Those suggestions on the NFA sound great. Let’s do that.
Also, let a few of the families of these latest school shooting victims sue the manufacturer of the gun that was used. Their children are dead because this weapon functioned exactly as it was intended, to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Maybe they’ll start a trend. Anyway, it’s at least something. I hate this doomloop of “it’ll never change, may as well get used to it”.
Nothing like seeing the awful character of our fellow Americans when something like this happens. Like Frank Lee.. " only " 13 mass school shootings" , I shouldn't have to elaborate on that or the rest of his " rant".
I don't understand how we " the greatest, most amazing and exceptional nation EVER and with that shining city on a hill" can't do anything. Nope nothing to see, can't be stopped. Except...Australia, New Zealand, The UK and Norway seemed to have..also most of our Allies too.
The comments on most forums from these Americans tell me we have lost our way and possibly without a return ticket. The callousness is telling.
The one thing always at these horrors is the guns, always the guns...so maybe the problem is ..The Guns!!
My blood pressure went through the roof a few minutes ago as I read what McConnell and his spineless cowards did today. Those gutless F*ing Reptilian (apologies to all reptiles) Senators known as Republicans just voted down a damn DEBATE on discussing gun control. Those cowards won't even TALK about doing something to try to stop the slaughter. You know, I'm starting to believe that maybe there are some people who deserve to go to hell. The cries of the parents and the dead children should be played full blast in their ears for eternity. I apologize to any sane Rs left, but the Republican Party should be wiped from the face of the earth. And why the hell do you still believe in it?
"The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun", except when they stand outside for 40 minutes or more. Didn't the armed school resource officer stay safely outside in Florida too? Yep, those good guys with guns sure stopped all that murder.
Wikipedia has a comprehensive list since 2000. There have been 17 school related shootings with injuries and/or deaths this year alone. And your number of 13 it wasn't over 56 years - those 13 were since 2000, and were just the amount for 10 dead or injured in those shootings. But there are dozens with fewer victims. Are their lives somehow considered less important simply because the gunmen didn't manage to kill or injure more than a handful of victims? For God's sake, until the NRA went nuts in 70s, even they advocated training, background checks, keep weapons of mass killings out of the population. I find myself thinking the only way people like Cruz will start getting sane about guns is if someone blows them away with those guns they love more than people. Same with the 1/6 "tourist tours" people. If any of them were actually hurt or killed by those "tourists", they'd all be singing far different songs!
You don't know what you are talking about. It has nothing to do with the NRA. The NRA is a dog whistle for you prohibition Karens. Guns are not killing people, it is insane people doing the mass shootings, and either blacks killing blacks or Democrats trying to kill Republicans.
Here is a weird take. I am a mostly retired big law firm partner. These days, I take contract cases from the local public defender as penance for the last 4 decades that I spent making the world safe for the rich.
Today, I dropped a client off near his home in what can fairly be described as a midwestern city ghetto. There, I saw a late model, black on black, 21st century drug-dealer mobile with a HUGE bumper sticker that read FIGHT FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT.
Guns prevent crime?
Not where my clients live, I am certain. And nowhere else, I suspect.
Hi Bulwark community. Thanks for creating such an informative discussion, everyday. I have a question--Can someone please weigh in on where the police unions come down on the sale of weapons/armor that put their police force at risk of being outgunned? I've not seen much reporting on this, but maybe haven't been looking in the right place.
That is fine if you are into meaningless symbolic political wins and not really solving the problems.
The White House used to be open... any citizen could walk in and request audience with the President. Today all government buildings are locked down like Fort Knox. Most private office buildings have the same. You cannot get on an aircraft without running the gauntlet of security. Fancy Nancy put up razor wire and called in the military because she was Nervous Nancy about some bearded blue-collar worker protests.
We have recognized that there are risks worth the cost of security for the adults in these places, but we just ignore the same for our children. I am pissed at Republicans for failing to take the lead on this. I am pissed at Democrats for ambitiously milking the tragedies to implement their matriarchal Karen prohibitions on our Second Amendment rights. Take the damn $40 billion that they are going to give to the corrupt regime of Ukraine and instead use it to outfit every school with building security and an armed guard at each door. We might not like it, but it is our reality... a reality we have already conceded with all the other security measures.
