March for Our Lives is the organization created by students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, after the massacre of 14 students and three staff members on February 14, 2018. The students organized massive rallies demanding gun control. Florida Governor Rick Scott signed gun control legislation: however, in the past few days the Florida legislature rolled back the post-Parkland gun control and made it legal to carry a gun without so much as a permit.
Please note that Rep. Andy Ogles, pictured below with his family, brandishing guns, represents the district in Nashville where the Coventry School is located. His district was created as a result of a gerrymander when the legislature split Nashville in two.
This Monday, we lost three children and three adults to gun violence in yet another school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee: Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, Michael Hill, 61, Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Hallie Scruggs, 9, and William Kinney, 9.
The perpetrator used an AR-15 rifle to kill three children and school staff, including a substitute teacher, custodian, and school head. Instead of using their power to act, two Tennessee Congressmembers are treating calls for gun safety legislation as a joke. Rep. Andy Ogles represents the district in Nashville where the Covenant School shooting occurred. Do you know what his response was? Thoughts and prayers. This is the same congressman who glorified guns with his family in this holiday photo:
When reporters asked him if he regrets even sharing that photo, he doubled down by saying, “Why would I regret a photograph with my family exercising my rights to bear arms?”
Another Tennessee lawmaker, Rep. Tim Burchett, told reporters, “We’re not gonna fix it. Criminals will be criminals.” In other words, get used to it. Of course, both of these elected officials have accepted campaign contributions from the NRA.
When corrupt, pro-NRA legislators throw their hands up and claim there’s nothing they can do to stop this country’s rampant gun violence crisis, we call BS. It’s their JOB to come up with solutions to our country’s problems — especially the number one cause of death amongst children and teenagers.
Any politician who cares more about protecting the gun lobby’s profits than saving our children from gunfire does NOT belong in Congress.
We’re calling on these two clowns— Rep. Burchett and Rep. Ogles — to resign immediately. If you agree that failure and incompetence have no place in Congress, sign our petition today →SIGN PETITION
Politicians like Rep. Burchett and Rep. Ogles have grown too comfortable repeating thoughts and prayers instead of actually delivering solutions. But we’re paying attention to their empty words, and we are prepared to do the work to elect gun safety champions to replace them in office.Thank you for all your support.In solidarity,
March For Our Lives
(P.S. Our movement is powered by grassroots supporters committed to ending gun violence. Chip in to fuel our year-round organizing work→) DONATE NOW
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Sociopathic Continuum Of The United States (SCOTUS) stretches down from the highest court of the land to the schoolyard, shopping mall, and street. It will not be cured by any amount of salving the symptoms, however much we try. The massacres will continue until we root out the cause at the top.
It’s a waste of breath talking about anything else.
It’s a waste of time pointing in any other direction.
#SociopathicContinuumOfTheUnitedStates • #SCOTUS
While I admit to being socially pathetic, I don’t think I’m sociopathetic! (sic intentional)
Jon– I don’t like the we-can’t-do-anything-cuz-SCOTUS attitude. It’s not practical. We are stuck with those jackasses for decades, not to mention all the cowards and NRA-campaign-funded members of Congress. Doesn’t mean the public can do nothing short of adding justices—despite the JQPublic reading of Heller decision. If you scroll way down to Section III—starting p 57 of 154pp [pdf], there are a number of suggestions showing openings for restrictions this “originalist” bunch considers constitutional. They even say flat out “ From Blackstone through the 19th century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
The Bruen case likewise is not quite as draconian as it sounds from media summaries. See what you think. The way I read it: NYS [& 5 other states] have managed to minimize concealed-carry permits for many yrs simply by leaving it hands of judges to decide what [unspecified] “additional” needs justify concealed carry other than those specified by law. Judges have tended to simply deny other needs offered by applicants. There seems to be some wiggle room there [& no doubt legislature is working on establishing additional specifications that may pass muster].
I don’t mean to say SCOTUS hasn’t put us in an awful bind; they have. But we can’t just lie down and play dead.
Ogles is a first time congressman whose shtick is mr conservative in a land where posing with guns gets you positive vibes.His land was created by the Republican gerrymandering that robbed Nashville of its voice in Tennessee politics. He replaced Jim Cooper, a long time Democrat who was always a voice of moderation, and whose political career included losing to Fred Thompson in Tennessee’s movement toward the distant right. Ogles won by pandering to anti-vaxers, gun totters, and the pseudo-religious. If he had not thus pandered, some other buffoon would have no doubt usurped him and still might. I consider Ogles the poster child for the modern conservative: truth is relative, image is everything.
This was broadcast days before the shooting.
If interested, YouTube search: Calls for Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles to resign come in the form of ads
Glad to see that Republicans are sick of these phonies. Worse than Santos! Gun-toting idiot.
Ogles ran using ads that attacked his fellow Republicans as being too soft. All three of the candidates were very far right. The Republican faithful chose the one who is a caricature of conservative position. He, like Brobert and Green, is like a living political cartoon. Only it ain’t funny. The only worse guy in Congress from our state is my own representative. When it was exposed that he had financed his girl to have an abortion, his voters sent him back to congress, preferring a dishonest pervert to an honest Democrat.
Now before you go cussing us old Tennessee boys out, recall that in-migration has been the biggest influence on the march to the right in Tennessee.
