After Yet Another Mass Shooting

This week 10 people in a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket were killed, slaughtered really, by a nut case with a mad on about some damned thing or another who thought to resolve his issues with a gun

An assault rifle, actually. A weapon of war available to people who are not soldiers in an army in an actual war. 

The murderer obtained his assault rifle a mere 6 days before the shooting in a state where an assault rifle ban was overturned by a conservative judge based on the supposed constitutional premise "you can have all the guns you want!" 

After yet another mass shooting, we all know our assigned roles. 

Republicans snapped to attention to defend the status quo and deflect. 

Sean Hannity managed to turn a discussion of the Boulder massacre into a rant against Black Lives Matter? 

Ted Cruz had to weigh in, once more reminding us....

Say it with me! 

Ted Cruz is a lying fuck bastard!

Ted Cruz is a lying fuck bastard!

Amen!  

Amen! 

Bless you! 

Speaking at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Ted Cruz had this to say:  

"Every time there’s a shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee gets together and proposes a bunch of laws that would do nothing to stop these murders.  What happens in this committee after every mass shooting is Democrats propose taking away guns from law-abiding citizens, because that’s their political objective. But what they propose, not only does it not reduce crime, it makes it worse.”

Let me highlight a couple of troubling passages from the text above: 

• every time there’s a shooting
• after every mass shooting 

I think that defending the status quo is a bit problematic when that defense only serves to reiterate this is a recurring problem.

Sen. John Kennedy from Louisiana got in on the act.

“We do not need more gun control. We need more idiot control.” 

Good luck parsing that statement.

Kennedy also asserted that background checks and other basic gun control measures was like handling drunk drivers by taking cars away from sober drivers.  

CNN's Jake Tapper response to that? “I don’t even know what to say to that, it’s so stupid." 

Well, no one ever said the Republicans lock step rush to defend guns after yet another mass shooting had to actually make sense.  

There were the usual expressions of thoughts and prayers from the same Republican politicians who have and will continue to vote against any kind of meaningful and common sense gun control. 

Look, I have no problem with thoughts and prayers but if all you're gonna do is offer up thoughts and prayers while I risk my life to simply go to the grocery store, then fuck you and your thoughts and prayers. 

The recurring nature of mass shootings led Seth Meyers to question the use of the word “unimaginable” to describe such tragedies.  

“Unimaginable. That’s probably a word we can retire when something happens three or four times a week." 

It can be imagined. Kids can imagine it. 

When the pandemic began and kids had to adapt to distance learning from home, I read an article where one student noted the bright side this situation: not being killed in a mass shooting at school. 

Mass shootings are not unimaginable in a world where we have a routine of what to do after yet another mass shooting.