Democrats are fools for their open border, defund the police and their radical Soros funded DAs because the public sees that with Democrats in charge they cannot count on the government to keep them safe. So no gun bans will be accepted. Democrats have shot themselves in the foot with hypocritical positions and the voters just don't trust them.
Today we have a significant mental health issue with kids... and again, this is mostly because of Democrat actions to keep schools closed without of any science to justify it. I am done with the teachers unions. It is clearly an evil organization that needs to be irradiated for what they did to these kids.
Another point that is being buried in the mainstream press is the connection to cannabis. Both the Buffalo and the Texas shooter were significant pot heads. 50% of the diagnosis of psychosis and schizophrenia today have a cannabis connection. But the Democrats use their media connections to bury that fact and to push this anti-gun agenda destroys the conversation about these real root causes. We have a mental health problem not a gun problem. Guns don't walk around and shoot themselves.
I'll go ahead and for the sake of this post agree with you that there is a mental health crisis in the United States that is part of the root cause of these shootings.
Ok, fine, great we will agree.
Republicans are passing just as much mental health care legislation as they are gun control legislation. None. Zero.
If Greg Abbott is serious that mental health is a huge area of concern then I look forward to seeing the Texas legislature move swiftly to pass legislation to address mental health issues.
Texas is currently ranked dead last, 50/50, for access to mental health care.
Not an Abbott fan. Not a fan of Republicans on this subject. I am not fan because they are not coming to the table with solutions.
However, I am not a fan of Democrats as they are both responsible for much of the economic and social degradation that has increased violence, crime, depression, insanity, drug-use, broken middle-class families... and then they come to the table with non-solutions that will create even more of the same.
Texas isn't keeping the border open. Texas didn't push globalism. Texas did not make the violent video games, Internet and social media where these kids get their heads twisted. Texas did not take over the mainstream media and their politicians did not drive class, and race divisiveness into every media feed. Texas did not evoke the war on the American working class, men and boys. Texas did not make all the policy blunders including printing trillions to pump into the economy, paying people to not work and canceling oil permits that has led to hyper-inflation.
But this was one kid with clear mental health problems and Abbott did cut mental health department budgets in the state.
so - where does security stop? if we barricade every school door... do we need to also do that for grocery stores and walmarts and churches and.... pretty much any place with groups of people. Parks? swimming pools? swimming holes? restaurants...etc etc etc. We can turn the US into a total armed and barricaded prison or we can start NOW to reduce the carnage a bit. the following were in the article; we can also tax ammo heavily. We can require everyone buy insurance when they buy a gun (insurance to cover deaths they cause with the gun assuming not self-defense)
(mental health/closed schools - red herring. School shootings were happening well before covid. Yes, we need better mental health; but blaming covid/closed schools - that happened under a REPUBLICAN president, not a Democratic one is incorrect.)
Red flag laws (David French makes a great case here.)
What a Fox-"news"-redolent screed. Other countries have mental illness, legal weed, depressed children, violent video games, just name your deflect-the-point boogeyman. Other countries do not have 1.2 guns for every person, virtually zero restrictions on obtaining guns and ammo, and indifference to the freedoms of their citizens not to get shot. We have unique gun violence because we have so many guns and so few constraints on them. Solve that and you solve the problem. Guns don't shoot themselves, but people don't shoot people without guns.
Wow. If you cannot connect the dots it is indicative of the lack of critical thinking skills claim going around. I think my 10 year old grandson would understand this point.
Let me rephrase that... What has BLM and Darrell Brooks got to do with this, other than giving a nod to another front in the culture wars.
But, Frank, it's not healthy to be as worked up and angry as you appear to be. I suggest you look up the Serenity prayer and give it some serious thought. I know it helped me.
It also helped that I am old. Old age doesn't bring wisdom, but it does give one a sense of perspective.
Although, to be fair, a sense of perspective is not without its own risks.
I am old enough. Darrel Brooks was responsible for a mass murder hate crime using a vehicle. I do not hear any outcry from the left to ban vehicles. Cars do not drive themselves. Guns to not walk around and shoot themselves. Wisdom is manifest in pragmatic, not emotional-driven, conclusions that can be supported by comparisons.
