Another School Shooting...

Another day, another school shooting.

Boy, do I wish that were an exaggeration! But it's not. According to security.org, 144 school shootings took place in 2024 as of May 29th. That's 150 days, and 144 school shootings! And the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that there have been 323 school shootings in total this year, including this most recent one at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. That's 323 shootings in 345 days! Nearly 1 school shooting every single day this year!

What's markedly different with the Madison shooting this time is two things: 1) it was at a private, Christian school, 2) the shooter was a girl!

I'm not sure if all the previous shootings were done by boys, but I'm pretty sure they all were. (That's a lot of dross to research through. If I'm wrong, I'll own up to it.) Now, finally, a shooter was female.

This is not an area where I'm in favor of gender equality! Or rather, I am, provided that the number of shooters of any gender is zero.

And I'm sure the Christians are all saying, "What's going on, here? I thought only public school kids were susceptible to this kind of thing?"

Guess what, NRA-supporting Christians, some of your chickens have come home to roost.

To say that this gun-violence situation is getting out of hand is putting it mildly. The Right Wing Media Machine has so handicapped our ability to think, and so handcuffed our legislative process, that we can't even enact the most rudimentary of gun restrictions. Even bump-stocks are legal again.

It's not that the will power isn't there. 56% of Americans want stricter gun laws. But Congress doesn't fear that 56%. It fears the huge amounts of campaign donations it will lose if it pisses off the NRA.

And the NRA has been a primary cog in the Right Wing Media Machine for decades. It has been waning in its power as of late, but at its height, it had NRATV, which was blasting out misinformation about guns 24-7. It failed in 2019, but it still has a YouTube channel, and continues to mislead the public.

And more importantly, mislead the ultra-rich donors who are prone to such propaganda.

Beginning with the awful Columbine school shooting of 1999, there have been a total of 1,934 school shootings. And yes, that includes the most recent tragedy at Abundant Life Christian School. That averages to 77.36 school shootings per year. But that doesn't give the entire picture. School shootings waned during the Obama years (naturally), but then skyrocketed beginning in 2018 under Trump. That year saw a whopping 118 school shootings! There were 119 in 2019, 114 in 2020, and then that average more than doubled in 2021 with a massive 250 shootings! There were 155 in 2022, 198 in 2023...

And the 323 shootings so far this year.

We are literally seeing our kids mowed down every day! And we just stupidly elected the most pro-gun president ever.

In spite of the Right Wing Media Complex, and our inability to think our way out of a wet paper bag as a result, I'm of the opinion that we're finally beginning to see a turning point. The Left has been shocked out of its doldrums by the recent election results and (we hope) goaded into action. A whole bevy of leftists are finding themselves doing what they never thought they would ever have to do - buying a gun. And not just out of fear that Trump's brown-shirts may show up at any moment. They are arming themselves precisely for the reasons that the founding fathers advocated - to prevent an overbearing government from oppressing the people.

Of course, that won't do much. As I've argued for years, hand-held firearms, even automatic ones, are simply no match for drone technology, armored vehicles, super-surveillance, robotic warfare, cyber-warfare, napalm, etc., etc. Guns are antiquated. And, by extension, so is the 2nd Amendment.

But guns are still useful in small matters of self-defense, as we all know. And the Left is getting more of them.

Why does this matter? Because, interestingly, the most restrictive gun laws our nation ever saw came after the Black Panthers began arming themselves in the late 1960's. The Right loves being armed, but they get nervous when the Left starts doing so. The Trump administration may actually enact gun licensure and registration just to know where the armed leftists are - resulting in the unintentional result the political Left always wanted! Trump won't go so far as to actually confiscate guns outright, as he needs to walk a fine line between the NRA and not wanting leftists armed, but he will likely find an excuse to try. And he will fail. Because for once, the NRA will be on our side.

The net result should be a stalemate, preventing Trump's brown-shirts from trying anything stupid. Nobody wants mutually assured destruction.

Poetic, no?

And riding in the wake of this development will be the next generation of political leaders, the ones who grew up in schools doing regular "shooter drills," or outright being the survivors of school shootings. These young people, some of them having grown up with bullets literally whizzing past their heads, have a much different attitude towards guns than Boomers and X'ers do! Already, David Hogg, one of the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, is bidding to become the Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee. He will likely win. The survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have already become voting-age adults, as have the survivors of the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida. Gabby Giffords is still alive, and her NASA-astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, is an early favorite as a possible presidential candidate in 2028.

There is reason to hope.

If we ever achieve our #1 goal of breaking the Right Wing Media Machine, we might just manage to resuscitate some remnant of our democracy after it being declared clinically dead.

But to do this, we'd better keep our eyes open.

Eric

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