(Dobbs) Setting New Records for Mass Shootings
Yet the fanatical Right Wing now is actually glorifying the AR-15.
I was pretty shocked to read that last weekend, in a span of only three days— February 17th through the 19th— there were ten mass shootings in America. 13 victims died, 46 were injured in the states of Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and South Carolina. That’s just one weekend in February. In fact two states, Georgia and Missouri, had two mass shootings in that three-day span. And those figures don’t even include another just two days later in Florida where three more innocent people died— including a 9-year-old girl— with two critically injured. Or yet another the very same day in Alabama: another four people shot dead. Or two more the very next day in Pennsylvania and Colorado.
And that’s just “mass shootings”— defined as shootings with four victims or more.
On average, taking all the gunfire into account across America, there are more than a hundred gun deaths a day.
It’s crazy. It’s madness. A lot of us have been saying that for a long, long time. But it never stops and only gets worse.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, that three-day weekend with ten mass shootings brought the total in the United States this year so far up to 82 (and the four that followed brought it up to 86). At the same time last year, the figure was only 59, although “only” must be said with a deep degree of caustic contempt.
But contempt for whom? The shooters of course, the killers who pull the trigger.
But it’s contempt too for the irresponsible leaders who enable them, like Georgia’s GOP congressman and multi-millionaire gun shop owner Andrew Clyde, who has been glorifying the semiautomatic AR-15, many shooters’ weapon of choice, handing out these lapel pins to fellow gun nuts in the House.
Some of them even had the heartless gall early this month to wear them during National Gun Violence Survivors Week. Congressman Clyde said on Twitter, “I give it out to remind people of the Second Amendment of the Constitution and how important it is in preserving our liberties.”
What he conveniently ignores is, they also remind people of America’s place as the most heavily armed nation on earth. Serbia, Yemen, and Switzerland come next, but with more guns than people in the U.S.A., the others aren’t even close. Just for good measure, we also have one of the world’s highest per capita rates of death by firearm.
It’s contempt for rash leaders like Marjorie Taylor Greene, also from Georgia, who sarcastically tweeted last week that if Red State Democrats had their way, “they would immediately disarm their citizens of course because those bad guns get up and kill people by themselves all the time.” What she expediently overlooks is, those “bad guns” wouldn’t kill people if bad people couldn’t so easily get those bad guns.
It’s contempt for reckless leaders like Alabama’s Republican congressman Barry Moore, who claimed without foundation early last week, “The anti–Second Amendment group won’t stop until they take away all your firearms” and excitedly took to Twitter to announce his bill “to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America.”
If you need to be reminded, it was an AR-15 that cut down five people at Club Q in Colorado Springs. It was an AR-15 that killed ten shoppers at the supermarket in Buffalo, New York. It was an AR-15 that wiped out 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. An AR-15 executed 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. An AR-15 shot 49 people to death at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. An AR-15 mowed down 473 innocents, killing 60 of them, at a country music festival in Las Vegas.
But this Alabama congressman, just like the murderers in these shootings, would make it “the National Gun of America.” His co-sponsors include the likes of Georgia’s gun shop owner Congressman Clyde, Colorado’s gun-toting Lauren Boebert of Christmas card fame…
… and the unconscionably unshamable George Santos of New York.
This is hardly an honor roll, let alone an honorable roll, from the House of Representatives.
Congresspeople Clyde and Greene and Boebert and Moore and their fellow firearm fanatics cite the Second Amendment as if its meaning and intent are crystal clear. But they’re not and never have been. What it says is, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The gun lobby has always adulterated that language to minimize the significance of those first four words, “A well regulated Militia.” But that is what James Madison wanted to protect when he wrote the Second Amendment: a well-regulated militia, not every American who wants to be armed with an AR-15.
Tragically though, with their political pull, gun advocates have carried the day. Whether in legislatures or courts, reasonable regulation loses out more often than not.
Nor are they honest about the issue. Newsweek quoted the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s characterization of the semiautomatic AR-15’s users: “Hunters, competitors, millions of Americans seeking home-defense guns and many others who simply enjoy going to the range.” What it leaves out, of course, are the killers at Club Q and Uvalde and Pulse and all the rest.
These people would turn “gun reform” into dirty words. Like Congressman Clyde, they say it threatens our liberties. It doesn’t. Like Congresswoman Greene, they say it would mean the end of Second Amendment rights. It wouldn’t.
If better background checks could stop dangerous people from buying a gun, would that be a bad thing? If concealed weapon permits weren’t so easy to get, would that be a bad thing? If a waiting period helped some people cool off before going on a rampage, would that be a bad thing? If red flag laws kept unstable Americans from purchasing firearms, would that be a bad thing? If a citizen couldn’t buy a gun until the relatively mature age of 21, would that be a bad thing? If an assault weapons ban could dry up most of the market for AR-15s, would that be a bad thing?
Some bad people will still get around reasonable regulations on guns. Nobody is naive enough to think otherwise. But if fewer could get around them, would that be a bad thing?
No it would not. It would have been a very good thing in fact for the 13 people killed and the 46 injured in that three-day weekend last week. And for all who’ve been shot since then.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Thank you for this Gregg. As a lifetime Crime Victim Advocate, who once helped pick ip a child who fell to the floor with grief and horror as she recounted witnessing her friends murdered in “a school shooting” I am appalled at the selfishness of those who turn a blind eye to the horror and grief experienced by our children who now practice hiding from these guns in their schools. That this continues to happen, so regularly as you pointed out, nearly 34 years later, is unbelievable to me. Our society is built on little personal inconveniences, if you will, In the interest of safety for all. I’m not a gun owner but I grew up in a family of hunters. Not one would consider fighting to own an assault rifle easily available to virtually anyone who wants it because they like shooting it for sport. Or agreeing to reasonable precautions to keep guns out of the hands of those who clearly shouldn’t get them. That’s just common sense. My heart breaks that this madness continues. I cry each and every time I hear of yet another shooting that results in life changing experiences for so many hood, innocent people just living their every day lives - going to church, a concert, a grocery store, school, a club, the list goes on. And on. And on. When will it stop?
We usually worry about our demise as a Republic coming from an outside force, while we should examine and beware of it coming from within, as is being demonstrated as a mortal threat on a daily basis in today's America.