Tag Archives: Gun violence

Past Time To Act On Guns

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Momsgunssign-sm

Many have found it particularly distressing given how little has been accomplished to assure citizens that they are safe from mass shootings and gun violence.

Moms, family and friends gathered to protest this past weekend – to demand action for a change.

In recent days, in Virginia Beach, a city employee killed 12 people and injured four more in a municipal building.

The killer carried two lawful .45 caliber handguns but he also had a silencer and an extended capacity ammo magazine.  The large magazine meant he didn’t have to re-load and could continue to shoot longer and kill or wound more innocents. Continue reading →

Students Lead the Way

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Loudoun Valley High School walked out on March 14, 2018

Loudoun Valley High School walked out on March 14, 2018

Thousands of students from across Loudoun County walked out of class for 17 minutes, a minute of silent remembrance for each of the 17 students and staff killed in a Parkland, Florida High School, by an AR 15 wielded by 19-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz.

The students also assembled to protest automatic and semi-automatic weapons that, according to an organizer at the Seneca Ridge Middle School walkout, Lane Thimmesch, have no practical use, and can only be used to hunt people.

The students in Loudoun County joined a massive national protest, from New York to Seattle, and many small towns and communities in between, on March 14, 2017, one month after the Florida shooting.

The demonstrators permitted to speak or carry a sign said that they’d had “enough” of “hope and prayers” and wanted “action,” demanding that elected officials protect them from gunfire and death.

In Loudoun County, among the published Student’s Rights and Responsibilities, students have a right to “freedom of expression” through “speech, peaceful assembly, petition, and other lawful means provided such expression does not cause substantial disruption …”

Ironically, we instruct our students that the “Boston Tea Party,” throwing 342 chests of British East India Company tea into the harbor waters, that “cursed weed,” was a righteous protest. Continue reading →

How many gun dead does it take?

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The Florida Shooter – Esteban Santiago

The Florida Shooter – Esteban Santiago

When you can’t use your mind, you may only act physically.

Guns empower true physical violence, wielded at a distance from the human target, who is unarmed, unsuspecting, innocent, a truly one-sided “fight,” with surprise on the side of the assailant, that reduces his risk of harm.

Guns are easy to get in America no matter how little you know about handling weapons, no matter how unhealthy mentally you may be.

A troubled Iraq vet, Esteban Santiago, 26, upon his return stateside, according to his Aunt, lost his mind in the mid-east and was hospitalized.

Last November, Estaban told the Anchorage FBI that there was a CIA plot against him, and related a tale of paranoia that would be hard to imagine.

Esteban surrendered an ammunition clip to the FBI.  The FBI confiscated his gun.  Esteban was admitted to a hospital.  Shortly afterwards, he was released from the hospital, his gun returned, and Esteban flew from Alaska to Florida, to kill five people with the very same gun the FBI returned to Esteban. Continue reading →

Now Dallas

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In protest of the Minnesota shooting of Philando Castile

In protest of the Minnesota shooting of Philando Castile

The rule of law is ignored.

Cops kill with impunity based seemingly, given the stats, on the race of the victim.

The system shuffles the shooting cop off stage, hides his identity, misplaces the dash board camera footage, gives us a bs song and dance that doesn’t fly, for, after all, to give one recent example, how can you justify killing a black man, Philando Castile, in Minnesota for having a busted tail light?

If Castile had been arrested for anything, had he not been killed, or if any one of us were arrested, the police would circulate a sorrowful mug shot, showing us off to severe disadvantage, and whisper “on background” to some journalist or other a brief slanderous history.

But the Castile cop is on administrative leave, traveling under the radar.

What we can expect, following Castile’s death, is that they’ll clear the officer 6 or more months later – after a “full and fair” investigation – behind closed doors – and announce the results when most have moved on to another tragic public incident.

The law fails when it lacks force and suffers from favor. Continue reading →

The nation’s untreated wound

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Terrorist_nation_gunsThe nation suffers an open wound that we refuse to treat even after the worst mass shooting in American history.

In Orlando, a semi-automatic assault rifle, in the hands of a soulless assassin, hurled 20 deathly shots every 9 seconds, ripping the flesh and organs of the young and defenseless with the fury and power one could hardly resist.

Innocent young men and women who tried to hide couldn’t.

In the moments before the rain of fire, they were unsuspecting, happy, having fun, dancing at a club about to close in the early morning hours, and, what sounded like fire crackers, as they couldn’t know better, was gunfire; those who were not close to an exit to escape, were stranded, shot at will, as they cowered, and, in the end, 49 would die, and another 53 would be injured or left fighting to live.

Those who ran and escaped were torn, felt guilty, for those they left behind.

This place of unholy devastation was encircled by a community of compassion while the killer continued to hunt those trapped inside.

A Mother traded anxious texts with her son, hiding inside, waiting for the police, hoping to be reunited with his Mom, until the moment he texted, “I’m gonna die.” And he did. Continue reading →

Ban guns

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Rep. Zoe Lofgren, reviewing amendments to deal with Columbine, with her Special Counsel, John Flannery.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, reviewing amendments to deal with Columbine, with her Special Counsel, John Flannery.

