In the senseless Odessa shooting yesterday, seven are dead and 19 injured, among them a 17-month-old baby. Odessa, Texas Mayor David Turner rushed home from a vacation and announced:
In a situation like this, prayer is the most important thing. We’ll get through this.
Seriously. That is what the mayor said.
Tell that to the relatives of any of the seven innocent people who died, because some nutcase went berserk during a traffic stop!
Tell that to any of the injured people!
Praying isn’t going to fix this. Making sure there are no firearms in cars driving around on our streets would fix this.
On the same day that the San Diego Union’s headline on page one was “5 Dead, 21 Injured in Shooting,” there was a small article on page 4 in the left lower column, titled: Gunfire Erupts at Football Game; 10 Wounded. A 17-year-old student started shooting at a high school football game in Mobile, Alabama. All the injured were other high school kids. Since nobody actually died this time, the article didn’t even make a headline.
Praying isn’t going to fix this. Making sure that there are no firearms in the hand of a 17-year-old high school student would fix this.
Obviously, the god all these people are praying to isn’t doing anything to protect them. Do they notice it’s not working?
And our beloved Second Amendment isn’t really protecting us, is it? The founders wrote it for these two purposes:
- a practical purpose, to protect people from thieves, bandits, Native Americans, and slave uprisings
- a political purpose, to remind the rest of the world that the United States is well-armed
I am not very terrified about thieves and bandits. And I am not worried about Native Americans and slave uprisings. And I really don’t think the rest of the world is unaware that the United States is well-armed.
The Second Amendment makes no more sense. We need sensible laws regarding guns. We need laws that actually protect our people, not from slaves, thieves, bandits and Native Americans, but from nutcases wielding guns in public places killing innocent people.
The rest of the world is so “aware” that the U.S. is well-armed, they are issuing travel advisories. Nobody I know plans to go there for the foreseeable future. Tourism is suffering. What isn’t under this fetid cloud of Trump and his enablers? Certainly morale, optimism, justice, facts…while apathy kills resistance and cynicism rages. If Trump et al., manage to rig the next election I will blame every person to could and didn’t vote.
Fixed.
Thanks, Barbara. The word “Insanity” as Ray puts it below, comes to mind.
Thanks for correcting my flubs. BTW, I am on Chome so let’s see if it’s my go-to browser for your site.
testing… my info is below… YES!
Hi Norbert.
You have succinctly encapsulated EXACTLY what many around the world, (as well as in the U.S.) are thinking.
Only in the last 24 hours, in the context of yet ANOTHER U.S. shooting tragedy, we were waiting for the usual B.S. about “our prayers are with…..blah blah blah”.
It didn’t take long to come–!!!
“Strangely” we WERE (yet again) bitterly disappointed.
An utterly inadequate, “insane” & inappropriate response to a specific tragedy……which is yet another example of a horrid state of affairs in the U.S.
Thanks for your words, Norbert, which sum up well, what many, many are thinking…..as we shake our heads in sadness, once again–!!!!
And the funny thing is – you don’t meet anyone here (at least not in the circles that I travel) that thinks any of this is good or makes sense. Powerful money lobby is active here.