Only Cornyn has backed out.
Abbott lauds his pro-gun credentials. He declared that he was embarrassed Texas ranked second in the nation for new gun purchases, and implored Texans to pick up the pace. He boasted about implementing “constitutional carry” that allows Texans to carry their guns in public without a permit or training. He signed legislation proclaiming Texas a “sanctuary state” for the Second Amendment. He cheered the NRA’s proposal to relocate its headquarters to Texas.
No wonder the teenage killer in Uvalde was better equipped than many frontline fighters defending Ukraine.
More than 100 people die by gun violence every day in America. The epidemic is so common that it takes a spectacular incident to receive media coverage and galvanise public outrage. Attention lingers for a few days, before fading until the next explosion.
The NRA and its collaborators rely on this.
Will this time be different? Can anything stop angry men with guns from murdering innocents? Not unless voters revolt and demand action. More precisely Republican women. If they tipped the balance within their party, they could make a difference. Some have demonstrated their willingness to change their voting behaviour in recoil against their party’s increasing extremism. Republican men won’t budge. They blame everything but guns for the bloodshed. They insist that gun safety laws would not prevent gun crimes, because shooters will always find a way to access weapons. For some reason, many who make this argument reject the same logic when applied to abortion laws stopping abortions.
Apathy is likely to win out. Again. The perpetual outrage machine has no shortage of issues vying for Americans’ attention. Despite all the carnage, most people have never been touched by gun violence. So it’s out of sight, out of mind, until bullet bingo comes for them.
I wonder what percentage of Republican Party politicians in the USA are both pro-NRA and so-called “pro-life”.
Very good question, Leigh.
I would suggest a very high percentage; and I bet that most, if not all, are also prominent church goers.
It’s always interested me that Christ was reputedly to be the most gentle, forgiving and loving of spiritual leaders and that some of his followers, from modern times all the way back in history, use the fellowship of their church to have power over others – the opposite of Christ himself. Maybe there’s two streams – those who take their relligion to their hearts and those who use it to trample over others.
Religious fairy-tales, fantasies and fables mean nothing to me Jen. In the case of religion (and I mean any and all religions), they all too frequently merely serve to provide cover for egregious behavior.
Hardly – according to his followers he sent a herd of swine over a cliff, cursed a fig tree for having fruit though”…it was past the season” and overturning legitimate traders tables & wares.
Doesn’t sound like a reasoning kinda bloke.
Matthew 10:34-37″Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me…”etc ad nauseam.
They weren’t traders. They were money changers. They were changing money from the common currency to Roman currency because that was what the rabbis would accept to sacrifice an animal during a holy festival. They were charging a very high exchange rate.
As usual, you have things the wrong way round – it seems to be your special talent.
The common currency was the Roman denari, as Luke 20:25 and Matthew 22:21 demonstrate.
The money changers sold, for denari, small animals for sacrifice by the priest.
They were legitimate traders under law – try overturning the tables at your local farmer’s market or trendy faire.
You, as usual, are incorrect and have probably taken this from a quick google search. You really are terribly boring.
The quickest path to atheism is to read your culture’s Good Book, I’ve found. All of it, critically. That fig tree story is just bizarre, isn’t it? As a gardener, my first thought was “But that’s a bonus! I’d be cosseting the fruit, not cursing it!”
Certainly seems that way to me, Jennifer. I’m an atheist in a family of moderate Australian Catholics. No moral or political conflicts with them, because they put the Golden Rule and Social Gospels above all else. They’re even pro-choice.
Never trust anyone with a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other hand.
Very sound advice Mik. I could not agree more!!
Either item is a sign that there is a distinct lack of cerebration but both together should exclude the holders from any participation is society.
Anyone doubting that is ignorant of history.
Tell me Keir, what is is like living in a national lunatic asylum?
I know that there are some really decent, sane and sensible Americans who live there with you but their views do not prevail. America is falling apart from within and has been doing so for decades. It is a lost cause.
The Republican Party in America makes the Liberal Party here look good. How hard is that to do? What does that tell you?
Bring back FDR!
Lead in the water…
And in the barrels, magazines and bandoliers.
If there was a ritual sacrifice of say, twenty-five American children each year in some Aztec-style ceremony so that gun ownership could go on unabated for the next twelve months, then guns would be under political attack by all sane Americans. But far, far more than that are killed by random gun violence each year, and nothing happens. Quite the reverse; gun sales soar. My gut feeling is that until members of the NRA start personally experiencing some of what they’re tacitly encouraging, nothing will continue to happen.
From the US gun violence archive site: 313 children 0-11 years old died in 2021, 750 injured. Similar stats for the 2020.
Phillip Adams on last night’s repeat LNL program on Radio National this afternoon, describes the National Rifle Association as a ‘terrorist organization’ that was complicit in this latest atrocity.
I agree with him entirely.
No mainstream politician in Australia could get away with attending a gun show under these circumstances. In fact, highly unlikely the gun show would go ahead.
As bad as things seem (seemed – past tense after Saturday?) here, we don’t have this obscene fetish with guns, nor a gun lobby powerful enough to overturn the will of the vast majority of voters.
If only I could persuade my daughter and son-in-law to bring their family home from that god-forsaken country. (I’m not a believer, but if god exists, he surely has forsaken the land of the pseudo-christians.)