You might remember last April’s school shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville. I know, they all run together in memory sometimes. But this one inspired a few Democratic members of the Tennesse legislature to demonstrate for gun control legislation. And the Republican majority silenced them. Even if you don’t remember the school shooting, I bet you remember the Tennessee Three — Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson. They tried to move the needle on gun legislation in Tennessee, and failed. They’ve since all been reinstated.
Today the New York Times tells the story of some parents from that Nashville school who tried to get the Tennessee legislature to see sense. In brief, they failed. But what makes the story interesting is that these were white, Christian, mostly conservative, upper-income parents, mostly the moms. And they got no more respect than the Tennessee Three.
Ms. Joyce and other Covenant parents felt they stood a better chance than anyone at cutting through the divisions on gun control. Among them were former Republican aides, gun owners and lifelong conservatives who could afford to spend days at the legislature. …
… But the Tennessee legislature proved more hostile than the Covenant parents imagined. And when Ms. Joyce heard just one more gun rights supporter dismiss the parents’ concerns after days of restraint, her patience snapped.
The shooter at Covenant “hunted our children with a high-capacity rifle,” Ms. Joyce cried out, her voice cracking, as she confronted the gun rights supporter in the Capitol rotunda. He walked away, but not before suggesting she listen more closely to his arguments.
“I have held my composure,” she said, now openly angry despite the crowd that had gathered. “I have stayed calm. I have been silent and quiet and composed. And I am sick of it. Listen to me.”
The shooter in Nashville was a trans man named Aiden Hale. He killed three nine-year-old children and three adults and was shot dead at the scene. Hale was under treatment for an emotional disorder that had caused concern among his family. Yet he was able to legally purchase the firearms in his possession that day — an AR-15 military-style rifle, a 9 mm Kel-Tec SUB2000 pistol caliber carbine, and a 9 mm Smith and Wesson M&P Shield EZ 2.0 handgun. The parents wanted a law “that would allow judges to temporarily remove weapons from people deemed to be a threat to themselves or others,” the Times reported.
Nope; that was a nonstarter. The idea was dead on arrival before the legislative session got underway. Instead, the Republican majority wanted a bill that would allow people with enhanced carry permits to take handguns into schools. When a mother demanded a justification for more guns in schools, a legislator scoffed at her, saying that if Aiden Hale hadn’t gad guns he could have run the students over during recess.
I take it these parents had never been treated so shabbily before in their lives. They had assumed that if they were reasonable and well behaved they would at least be listened to. Nope.
Eventually Tennessee did pass some bills to enhancee school security, but no gun control bills of any sort that I can find.
Today WaPo has a retrospective on Sandy Hook, or rather the gun control laws that didn’t happen after Sandy Hook. The article interviews four current and three former senators, all Democrats, who had voted against gun bills after Sandy Hook. And now they are sorry. I notice that no one bothered to interview Republicans to see if any of them are sorry.
The Sandy Hook parents interviewed sounded a lot like the Tennessee parents. They were grieving. They were ignored. And nothing gets done.
In other news, see Florida teen kills sister during fight over Christmas gifts, sheriff says.
“They had this family spat over who was getting what and how much money was being spent on who,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told a news conference Tuesday.
The argument continued as the family made their way from the store to their grandmother’s house in Largo, Fla. The brothers were each in possession of a gun, the sheriff said.
“They get to grandma’s house [and the 14-year-old] takes out his gun and tells him he’s going to shoot him in the head,” the sheriff said.
The older brother said he didn’t want to fight and asked his younger sibling to get out of the house, he added. Their uncle and sister, Baldwin, attempted to turn the situation around.
“You all need to leave that stuff alone … It’s Christmas,” Baldwin told them while standing outside the property, according to Gualtieri.
The 14-year-old, after allegedly threatening to shoot his sister and her baby, is accused of shooting Baldwin in the chest while she was holding her son in a carrier at 1:45 p.m. She fell to the ground and was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Her baby was not injured.
Seconds after the shooting, the 15-year-old brother came outside holding his own handgun and shot his younger brother in the stomach, Gualtieri said. The 14-year-old was unarmed when his brother shot him, he said, and is in custody in stable condition at a hospital.
The 15-year-old then fled, tossing his weapon into a yard nearby, Gualtieri said. He was later taken into custody at a relative’s house.
Gualtieri said that both teens were arrested and that only one of the two weapons was recovered at the scene, expressing concern that the missing gun would eventually be picked up and used in another crime. Audio of the incident was captured on a neighbor’s camera, Gualtieri said.
