It Didn't Even Take Right-Wing Hate Media a Full Day to Pin a Mass Shooting on Transgenders
Seriously, what purpose does the modern-day republican party serve?
Well, here we are again.
Another school shooting in America only 88 days into the year.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, the premier site for documenting America’s gun violence carnage, Monday’s incident at Covenant School in Nashville was the 130th mass shooting this year. The K-12 School Shooting Database, dedicated exclusively to chronicling school shootings, logs this as the 89th school shooting incident.
Of course from republicans we get the usual “thoughts and prayers” since they have nothing else in the way of substantive solutions that wouldn’t run afoul of their fealty to the almighty gun lobby.
But it didn’t even take them 24 hours to deflect away from the gun toward the shooter’s apparent gender.
Here are some headlines straight out of right-wing hate media:
Breitbart: “Nashville Shooter Was Second ‘Transgender’ Female Killer in 4 Years”.
Washington Stand: “Transgender Activist Kills 6 at Christian School”.
NewsBusters: “CBS Blames Guns for Possible Trans Terrorist Shooting”.
Infowars: “Leftists Complain About Transgender Shooter Being Misgendered”.
While the nation is awash in students’ blood, right-wing hate mongers are using yesterday’s carnage to justify their culture war on LGBTQ+ Americans.
“Sick” isn’t strong enough an adjective.
Republicans do the Mexican hat dance about everything from school doors being propped open, the over-prescription of ADHD medication, the absence of God in school, the dearth of armed school personnel (including teachers), fatherless children, gender, race, to gun control itself.
(Those are actual excuses republicans have provided to try to avoid the fact that availability to guns is the core of the problem.)
After years of schools, churches, grocery stores, movie theaters, concerts, and hospitals being turned into shooting galleries, we’re still only given pearl clutching over “mental health.”
But since even that ruse is getting stale, republicans are starting to come clean about the truth: they aren’t interested in doing anything about it.
Case in point: when reporters asked republican Rep. Tim Burchett — from Tennessee no less — on the steps of his state’s capitol building what he and his colleagues intend to do to stanch the scourge of gun violence, he replied, “We’re not gonna fix it.”
He added:
I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly. Criminals are going to be criminals.
That’s it right there.
That’s their whole plan.
Throw up their arms and just surrender people up to the gun lobby’s altar.
But drag show? Books?
Oh, no — those are the real threats to the nation, according to Burchett, who worked tirelessly with republican cronies to pass a law in Tennessee banning drag shows.
A CBS and YouGov survey administered to 2,021 American adults between June 1st through 3rd, one week after the Uvalde, Texas Robb Elementary School massacre last year, found 44% — nearly half of respondents identifying as republicans--feel we should accept mass shootings as the price of living in a free society.
Last June, President Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun safety legislation in decades.
According to CNN:
It includes $750 million to help states implement and run crisis intervention programs. The money can be used to implement and manage red flag programs — which through court orders can temporarily prevent individuals in crisis from accessing firearms — and for other crisis intervention programs like mental health courts, drug courts and veterans courts.
This bill closes a years-old loophole in domestic violence law — the ‘boyfriend loophole’ — which barred individuals who have been convicted of domestic violence crimes against spouses, partners with whom they shared children or partners with whom they cohabitated from having guns. Old statutes didn’t include intimate partners who may not live together, be married or share children.
The bill encourages states to include juvenile records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System with grants as well as implements a new protocol for checking those records.
The bill goes after individuals who sell guns as primary sources of income but have previously evaded registering as federally licensed firearms dealers. It also increases funding for mental health programs and school security.
While bipartisan support on just about anything today, let alone gun legislation, should celebrated, some are arguing this law’s framework is mere tokenism.
Some experts argue the agreement’s limited provisions wouldn’t have prevented the Uvalde, Texas Robb Elementary School shooting last year.
One reason for that is the agreement does not include reinstating an assault weapons ban like the one in effect from 1994 to 2004 that reduced mass shootings 43%.
Along with that is no mention of altering gun buyers’ required minimum age to purchase assault-style weapons.
There is heavy emphasis on republicans’ “mental health” excuse du-jour, though, despite the fact that the United States does not hold a monopoly on mental illness.
Other countries have mentally ill people too, but no other country has our number of guns and gun deaths.
All countries the world over average 9.86 guns per 100 civilians.
The United States, though?
120.5 guns per 100 people.
Most Americans, even gun owners, agree with stricter gun control measures.
But not the base of the modern-day republican party pulling the majorities’ strings.
No, it’s too busy with a parents’ “bill of rights” to root out “wokeness” in school curricula and demonizing transgender people.
Seriously, what purpose does the modern-day republican party serve?