Two students entered Columbine High School in Colorado on April 20, 1999, fully equipped for war. After they finished, 12 of their fellow students and 1 teacher had been killed and scores more were injured. While not the first actual mass shooting in a U.S. schoolColumbine’s massacre is widely seen as the beginning a new age of in-school gun violence. This has been a period of increasing horror with each passing year.
Nine days after Columbine, Denver was home to the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual convention. We were greeted by crowds of gun control advocates, NRA president and former actor Charlton Heston declared, “We cannot, we must not let tragedy lay waste to the most rare, hard-won right in history.”
It is presumed Heston meant gun ownership when he described “the most rare, hard-won right in history,” and not “life,” another right codified in the same founding documents. This sentiment is not consistent with the NRA logic. led to the assembly and deployment of an arsenal of pro-gun talking points, along with the ever-present offering of “thoughts and prayers” once the bodies stop dropping.
Heston addressed the NRA convention in Charlotte one year later. Raising an old flintlock rifle over his head, the actor bellowed, “From my cold, dead hands!” The line became his catch phrase until his retirement in 2003.
The Columbine murderers did not bring flintlock guns into the school. They brought a Hi-Point model 95 carbine rifle, a double-barrel Savage311-D sawed-off gun, a Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotgun, and a TEC-DC9 9-mm semi-automatic pistol. These weapons would have been possible in the age when flintlock was still popular. The Second Amendment would likely have been written in a much more ambiguous language.
Thirteen years later and eleven days before Christmas, another gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut. He had a Bushmaster XM-15E2s assault rifle and a Glock 20SF pistol. After he had killed his mother with a Savage Mark II, a handgun and a Bushmaster XM-15E2s firearm, he opened fire.
After the shooting was over, the shooter was taken by himself and 20 children and 6 school personnel. Nearly all of the children who died were aged 6 years. Some of the children were difficult to identify because their faces were blown off. Most of them were found in a small bathroom, where they had sought refuge among their teachers. A push to enact new gun controls laws was resisted by the NRA. It was defeated in Senate four months after the massacre, despite receiving huge public support.
Sandy Hook families were awarded $73 Million in damages by a civil Court against Remington, who made the Bushmaster rifle used for the shooting. “It was the largest payout so far in a mass-shooting-related case against a gun manufacturer,” accordingTo The New York Times.The courts also found conspiracy theorist Alex Jones responsible for spreading the gruesome fiction, that the shooting was staged, and that the dead were all actors.
No significant attemptSince Sandy Hook, efforts have been made to tighten federal gun laws.
Six years after Sandy Hook tragedy, a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland. After he was done, 17 students were killed and 14 more were injured. Young people were inspired to take action after the attack. more than 311,000 of whomSince Columbine, I’ve witnessed acts of violence in schools. The Parkland shooting survivors were among the most vocal activists, and they marched across the country calling for change. There was no sign of change.
Ten years ago, Sandy Hook was overthrown by a gunman who entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde Texas. Before he was shot and killed by responding officers, he had already killed 19 students and 2 teachers. Although his motive and the weapon he used are not yet known, it is known that he bought the weapons legally on his 18th birthday.
The Uvalde horror follows a bloodbath. at a grocery storeEight days ago, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo was the scene of the shooting. The shooter, a white supremacist avowed, killed 10 people before police detained him. The act has been labeled as “domestic terrorism.”
The NRA’s annual convention will be held in Houston on Friday. Former President Donald Trump Texas Gov. Greg AbbottTed Cruz from Texas and Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas are the featured speakers. “According to the NRA, the Secret Service is taking control of the hall during Trump’s speech and is prohibiting attendees from having firearms, firearms accessories and knives,” reports NPR. “Ammunition, laser pointers, pepper spray, toy guns, backpacks and other items also won’t be allowed. The Secret Service will search attendees with magnetometers before they enter the hall, the NRA said.”
The U.S. has approximately 35 million inhabitants murdered with a gunEvery day. More than 550 school shootings have occurred in the U.S. since Columbine. There are more guns in the U.S. than people and it is a large number. Gun prices rise every time one of these massacres takes place. The NRA and other gun groups warn gun advocates that the government is coming after them. Nothing could be further from truth and gun sales are at an all-time high. State after state — most conspicuously Texas — has passed laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons without a permit.
“The F.B.I. released alarming data showing a rapidly escalating pattern of public shootings inThe United States on Monday, one day before the massacre in Uvalde, Texas,” reports the Times. “The bureau identified 61 ‘active shooter’ attacks in 2021 that killed 103 people and injured 130 others. That was the highest annual total since 2017 when 143 people were killed, and hundreds more were wounded, numbers inflated by the sniper attack on the Las Vegas Strip in October of that year.”
Democrats are fast-tracked gun control legislationIn response to the events at Uvalde, votes could be held as soon as Thursday. However, the effort is almost certain to fail. The bills will need 60 votes to pass cloture, and while Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is “horrified and heartbroken” over the violence at yet another elementary school, he enjoys an “A+” rating from the NRA. There will almost certainly be no meaningful Republican support for the proposed legislation, again.
Entropy. Degradation. Disorder. Collapse.
It is everywhere you look. Gun violence, climate calamity, a wobbly health care “system” laid bare by a preventable pandemic, a vast and widening gulf between the have’s and the have-not’s, the ongoing daily violence of institutionalized racism, sexism and homophobia: We are surrounded and subsumed by terrible situations that are nearly all growing worse.
There are solutions to all these ailments, but one of the main mechanisms for achieving most of those solutions — the United States Congress — is itself a victim of entropy and deeply corrupted disorder. Democrats have their own moral stains, while Republicans bear the greater responsibility for 23 years of inaction regarding school massacres.
Their long-term efforts have been marred by ineffective messaging, fear of the fight, and four Democrats voted alongside Republicans to kill the gun regulation bill after Sandy Hook. Democrat Joe Manchin continues to refuse to surrender the filibuster, even if this means the defeat of the latest round. “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity,” he toldTuesday, reporters. They said that this is what it is.
Entropy. Degradation. Disorder. Collapse. The collapse came not with a bang, but rather with the whimpering third-graders before the bang from the gun barrel in the classroom. There is no help available, and no recourse in law. Thoughts and prayers. This one is doing it in the most filthy fashion history has ever seen for collapsing imperia.
