Gun Control and Uvalde Texas

Following the mass shooting in Uvalde Texas that killed 2 teachers and 19 children, Fox news proposed at least 50 solutions to mass school shootings, included but not limited to arming the teachers who have to buy their own school supplies with semi-automatic rifles, imposing martial law on third period geometry, and rage quitting society and living with your children in a hole in the woods, or even worse- home school.

None of these proposed solutions mentioned any form of gun control.

This is dumb people with terrible ideas. I’m your host Eric Gray.

Many years ago, John Hinckley Jr. grew up in a wealthy family in Dallas Texas. At age 20, he quit college and moved to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a songwriter. What he became instead, was the quintessential incel stereotype.

He wrote home with letters about his relationship with a fake girlfriend, begged his mother to pay his rent, and waxed poetic about the endless sadness of the universe until he moved back home to his parent’s place, his tail tucked between his legs, where he was prescribed antidepressants and tranquilizers for his emotional issues.

It didn’t help.

And so nutty John Hinckley, to impress an actress that he had grown fond of yet had never met, came up with- not just a terrible idea, but an Olympic gold medal winning catastrophic idea.

He would assassinate Ronald Reagan in order to get the actress’ attention.

And it wasn’t for trickle-down economics, or the AIDS epidemic, or the Iran-Contra scandal, or the unlawful bombing of foreign sovereign nations, or the blasé response to South African apartheid, or any of the other evil shit to come spewing forth from this landmark cabinet. Nope. John Hinckley, attempted to assassinate an American president to garner the attention of a actress who played a fictional 12-year-old sex trafficking victim in the film taxi driver.

Historians are still baffled about how John Hinckley jumped to this wildly ineffective method of courtship, but one thing’s for sure: He had shit aim.

Hinckley with six shots, missed his intended target, although several found their way into people standing nearby, and one richoted off the side of the presidential limo and struck the President about an inch away from the heart.

Four people injured. All of them, including the President, lived. Yet he missed everything he aimed for- six times!

We’ll get back to this in a moment.

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Fox news gives us a deep dive into the deep end on shooting solutions, but none of these proposals include removing the firearms from the hands of a frustrated teenager. Instead of controlling guns, they’d rather eliminate doors, or buy better locks, or hire retired military veterans to patrol school hallways, or arm teachers- the very same teachers that aren’t trusted with books, are now trusted with a Glock 17- basically saying “here, Ms. Johnson, YOU shoot them”.

BUT none of these proposed solutions would have helped in Uvalde, where two dozen police officers held their thumb up their ass for an hour, milling about like a weekend excursion with the fam at blood bath and beyond, patiently waiting for the school janitor to provide keys to the classroom- even though the classroom door was unlocked for heaven’s sake- , because they were too scared to take on 18 year old Jerky McTrigger whose locked and loaded spraying and praying in a grade school with a goddamn gatling gun.

If trained police officers are too scared to confront a gunmen, then we need to stop asking teachers to do so< because Mrs. Johnson in social studies with her PEW PEW PEW Gun going up against 6 foot tall teenage Biff Tannen with body armor and a AK-47, is not a solution.

And if f a weapon is so scary that an untrained 18yo squirting rounds in study hall like silly string scares the shit out of two dozen cops, perhaps that weapn shouldn’t be exist at all.

And the Uvalde story keeps changing- a door was propped open then it wasn’t- a classroom door was locked and then it wasn’t- next we’ll learn the kids tried opening and running out the door, but the cops shoved them back into the classroom because the cops were afraid of losing cover with the door open.

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Why not advocate, I don’t know, forced Xanax consumption? Outlaw energy drinks? Maybe blame call of duty and the latest Kendrick Lamar track? We, as a society, are just nibbling around the edges of the real problem, which is that is too easy for guns to wind up in the hands of lunatics.

You gotta be 18 to buy a lottery ticket in most states. You can’t buy tobacco or alcohol until you are 21. You can’t rent a car until you’re 25 in most states. But there is NO requirement- of any type- age restriction or otherwise- on the private transfer of an assault rifle.

At a gun show, we’re going off the international waters age of consent rule: whatever sinks your submarine.

A 13 year old can do it- buy an assault rifle- as proven by a recent documentary on Vice that showed a 13 year old attempt to do all these things- beer, cigarettes, scratch-offs- and immediately being shut down, except at the gun show, where he walked out with a fucking shoulder cannon that could shoot through 2 feet of concrete and still hit a lunch lady from 300 yards away.

And the Uvalde shooter? He purchased his guns on a payment plan, like they were a Kia Sorento.

This evil asshole didn’t even need money to buy an arsenal.

And a payment plan isn’t really a deterrent, when you know that the reason you’re buying the guns in the first-place guarantees that you ain’ gonna be around when the first payment comes due.

Hey- This just in! Congress and President just signed gun legislation that addresses absolutely none of these issues! The first meaningful gun legislation in years doesn’t address any of the issues that allowed this asshole to get his kid-killing commando tommy gun 60 caliber school-sweeper in the first place.

Real bang-up job, there Mr. president.

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This is how it works.

Pro-gun politicians and the gun lobby refuse to accept any definition of “assault weapon”. So, they leave it to others to categorize, and then argue with that categorization. America can’t even agree on what an assault weapon is- not because we’re stupid- but because the ones who jerk their peepee for gun freedom refuse to accept any definition of “assault weapon” because their mouths are too full of NRA board member balls and buttholes to bite into what an assault rifle actually IS, because once they define it, they’ve opened the door to regulating it.