If Sandy Hook didn’t move the needle I’m sorry to say that this will not either. 2012 was before Qanon and utterly hateful party divisions. It was no picnic but things are even worse now. Most republicans and a few democrats won’t do anything on guns in an election year, just for starters. After an election year they will tell themselves another story to soothe their consciences. As someone said below, voters are responsible for demanding gun legislation. In the end, we get the politicians we deserve.
Trumpism without Trump is simply "on-the-rocks" Republicanism. A lot of Rs will willingly & happily drink from that same well (of course after they have added mixers etc. to delude themselves into thinking that the situation is not that bad). Trump was certainly an accelerant, but not the originator of "Trumpism". Like everything he has done in his life, he just put his golden name to it.
Part of it is indeed a rejection of the whole idea that personal virtue is an important element of good leadership, in favor of "He fights!" and "He's not afraid to challenge traditional norms" (or defy rules and laws if he can get away with it).
Another part is constant railing against "the establishment," and a belief that our whole system has become so "corrupt" that drastic measures are necessary to save America.
When Trumpers say that the system has become "corrupt," they don't really mean that the people running it are doing illegal things. They might mean that those people are exploiting power for personal gain (as people with power have done across the ages). But often it seems to mean that the people who staff the system aren't doing things the way Trumpers would prefer. Or: it means they haven't been uncritically obeisant to Donald Trump.
One of the more disturbing features of the Trump era is that people who used to convey some understanding of principles and values in governing institutions chose to believe that others are good or bad according to whether they favor and defend Trump. And whenever anything in the system presented any resistance to Trump or any inclination to hold him to laws and rules, that became proof that the system is rotten -- and gave Trumpers a rationale to use drastic means to "fight back." And so a revolutionary mentality has swelled on the right, fueled in part by Trump's own belief that whatever deprives him of what he wants is fundamentally wrong, and the Trumpers' assimilation of that belief.
The revolutionary mindset also rests on complaints about the cultural power of the left side of the political spectrum. What's overlooked is that our constitutional system has given disproportionate political power to the right side of the spectrum. At the same time, I'm sure there are people on the right who would say there's nothing wrong with that, since the people on the left side are "not real Americans in any meaningful sense."
That attitude can survive without Trump. How much political power it has without the cult of the hero is another matter.
What would be the response by the current "Silent Majority of the Republican Party" concerning the proliferation of open-carry and permit-less gun ownership if all of a sudden there was:
~ a reemergence of the "Black Panther Party" walking in urban America in military garb like they did in the 1960s, [Gov. Reagan supported a law from a Repub legislature in 1967 that required much stricter gun access once the Blacks had guns]
~ an equally open-carry by an Hispanic equivalent, let's call it in ReTrumplican't terms "The Sombrero Posse,"
~ a Chinese 21st century version of "Yihequan" (Righteous and Harmonious Fists), the "Boxers" made famous in the movie "55 Days to Peking."
~ an armed Japanese-American "Yakuza" (mafia-like organized crime syndicate).
Add any non-white ethnic group carry copious amounts of guns without state licensing, may have the MAGA-Trump tribe reconsider the current policy
While the White Supremacists would say "bring it on mongrel hoard", that ReTrumplican't Silent Majority would be staining their skivvies, ready to deal with the hated unAmerican, anti-Christian, Communist "Democrat" Party Libs to have some semblance of modified gun control.
Why not have a 200% (or 2,000% for that matter) tax on the ammunition and clips for assault rifles and any similar non-hunting weapons?
There is no wording in Article Two of the Constitution protecting the right to purchase and own ammunition.
I am old enough to have witnessed many changes in our country and this "sacrifice of children and innocent people" will not stop considering the mad-dog adherence to protecting Article Two.
so if Border Patrol really couldn't break through the locked classroom door - that is good in most cases (when the shooter isn't in the room). But did it really take them that long to find a key? I think the timeline is still pretty much not well defined yet.
My guess is that the highly-trained border patrol team could get there faster than San Antonio's elite response team. I don't know that for sure, but it seems reasonable.
