Same People Telling Us More Guns Is Solution to Gun Violence Have Given Us 15 years of War in Mid East
October 12, 2015

 
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WHILE President Obama was en route to Oregon to meet with families of the last mass school shooting at Umpqua Community College, TWO MORE school shootings took place, one at Northern Arizona University (one dead, three wounded) and one at Texas Southern University (one dead, one wounded). And as I pointed out last week, all the GOP candidates could do was shrug their shoulders and say “Hey, shit happens.” And these are the same people that want to be Commander-in-Chief of the largest military on the face of the planet (larger than the next ten militaries combined), saber-rattling against Syria, Iran, and… quite possibly… Russia (whom is now meddling in Syria after invading Georgia in 2008 and annexing Crimea in 2012.) They blame President Obama (not President Bush) for the rise of ISIS, saying he withdrew too early (ie: Bush’s timetable), hinting that if THEY were in charge, they’d be sending our troops right back into that meat grinder. I believe the majority of Americans want us OUT of the Middle East and an end to the wars there. Republicans think the solution to violence is more violence: more guns solves the problem of gun violence, and the way to end war is by sending more troops to war, back into Iraq, expand into Syria, destabilize Iran and play Chicken with Russia. Does ANYONE still wonder why the war in Afghanistan is now in its 15th year and why gun violence continues to spiral out of control?

So who’s to blame for all the gun violence breaking out in our schools? We’re not talking about “violent ‘inner-city’ public schools” as most Right-wing gun nuts would have you believe, but nice suburban colleges with a diverse student body. They try to blame the rising violence on movies & videogames, but those exist in other countries too. And it’s not just our schools. We also saw a mass shooting in a church earlier this year by a white kid seething with hatred towards blacks (wonder where he picked THAT up? Hint: It wasn’t movies & videogames) and yet another movie theater shooting, this time in Louisiana. “Hey, shit happens.” (also last week, a women decided to play vigilante and open fire on a shoplifter in a Home Depot parking lot last week. I assure you, that 46 year old woman didn’t decide that was acceptable behavior playing “Call of Duty III“.)

Following the Charleston, SC church shooting last August, and a spate of violence against blacks by white police officers, GOP candidate Ben Carson was hailed as “the GOP voice of reason” after chastising his fellow Republicans for failing to recognize that violence against blacks is still a problem in this country. But the pressure must have gotten to him, because following these most recent campus shootings, America learned that it IS possible to be both a “brain surgeon” AND a blithering moron simultaneously. Carson chuckled as he essentially blamed the victims of the Umpqua Community College shooting, arguably accusing them of cowardice, suggesting that more lives could have been saved if victims simply joined forces and “rushed the shooter” (like the thought hadn’t occurred to them). But when it was pointed out to him that one man, Chris Mintz, did exactly that and barely survived despite being shot SEVEN TIMES, Carson claimed it “proved his point”. NO. No it doesn’t you jackass! You suggested that rushing the shooter would “take him down and prevent others from being killed”, but this guy tried. The shooter was NOT taken down and Mintz nearly died while the shooter stepped over his bullet-riddled body and into his son’s classroom (I can’t confirm whether the three additional gunshot victims were shot before of after Mintz’s heroic act). His actions do NOT “prove your point.” It only proves what a clueless idiot you are.

(In a second interview the next morning, Carson admitted that when a robber shoved a gun in HIS ribs, HIS response was not “heroics” but to redirect the gunman to the cashier. My how brave!)

More guns. More troops. More tax breaks for the Rich. When reality fails to confirm your misconceptions, double-down. They create a catastrophe, and when the damage is pointed out to them, their “diagnosis” is that we just didn’t go in big enough. When I was a young teen, a neighbor’s infant son drank a half bottle of ammonia! I’d have thought that after the first sip, the child would have spit it out and knew it wasn’t drinkable, but it was explained to me that the child keeps drinking because they keep expecting it to get better. THAT’s the Republican Party! They are that child that sees the pretty glowing green liquid, concludes that something that appears so great can’t possibly be bad, then after they start to drink, no batter how bad it tastes or how sick they get, they just keep on drinking because they are certain if they just keep going it’ll get better. Thing is, the infant doesn’t go back later on and declare that the problem was that they just didn’t keep drinking long enough.

In 2006, then-President Bush visited Vietnam and actually compared the Vietnam War to Iraq… but not in the way you or I… or any sane person would. No, he argued that “the lesson of Vietnam” was that we left too soon. NO! “the lesson of Vietnam” was that WE NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! Both wars were based on lies, we stayed FAR too long, and a lot of innocent young kids gave their lives fighting a war we had no business fighting in the first place! At the time, I tried to imagine being the President of Vietnam, sitting there in that room, while the President of the United States argues that your war didn’t go on long enough and enough of your people didn’t die for nothing. (On a side note, Fox “news” dedicated a segment yesterday to trashing a new Robert Redford film called “Truth”, about the firing of Dan Rather from CBS after he dare report on “60 Minutes” the fact that then Private George Bush had gone AWOL while serving in the Alabama National Guard (the “Texas Air National Guard” came later.)

Conservatives think the “solution” to any problem is to mitigate the damage AFTER it’s begun (eg: Firing back at a shooter AFTER they’ve opened fire on your classmates, finally taking notice of terrorism AFTER the worst attack on U.S. soil in American history, or “going to the ER after you get sick” is a reasonable alternative to the “preventative” care the Affordable Care Act offers.) At least ONE person must die AFTER a crazed gunman starts shooting people before other armed people nearby can pull out their guns and return fire in a campus classroom or crowded movie theater. Carson actually said he has never seen a bullet-riddled body that was worse than denying people the right to own a gun. Seriously. So naturally, being allowed to “own a gun” means we can’t deny a person with a history of violence or mental illness from obtaining an assault weapon with 30-round clip.

Completely irrational. And it should comes as no surprise that these same irrational people actually believe that Mr. Maniac would never attempt such an act in the first place if they knew we were all packin’. But when 50% of mass shootings end in either suicide by their own hand or “suicide by cop”, the nuts committing these crimes aren’t terribly worried about getting killed themselves. If Mr. Maniac is worried about getting shot himself, he’s not going to simply decide not to commit mass murder, he’s going to find another way to do it, like shoot at cars on the freeway from a distance, or fire upon students from a clock tower.

And these people are telling us THEY KNOW how to end the wars in the Middle East. A few months ago, Donald Trump actually pontificated that he’d actually get along well with (megalomaniacs like) Putin or Assad. Of that I have little doubt. But would it lead to peace? Only if their solution is that we switch sides.

More war doesn’t lead to peace any more than Syria, Iraq & Afghanistan have become bastions of tranquility thanks to all the guns that have flooded into those countries.

“Your kid was killed in a school shooting, movie theater, or fighting a war we had no business fighting in the first place? Hey, shit happens.”

(Postscript: The first Democratic presidential debate is tomorrow/Tuesday. The “15 Questions” I suggested for the GOP candidates last July still haven’t been asked/answered. A few should also be asked of the DNC candidates.)
 

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October 12, 2015 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, Election, Guns & Violence, Middle East, National Security, Party of Life, Politics, Racism, Religion, Right-Wing Insanity, Seems Obvious to Me, Terrorism, War

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