Pro-gun politicians and the gun lobby blame mental health, or teachers, or unlocked school doors, or declining church membership instead of gun ownership. They deflect, much like a bullet bouncing off the presidential limo into Ronald Reagan’s chest.

Pro-gun politicians and the gun lobby convince supporters to challenge Americans *not as knowledgeable* on guns by ridiculing them for not knowing the difference between a magazine and a clip, or a AR-15 and a rifle, when it isn’t really a key to the conversation.

It’s the Ben Shapiro / Daily Wire / PragerU / form of an argument. Rather than constructing any kind of point or actual debate, they watch and wait until some shaken liberal trips over a single word, then spend the entire discussion belittling the stupid lib for getting one minute detail ever so delicately wrong and paint the entire conversation as farcical from the get go.

Let’s be clear- None of these heat-packing heretics understand the difference between solar ultraviolet A rays or solar ultralight B rays, but they know to use sunblock or they’ll get sunburned at the beach, which is essentially the same idea- you don’t need to know how the sun works to protect yourself from sunburn

You don’t need to know how to build a watch to tell the time.

And you don’t need to have a lifetime of gun knowledge to know that guns are killing too many people. In fact, in 2022, firearms became the leading cause of death among Americans ages 24 years and under, surpassing automobiles.

If you don’t need a fifth-grade education to fear gun violence, you don’t need a college degree to know that it’s gone way too far.

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When John Hinckley Jr. decided to kill Ronald Reagan instead of jerking off again to Jodie Foster, he had a shitty gun with six bullets. His victims, all lived, but were all injured- including James Brady, the Presidential press secretary, who was forever handicapped because of a bullet that wound up in his brain.

Yet, he lived.

And so, the survivors of that shooting were around so that America could see the grievous consequences. James Brady was in a wheelchair, with slurred speech. The President healed painfully- in front of the nation’s eyes- while on TV, running the country. America had victims that could speak out afterwards about the physical pain and suffering they endured. It was impactful.

That’s not the case now. There *aren’t* survivors, anymore. The Uvalde massacre killed 19 children and two teachers- dead, not injured. How much more effective would advocates for gun control be if the weapons being used nowadays left victims that could speak, rather than victims that are silent?

The aftermath is horrific, either way. But in one case, you have first-hand accounts of the brutality. Like James Brady, whose slow speech and broken body from the tragic shooting resulted in the law that requires a waiting period and a background check to buy a gun.

And even then, who's to say gun lobbyists would even listen. Look no further than the Parkland shooting survivors from 2017, who continue to be mocked because they became overnight public figures after bearing witness to one of the deadliest attacks of that year.

But that point is moot- because the guns being used today aren’t six bullet shit-shooters, but rifles that spray hot lead hundreds of times, over and over, to where if your aim is bad it doesn’t matter. Because even an idiot can press a trigger and fan the weapon around.

The Uvalde shooter brought 1000 rounds- a US soldier going into combat only carries 210 rounds. Because when killing human beings, talent and training and aim doesn’t beat volume. Hinckley got 6 shots- missed ‘em all. The Uvalde shooter had as many chances as he needed, until his finger got tired…and eventually the police, finished up their sippy cups, awoke from their nap , knocked politely on the classroom door, gingerly opening the unlocked door after waiting for an unneeded key politely provided by a \ terrified janitor that had been noping-the-fuck-out of there for the past hour but couldn’t find an uber to pick him up- and shot the killer of children dead.

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Hey here’s an idea- let’s sue gun manufacturers for the deaths their products cause. It works with automobile manufacturers and tainted dog food producers, right?

You can’t sue gun manufacturers, though. They’re exempt from lawsuits from victims of their products, unlike cars, and dog food and nearly every other good and service provided in our robust economic system.

Ok, so how about require individual insurance for gun owners? Like, car insurance but for guns, and the premiums would depend on a person’s gun proficiency, like car insurance premiums depend on a person’s driving history.

Nope, can’t do that either. That’s een blocked too.

Is it any wonder why we’ve been having these same arguments for over two decades now? You can pull up clips of the news from 1998 which are virtually indistinguishable from our current discussions on the topic, with only the increased frequency of the shootings serving as a watermark of the times.

We have been entrenched in this hyper-violent, phallocentric, militaristic overhaul of basic rights and values for the last 40 years. In 1984, a guy killed 21 people at a San Diego McDonald’s. The laws are the pracitaccaly the same then as now. Wwith gun violence rising by the day, political unrest continuing to create class turmoil, and mass shooters churning out in droves like new pokemon, something’s gotta give.

Why do we spin our wheels while every school bell creates a cacophony of anxiety amongst our learned youth? You feel comfortable sending your child to school knowing the gun laws that allowed Sandy Hook and Uvalde to happen haven’t changed in any capacity? What needs to be done to make meaningful change? Because I know three dozen grieving parents who would be more than happy to do whatever it takes to get this point across, and their numbers are unfortunately growing by the day.

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President Joe Biden visited Uvalde, Texas, after the shooting.

He said that the school would be razed, torn to the ground and a new school would be built instead, because there is a federal grant process for schools to be razed after a mass shooting.

Americans live in a country that has money in reserve to raze schools after a shooting, rather than prevent guns getting in the hands of crazy people.

Which is what happens when you are ruled by dumb people with terrible ideas.