The facts are these:
Three assholes armed to the teeth and reportedly wearing masks and body armor strolled into a community center in San Bernardino California, opened fire with their guns, killing up to 14 people at the moment with more wounded, and drove off with intent to get away with it. The local police were able to locate where they tried to hide and they were caught in a shootout, with about two of the gunmen dead and one fleeing on foot. This situation is not over.
The location targeted is the Inland Regional Center, a community agency that teaches and cares for people and children with disabilities. This is akin to a school, a college campus, a church, a place of selfless activity filled with people WHO DID NOT DESERVE TO GET SHOT AT.
This is essentially the 355th mass shooting (where four or more people are shot at one time) we've had in the United States. We had another mass shooting in Savannah Georgia and the nation hasn't even paid attention to THAT because the body count's too low.
Our body count from mass shootings rivals that of nations caught in civil wars.
Mass number of guns DO NOT MAKE US SAFER. We've got the highest gun-to-resident ratio on the planet, and having all these guns have not made us safe. All these guns have made us easier targets.
The common links between all these shootings are simple to identify.
We make it too goddamned easy for assholes to buy/procure guns.
Nearly every mass shooting involved at least one man - more often than not white - with anger management issues.
To quote Rude Pundit:
The Rude Pundit has said before and he'll say again: It's never just the assailants. It's always the guns. Already, we're seeing the appalling piglets of the right tell anyone who dares to insist that it's the guns to sit down and shut up and not "politicize" this latest float in our unending parade of horrors. As if silence isn't a political act. As if the very people who called for banning Syrian refugees before the bodies were cold in Paris have any goddamned right to tell anyone to not talk politics. As if the NRA, which makes money on the corpses of the victims of mass shootings, deserves anything more than being spit on. They fear politicizing because policy may come from it...
...This country has allowed ludicrous and evil and demonstrably wrong people and ideas to be passed off as legitimate. We give people a forum to say unbelievable bullshit, like that expanded background checks will lead to tyranny and gun confiscation. At some point, we are allowed to assert that some things are not worthy of discussion and that some people and organizations deserve only contempt, derision, and isolation. We can turn people into pariahs. We are allowed to do that. The CNN anchor, reacting to the shooting a few minutes ago, kept saying, over and over, that it was sad and "ridiculous." She's right. Now, how about the next time some Republican politician talks about how we need to do more about the "mentally-ill" (which is something they won't do) and not limit gun purchases, she shuts them down and throws them off the show? What if she says that it's an unacceptable position to not do anything about guns?
We do not have to tolerate the intolerable. We have chosen to tolerate it. We have chosen to pretend as if the extremists who demand no regulation of guns have a valid point of view. We should be politicizing every shooting even more. We should be asking our politicians how they can dare not do something to help a nation afflicted with bullets.
If there will ever be a tipping point on guns, it will only happen when we say that disgusting acts are aided and abetted by disgusting people with disgusting beliefs. It will only happen when we treat the disgusting people with the disgust they deserve.
He's right.
The NRA should not be treated as a legitimate organization. They are not speaking to the facts NOR the truth. They have a financial incentive - many NRA leaders OWN companies that manufacture firearms - to promote fear-mongering and frenzied ammo stockpiling. The NRA and other gun-worship enablers have a political incentive to "win" the issue on guns otherwise they look weak to their followers.
The NRA are no longer about rifles. They haven't been responsible about firearms for 40 years. They are the National Murder Association now, and have been. Their organization is now about murder, and how THEY can profit from it. They are about the worship of metal pieces of weaponry that stand as their golden calf, which gives them millions of dollars while thousands of US die for their un-Christian sacrifice.
To hell with the NRA and their fear-mongering allies. THEY ARE AT WAR WITH THE REST OF THE UNITED STATES and we need to recognize that fact.
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