You really could have done without that last sentence. It furthers a toxic meme not grounded in fact. I know a lot of people who have moved to the Nashville area who can refute this weak thesis. Like many large-to-medium left-leaning cities in republican states, it has been gerrymandered out of being represented fairly in Congress, or ever having the hope to be so. You’ll have to come with a lot of data and evidence to make a statement like that. I’ll keep cussing good ol’ boys in Tennessee (and every other state) until proven otherwise.
Greg: you are correct. Your medium city friends have been out voted, out gerrymandered, and out-migrated. The problem is that most of our urban in-migration is taking place in downtown among young people who vote for Democrats. They Are tossed into districts like Ogles’. Their vote is like mine, diluted. One of the forces diluting votes on the left is political migration from blue states. I have met a bunch of people in recent years who retired to the Tennessee countryside to escape high taxes (or so they said to me). They join our own, homegrown bubbas, who never met a tax they didn’t hate or a level of government they couldn’t criticize, in voting in the increasingly conservative political leadership we all have come to know.
Al Gore left the state to be Clinton’s VP because he knew all this was coming.
I live in a similar community, Roy. Solidly Democratic and carved up between three districts, giving one safe district to Democrats. In a fair districting, an additional one would be leaning Democratic. Prior to the last round of gerrymandering, I could literally see three congressional districts when I stood in front of my house.
“I consider Ogles the poster child for the modern conservative: truth is relative, image is everything.”
Can’t agree Roy. He is not a conservative. You and I are conservatives. Most posting here are as teaching is a very conservative type of professional. One doesn’t destroy that which one is teaching.
He is the poster boy for regressive/reactionary xtian fundie theocrats whose “truth” is based in over 2,000 year old Middle Eastern desert tribal myths.
We need to call a spade a spade with these lying, falsely disseminating extremist nationalistic theocrats.
Again, perhaps the tide is beginning to turn. Because Texas Judge Robert Pittman has just ordered Llano County to RETURN these books to the library. Pronto! Removed by the right wing thugs for content and viewpoint.
IT IS ORDERED THAT:
1. Within twenty-four hours of the issuance of this Order, Defendants shall return
all print books that were removed because of their viewpoint or content,
including the following print books, to the Llano County Libraries:
a. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson;
b. Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan
Campbell Bartoletti;
c. Spinning by Tillie Walden;
d. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak;
e. It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexwal Health by
Robie Harris;
f. My Butt is So Noisy!, I Broke My Butt, and I Need a New Butt! by Dawn
McMillan;
g. Larry the Farting Leprechaun, Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose, Freddie
the Farting Snowman, and Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts by Jane
I have a feeling I’m going to love Larry the Farting Leprechaun. Freddie and Harvey seem to be my kind of guys too. I wonder if they are like an individual I know who not only thinks his/her s#!t don’t stink, he’s/she’s convinced it’s fragrant.
I just looked up Spinning and it looks like a wonderful book that would really be important for some kids. Probably kids who would never go to their parents to seek approval and need to know there’s another world out there. Here’s some Canadian lesbian rock for them to ban too:
If you are interested, skip to last song, Creature in the Sun. Canadians are so ahead of us on these issues. Most, actually.
Greg: that is my rather limited experience in Canada. We were camping at Waterton (Canadian side of Glacier) during Trump. I got into a political conversation with a Canadian who soon was shedding sympathetic tears for my being marooned in Trumpland.
The innate, seemingly genetically programmed decency of the vast majority of Canadians is very annoying. I love Canadian sitcoms because of this very reason. They may have conflicts, misconceptions, and even prejudices, but they are aware of them and the humor is not at the expense of any category of people or individuals. If you have Netflix, Kim’s Convenience is just a happy, decent show with real laughs. Or Schitt’s Creek. And Letterkenny on Hulu is an obsession with me. Even the violence is based in a basic humanity and decency. I once got misty eyed by a fight breaking out (last scene, last shoe, season 8). They even make fighting decent!
Her purple assault rifle is cute?
Thats an obvious reference to Harold and the Purple Assault Rifle
And the silencer on daddy’s gun is an obvious reference to the Christmas song “Silencer Night
Silencer Night
Holey night
Besides criminals and assassins, who uses a silencer?
Harold and the Purple Assault Rifle
ROFL!!! OMG!!!
When I first heard the breaking news of the shooting, I immediately assumed it would be at a public school. Of course it wasn’t.
It just goes to show nobody is safe from mass shootings anywhere. However, you can’t have a mass shooting without a gun…
I’ve instructed my family that if I’m ever killed in a mass shooting, they’re not to clean my body, and they are to release photos of my bullet-riddled body (with only modest covering in the pelvic region) online and to the press.
These instructions are based on Mamie Till’s example, though I don’t expect it would make much difference in today’s society.
I live in the district where the shooting took place, and my family and I voted against Andy Ogles when he ran. Recently, investigative reporter Phil Williams on local News Channel 5 discovered that Ogles, who claims to be an economist, has only one economics class on his college transcript from a community college and received a “C” in that course.
Btw… Many here are also thanking school bus drivers of our local public school (MNPS) for voluntarily transporting the children to the reunification site.
I saw a YouTube video, posted in comments today, of a wealthy Republican in Nashville calling on Ogles to resign, full-page ad in paper. Says he’s a bigger liar than George Santos.
Bravo! I think pictures of children (or anyone) killed by mass shootings should be on page one of every newspaper and blog in the nation. Every time one happens. And like you, if I should happen to win the wrong lottery and die in a mass shooting, I hope pictures of my wounds will be shown. Everyone has my permission. We’ve seen how different it is when we have video evidence. Note Jared Moskowitz’s point about what happens to children shot with AR-15s:
Thanks, Joe!