Assault weapons ban
Cat.
May 31, 2022‘Peace be on them. Peace be on you.’
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For the little ones of Uvalde, Sarajevo, Dunblane and every place where innocent souls have been taken!#Uvalde #UvaldeMassacre #TexasSchoolMassacre #Children #innocent #Peace pic.twitter.com/71uLEQZUKB
— Yusuf / Cat Stevens (@YusufCatStevens) May 26, 2022
‘Go in peace.’ -Abraham Lincoln
‘How peaceful do you feel right now? Our nerves, our home and our country crave peace.’ -A. Stoddard
‘What kind of courage is required of us? ~ This is, in the end, the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to meet the strangest, most awesome, and most inexplicable of phenomena.’ -Rilke, 1904
And act.
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The Atlantic
[Posted today, May 31, 2022]
‘Our writer argues that students should not return to school in the fall until Congress passes new gun-control laws.’
#BoycottSchools
#GunReformNow
#AssaultWeaponsBan
by Gal Beckerman
‘The argument that we’ve been here before, that the gun lobby has a generation of politicians in its pocket, that our political system, and particularly the structure of the Senate, will always give outsize influence to Second Amendment absolutists—all of it is true. And yet, as awful as it is to say, we’re learning with every killing. We’re moving closer to the kind of movement that might actually make a difference.
Today, I’m left with one conclusion: The children and parents of our country need to take the summer to organize locally, build a set of national demands, and then refuse to go back to school in the fall until Congress does something.
Let me explain. Social movements need two elements to be successful: narrative and tactics. Borrowing from the political scientist Joseph Nye, we might think of these as soft power and hard power, respectively. Activists need to tell a compelling story that brings people along to a new way of thinking and emboldens them to act. But that isn’t enough. There is also the hard work of mustering actual political power to elect different representatives, change laws, and leverage lobbying.
When it comes to narrative, those whose lives are most at risk in mass shootings make for the best storytellers. This has been a strangely hard-won realization. Dave Cullen, who covered the Columbine shooting in 1999 and later wrote a book about it, has said that in the days and even weeks after the attack, none of the survivors wanted to talk about gun control. Though a common right-wing talking point is that speaking about new regulations immediately after a shooting is “politicizing” the tragedy, few people pay this much heed anymore. “Everybody keeps telling us that it’s not the time to be political,” Kimberly Rubio toldThe New York Times, two days after her daughter was killed in Uvalde, Texas. “But it is. It is.”
Full piece:
‘It’s time to grow up and figure this out.”
June 14, 2016
Late night responds to the massacre in Orlando.
Conan O’Brien:
“I have a shred of common sense and I simply do not understand why anybody in this country is allowed to purchase and own a semiautomatic assault rifle. These are weapons of war and they have no place in civilian life. I have tried to understand this issue from every side and it all comes down to this: Nobody I know or have ever met in my entire life should have access to a weapon that can kill so many people so quickly. These mass shootings are happening so often now that lamenting them afterwards is becoming a national ritual. I do not know the answer. But I wanted to take just a moment here tonight to agree with the rapidly growing sentiment in America that it’s time to grow up and figure this out.”
Stephen Colbert:
“We each ask ourselves what can you possibly say in the face of this horror? But then sadly you realize, you know what to say, because it has been said too many times before. You have a pretty good idea of what most people are gonna say. You know what a president, whoever it is, will probably say. You know what both sides of the political aisle will say. You know what gun manufacturers will say. Even me, with a silly show like this, you have some idea what I will say because even I have talked about this when it has happened before. It’s as if there’s a national script that we have learned, and I think by accepting the script, we tacitly accept that the script will end the same way every time, with nothing changing. Except for the loved ones and the families of the victims, for whom nothing will ever be the same. These people in Orlando were apparently targeted because of who they love. And there have been outpourings of love throughout the country and around the world … love allows us to change the script. So love your country, love your family, love the families and the victims and the people of Orlando.”
Jimmy Fallon
“This country was built on the idea that we do not all agree on everything, that we are a tolerant free nation that encourages debate, free thinking, believing, or not, in what you choose. I as a new father am thinking, ‘What do I tell my kids?’ What do I — what do I tell them about this? What can we learn from this? What if my kids are gay? What do I tell them? Maybe there’s a lesson from all this. A lesson in tolerance. We need to support each other’s differences and worry less about our own opinions. Get back to debate and away from believing or supporting the idea that if someone doesn’t live the way you want them to live, you just buy a gun and kill them, just bomb them up. That is not okay. We need to get back to being brave enough to accept that we have different opinions and that’s okay. Because that’s what America is built on. The idea that we can stand up and speak our minds and live our lives and not be punished for that. Or mocked on the Internet. Or killed by someone you don’t know. This was just one bad guy here. Forty nine good people and one bad guy. And there will always be more good than evil.”
Samantha Bee
“Well, here we are. Now, after a massacre, the standard operating procedure is that you stand on stage and deliver some well-meaning words about how we will get through this together, how love wins, how love conquers hate. And that is great. That is beautiful. But you know what? F— it. I am too angry for that. Love does not win, unless we start loving each other enough to fix our f—ing problems.”
Seth Meyers
“This was an attack on LGBT people fueled by bigotry and hatred. And the shooter was apparently inspired by ISIS. But we’re gonna talk about guns. Because whether the shooter was a homophobe, mentally ill, a terrorist inspired by ISIS or all three, what allowed him to kill so many people on Sunday was his gun. And that means we’re likely about to enter yet another contentious national debate about gun control. Later, when given a chance, Congress consistently chooses nothing as a course of action. So while there were some who were busy callously exploiting the tragedy to spread bigotry and misinformation, let’s keep in our hearts the victims and applaud those acts of love and humanity that poured forth in Orlando and across the country. Because at the end of the day, that’s what will endure.”
