Mass shootings are not boat accidents
Republicans are so terrified of riling base voters already on low boil that all that Americans can expect from them for the foreseable future is no change whatsoever to the status quo. Nothing that’s an improvement, anyway.
After another weekend of mass shootings, city mayors are sick of having to mop up blood and deal with the political and emotional fallout (New York Times):
Prepping for massacres has become a standard part of leading an American city, a reality that mayors discussed with a mix of anger, fear and matter-of-fact resignation as they gathered over the weekend in Reno, Nev., for a meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors.
The meeting, held in a country raw from killings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, exposed a paradox of American mayoralty: When mass violence happens, mayors are the ones who must deliver the grim details, console their cities and field questions about how the gunman might have been stopped. But while big city mayors often have authority over police departments and social service programs, which can help prevent gun violence, they say they are largely powerless to enact the gun control measures that many of them say would be needed to prevent more tragedies.
“We’re pissed off,” said Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, Ky., a Democrat who was among the more than 170 mayors who met in Reno. “We’re working so hard every day to make our cities safe. And there’s actions that could be taken at the federal level, or state level in many of our cases. But for those of us in red states, we’ve almost given up on state action.”
That inaction is not, Plum Line’s Greg Sargent points out, the “exasperating partisan impasse” the Times subhead describes. Nor is it a boat accident. Or a shark attack. It’s Republican irresponsibility and buck-passing.
Republicans in state capitals and in Congress have often blamed Democratic mayors for violence in their cities, arguing that mayors do not support law enforcement enough and are overly focused on guns instead of other issues, like mental health, that can lead to violence.
It’s never the fact that the gun lobby has convinced gun fanatics that every man his own militia is what the framers intended.
It’s never the fact that conservatives are so radicalized and paranoid that many believe personal arsenals are neeeded “to be effective against the government if it becomes tyrannical.”
It’s never the fact that red states keep loosening, not tightening, gun laws.
It’s never the fact that the country is awash in military-style and other firearms.
Melissa Ryan argued over the weekend:
For the Right mass shootings are a feature, not a bug. They don’t care about being called hypocrites or heartless. They don’t care about any data or evidence we could show them. They don’t even care about polling or guns as an election issue. A violent minority of people are willing to sacrifice anything and everything for white supremacy and authoritarianism. Power and control are what motivates them. We have to adjust our tactics accordingly.
Terrorizing Americans is the point for a “violent minority” meaning to keep and hold power undemocratically in country purporting still to be the United States of America. Intimidation and despair are political weapons.
Amanda Marcotte wrote after the school murders in Uvalde, Texas:
That numb feeling you’re experiencing? That exhaustion? That tugging urge to just give up, abandon politics entirely, and just concentrate on your own life? That’s what Republicans want you to feel. That’s why they act this way, to exhaust you. The more that ordinary Americans feel that nothing we say or do can make a difference, the better the political landscape for Republicans.
Illegitimi non carborundum.
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