Elaine’s prayers won’t help
Mitch McConnell yesterday:
The entire nation is horrified by today’s senseless violence in El Paso. Elaine’s and my prayers go out to the victims of this terrible violence, their families and friends, and the brave first responders who charged into harm’s way.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just now:
The House passed HR8, a Bipartisan Background Checks Act, 5 months ago and the Senate has yet to vote on it. It was one of our 1st major priorities after ending the gov shutdown. You’ve been sitting on it since February giving bogus excuses. Care to explain the people why?
I did an angry reply to McConnell myself yesterday. It’s stomach-turning watching Trump and McConnell pretend to be sad about El Paso when they are the very people who glorify guns, scream bloody murder at all efforts to control the sale of guns, and talk racist incitement every chance they get. Nobody wants their damn prayers.
Well said, OB.
But think of it from God’s point of view. He has heard it all so many times before, after every damned massacre and shooting, he is probably sick and tired of it. Moreover, going by the evidence, God pays not the slightest bit of attention to the victim prayers anyway.
The NRA prayer each time has to be ‘Dear Lord, please don’t let them take away our guns because of this.’ On the face of it, those are the prayers that bring on a divine response.
Following the Christchurch massacre our gun laws have been changed to make certain types of weapon and accessories illegal. There is an amnesty and buy-back in progress whereby illegally held/obtained weapons can be handed in no questions asked and legally purchased weapons that are now banned will be bought back at a fair rate. Many gun owners support this, including all of the people I know with guns. There are certainly a hard core who don’t like it at all. I suspect some will keep their now illegal weapons and thus put a lie to the ‘we’re all of good character and law abiding’ claim they like to throw around.
What has become apparent since the law change is that anyone posting a comment on social media or a blog about the issue gets bombed by gun rights people. This includes the Police Association who analysed the thousands of comments one of their posts received. They could identify a country of origin for 45% of all posts. Of those 33% were from the US. Nearly all posts were negative about the law changes, the gun buyback and the stance of the Police and Police Association. The talking points were very much from the NRA song book and many of the claims made about NZ centric law and facts were just plain wrong.
There were even claims in US right wing media that the buy back had been a failure, before it had begun.
Rob:
(Ex) Prime Minister of Australia John Howard after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania (35 dead, 23 wounded) siezed the opportunity and turned on a ‘buyback’ of all SLR repeating weapons. He spoke at a large public open-air meeting mainly made up of gun enthusiasts who were howling for his blood, and his words were skillfully chosen to deliberately stir them up into a frenzy; because he was not playing to them, but to the TV audience of millions who were watching it all unroll. Howard appeared more well-built than usual because he was wearing a flak jacket under his suit, but no helmet; not that one would have been any use much in protecting him from a sniper in the crowd.
So successful was his campaign that the American NRA sent out a delegation to oppose the buyback, make themselves available for TV interviews etc, as they were wary of the American consequences.
For my own part, I lost a beautiful Chinese-made 22-gauge SLR which I had bought for vermin control on our farm. I handed it in at the central police station in a major town, and got back the new price plus a little extra for my trouble as I recall. So I was quite happy.
Before taking it away, the cop asked me if I wanted to hold it one last time. I replied that it would not be necessary. He then told me me that some shooters, on parting with their SLRs had broken down and cried like infants. One enthusiast had written a eulogy for his SLR all over it: “Goodbye old friend, we’ve had great times together…. etc, etc.” And was assisted to leave the cop station by his sympathetic and devoted wife, as he was in no state to do it alone.
Good grief, some people are just infants.