Gun Massacres And 2020

Sunday night a crowd of bereaved Dayton residents shouted down Ohio's right-wing, pro-NRA governor Mike DeWine. And Monday started off with a bang. Former Republican congressman and former trump amigo, Joe Scarborough mentions don Morning Joe that Trump's campaign donors are funding white supremacy. "The president never tones down his rhetoric. In fact, for those of you who are funding Donald Trump’s reelection campaign you may want to take note that because you keep writing checks to this president it’s on you, it really is, because you are funding this white supremacist campaign." Ohio state Rep. Candice Keller (R-Middletown), an untreated sociopath, on the other hand, wrote a Facebook post (now deleted) blaming the massacre in Dayton over the weekend on "the breakdown of the traditional American family" through gay marriage, transgender people and "drag queen advocates," recreational marijuana, "fatherlessness," video games, "open borders," "professional athletes who protest the American flag," "snowflakes who can’t accept a duly-elected President," and former President Barack Obama. Butler County Democratic Party Chairman Brian Hester said "She loves to fan the flames and play the role of victim here, not the nine people who were killed… She is fundamentally unfit for office. She is an embarrassment to her party, to conservatives, to Butler County and to the state Legislature."

Ohio state Rep. Candice Keller (R), hate machine

Before Trump crawled out from under the rock he was using to hide under in his Bedminster golf resort to awkwardly read a speech someone wrote for him-- because, you know, that's what real presidents are supposed to do, so let's give it a shot-- one of his nemeses, George Conway, took a shot at him with an early morning a twitter storm:

1- Trump will go on TV and give a speech. On paper, the speech may say some of the right things. It will look somewhat presidential. There’s an off chance it might even be good (grading on a curve).
2- But the problem will be that it was given by Trump, who’s incapable of sincere empathy. So it’ll be hard to believe that he believes the words he said. And his speech won’t address his own hateful, racist rhetoric.
3- So he’ll be roundly criticized for that. And he’ll also be criticized on policy grounds, because whatever he says on that score will not suffice for many people.
4- He’ll see and hear all this criticism on TV, and he’ll stew. And stew. He’ll grow angry and resentful that he was forced to give the speech in the first place.
5- Finally, perhaps within 24 or 48 hours, the narcissistic pressure will break the dam, and his anger and frustration will gush forward.
6- He’ll tweet, otherwise say, or do something that’ll completely undo whatever positive benefit came from the speech.
7- We’ve seen this movie before how many times?

As Stuart Rothenberg's wife, a retired linguists professor mentioned while Trump was lifelessly reading the speech, no doubt pissed off "they" were making him do it, "It’s like he is reading a foreign language he doesn’t understand." Does anyone doubt he'd be more animated if the shooter was an immigrant or an American-born Muslim?

John Pavlovitz had a warning for Republicans: Yeah, Republicans-- It's the Guns. "Of course it’s the guns," he wrote. "You’re insulting people’s intelligence when you claim that it isn’t. You’re trying to gaslight us all into imagining we’re not seeing what we’re seeing, that our faculties are not fully intact, that our minds are somehow clouded and unable to grasp the reality in front of us. But we see you clearly.

All you’re doing when you rush to throw blame everywhere else for the daily massacres we’re witnessing in America except on guns-- is exposing yourself, tipping your hand, showing us who you are.

You’re telling us you know it’s the guns-- by going to such ridiculous lengths to prove that it isn’t the guns; by flatly refusing to even consider it, by taking nonsensical tangents about video games and Hollywood and atheism.

You protest too much.

Rational, reasonable people are able to admit that there are all sorts of factors contributing to the United States’ stratospheric gun homicide rate.

We know that depression matters, that addiction matters, that a culture of violence does, that toxic misogyny does, that institutional racism does, that incendiary politicians do, that personal upbringing does, that extremist religion does-- and we believe in addressing all of these areas, both personally and legislatively where possible.

But we damn well know that the guns matter-- because the guns are the preferred method of choice when unwell unstable, angry people want to murder many human beings quickly. When it comes to easily-accessible instruments of rapid carnage, it is guns by an American country mile.

And it’s not just guns, but everything around them: the glorification of guns, the grocery magazine shelf commandeering, the invasive and deep-pocketed gun lobby, a GOP in bed with the NRA, the availability of assault weapons, the general proliferation of handguns-- but yeah it’s the guns.

We understand that entertaining these realities is problematic for you, because it will do something to you that we all have a hard time with: it will show you your culpability. It will be a mirror to your policies and your President and your prejudices. It will present you with choices at the polls and changes in your heart and alterations in your allegiances that you may not want to make.

To face the reality of our gun problem, you’ll have to admit that you are the problem too. You’ll be forced to connect the dots between guns and your white theology, guns and your nationalism, guns and your Islamophobia, guns and your white supremacy, guns and your resentment of foreigners, guns and the people who so often shoot strangers in shopping malls and schools and churches and concerts-- guns and you.

Every nation in the world has mental illness and racism and nationalism, but they aren’t seeing the bloodshed we’re seeing, and we can’t ignore that we have more guns per capita than anywhere else, and that this isn’t immaterial in the rising body count here.

18 years ago we had a single shoe bomber who didn’t kill a single human being-- and we completely altered airport screening for the country. We changed protocols and made changes and we “inconvenienced” millions and millions of people, and you were willing to abide that-- because the how of murder matters and you know it.

And there is no greater how in the bloody mess we are seeing in our schools and streets and neighborhoods and churches-- than guns.

You can deny it and hide from it and refuse to acknowledge it and try and distract from it, but that’s simply the truth.

Yeah Republicans, it’s the guns.

And if you won’t admit this and you will not commit to doing anything about it-- then yeah, it’s you too.

It wasn't just the El Paso mass murderer who took his orders from Trump

Trump blamed everyone and everything but his NRA allies, himself and his own championing of white nationalism for the massacres over the weekend. He tried blaming the internet, a culture that promotes violence, the mass media, video games-- forgetting Japan has the biggest video game culture and no gun massacres-- and mental illness. In a statement, Rosie Phillips Davis, president of the American Psychological Associates, chastised Trump, severely mentally ill himself, for stigmatizing the mentally ill. "The combination of easy access to assault weapons and hateful rhetoric is toxic. Psychological science has demonstrated that social contagion-- the spread of thoughts, emotions and behaviors from person to person and among larger groups-- is real, and may well be a factor, at least in the El Paso shooting." That was a clear reference to Trump's bigoted rhetoric.

That shooting is being investigated as a hate crime, as it should be. Psychological science has demonstrated the damage that racism can inflict on its targets. Racism has been shown to have negative cognitive and behavioral effects on both children and adults and to increase anxiety, depression, self-defeating thoughts and avoidance behaviors.

Routinely blaming mass shootings on mental illness is unfounded and stigmatizing. Research has shown that only a very small percentage of violent acts are committed by people who are diagnosed with, or in treatment for, mental illness. The rates of mental illness are roughly the same around the world, yet other countries are not experiencing these traumatic events as often as we face them. One critical factor is access to, and the lethality of, the weapons that are being used in these crimes. Adding racism, intolerance and bigotry to the mix is a recipe for disaster.

If we want to address the gun violence that is tearing our country apart, we must keep our focus on finding evidence-based solutions. This includes restricting access to guns for people who are at risk for violence and working with psychologists and other experts to find solutions to the intolerance that is infecting our nation and the public dialogue.