Don’t buy into the mental health & school safety angle Mitch McConnell and the Republicans promote. It is a GOP farce.
GOP: Clear and Present Danger
A reporter asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell what the state of the gun control negotiations was. He designed his answer to change the discussion from guns to social programs and security.
“What we’re doing is,” McConnell said. “We have a group led by Senator Cornyn and Senator Murphy on the Democratic side discussing how we might be able to come together to target the problem, which is mental illness and school safety. We’ll get back at it next week and hope to get it resolved.”
We cannot allow the GOP leaders to use smoke and mirrors. They are attempting to change the cause of the mass murder in Uvalde and elsewhere. Every country in the world has people with mental issues. America is the only one where mass shootings occur several times a week.
Do you remember the NRA’s slogan to deflect their complicity after the Sandy Hook massacre? The gunman killed 20 elementary school kids. And what was the result?
The political talking point of increasing the presence of police and armed teachers to deter mass shootings traces its origins to 2012—having been famously proposed by NRA head Wayne LaPierre following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six staff members were killed. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said, as the nation debated tougher gun control measures.
But in the 10 years since, “good guys with guns” have been present or quickly arrived at the scene of nearly every major mass shooting and failed to stop the gunman before he was able to take multiple lives. “Good guys with guns don’t always win gunfights,” says David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center.
There were supposedly good guys with guns during the Buffalo massacre and the Uvalde massacre. They were ineffective.
The only solution is to remove weapons of war from society. We can learn much from the rest of the world. They have sensible laws. Canada is strengthening its already good gun control laws. New Zealand tightened its laws immediately after the massacre in Christ Church. We can even learn from California. They tightened their laws and made improvements. Texas and Florida loosened laws and saw an explosion in shootings.
And here is the corroboration that gun control works.
In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10, and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Since then, California repeatedly has tightened its gun laws, while Florida and Texas have moved in the opposite direction.
California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction.
We must wake up. We cannot allow the arm of the NRA, the GOP, to change the debate to avoid passing sensible gun control laws.
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