July 4th: Chicagoland Celebrates 2nd Amendment

On the morning of July 4th, an Illinois firearms enthusiast joined Highland Park‘s small town Independence Day parade by firing his assault-style rifle at it, killing 6 fellow citizens outright and mangling the bodies of dozens of others, including children. An illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate urged citizens to “move on and … celebrate the independence of this nation.”

US gunshot deaths so far this year: 22,434.

God Bless America.

Update:

“7th Person Dies Day After Highland Park Parade Mass Shooting,” NBC 5 Chicago

More:

“Horror on the Fourth: Suspect in custody after 6 killed, dozens wounded at Highland Park Fourth of July parade,” Lynn Sweet, Manny Ramos, Elvia Malagón and Sophie Sherry, Chicago Sun-Times

“Guns Killed More Than 220 People Over July 4 Weekend Alone,” Alice Tecotzky, Daily Beast

“Marjorie Taylor Greene Tweets Predictably Fact-Free Theory About Highland Park Massacre,” Zachary Petrizzo, Daily Beast

“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” The Onion

________________________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-zh4

Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

19 Children Shot to Death in Texas

At least 19 children and 2 teachers were shot to death at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. The victims were in a single 4th grade classroom. The teenaged perpetrator wore body armor but was shot dead by police. The shooter was legally able to buy his assault-style rifle this month, the day after his 18th birthday.

There have been 213 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, 27 school shootings. And it’s only May.

In other Texas news, the National Rifle Association will hold its annual meeting in Houston on Friday. Scheduled speakers include Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R), Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R), South Dakota Governor Kristi L. Noem (R), Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R, TX-2), and former president Donald J. Trump. At this time, no grieving parents from Uvalde are on the agenda.

More:

“21 killed at Uvalde elementary in Texas’ deadliest school shooting ever,” Sneha Dey, Texas Tribune

“Firearms are now the leading cause of death for U.S. children,” Peter Weber, The Week

“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” The Onion

___________________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-z5D

Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here.  Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

Racist Mass Murder in Buffalo

A teenaged white supremicist has murdered 10 people in a supermarket in Buffalo, NY. He was able to legally purchase an assault-style firearm despite earlier threats to commit such acts. There have been 202 mass shootings in the United States so far this year. And it’s only May.

More:

“The victims: What we know about those killed, injured in Tops shooting,” Buffalo News

“The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He’s a Mainstream Republican,” Talia Lavin, Rolling Stone

“Scrutiny of Republicans who embrace ‘great replacement theory’ after Buffalo massacre,” Richard Luscombe, The Guardian

“White Power, White Violence,” Kathleen Belew, The Atlantic

“Conservative media is familiar with Buffalo suspect’s alleged ‘theory,’” Paul Farhi, Washington Post

“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” The Onion

___________________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-z3R

Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

Mass Shooting in Indianapolis Kills 8 People

A gunman murdered eight innocent human beings and injured at least seven others in Indianapolis, Indiana on Thursday before shooting himself dead. This is the third mass shooting in Indianapolis so far this year. Five people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in a January shooting, and three adults and a child were shot to death in March.

Indiana has some of the weakest gun laws in the United States, a country of lax gun safety laws and more guns than people, where there have been 45 gunshot mass murders in the last month, 147 in 2021 to date, more than one every day (details here).

So far in 2021, 12,421 people have been shot to death in the US, including 87 children under 12, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

More:

“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” The Onion

“These are the victims of the Indianapolis FedEx mass shooting,” Fox 59 News

_____________
Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-wYM

Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

Second Mass Shooting In a Week

Ten innocent people, including a police officer, were shot to death on Tuesday at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. Nine were random shoppers; the officer was responding to reports of the shooting. The murderer, wearing tactical clothing, was armed with an assault-style weapon he bought last week. Also last week: Boulder’s 2018 assault weapons ban was voided by a judge.

This follows a mass shooting in Atlanta last Tuesday, when eight people were murdered by a gunman who bought his high-capacity handgun the same day. Georgia is not among the 14 U.S. jurisdictions with a waiting period for guns purchases, to prevent such impulsive acts of violence.

More:

“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” The Onion

___________________

Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-wQ5

Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

 

Gilroy. El Paso. Dayton. How many more?

On Sunday morning, Dayton, Ohio suffered the 251st U.S. mass shooting this year. 9 people were killed and 27 injured. The day before, in a shooting at an El Paso shopping mall, 20 people were killed and 26 injured. The preceding Monday, in Gilroy California, a gunman killed 3 people and injured 15. 3 gunmen perpetrated 32 gunshot homicides and 68 gunshot casualties in one week.