“The problem is, we got way too many kids out there with way too many guns,” Gualtieri said, adding that he hoped gun laws would change. “We need to get serious, and we need to get tough.”
Exactly why teenagers needed to be carrying guns to go Christmas shopping and on to Grandma’s house escapes me. But I’m sure somebody would argue that if they hadn’t had guns they would have just run each other over in their pickups.
But, y’know, sometimes it’s the gun. Someone with poor impulse control loses it and starts shooting. If that 14-year-old hadn’t had a gun, his sister would still be alive. It’s that simple. And as far as school shooters are concerned, I suspect shooting is the attraction. If shooting, especially with absurdly high-powered firearms, were no longer possible, I rather doubt we’d suddenly see a rash of vehicular homicides on school grounds.
Exactly why teenagers needed to be carrying guns to go Christmas shopping and on to Grandma’s house escapes me.
Does because 'it's Florida' offer any kind of a clue. Thanks to DeSantis almost everybody in the state is now packing heat. Concealed carry is the order of the day.
In Florida, guns are a religion.The day before Christmas someone walked into a crowded mall in Ocala and shot someone he didn't like (allegedly) .He then walked away and is still "at large."
Since obtaining a concealable weapon in Florida consists only of having enough money to purchase it, one would imagine that there would be more than one gun in one's pocket, holster, or handbag in a crowded mall, and there should have been at least one "good guy with a gun"to confront the offender. Now that the good guy with a gun idea is revealed to be a steaming pile of watery, stinky bullshit, perhaps some people will rethink of the gun as the central issue to be addressed for regulation in this country.
Nah, just kidding! Nothing will happen and we will all be thoughtsly and prayersly until the next senseless shooting,which should happen in the next few seconds.
“if Aiden Hale hadn’t had guns he could have run the students over during recess..”
Wow, well there you go. That is where we are. What started as a marketing ploy (30 years ago) to sell more guns has turned into collective national insanity. At first we needed guns to protect ourselves (Castle doctrine scary black folk). Then we needed assault rifles to put down a tyrannical government (again scary black president). Now we are to the point that owning a gun is a fucking appendage. If you cut off my left arm I’ll kill you with my right arm, how dare you! The gun nuts and there enablers in government are telling us that they have the right to mass murder and that mass shootings are an acceptable part of the American dream. Somehow our side hasn’t quite managed how to counter that yet?
Gun nuts are so convinced that lefties are out to confiscate all guns that any discussion of reasonable restrictions is doomed to failure. I don't know how we get past that. A considerable number of Mahabloggers have owned and some do own firearms, I think. (I'm not asking for a show of hands.) I don't think that very many liberals aspire to confiscate all weapons or ban them. (That might be an interesting poll if done with no attempt to slant the results.
Speaking for myself – I'd like to see legislation built on the foundation of RESPONSIBLE GUN OWNERSHIP. Translation: If you own a gun, you're responsible for it.
Example from Maha's post: The kids were not old enough to buy. Whoever DID buy and transferred custody should be charged with manslaughter or negligent homicide. Same deal if an underaged person – your child or a neighbor – discharges your weapon, even if you are not present. It's your weapon – it's your legal responsibility to secure it. Gun safe or trigger lock. Fail even once, if the gun is discharged and it's yours, you get charged. If anyone got hurt, you're screwed.
If you use a weapon, you will have to answer for it in a court of law. In other words, if you choose to own a gun, you are betting you can be 100% right if you use it. That means you will only shoot "bad guys" – hit an innocent bystander, you are screwed.
Mandatory gun insurance if you conceal-carry (outside the home).
I'm big on mandatory training and certification consistent with the type of weapon. y
Background checks made more aggressive with the type of weapon.
Sale/exchange regulations that encompass all the other regulations.
The question isn't if there are good ideas – the question is how they become law.
It won't happen with this USSC. So figure on packing the court or waiting a decade or so. Second, if the USSC isn't an obstacle, and a majority of the citizens support the ideas, you have to convince Congress to pass it. I think the gun control lobby needs to look at a long-term PR campaign built around securing and guaranteeing gun rights for RESPONSIBLE GUN OWNERS. Define that term around the laws that penalize idiots with guns. You might be surprised. Gun owners who really know guns have a deep contempt for fools with guns. Can this be developed? IDK, but maybe if the guarantees for responsible owners was and is part of the deal.