Once again, the hand wringing commences in Virginia and across the nation.

Guns again destroyed a network of family, friends, of co-workers, and, in a city, Roanoke, where the victims were known and loved; indeed, many watched them killed on tv in real time.

Before the camera, a young popular reporter, Allison Parker, 24, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, were shot dead; the shooter filmed the murders as well, and posted the carnage he created on line.

These deaths by gunfire will shortly be regarded as indifferently as the 20 children who were killed in Newton, Connecticut, those children killed at Columbine in Colorado, and those students killed at Virginia Tech.

Our nation’s sense of morality and of conscience has grown weak to the point of complicity in these murders for our failure to act to stem the flood of weapons that make any one that we care about more at risk every day.

Our elected “leaders” cower before the “new” NRA, a cultish front group for the firearms industry leaders who sit on its Board and who help fund the organization. Politicians fear that they will lose the approaching election without the NRA’s political support if they dare to think to say or do anything that might control gun violence in America. Continue reading →

Tywanza!

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tywanza“You don’t have to do this,” said Tywanza Sanders, 26.

That’s what Tywanza said in a Charleston, South Carolina Church.

A 21-year-old man, Dylann Roof, holding a gun, didn’t believe that.

Looking at Tywanza, a black man, standing before him in a church at a Bible study meeting, Dylann said, it was a “fact” that “black men are raping our women and taking over the country.”

The rich residue of bigotry and violence, accumulated over the history of our young country, makes for a deathly brew.

It began with rivulets, formed into rivers, a soulless flood, coursing through our nation’s veins, its institutions, and the minds and hearts of America.

Early vestiges of its source occurred when founding fathers failed to condemn slavery in our Declaration of Independence.

When we wrote our Constitution, we embraced slavery, making men chattels and partial persons.

Even now when discrimination is outlawed, it is still widely practiced, with a wink and a nod, and finds ease and comfort in the oleaginous political rhetoric of our most unworthy leaders. Continue reading →

Kill Shot

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Christian Sierra – killed by the Police

Christian Sierra – killed by the Police

It looks like it’s a big mistake to ask the police for help – when you consider that a Police Officer reportedly pumped four deathly slugs into the chest of a 17-year old Loudoun Valley High School Student, Christian Alberto Sierra, who had threatened to kill himself.

Friends of Christian called the police, dialed “911” for help, trusting that the police would do everything in their power to save Christian.

Instead, the responding police officer killed Christian at or about 2:12 pm on May 24, 2014, claiming afterwards, by official spokespersons, that the shooting was justified because Christian was armed with a knife and lunging toward the officer on a public street.

What in the world did the officer do to prepare to encounter this suicidal young man?

Christian apparently had already cut himself and was in high distress.

Christian’s mother, Sandra, said he had not “lunged” at anyone, he was running that way.

Christian’s father, Eduardo, said, “They got a phone call for a suicide case, and they came to finish the job.”

Civilian suspects are disclosed publicly as “persons of interest” and even their pictures are published.

But a stonewalling standard that refuses to disclose anything is the rule when the “suspect” is an “officer.” Continue reading →

The Republican Culture of Death

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When is it okay to start talking about the fact that Republican policies actually kill people?

The most obvious example is Republican support for our government killing people, explicitly and in cold blood. That’s what the death penalty is. State sanctioned killing of a citizen in cold blood. Regardless of your position on the morality or constitutionality of the death penalty, it is, quite simply, support for state-sanctioned death. And there is no better example of the bedrock principle for Republicans that the state should be allowed to kill its citizens.

How about Republican’s opposition to reasonable gun safety legislation? To the point of actively repealing gun safety legislation already in place when they take control of a state? Did you know that Missouri repealed background checks for gun purchases recently? And when it did, gun murders went up 25%?
“Hey, this legislation will cause more people to be violently murdered!”
“Great, let’s do it!”

Or the 17,000 women who will die because Republican-controlled states refuse to expand Medicaid?

“We calculated the number and characteristics of people who will remain uninsured as a result of their state’s opting out of the Medicaid expansion, and applied these figures to the known effects of insurance expansion from prior studies,” lead author Samuel Dickman said. “The results were sobering. Political decisions have consequences, some of them lethal.”

(This is particularly relevant and sobering for us here in Virginia.)

So again I ask, when can we start talking about the fact that Republican policy positions seem to revel in a culture of death?

Frank Wolf’s “Science Trap”

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You’ve got to have pity for Frank Wolf. He must appeal to the anti-science Christianist TEA-Party right and his overwhelmingly smart, diverse, real-world, evidence-oriented constituency. He’s between a rock (or shall we say LaRock) and a proverbial hard place. For example, Liza Gold* just took him to task for his anti-violent-video game ideology. Here are a few excerpts from her Fairfax Times op-ed.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Dist. 10) has repeatedly stated his belief that violent video games are a major cause of gun violence and mass shootings. As per his website: “Common sense tells us that the level of violence on TV, in the movies and in many video games is a problem. While media violence is not the only factor of mass violence, it is one of the easiest factors to change and it needs to be addressed.” This position would not be objectionable, except for the fact that Rep. Wolf seems uninterested in any other subject relating to sensible firearm regulation reform. Continue reading →