Gun Control’s Role in Georgia Killings
Hysteria over race and sexual disorder has blinded the national media to what actually enabled Robert Aaron Long to commit mass murder on Tuesday in Georgia.
For several days after Long was alleged to have killed six Asian women and two white men, the nation’s obsession with racism and sexism was unrelenting in a furious rush to judgement lacking reason and facts.
Long was reported widely to be a sex addict tormented by religious demons to the point that he bought a gun to murder those he blamed were luring him into sin, they being the “massage” parlor workers he patronized to satisfy his addiction.
What was missing in the frenzied first few days of coverage of the horrendous crime was any mention of what might have happened had Long been unable to buy a lethal weapon in the first place given his precarious mental state.
Only recently have some pundits and news outlets started raising perhaps that most important aspect of this horrendous crime.
Would there have been a horrendous crime at all if federal or state laws had adequate gun control legislation that would halt the senseless slaughter of innocents by mentally disturbed people who see gun violence, either by shooting themselves or others, as the easiest way out of their frazzled, troubled mental state?
The Associated Press today reported a Gifford Centers study suggesting that suicides using guns would be reduced by up to 11 percent, and homicides with guns by up to 17 percent, with significant “cooling off” periods between the desire to purchase a gun and when the purchaser is able to receive the gun, allowing time to determine the purchaser’s fitness to own a deadly firearm.
If a law like that were in effect in Georgia on Tuesday, how likely would it have been that eight innocent people would be dead today? Long’s family apparently knew of his fragile mental condition and reportedly had banished him from their home. His friends apparently also knew how badly off he was mentally. Yet the current “background” check proved worthless, taking all of about 10 minutes, suggesting it revealed only that some background existed, not necessarily the substance of it.
The media obsession with the story in the U.S led for days to downplaying facts that didn’t conform with the racism/sexism narrative.
Former President Barack Obama early on following the tragedy called for tighter gun laws in a series of tweets that were drowned in the sea of the media preoccupation with race and sex in the commission of the crimes.
Presumably the dead women were sex workers in massage parlors in the American south, an intimation widely reported, though not substantiated as fact in any of the reporting I’ve seen.
The other two were white men. I’m guessing these two unfortunates somehow got in the way, otherwise why would a white male racist shoot two white males?
The Guardian, a London-based newspaper, was characteristically among the first news outlets to raise the gun control issue. It’s generally the residents of foreign countries around the world, where gun violence is rare, who are aghast at the widespread level of suicides and mass shootings that is permitted and tolerated in the U.S.
But never mind, why let pesky details steer the media away from the shock narrative.
Authorities would have you believe it’s all perfectly understandable. After all, the suspect was “having a really bad day,” a police spokesman said. Really? That must be some comfort to the victims’ families. Someone apparently needs to explain to these misguided families that things like this happen from time to time in this country. We’ve got a Constitution that enables it, after all. What a country!
It’s absurd, I know.
Even Republicans are joining the racism/sexism blame game. They will grasp at almost anything as long as they don’t have to defend lax gun control laws that allow the mentally ill to kill a lot of people.
As a result, the U.S. is a virtual lunatic asylum when it comes to gun laws. I’ve been away for awhile, so maybe somebody can tell me when it became commonplace to see a bunch of nuts with high-powered weapons slung over their shoulders parading around in public?
We talk about the freedom to have guns, but what about the freedom of innocent people not to be shot and killed? Oh, that one’s not in the Constitution, you say? Well, I guess, … never mind then.
Although coverage beyond the simply sensational has begun to pick up, there’s still precious little being published that decries the ability of Robert Aaron Long to walk into a one-stop-shop gun store with convenient same-day service to buy an easily concealable lethal weapon. It’s more difficult to get prescription medicine in this country than it is to buy a gun.
It’s more difficult to get prescription medicine in this country than it is to buy a gun.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, issued a statement of the obvious days after the shootings, insipidly pointing out that the risk of gun violence is “out there in a big way,” and that two new U.S. senators from Georgia are focused on “doing something when it comes to the scourge of gun violence.” Good for her, huh?
The Associated Press weighed in Sunday with a reasonable article about the suspect’s purchase of the 9 mm handgun with the usual hand wringing over what needs to be done, prompting this revelation:
“If Georgia had required (the suspect) to wait before getting a gun, … he might not have acted on his impulse.”
Duhhhh!
Try traveling abroad and listening to people in other countries discuss their fear of visiting the U.S., and their disbelief that a nation as powerful as the U.S. cannot control its own people well enough to prevent these kinds of massacres from occurring with such regularity. Is this what freedom is all about?
What we need is the gumption to impose strict federal requirements on the sale of firearms that include long delays to conduct rigorous background checks, licensing and fees for education in the use and proper care of firearms, and other strictly enforced requirements for responsible gun ownership, which presumably include restrictions on killing people with abandon on the same afternoon that you purchase your gun.
But does anyone really think that, finally, we are going to turn our sights on significant gun control in the wake of this tragedy?
Have we heard from Marjorie Taylor Greene yet?
