Big thanks to local blogger Newsrackblog for presenting links to several articles about yesterday’s massacre:
Fuck You, Guns by Katie J. M. Baker
“[We] refuse to talk about how to prevent fucking massacres from happening over and over again thanks to how fucking simple it is for practically anyone to get their hands on some nifty automated mass murdering weapons. Fuck everyone who says today isn’t the time to politicize gun violence. Most of all, fuck the NRA and all of its political cronies. This is your fault.
Fuck you, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, for saying that “today is not that day” to discuss gun control. The only acceptable explanation for that statement is that you got cut off from saying, “because yesterday was.”. . .
Today, we don’t need prayers. We don’t need thoughts. We need action. We need to politicize this, and we need to politicize this now. Fuck everyone who isn’t ready to talk about gun control. You’re the reason 27 people (and counting) died today. Don’t forget it.
This article provides a helpful link to a list of the members of Congress who received NRA money in this past election cycle.
Shame on Jay Carney. Obama should fire him immediately. We don’t need a Democratic president’s press secretary acting as NRA spokesman!
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The NRA is the enabler of mass murderers by Alex Seitz-Wald:
New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler said yesterday: ““Al-Qaida killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center in 2001. The United States went to war because of that. Because of the NRA, we’ve lost 10,000 people last year unnecessarily. It’s time we went to war.”
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Five Lies The Gun Lobby Tells You by Zack Beauchamp:
The five lies are:
- More guns don’t lead to more murders
- The Second Amendment prohibits strict gun control
- State-level gun controls haven’t worked
- We only ned better enforcement of the laws we have, not new laws
- Sensible gun control is prohibitively unpopular.
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Now’s the time to talk guns by Joan Walsh:
“I beg to differ [with Jay Carney]. Today is precisely the day. It’s true, we still don’t know details about the weapons the school shooter, or shooters, used in Connecticut. But we know that there are too many guns, and that the gun lobby fights all efforts to regulate them. The grief and outrage sparked by the Newtown tragedy ought to strengthen the arguments of those who fight for sane restrictions, as well as broader mental health services.
Guns in national parks. Guns in church. Guns in schools and day care centers. All over the country, the spaces that used to be gun-free zones are now open to them.
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Fuck Everything, Nation Reports in the Onion:
“Americans reported feelings of overwhelming disgust with whatever abhorrent bastard did this and with the world at large for ever allowing it to happen, as well as with politicians, with the NRA, and above all with their own pathetic goddamn selves, sitting in front of a fucking computer instead of doing fucking anything to help anyone—Christ, as if that were even fucking possible, as if anyone could change what happened, as if the same fucking bullshit isn’t going to keep happening again and again and fucking again before people finally decide it’s time to change the way we live, so what’s the point? What the hell is the goddamned point?”
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I wonder today how this country has the chuztpah to lecture Bashar al-Assad as he oversees the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Syrians. What moral standing does this country have to tell anyone anything? Far from a shining city on a hill, we have become the example of government-sanctioned mass murder that serves as a warning to all peoples who contemplate where to draw borders between individual rights and public rights.
US obsession with individual freedom has long passed the point of worthy respect. It has descended into the utter hell of “collectors” and “sportsmen’s” freedom being considered more valuable then the tens of thousands of lives lost to gun violence in this country each year and where billionaires’ rights to double their billions comes while middle class families sink into penury and the already poor lose their access to any help at all.
American freedom can be — and often is — a beautiful thing. It is also despicable. Only when we face our demons and beat them down can we progress.
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So do something! Candlelight vigils are fine for sharing our collective grief. But we cannot forget that laws get changed by presidential leadership and Congressional action. Call or write your legislators today. Tell them they have blood on their hands if they are part of the NRA. Tell the others that the time of spinelessness and silence is passed. Tell them to hold the president accountable (he must not be allowed to follow his press secretary’s lead!). And send a check to the Brady Campaign, the best and strongest gun control organization out there.
Copyrights belong to the individuals and publications quoted. My comments are ©2012 Keith Berner.
