In the USA (where else?), there was a mass shooting at Michigan State University (MSU), in East Lansing, in which three students were killed and another five injured. The suspected perpetrator was later found with a fatal self-inflicted gunshot wound; he had no apparent connection to the university1.
One of the survivors of the MSU shooting was a first year student studying history. She said that “[fourteen] months ago I had to evacuate from Oxford High School when a fifteen-year-old opened fire and killed four of my classmates and injured seven more. Tonight, I am sitting under my desk at Michigan State University, once again texting everyone ‘I love you’”. The shooting at Oxford High School was in November 30, 2021, in a community about 130 km northeast of the MSU campus in East Lansing2.
So, a young woman (she is about 17-18 years old) has experienced two mass shootings in her life. It simply boggles the mind that any politician of any persuasion could allow this terrorism to continue. What have the Republicans come up with? AR15 lapel badges, that’s what3. What are a few hundred (or thousand) children’s lives when doing something about it could impact the funding of your election campaigns? It doesn’t matter for politicians, as the dead and injured are other people’s children.
Sources
Thanks for the Time link admin. It made me feel sick. Repulsive people. I have always thought than anyone who wants a gun should be banned from having a gun. In other words the only people who should have them are those who don’t want to have them, and certainly don’t want to use them, but may be required to in the most dire of circumstances. .
Mark,
I have used a .22 bolt action rifle, to shoot rabbits on a relative’s dairy farm. He had a constant struggle against them in the days before myxomatosis and calicivirus. There is no need for anyone to have an automatic or semi-automatic rifle, artillery, tanks or suchlike, except in the armed forces. In civilian life, all they are is penis-extensions for those who feel inadequate. The fact that the Republicans and some Democrats think they are a good idea is, apart from their lack of humanity, solely down to money they get from the NRA and weapon manufacturers. How any human could consider this even remotely acceptable is beyond me.
I live in a rural area as I have mentioned before, on a several hectare property. Most of our near neighbours abhor guns but over the years a couple of people have felt that it was necessary to control what they call “vermin” using guns. If they were shooting rabbits or foxes then fine but they don’t. They kill correllas, cockatoos, galahs, lorikeets, crows, kangaroos and other native animals some of them protected, and others that can only be shot with a permit. Foxes and rabbits probably do more damage to the vines than any of these birds, but they are hard to find in the rows, and hard to shoot. Birds though, boy can you get them. They do not need to do this and often it is illegal. None of these animals are causing significant, or in many cases, any, damage to their crops (vines). They simply like shooting, and, if possible, killing things. We have also had on our road two domestic murders committed with the family gun. The gun that was legally owned. The gun used to shoot vermin. We should get rid of rabbits, and foxes, and feral cats but shooting them with a .22 is about as inefficient a way as possible to do that. My dogs are much better at killing rabbits, and the main, and recommended ways are find the burrow and fill it in, or bait, which I do. Guns are a very stupid thing for most people to own. In the USA there are a huge number of people behaving very stupidly, and tragically.
Mark,
As someone said to me the other day, the average person is pretty thick, but you have to realise that 50% of the population are of below average intelligence. I think the human species is buggered.
“you have to realise that 50% of the population are of below average intelligence”.
Well, yes, but that would be the case no matter whether the average was genius level or moron level. That’s just a statement about a mathematical certainty, and says nothing about whether the average improves or declines over any period of time.
Arthur,
Jeez, you are on the ball, aren’t you?
I will forever treasure your words of kindness.
You must have missed the accompanying qualifier Arthur:
“As someone said to me the other day, the average person is pretty thick”.
Well Jon, I’ve been variously referred to in this forum as “stuck-up”, “bellicose”, “up myself”, “simply vulgar”, “abusive”, “not fit to contribute”, and “should be rejected from the forum”. If I’m also “pretty thick” or even thick as a brick, I don’t suppose it would make any appreciable difference. If Admin finds me undesirable, he always has the option of chucking all his toys out of the pram and deleting every comment I ever made, but here I still am. Hanging on by the skin of my teeth. Coo-eeeee!
Arthur,
Poor little fellow.
It’s a slowly failing state with a lifestyle propped up by other nations like Japan, China (the irony), UK, and Belgium who own a lot of its debt. It’s hard to contemplate a world order where the USA isn’t top dog amongst free nations but on its current trajectory I give it maybe until the next century before its influence is significantly diminished. Australian politicians and the country as a whole have been far too complacent about USA world leadership imo. If the Republicans don’t steer a course back towards the middle the demise will come even quicker.
Jon,
It is difficult to predict what will happen. The Liberal Party here has clearly taken their lead from the Republicans in so many ways, and are paying for that. However, I think the thing that separates Australia from the US is that we are not quite as insular, so Americans do not know as much about the outside world as Australians do; this is perhaps indicated by the proportion of people with passports. This insularity is, I suspect, because of the size of the US population. There is so much happening, that they don’t have to write about stuff in other countries as much as we do to fill their media ‘column inches’. Also, in so many ways the US is behind countries like Australia as we are behind many countries in Europe. One of these ways is in the rejection of religion. The Republicans trade on this in a big way, as has the Liberal Party here, to their cost. If the US is to survive as a nation, the Republican Party, as it is currently constituted, will have to be consigned to the dustbin.
In the “land of the free” people commonly claim gun ownership is a “right” The one right Americans do not seem to have access to is the right not to live in fear. Why does the “right to bear arms” trump the right to not live in fear? Surely the right of the “pursuit of happiness” includes the right to not live in fear?
Peter,
Over the last few years, I have had some interactions with Americans online and some of them spout this ‘land of the free’ bullshit. I tried to explain to them that the only things Americans have that we don’t is the freedom to die in a hail of bullets and the freedom to go bankrupt with medical bills. Nearly a decade ago, I had to have emergency surgery and it cost me nothing. I happened to bump into an American who had the same operation and they had to take out a loan to pay for it. It is a shithole.
Fascism is alive and in plain sight in the USA.
https://www.rawstory.com/christopher-rufo-desantis/
Can only hope that the FBI, CIA and wise military heads are right on to these extremists. Our own intelligence agencies should be advising our government(s) of the risks also. I previously posted a link to GOP plans to replace judges and senior public servants with sycophants should Trump somehow prevail at the next election. That itself is an insidious way of eroding democracy.
Jon,
I don’t think anyone would deny that fascism is abroad in the US. A similar thing is happening here, but there don’t seem to be as many aggrieved punters who subscribe to this in Australia. In some ways we are ahead of the US.
As discussed on Blot previously, ironically the Australian “Christian” Lobby (just one of numerous “charities” which should be struck off – along the IPA and ALL right and left wing think tanks), was the last anti-democracy group caught out publicly supporting extreme actions in order to impose their authoritarian views on us.
Here’s another deranged, dangerous, self-proclaimed “god-driven” American neo-con with extreme ideas similar to Christopher Rufo. Thankfully federal courts have dealt with Christopher Arthur and he should be locked away for a long time:
https://www.rawstory.com/christopher-arthur/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/man-found-guilty-teaching-bomb-making-person-targeting-101181022#
Ironically the name Christopher means ‘bearer of Christ’. Neither of those mentioned above have even a basic inkling of Christ’s teachings, although like most of us they share most of his DNA.