Uvalde Slaughter

 19 children, 2 teachers, shot down.

Killer dead, motive unknown, but everyone knows he wore body armor while carrying a semi-automatic rifle. 

He dressed up like s soldier to kills a bunch of kids. Just like the Buffalo, NY, he had the courage to kill the weak and defenseless.

Here are the news stories:

NPR: What we know so far about the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas

The Guardian: Texas school shooting: second teacher and first child victims named after 21 killed at Uvalde elementary school – latest updates:

The NRA is still planning to hold its annual meeting this weekend in downtown Houston, the Houston Chronicle is reporting.

 HuffPost: 19 Students, 2 Teachers Killed In Shooting At Texas Elementary School

Just before noon on Tuesday, police in Uvalde responded to reports of a shooting at Robb Elementary School, which educates students between second and fourth grades. Uvalde is about 80 miles west of San Antonio, sitting between the metropolitan area and the U.S. border with Mexico. It has a large Mexican American population.

***

Police said the shooter, an 18-year-old male who was clad in body armor, crashed his car outside the school before he entered the building and opened fire. He was killed by responding officers, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said during a press conference.

Texas State Police identified the alleged gunman as Salvador Ramos, who was from the area.

The shooter also shot his grandmother before he went to the school, the governor said. The Texas Tribune reported she was still alive after being airlifted to an area hospital.

The Bulwark:Our gun debate doom loop.

Before we descend into the predictable doom loop of talking points, clichés, thoughts/prayers, and dumb arguments about armored backpacks and good-guys-with-guns, take a moment to imagine the final moments of the lives of those children and their teachers. The fear. The horror. Followed by the ghastly carnage committed by an 18-year-old with an AR-15.

The Republican response?

• CNN: McConnell blames "maniac" for Texas killings, doesn't address possible solutions to recurring mass shootings
• Mother Jones: Trump, Cruz Headlining the NRA’s Texas Conference This Weekend. For the Gun Lobby, It’s Déjà-Vu.

Conservatives are supposed to be the law and order party.  They should be the party of ordered liberty.

Liberty derives from Natural Law; it is our birthright, forfeited only through irrationality or violence.[29] But liberty is not license to act from sheer self-will; rather, it is “social freedom. [Burke’s italics] It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint,” with no individual or group able to violate the liberty of any other.[30] Moreover, liberty must comport with order—in both the society and the individual soul.... (Edmund Burke: Champion of Ordered Liberty)

 Instead, the Republicans represent licentiousness.

Licentiousness is not only a counterfeit of true liberty, but it can be antithetical to true liberty. Consider perhaps the most compulsive of all innate urges: that for sexual intimacy and satisfaction. No one is entirely immune from lust or prurience, as it is our human nature to yearn to reproduce and to experience pleasure in doing so. Even so, one must turn away from licentiousness to exercise dominion over this primal urge—if one wishes to experience any other freedoms such as the freedom to critically think and reason for oneself without preoccupying themselves with lewdness, for example through compulsive viewing of pornography. We all intuitively understand that we must learn to resist the temptation of licentiousness in the short term, so that they may not be entirely enslaved to it and all its negative consequences in the long term....(Licentiousness: When Liberty Goes Awry)

Most every state Bill of Rights has the same or similar language as Indiana's Article I, Section One:

WE DECLARE, That all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that all power is inherent in the people; and that all free governments are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and well-being. For the advancement of these ends, the people have, at all times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government.

(History: As Amended November 6, 1984).

The language should be familiar to anyone who has read the Declaration of Independence. It is the language of ordered liberty, not licentiousness. Here, the government of Indiana is dedicated to the "peace safety, and well-being" of its citizens. When those citizens fear going to the grocery or sending their children to school for the fear of death appearing in those places dressed and equipped more appropriately for a war zone, then the government has failed its purpose.  

It is also possible the Republicans think they represent the interests of gun makers rather than people. That would mean they elevate corporate profits over the lives of their constituents and their constituents' children. We all know the Republicans are pro-life.

The President asks the question we all should be asking: Biden on Texas Mass Shooting: “Why Are We Willing to Live With This Carnage?”

The Conversation published What we know about mass school shootings in the US – and the gunmen who carry them out with plenty of information on these mass killers. The writers conclude:

...However, most school shooters are motivated by a generalized anger. Their path to violence involves self-hate and despair turned outward at the world, and our research finds they often communicate their intent to do harm in advance as a final, desperate cry for help. The key to stopping these tragedies is for society to be alert to these warning signs and act on them immediately.

Solutions exist - if there is the political will. 

I say vote Democrat - if you want to stop the killing of kids. Vote Democrat in every Senate race this year. The Republicans will not help you and we need to end Joe Manchin's reign as the most important man in DC. Manchin calls for ‘commonsense’ gun limits, resists filibuster reform.

What else can be done:

Get your Senators to get behind reform. Senate heads for gun control reckoning pop after Texas school shooting.

But I think The Bulwark hits the right note: Stop Begging. Start Fighting..

But it’s time to stop begging. Begging hasn’t worked. Nothing will change on this issue until politicians who oppose any reasonable gun restrictions start losing their jobs.

I also suggest re-reading the Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

You want to own a military quality weapon, then join a well-regulated militia. That does not mean a bunch of yahoos who have OD'd on conspiracy theories, have bought their weapons to reassure themselves of being masculine heterosexuals, and would not last a minute if they ran up against a real military unit. 

Time has come for a change.

sch