Three people were able to commit that human carnage because they used variants of assault rifles designed for the battlefield and equipped with high-capacity magazines. The gun industry has cynically re-branded these military-style firearms as “modern sporting rifles,” though they are designed to tumble when they hit a target and would shred game animals and blast 6-inch exit holes. That’s what happened to this week’s victims. It’s true that most of America’s yearly 40,000 gunshot fatalities are committed with handguns, but you don’t have mass shootings without weapons capable of mass shootings. Reinstituting the assault weapons ban is a good place to start.

‘America’s Rifle,’ American Carnage

In the February 14th school shooting in Parkland Florida, 17 people were killed with an AR-15 type rifle, legally purchased by an 18-year-old American citizen too young to legally buy beer. It has long been known that the assault-style AR-15, which the NRA calls “America’s Rifle,” is the mass killer’s weapon of choice. After an assault-style weapon killed 5 children at a school in Stockton California in 1994, Congress passed a ban on the civilian sale of semi-automatic assault-style firearms and high-capacity magazines, but the law was allowed to expire in 2004. Since then, such massacres have increased 183 percent with a 239 percent increase in massacre deaths.

After 2004, U.S. gun manufacturers re-branded variants of the military-derived AR-15 as the “Modern Sporting Rifle” even though the gun is terrible for hunting. It was designed to do maximum damage to the human body. Just ask Dean L. Winslow, MD.

It’s not just this Florida school shooting. Assault-style rifles have been used in recent mass killings in Aurora Colorado (22 dead), Newtown Connecticut (26 dead), Santa Monica California (6 dead), Colorado Springs (3 dead), San Bernardino (14 dead), Orlando (49 dead), Las Vegas Nevada (58 dead), Roseburg Oregon (9 dead), and Sutherland Springs Texas (26 dead).

Is it time to bring back the assault weapon ban? The surviving students at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School seem to think so. The Second Amendment shouldn’t be a suicide pact. The Founding Fathers never saw an AR-15.

More:

“The AR-15: ‘America’s rifle’ or illegitimate killing machine?” Marc Fisher, Washington Post

“Mass shootings are getting deadlier. And the latest ones all have something new in common: The AR-15,” Matt Pearce, Lost Angeles Times

“Nothing in the Constitution Prevents Sensible Gun Rules,” Cass R. Sunstein, Bloomberg

“Laws we used to have on the books could have prevented the Florida school shooting,” Robert J. Spitzer, Washington Post

“No one becomes a mass shooter without a mass-shooting gun,” George Skelton, Los Angeles Times

“Top GOP Donor Cuts Off Opponents of Assault Weapon Ban,” Chas Danner, New York Magazine

“Shooting survivors to press for gun control,” AP via ABC News

“Florida school shooting: Students demand tighter gun controls,” BBC News

“Florida high school superintendent shares calls for ‘commonsense gun laws,’” Josh Delk, The Hill

“Florida massacre: Broward Sheriff Scott Israel’s plea for gun control,” Kyle Swenson, Washington Post

“Ex-CIA chief: Congress must act now to block access to semiautomatic weapons,” Jacqueline Thomsen, The Hill

“A Republican Governor Just Called for a Ban on Assault Weapons,” Dan Friedman, Mother Jones

“At vigil for Florida shooting victims, students who survived the attack chant, ‘No more guns!'” Catherine Garcia, The Week

“Stoneman Douglas survivors are emerging as the sanest voices on gun control,” Karen Hao, Quartz

“Murdoch’s New York Post shifts on assault-weapons ban, after Florida school shooting,” Callum Borchers, Washington Post

“All the things Fox News blamed the Parkland shooting on other than the gun,” Adam Epstein, Quartz

“Florida students protest Trump, NRA,” Morgan Gstalter, The Hill

“Surviving Teens of Parkland Massacre Tell NRA to Shove Its ‘Thoughts and Prayers,’ and Plan March on Washington,” Angela Helm, The Root

“Shooting survivor to NRA: ‘Don’t you dare come back here,’” Rebecca Savransky, The Hill

“Shooting suspect was on school rifle team that got NRA grant,” Michael Biesecker and Collin Binkley, Associated Press

“Outside NRA headquarters, hundreds gather in vigil and protest,” Clarence Williams, Washington Post

“NRA Goes Quiet on Twitter, Just Like After Previous Mass Shootings,” Matt Novak, Gismodo

“FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump,” Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, McClatchy News

“NRA contributions: how much money is spent on lawmakers?” Lauren Gambino, The Guardian

“Have your representatives in Congress received donations from the NRA?” Aaron Williams, Washington Post

“Lawmakers use campaign funds for NRA dues,” Ben Wieder, McClatchy News

“The NRA’s step-by-step playbook for responding to a mass shooting,” Heather Timmons, Quartz

Updates:

“Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved,” Saul Cornell, The Conversation

“Florida shooting survivor: We should call AR-15s ‘Marco Rubio’ because they’re both easy to buy,” Brandon Carter, The Hill

________________________

Short link: https://wp.me/p6sb6-rfo

Image (“Old Glory”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine