"Coldly dismissing the Latino victims of Friday’s horrific mass shooting in Texas as five “illegal immigrants” was a new low for Gov. Greg Abbott, a gun-loving Republican.
"For the record, it is apparently not true that all of those senselessly slain in Cleveland, an exurb of Houston, had no legal right to be in this country. It is true, however, that one of the victims was a 9-year-old boy. It is also true, according to authorities, that two of the women who were killed sacrificed themselves by throwing their bodies over children to protect them." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/01/texas-shooting-family-greg-abbott-illegal-immigrants/
I imagine Texas' enforcement of red flag laws is nonexistent. But this is an example of a situation where strong, enforced red flag laws would have saved all of these lives, preventing the awful trauma for the survivors. Imagine the lives of the children who survived underneath their dying mothers.
The only ones who benefit from mass shootings are firearms manufacturers and politicians they donate to.
This is a uniquely American problem and we have a party who is unwilling to protect our children instead they controlling how they think and act yet people still keep voting for them. Well guess what I'm 26 and don't have kids and I never voted republican my whole life they can burn in hell. #GunViolence
As I pointed out in my blog yesterday, US Americans shooting each other with little or no provocation like this is nothing new, sadly. And our #GunCulture is not something that #GunControl will fix. We need to proselytize #peace and #nonviolence.
Tennessee’s Governor Calls for Expanding a Gun Dispossession System Already Failing Domestic Violence Victims
After the Covenant School shooting, Gov. Bill Lee went beyond state Republicans in calling for reform. But the system he is embracing already allows violent people to hold on to their weapons.
Gun rights carry with them grave responsibilities. They must not empower your hate. They are certainly not objects of love or reverence. Every hair-trigger use, every angry or fearful or foolish decision, is likely to spill innocent blood.
America will change and gun rights will diminish. And the gun owners and advocates who fail to grasp the moral weight of their responsibility will be to blame.
Racism wears on me. Every other day there’s either some new legislation written to dehumanize the lives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color or another incident of some white person shooting an unarmed Black person because they were “afraid for their life” — translation: they never had an affinity for “Blacks,” and thought they had the opportunity to kill one with impunity, so they did.
—@clayrivers
from “Black in America: Living Behind Enemy Lines”
“If Black people can develop and refine metaphors to understand the white experience (in all of its constituent complexity, pain and privilege), how is it that white people are excused from understanding the Black experience?”
—Christienne Leigh Hinz
“Fieldnotes on Allyship: Achieving Equality Together”
It's time for everyone in red states to start filing civil rights complaints against the US. Numerous states have passed laws that directly violate the UN Declaration of Human Rights, including provisions against #ForcedPregnancy#Slavery and Religious Coercion.
It's clear that any supposed "domestic remedies" (ie waiting until the next election and hoping white nationalist christo fascists get voted out) would in fact be "ineffective or unreasonably prolonged" for people who are pregnant now or in lgbtq treatment regimes now, or are in a state where christian beliefs are being legislated in violation of everyone's constitutional right to be free of religious oppression.
If you have been affected, or work for an organization helping those affected, file here:
Americans Are Now Being Shot and Killed Over Simple Misunderstandings—And Republicans Could Not Give Less of a F--k
In the span of a week, Ralph Yarl was shot for ringing the wrong doorbell, Kaylin Gillis was killed for pulling into the wrong driveway, and two cheerleaders were shot over one of them getting into the wrong car.
A large segment of the population cares about the supposed right to bear arms more than it cares about human beings
"Americans seem to have a national anger-management problem, which grows even more toxic when it interacts with racism, sexism, jingoism, homophobia, transphobia and a slew of other “reasons” for hatred"