As someone who avoided right-wing commentary - in print or on TV/radio - until the never Trump movement, I am curious Charlie. Could you share with us what kind of concerns you were expressing on your radio show in the days following the Sandy Hook massacre? This is not me knowing the answer and playing "gotcha" - this is me not knowing and being honestly curious. I am glad to have found common ground with many on the center-right in the (hopefully) post-Trump era, but I find it helpful to know stances some people I now agree with once held. (I am sure in my more leftward days, I held views or said things that you would find abhorrent, then and/or now.) Thanks
Those suggestions on the NFA sound great. Let’s do that.
Also, let a few of the families of these latest school shooting victims sue the manufacturer of the gun that was used. Their children are dead because this weapon functioned exactly as it was intended, to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Maybe they’ll start a trend. Anyway, it’s at least something. I hate this doomloop of “it’ll never change, may as well get used to it”.
Nothing like seeing the awful character of our fellow Americans when something like this happens. Like Frank Lee.. " only " 13 mass school shootings" , I shouldn't have to elaborate on that or the rest of his " rant".
I don't understand how we " the greatest, most amazing and exceptional nation EVER and with that shining city on a hill" can't do anything. Nope nothing to see, can't be stopped. Except...Australia, New Zealand, The UK and Norway seemed to have..also most of our Allies too.
The comments on most forums from these Americans tell me we have lost our way and possibly without a return ticket. The callousness is telling.
The one thing always at these horrors is the guns, always the guns...so maybe the problem is ..The Guns!!
My blood pressure went through the roof a few minutes ago as I read what McConnell and his spineless cowards did today. Those gutless F*ing Reptilian (apologies to all reptiles) Senators known as Republicans just voted down a damn DEBATE on discussing gun control. Those cowards won't even TALK about doing something to try to stop the slaughter. You know, I'm starting to believe that maybe there are some people who deserve to go to hell. The cries of the parents and the dead children should be played full blast in their ears for eternity. I apologize to any sane Rs left, but the Republican Party should be wiped from the face of the earth. And why the hell do you still believe in it?
"The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun", except when they stand outside for 40 minutes or more. Didn't the armed school resource officer stay safely outside in Florida too? Yep, those good guys with guns sure stopped all that murder.
There have been only 13 mass school shootings over the last 56 years. Obviously we want it to be zero, but let's maintain some rational perspective.
Wikipedia has a comprehensive list since 2000. There have been 17 school related shootings with injuries and/or deaths this year alone. And your number of 13 it wasn't over 56 years - those 13 were since 2000, and were just the amount for 10 dead or injured in those shootings. But there are dozens with fewer victims. Are their lives somehow considered less important simply because the gunmen didn't manage to kill or injure more than a handful of victims? For God's sake, until the NRA went nuts in 70s, even they advocated training, background checks, keep weapons of mass killings out of the population. I find myself thinking the only way people like Cruz will start getting sane about guns is if someone blows them away with those guns they love more than people. Same with the 1/6 "tourist tours" people. If any of them were actually hurt or killed by those "tourists", they'd all be singing far different songs!
Well, no. There have been 13 mass school shootings over the last 56 years. The rest were just gang-banger shootings.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-know-about-mass-school-shootings-mdash-and-shooters-mdash-in-the-u-s/
You don't know what you are talking about. It has nothing to do with the NRA. The NRA is a dog whistle for you prohibition Karens. Guns are not killing people, it is insane people doing the mass shootings, and either blacks killing blacks or Democrats trying to kill Republicans.
Here is a weird take. I am a mostly retired big law firm partner. These days, I take contract cases from the local public defender as penance for the last 4 decades that I spent making the world safe for the rich.
Today, I dropped a client off near his home in what can fairly be described as a midwestern city ghetto. There, I saw a late model, black on black, 21st century drug-dealer mobile with a HUGE bumper sticker that read FIGHT FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT.
Guns prevent crime?
Not where my clients live, I am certain. And nowhere else, I suspect.
Hi Bulwark community. Thanks for creating such an informative discussion, everyday. I have a question--Can someone please weigh in on where the police unions come down on the sale of weapons/armor that put their police force at risk of being outgunned? I've not seen much reporting on this, but maybe haven't been looking in the right place.
