RUMPOLE NOTES: Thank you Captain. We've been thinking since yesterday that we should write something, and yet there are really no words. Parents send their child off to school, and she is murdered. In the United States. In 2020. And it's happening over and over again. And a large percentage of this country, would scream and yell in ecstasy at the top of their lungs if at a rally a politician said "all we need is more guns and more prayer." It is madness. We have lost our mind as a country. We were thinking of things like "Guns don't kill people, but they kill children at school"; and "Our adults are the Russians and our children at school are the Ukrainians."
Nothing really captures the sadness and horror of this. Other than to say we are broken as a country. Broken to bits when a parent cannot safely send their child to school. If we cannot do that, then nothing else matters. The Constitution, our courts, our political bodies...nothing matters if we cannot protect innocent children. We are broken and we do not see a fix on the horizon. Maybe it's time to call this experiment a day. Break up the union into a country that love guns and prayer and reject science, and a country with gun control that respects education and reason and science and healthcare and logic. Maybe it is time for that. Nothing else seems to work.
Rumpole.
THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:
OUR “WELL REGULATED MILITIA” HAS STRUCK AGAIN .......
On Tuesday, an 18 year old male wearing body armor walked into Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, pulled out a firearm, and slaughtered 21 human beings including 19 children who were there attending the second through fourth grades. It was two days before the end of the school year.
The attack evoked memories of one of the worst days in recent US history when, our “well regulated militia” struck almost ten years ago, as a young man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary, in Newton, Connecticut, and murdered 20 children and six adults.
Following the attack at Sandy Hook, President Obama and Vice-President Biden led the effort to get Congress to enact significant firearms legislation. Despite bipartisan support, led by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D) (yes that Joe Manchin) and Senator Pat Toomey (R) of Pennsylvania, and in the face of the grieving parents of 20 elementary school children, legislation never made it to President Obama’s desk with the bill failing in the Senate by a vote of 54-46.
Since Sandy Hook, there have been no less than 3,500 mass shootings (defined as a shooting incident in which four or more people are killed or injured) in our country.
Our “well regulated militia” struck again when in 2015, it was at a Black church in Charleston, S.C., and then again at a government-funded nonprofit center in San Bernardino, Calif. They struck again in 2016, at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Again in 2017, at a country music festival in Las Vegas, and again, in 2018, when it happened in our own back yard at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
A week after the MSD shooting, President Trump met at the White House with the families of the murdered students. He famously clutched a note card that read: “What can we do to help you feel safe?” and “I hear you.”. The next week, Trump stood up to the NRA by calling for comprehensive gun legislation and warned his fellow Republicans not to be petrified of the powerful gun lobby. But, the next day, Trump hosted the NRA’s top lobbyist in the Oval Office, and suddenly, all of the momentum for a post MSD rally to pass any gun legislation quietly faded away.
Our “well regulated militia” was not done. In 2018, they struck again at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. In 2019, on the same day, they struck twice, first at a Walmart in majority-Hispanic El Paso, followed just hours later by a shooting in a popular nightlife corridor in Dayton, Ohio. In 2021, it was at Asian American massage businesses in Atlanta.
And just last week they struck again at a supermarket in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, NY that left ten dead.
American Exceptionalism
America is exceptional at leading the civilized world in mass shootings.
America is exceptional at having more guns per person than any other country on earth. In fact, the estimate of civilian firearms per 100 persons in the United States is 121. The next closest country is Yemen at 53 firearms for every 100 persons.
America is exceptional in not requiring the registration of firearms. There are an estimated 393,347,000 firearms in the United States as of 2017. Of those, only 1,073,743 are registered. The rest are not.
America is exceptional for having over 200 mass shooting having taken place already in 2022. That number works out to ten per week for the first 20 weeks of the year. There were a total of 693 mass shootings that took place in 2021.
America is exceptional for having already experienced 27 school shootings this year where someone has been injured or killed. In 2021, there were 34 such incidents of violence.
Today, before Game 4 of the NBA Western Conference Final between the Warriors and the Mavs, Golden State Coach Steve Kerr took to the podium and refused to discuss basketball. Here is what Kerr had to say:
“I'm not going to talk about basketball. Nothing's happened with our team in the last six hours. We're going to start the same way tonight. Any basketball questions don't matter.
Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here. And a teacher. In the last 10 days, we've had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we've had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California. Now we have children murdered at school.
When are we going to do something? I'm tired. I'm so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I'm so tired. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm tired of the moments of silence. Enough!
There's 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on HR8, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago. It's been sitting there for two years. And there's a reason they won't vote on it: to hold onto power.
So I ask you, Mitch McConnell, I ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings. I ask you: Are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers? Because that's what it looks like. It's what we do every week.
So I'm fed up. I've had enough. We're going to play the game tonight. But I want every person here, every person listening to this, to think about your own child or grandchild, or mother or father, sister, brother. How would you feel if this happened to you today?
We can't get numb to this. We can't sit here and just read about it and go, well, let's have a moment of silence -- yea, Go Dubs. C'mon, Mavs, let's go. That's what we're going to do. We're going to go play a basketball game.
Fifty senators in Washington are going to hold us hostage. Do you realize that 90 percent of Americans, regardless of political party, want background checks -- universal background checks? Ninety percent of us. We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote, despite what we, the American people, want.
They won't vote on it because they want to hold onto their own power. It's pathetic! I've had enough!”
Have you had enough?!