(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . We Accept School Shootings [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-03-29 The Future of School Shootings Mass shootings, especially school shootings, are as American as apple pie and Uncle Sam, and much like apple pie and Uncle Sam, mass shootings aren’t going away anytime soon. The truth of the matter is we accept mass shootings, and again, especially school shootings, as part of life in America. Please, I can hear some of your assholes puckering in anger at that statement, but you know it’s true. You know it in your gut. No matter how many elementary school children are shredded by AR-15’s, no matter how many closed casket funerals parents need to plan for their slaughtered daughters and sons, nothing is going to change. I can say that with confidence because nothing has changed. I thought Sandy Hook in Newtown would be the massacre that would force this country to recognize the idiocy of giving a person a weapon of mass murder. I thought that the mutilation of twenty children between the ages of six and seven years old would be enough for America to look itself in the mirror and finally understand that owning weapons of mass murder is not a God given right. I was wrong. The butchering of twenty first grade children wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to being enough. In my opinion, President Obama not doing something after Sandy Hook to curb the war-like violence that our children face is one of the greatest failings of any president in American history. Twenty kids, with a combined age of 124, and average age of 6.2 years old, wasn’t enough for the President of the United States to do something. The president is considered the most powerful person on the planet, but that’s not true. The president is not more powerful than the AR-15’s that terrorize our schools, and Obama proved it. Sandy Hook was over ten years ago, there have been 20, 30, 40, or more school shootings since then and it is still not enough. Since Sandy Hook, what has changed? Think about it, what really has changed? If you’re having a hard time thinking of a few things here are a couple of changes: There are states that have made it EASIER to acquire weapons of mass murder. Since Sandy Hook, it is now easier to buy an AR-15. National gun laws have been weakened. No permit, no training, no problem! We developed ALICE training. Instead of getting rid of guns, we now have training for our school aged children so that they are prepared for when there is mass shooting at their school. Not if there is a mass shooting, but for WHEN there is a mass shooting. The Supreme Court is a conservative super majority who will protect the 2nd amendment. Gun sales have skyrocketed. 23 million guns were purchased in 2020 and 20 million in 2021. In those 2 years Americans bought the most guns in American history. We have accepted the idea that a good guy with a gun beats a bad guy with a gun. In Tennessee, before the good guy with a gun got to the school, three nine-year-old children and three adults were massacred. In Uvalde, the good guys with guns stood in the hall and waited for the bad guy with a gun to finish. Manufacturers have made weapons of mass murder more efficient and capable of killing more people. The MCX-SPEAR is the newest offering from SIG Sauer. This weapon fires bullets with twice the kinetic energy versus an AR-15. It will shoot through almost all known bulletproof material and any bulletproof material that is in development. It will pierce all the bulletproof vests that law enforcement uses. It is designed to stop the good guy with a gun. It has a range of 1 mile. It comes with a noise suppressor so shooters are harder to pinpoint. And anyone can buy a shiny new one for $5,000-$8,000 dollars. The biggest change has been this country’s acceptance of school shootings. When Sandy Hook happened this country was in mourning for weeks, if not months. Now when a school shooting happens, we pay attention for a couple of days, post witty memes and scary stats on social media, vow that we are going to do something, and then we all move. Do you blame us? Come on, it’s Final Four weekend and Harry Styles broke up with someone and Taylor Swift is on tour and all those other things that are happening that pale in comparison to the murder of children. We accept it and move on. We get thoughts and prayers and are told that it is too soon to do something, that we need to cool down before action can be taken. Before we finish cooling down, another shooting happens and we are back in the thoughts and prayers cycle. Not only do we accept it, we re-elect the thoughts and prayers people. We are told that it isn’t the guns, it’s the people. And we accept that. If the shooter in Uvalde had a knife instead of an AR-15 would those coward cops have waited in the hall for 45 minutes? Of course not. It’s not the people, it is the guns. We are told that it is a constitutional right to own guns when in fact that constitution says nothing of the sorts. But we accept that it is a God given right to own weapons of mass murder. Now we are being told by Representative Tim Burchett (R-Tenn) that “We’re not going to fix it. Criminals will be criminals.” And we’ll accept it. I would bet that this douche gets re-elected. The clearest sign that we accept it is the belief that there is nothing we can do. Other countries have had school shootings and they did something, they got rid of the guns. Guess what happened? There are no more school shootings. They didn’t accept what we have accepted. They didn’t make it easier for people to buy weapons of mass murder. They didn’t offer thoughts and prayers and nothing else. They didn’t accept training their children to survive when someone is mowing down their friends and teachers with an AR-15, or, in the near future, a MCX-SPEAR. What they didn’t accept was the murder of their children. They didn’t accept their schools turning into shooting ranges. They got rid of the guns because they wanted to protect the lives of children. We did the opposite. We protect guns and get rid of children. And we accept that. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/3/29/2160956/-We-Accept-School-Shootings Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/