Can you please make: Is the gun debate hopeless? A separate link.
It has a lot of really good info that I want to share.
Thank you for considering this request.
Lj
"Something can be done about guns."
That is fine if you are into meaningless symbolic political wins and not really solving the problems.
The White House used to be open... any citizen could walk in and request audience with the President. Today all government buildings are locked down like Fort Knox. Most private office buildings have the same. You cannot get on an aircraft without running the gauntlet of security. Fancy Nancy put up razor wire and called in the military because she was Nervous Nancy about some bearded blue-collar worker protests.
We have recognized that there are risks worth the cost of security for the adults in these places, but we just ignore the same for our children. I am pissed at Republicans for failing to take the lead on this. I am pissed at Democrats for ambitiously milking the tragedies to implement their matriarchal Karen prohibitions on our Second Amendment rights. Take the damn $40 billion that they are going to give to the corrupt regime of Ukraine and instead use it to outfit every school with building security and an armed guard at each door. We might not like it, but it is our reality... a reality we have already conceded with all the other security measures.
Democrats are fools for their open border, defund the police and their radical Soros funded DAs because the public sees that with Democrats in charge they cannot count on the government to keep them safe. So no gun bans will be accepted. Democrats have shot themselves in the foot with hypocritical positions and the voters just don't trust them.
Today we have a significant mental health issue with kids... and again, this is mostly because of Democrat actions to keep schools closed without of any science to justify it. I am done with the teachers unions. It is clearly an evil organization that needs to be irradiated for what they did to these kids.
Another point that is being buried in the mainstream press is the connection to cannabis. Both the Buffalo and the Texas shooter were significant pot heads. 50% of the diagnosis of psychosis and schizophrenia today have a cannabis connection. But the Democrats use their media connections to bury that fact and to push this anti-gun agenda destroys the conversation about these real root causes. We have a mental health problem not a gun problem. Guns don't walk around and shoot themselves.
Frank, do you actually live in Texas? You've got some serious Laura Ingraham-ing going on there.
I live in liberal land in a liberal college town. You got some serious Joy Reid going on there.
Hi Frank,
I'll go ahead and for the sake of this post agree with you that there is a mental health crisis in the United States that is part of the root cause of these shootings.
Ok, fine, great we will agree.
Republicans are passing just as much mental health care legislation as they are gun control legislation. None. Zero.
If Greg Abbott is serious that mental health is a huge area of concern then I look forward to seeing the Texas legislature move swiftly to pass legislation to address mental health issues.
Texas is currently ranked dead last, 50/50, for access to mental health care.
https://mhanational.org/issues/2021/mental-health-america-access-care-data
What has Abbott proposed to do to start fixing it?
Not an Abbott fan. Not a fan of Republicans on this subject. I am not fan because they are not coming to the table with solutions.
However, I am not a fan of Democrats as they are both responsible for much of the economic and social degradation that has increased violence, crime, depression, insanity, drug-use, broken middle-class families... and then they come to the table with non-solutions that will create even more of the same.
I would like to hear more about how Democrats are responsible for much of the economic and social degradation in *checks notes* Texas.
Texas isn't keeping the border open. Texas didn't push globalism. Texas did not make the violent video games, Internet and social media where these kids get their heads twisted. Texas did not take over the mainstream media and their politicians did not drive class, and race divisiveness into every media feed. Texas did not evoke the war on the American working class, men and boys. Texas did not make all the policy blunders including printing trillions to pump into the economy, paying people to not work and canceling oil permits that has led to hyper-inflation.
But this was one kid with clear mental health problems and Abbott did cut mental health department budgets in the state.
Teachers are groomers. They're union is evil and should be irradiated.
But you want to arm them.
Maybe you should think this through a little bit more.
I don't want to arm teachers. I want to put armed and trained security guards at the entrances of the schools.
The Republican party wants to arm them. MTG and Ted Cruz (and many others) have been arguing this for the past 3 or 4 mass school shootings.
Fox News 2019: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/john-lott-armed-teachers-can-save-student-lives-dont-leave-children-defenseless-against-school-shooters
Felonious Texas AG Paxton yesterday calls to arm teachers: https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1529224340071297025
Like I wrote, I am not a fan of Republicans and their non-solutions.
I really wanted to take you seriously. I sincerely appreciate well-considered opposing views.
But...
"...some bearded blue-collar worker protests..."
"corrupt regime of Ukraine..." - this tells me you don't understand the implications.
"Democrats are fools for their open border..."
"defund the police..." - if only you had said 'what a stupid slogan a small minority on the left came up with'
"radical Soros funded..." - oh boy.
"Democrat actions to keep schools closed without of any science to justify it.."
...and I realized there's probably no point in having a serious conversation.
so - where does security stop? if we barricade every school door... do we need to also do that for grocery stores and walmarts and churches and.... pretty much any place with groups of people. Parks? swimming pools? swimming holes? restaurants...etc etc etc. We can turn the US into a total armed and barricaded prison or we can start NOW to reduce the carnage a bit. the following were in the article; we can also tax ammo heavily. We can require everyone buy insurance when they buy a gun (insurance to cover deaths they cause with the gun assuming not self-defense)
(mental health/closed schools - red herring. School shootings were happening well before covid. Yes, we need better mental health; but blaming covid/closed schools - that happened under a REPUBLICAN president, not a Democratic one is incorrect.)
Red flag laws (David French makes a great case here.)
Raising age for gun purchases
Banning high capacity magazines
Banning bump stocks
Universal background checks
What a Fox-"news"-redolent screed. Other countries have mental illness, legal weed, depressed children, violent video games, just name your deflect-the-point boogeyman. Other countries do not have 1.2 guns for every person, virtually zero restrictions on obtaining guns and ammo, and indifference to the freedoms of their citizens not to get shot. We have unique gun violence because we have so many guns and so few constraints on them. Solve that and you solve the problem. Guns don't shoot themselves, but people don't shoot people without guns.
Cars don't drive themselves, but BLM activist Darrell Brooks cannot kill people without driving the car himself.
What has that got to do with this discussion? It's just a poor attempt to deflect instead of instead of answering the point.
Wow. If you cannot connect the dots it is indicative of the lack of critical thinking skills claim going around. I think my 10 year old grandson would understand this point.
Let me rephrase that... What has BLM and Darrell Brooks got to do with this, other than giving a nod to another front in the culture wars.
But, Frank, it's not healthy to be as worked up and angry as you appear to be. I suggest you look up the Serenity prayer and give it some serious thought. I know it helped me.
It also helped that I am old. Old age doesn't bring wisdom, but it does give one a sense of perspective.
Although, to be fair, a sense of perspective is not without its own risks.
https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/t/114333
I am old enough. Darrel Brooks was responsible for a mass murder hate crime using a vehicle. I do not hear any outcry from the left to ban vehicles. Cars do not drive themselves. Guns to not walk around and shoot themselves. Wisdom is manifest in pragmatic, not emotional-driven, conclusions that can be supported by comparisons.
If Sandy Hook didn’t move the needle I’m sorry to say that this will not either. 2012 was before Qanon and utterly hateful party divisions. It was no picnic but things are even worse now. Most republicans and a few democrats won’t do anything on guns in an election year, just for starters. After an election year they will tell themselves another story to soothe their consciences. As someone said below, voters are responsible for demanding gun legislation. In the end, we get the politicians we deserve.
Isn't Trumpism without Trump simply Assholism?
Trumpism without Trump is simply "on-the-rocks" Republicanism. A lot of Rs will willingly & happily drink from that same well (of course after they have added mixers etc. to delude themselves into thinking that the situation is not that bad). Trump was certainly an accelerant, but not the originator of "Trumpism". Like everything he has done in his life, he just put his golden name to it.
Part of it is indeed a rejection of the whole idea that personal virtue is an important element of good leadership, in favor of "He fights!" and "He's not afraid to challenge traditional norms" (or defy rules and laws if he can get away with it).
Another part is constant railing against "the establishment," and a belief that our whole system has become so "corrupt" that drastic measures are necessary to save America.
When Trumpers say that the system has become "corrupt," they don't really mean that the people running it are doing illegal things. They might mean that those people are exploiting power for personal gain (as people with power have done across the ages). But often it seems to mean that the people who staff the system aren't doing things the way Trumpers would prefer. Or: it means they haven't been uncritically obeisant to Donald Trump.
