A horrible school shooting, this time at a Catholic school in Minnesota. A deranged and hate-filled killer, carrying three weapons.
Nothing will change until the GOP abandons its love of guns. Nothing will change unless Democrats regain control of the House and Senate and pass sensible gun control laws.
There will be no safety for anyone until deadly weapons are locked away.
When the party in control of government loves guns more than innocent human life, there will be no change. The carnage continues, abetted by our elected officials. They have no shame.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This will not stop until we take mental illness seriously. The willingness to conduct this heinous attack is prima facie evidence of mental illness. People can debate the degree to which gender dysphoria is or should be a treatable mental illness. It is included in DSM-5 as such and defined essentially as a psychiatric diagnosis that refers to the psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. Caring people, regardless of party affiliation, want those such as this shooter to get the help they need, be it counseling, therapy, or pharmacological intervention. I think all can agree this person should not have had access to firearms. Taking firearms from those who have a legal (constitutional) right to own them is neither realistically possible or a solution to this type of problem.
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You are correct about “take(ing) mental illness seriously.” I’m proud to live in IL, where, on 8/15, Gov. Pritzker signed into SB 1560, “requiring all public schools to offer annual mental health screenings for students in Grades 3-12, starting in the 2027-28 school year. This make Illinois the first state to mandate such universal screenings.”
That having been said, gun violence prevention continues to–& MUST be–addressed. I was appalled, yesterday (although hardly surprised) watching a round table discussion on CNN or MSNBC during which a participant asserted–w/absolute conviction (&, yet again {of course, he was a GoP elected official}) that it was mental illness that was responsible for the killings & NOT the guns. I wish someone had said to him (although whoever responded to his comment did do a great job as, for the rest of the time, the Senator or Rep or whomever sat looking down at his hands), “Yes, the killer could have killed 2 & wounded 17 by hurtling knives–or an axe–through the windows!”
The final round count was, I believe, 117?
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visiting your fair state this month. Hope to see Dickson Moinds tomorrow
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Ha, ha…was trying to find out who “Dickson Moinds” is! (Mounds). Was that AI?
Enjoy!
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To add…I didn’t mean enjoy Dickson Mounds (to readers: a native burial place)–sounded rather flippant. I meant enjoy IL.
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Can’t blame automakers for that ocolet
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Trump is happy because the headlines have changed.
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Epstein! Epstein! Epstein!
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If the convicted rapist, fraud, felon, January 6, 2021, Traitor, malignant narcissist, sadistic sociopath, and the most aggressive micromanter in history becomes the dictator he wants to be and is doing everything he can to achieve that goal, we may not see data like this again.
The rest is a pull quote.
During Donald Trump’s presidency (2017–2020), gun homicides increased significantly, particularly toward the end of his term. While precise data on “shootings” as a whole can be complex to track, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows a sharp rise in gun-related homicides during this period.
Gun violence trends under the Trump administration
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TODAY’S CONSERVATIVE U.S. SUPREME COURT MAJORITY JUSTICES HAVE INVITED LAWMAKERS TO MAKE SPECIFIC GUN REGULATIONS — on pages 54-55 of its Heller decision, the Court gave Congress and state lawmakers the outline and rationale to follow to create gun control laws that the Court will approve as constitutional. In Heller, the Court declared that: 1. THERE IS NO UNLIMITED RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS: The conservative Court flatly declared in Heller that limits CAN be put on guns and on gun ownership, stating: “Like most rights, THE RIGHT SECURED BY THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS NOT UNLIMITED…” [it is] “…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Those are the words of the CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY of the U.S. Supreme Court justices in their Heller ruling. 2. AMERICA’S HISTORICAL TRADITION SETS LIMITS ON “DANGEROUS AND UNUSUAL WEAPONS”: The conservative Court declared that “We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [an earlier case decided by the Supreme Court] said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time’ [when the 2nd Amendment was written]. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’.” The Second Amendment became part of the Constitution more than 230 years ago in 1791. The very first semi-automatic gun was not invented until nearly a 100 years after that, in 1885. Most guns in use at the time that the Second Amendment was written were single-shot muzzle loaders. 3. GUNS CAN BE BANNED FROM SENSITIVE AREAS AND FROM FELONS AND THE MENTALLY ILL: The conservative Court declared that “Nothing in our [Heller] opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Today’s conservative Supreme Court majority says that DID NOT HAVE TO write these things into their ruling — but they did because they were INVITING Congress and state lawmakers to craft laws that fit the Court’s stated outlines to control the sale of guns in general and especially control and limit the sales of assault rifles and high-capacity magazine cases. But Congress doesn’t have the moral integrity or the decency to do that, even in the face of repeated slaughter of school children. Tell lawmakers at every level right now that they have been given clearance by the Supreme Court to craft effective gun control laws — and hold lawmakers accountable at the ballot box if they fail to act.
You can read the Court’s Heller ruling at: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep554/usrep554570/usrep554570.pdf
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Enough “thoughts and prayers!” We need action. At the very least we should ban assault rifles. No citizen needs them. We also have the facts that mortalities from guns declined when the assault rifle ban was in effect.
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The presidential press secretary Karoline Leavitt derided those who said thoughts and prayers are not enough. She said believers know that prayers are action.
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When one reads the minutes of the debate about guns that took place inside of Independence Hall in 1787 as the Constitution was being drafted, and when one reads that public debate taking place outside of Independence Hall, the record of all those debates shows that what was being discussed was about the fear that the federal government would be empowered to disarm state militias. There was no debate about the personal possession of guns and many cities already banned guns within city boundaries. The reason why the phrase “a well-regulated militia” was written into the Second Amendment was to put to rest the fear that the federal government could disarm state militias. The Second Amendment is all about state militias, not about personal ownership of guns.
However, even when presented with all the overwhelming original evidence, including the minutes of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court — who claim to be “originalists” (nothing is more original to the Constitution than the minutes of the debates in Constitution Hall) chose to ignore the original intent of the Second Amendment as stated by the men who wrote the Amendment and to craft an opinion that is wholly political in line with conservative politics.
They are The Supreme Liars.
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