Conflict resolution family style while shopping in Florida. Now children, don't forget to comb your hair and be on your best behavior. We have a village full of idiots to impress. Make sure your guns are handy and loaded. We don't want to look under-socialized. This is textbook stuff. True tales of the un-woke.
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but only if your politicians have reading comprehension skills. Most seem too busy getting greased by the gun lobby to do much reading at all.
Only in America – anything and everything is a business opportunity. The unregulated active shooter drills and training industry serving schools and businesses, which I would venture hardly existed if at all thirty years ago, has become the ubiquitous panacea for addressing these horrors, a way of pretending that we can actually do something (other than pass gun laws, of course) beyond thoughts and prayers. "We can be prepared!", yeah right. Seems very common now for active shooter drill videos and discussion to get media attention in the aftermath of mass shootings, just listen and you will hear "experts tell us what we can do".
Also, active shooter insurance is now a thing.
Going OT: Nikki Haley got nailed in a RARE instance of the media covering the thing that was NOT said. Usually, political hoof-in-mouth is reserved for comments where you're busted for words you did utter. Nikki gave (IMO) a response that was calculated to sound pretty without sounding critical of the fight to preserve slavery. And I think this is important – candidates are being held to account (or at least one was) for the omission of a critical truth. The text of the exchange is worth a read.
Here’s the whole Haley exchange:
What a shallow, weaseling coward.
"I think the cause of the civil war was how government was going to run"
I wish someone would ask her and all the other GQP'ers if they think the right side won that war?
As long as I'm being annoying and off-topic…
The Sec of State for Maine has determined Trump ineligible to be on the Primary Ballot. The 14th has been invoked in this way in the past but not for a presidential candidate. There are now two states that have pulled the trigger. Trump will have until Jan 4 (I think) to file on CO with the USSC.
The question is whether the USSC will hear the case and on what basis they will rule. They might decide it's within each state's power to decide if Trump can be listed. But would that mean the states can individually invalidate Trump in the General? If the USSC lets the states make the decision that Trump participated in an insurrection, the USSC will have to decide the issue at a national level if Trump wins the election. (At the latest.) They'd be doing the GOP a favor to decide it sooner but the GOP voter blowback against the USSC would be… significant.
I still say Trump is a problem the USSC would rather have go away by itself. That's why I think the USSC will decide not to hear the case, leaving Trump's eligibility in question, hoping GOP voters will back anybody else in the Primary.
The US Constitution is the thing the nation is built around. This was a new concept in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified. Until then, a government was built around a person, a king, a queen, a czar, who could be replaced by force if you could muster the strength.
The United States proposed that the person would be replaced by a written set of rules, a Constitution and the officers of the government would swear to IT, not to him or her. The rules are not inflexible, several methods for changing the Constitution were included in the original document. But allegiance to the document isn't flexible, and should not be.
Trump "honors" the US Constitution only when the provisions suit him. On Jan 6, the implementation of a provision of the US Constitution regarding the transfer of power was inconvenient so Trump sponsored a violent demonstration to prevent the final provision of certifying an election that Trump lost.
But liberal pundits are missing the point of the Constitution in droves. I read editorials that Trump has to be defeated in the 2024 election, not by disqualification. They seem to be in favor of ignoring the 14th Amendment, which is no less a part of the US Constitution than Article Two. The 14th says if you participated in an insurrection OR gave aid and comfort to those who did, you can NOT hold office IF you previously swore an oath to support the US Constitution.
If Trump is disqualified by his actions in 2021, he's disqualified. Period. You might find it more convenient if Trump is trounced in the election. I might even agree. But if Trump is disqualified, he can't even be allowed to get to first base. If you believe in fully supporting the US Constitution – that's what it says. And it's no more up for creative and convenient interpretation than the provisions Trump ignored on Jan 6.
The US Supreme Court has the final say. I don't like it, but that's what the US Constitution says. Back to that again. If the Supremes read a provision of the 14th that does not exist in print, it's the final word. (It's also a good reason to pack the court with judges who can read the Constitution, and do it according to the Constitution which allows the Congress to expand the size of the court.)
It's amazing to me that loyalty to the Constitution is such a difficult concept for liberal scholars as much as tyrants.
Would it not be poetic justice (a near oxymoron) if the guy who stirred the big lie about Obama not meeting presidential qualifications by not being native born, himself was disqualified by his own actions. On top of that by strict constructionists and originalists and a case originated by a couple of federalist society conservatives and using their "view" of how to read and apply the constitution.