One of the more disturbing features of the Trump era is that people who used to convey some understanding of principles and values in governing institutions chose to believe that others are good or bad according to whether they favor and defend Trump. And whenever anything in the system presented any resistance to Trump or any inclination to hold him to laws and rules, that became proof that the system is rotten -- and gave Trumpers a rationale to use drastic means to "fight back." And so a revolutionary mentality has swelled on the right, fueled in part by Trump's own belief that whatever deprives him of what he wants is fundamentally wrong, and the Trumpers' assimilation of that belief.
The revolutionary mindset also rests on complaints about the cultural power of the left side of the political spectrum. What's overlooked is that our constitutional system has given disproportionate political power to the right side of the spectrum. At the same time, I'm sure there are people on the right who would say there's nothing wrong with that, since the people on the left side are "not real Americans in any meaningful sense."
That attitude can survive without Trump. How much political power it has without the cult of the hero is another matter.
"The future of the Republican party will not be... It is far more likely to be Trumpism without Trump."
The future is a no-brainer. The GQP will be fascist.
Come to think of it, it already is. Trumpism ticks off most items characteristic of gutter totalitarianism.
Possible road to gun control:
What would be the response by the current "Silent Majority of the Republican Party" concerning the proliferation of open-carry and permit-less gun ownership if all of a sudden there was:
~ a reemergence of the "Black Panther Party" walking in urban America in military garb like they did in the 1960s, [Gov. Reagan supported a law from a Repub legislature in 1967 that required much stricter gun access once the Blacks had guns]
~ an equally open-carry by an Hispanic equivalent, let's call it in ReTrumplican't terms "The Sombrero Posse,"
~ a Chinese 21st century version of "Yihequan" (Righteous and Harmonious Fists), the "Boxers" made famous in the movie "55 Days to Peking."
~ an armed Japanese-American "Yakuza" (mafia-like organized crime syndicate).
Add any non-white ethnic group carry copious amounts of guns without state licensing, may have the MAGA-Trump tribe reconsider the current policy
While the White Supremacists would say "bring it on mongrel hoard", that ReTrumplican't Silent Majority would be staining their skivvies, ready to deal with the hated unAmerican, anti-Christian, Communist "Democrat" Party Libs to have some semblance of modified gun control.
Ni hao. I always wondered why the Boxers were called the Boxers.
Charlie,
Per one of Nick Kristof's points:
Why not have a 200% (or 2,000% for that matter) tax on the ammunition and clips for assault rifles and any similar non-hunting weapons?
There is no wording in Article Two of the Constitution protecting the right to purchase and own ammunition.
I am old enough to have witnessed many changes in our country and this "sacrifice of children and innocent people" will not stop considering the mad-dog adherence to protecting Article Two.
Article 2? I think you mean the 2nd Amendment. Conversely, the repeal of the 2nd Amendment would not automatically make gun ownership illegal.
so if Border Patrol really couldn't break through the locked classroom door - that is good in most cases (when the shooter isn't in the room). But did it really take them that long to find a key? I think the timeline is still pretty much not well defined yet.
Also why was the Border Patrol there?
I don't know what it's like in Uvalde, but in most towns the fire department would have a key to all of those doors in case of fires.
My guess is that the highly-trained border patrol team could get there faster than San Antonio's elite response team. I don't know that for sure, but it seems reasonable.
good list.
"And, even here, there are gun control laws that would make a difference.
Red flag laws
Raising age for gun purchases
Banning high capacity magazines
Banning bump stocks
Universal background checks"
As someone who avoided right-wing commentary - in print or on TV/radio - until the never Trump movement, I am curious Charlie. Could you share with us what kind of concerns you were expressing on your radio show in the days following the Sandy Hook massacre? This is not me knowing the answer and playing "gotcha" - this is me not knowing and being honestly curious. I am glad to have found common ground with many on the center-right in the (hopefully) post-Trump era, but I find it helpful to know stances some people I now agree with once held. (I am sure in my more leftward days, I held views or said things that you would find abhorrent, then and/or now.) Thanks
Fair question.