We've Seen This Movie Before

And it's NEVER about the guns

Yet more GOP verbal gymnastics is one of the annoying byproducts of virtually every mass shooting. After the ritualized offering of seemingly endless “thoughts and prayers,” Republicans begin offering all of the reasons for mass shootings. Amazingly enough (not really), it’s NEVER about the guns.

Even though mass shootings almost always involve weapons of war (generally an AR-15 or something similar), mass murder isn’t about guns. NEVER, ever, EVER.

In the aftermath of deadly mass shootings in May, Republicans and their allies scrambled to deflect attention away from guns. Prominent voices on the right ended up trying to blame, among other things, the multitude of doors at schools, abortion, video games, “secularization,” absentee fathers, and the virtues of government-imposed school prayer.

Some of these clearly can’t be applied to the mass shooting in Highland Park — there are no doors to a July Fourth parade, for example, taking away one of Sen. Ted Cruz’s favorite talking points[.]

Of course, this doesn’t mean the Far-Right can’t (and doesn’t) become exceedingly creative when providing reasons for mass shootings.

They have to because they must let Americans know it’s not about the guns and never is.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson blamed the massacre on medication given to young people, bleak economic prospects, and women nagging young men.... Carlson’s colleague Laura Ingraham homed in on the real culprit: marijuana. “What can regular pot use trigger in young men in particular? Psychosis and other violent personality changes,” she said, blaming the media for “covering up the truth about the growing scourge of violent psychosis in our young people” created by weed.

So, let me tally up what Republicans have come up with thus far. It’s quite an impressive list, and it tells us that mass shootings are very complicated things with a multitude of causes:

• Too many doors at schools

• Abortion

• Violent video games

• Pornography

• Secularization

• Absentee fathers

• Removing prayer from public schools

• Psychotropic medication

• Poor economic prospects

• Diet Coke

• Women nagging men

• Marijuana, which causes “psychosis” and “violent personality changes” (who knew??)

• Pepperoni pizza

OK, so I’m not sure about the last one. I’ve had pepperoni pizza and have never experienced the urge to shoot up a school or a parade…but you never know, right??

Still, there’s one thing missing from that list, and I’ll be you’ll NEVER guess what it could be.

Go ahead; I’ll wait….

If you guessed, “GUNS!!,” you’d get a prize, but the prize budget here at North Stars and Cowboys Bars has taken a real hit of late, so you’ll have to settle for my undying admiration and hope for better things to come.

Yeah, it’s funny how the Far-Right never wants to talk about guns. It’s almost as if they’re afraid that if firearms become a subject of conversation, people will realize that they’re the proximate cause of a lot of carnage. And once they understand that, they’ll want them banned.

And that Just. Cannot. Happen.

Conservative media personality Mark Levin apparently preferred a broader and more traditional approach, blaming “cultural decay, the decay of the civil society, the war on cops, the way that human life is viewed, whether it’s abortion, infanticide, whatever the issue.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell added, “The core of the problem is not the Second Amendment.”

It’s tiresome for a reason: We keep experiencing the same debate, as if we were watching a dispute unfold in “Groundhog Day.” The right keeps looking for ways to avoid blaming the preponderance of guns, while the left keeps explaining that blaming conservatives’ culprits doesn’t make sense.

Levin’s explanation is crap, primarily because it’s a coded message blaming it all on the Left.

McConnell’s is complete and utter bullshit because while the core of the problem isn’t the 2nd Amendment, the disingenuous way Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes interpret it IS. Or, more accurately, how they cherry-pick and manipulate it to their advantage.

The 2nd Amendment represents the most willfully misinterpreted and dishonestly manipulated 27 words in the English language. Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes completely ignore the first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment even as they cling to the final 14 words as if their very lives depend upon it.

(Theirs may not, but the lives of thousands of innocent civilians they care nothing for DO depend on it.)

This state of affairs is allowed to continue because the National Rifle Association (NRA) owns the GOP, and Republicans in Congress are terrified of the monsters who run it. They love the money they receive from the NRA, but they fear running afoul of the group and being primaried by them. And the NRA runs a tight ship; they brook no dissent and tolerate no discussion of common-sense gun control.

(As a Republican, what’s the surest way to find yourself primaried by a certifiable, pro-gun, knuckle-dragging Far-Right nutcase? Sit down with a Democrat to talk about finding common ground on gun violence. The NRA will have you metaphorically drawn and quartered before the sun rises.)

Even with all of the 24-karat, Grade-A, top shelf, USDA Prime bullshit propaganda the Far-Right and the NRA keeps shoveling upon us; there’s something they keep missing:

There are countries around the world where there’s access to marijuana, abortion, and video games, just as there are plenty of young people across the globe on anti-depressants. None of these countries is forced to deal with routine mass shootings — not because they have better societies or better people, but because those countries are not awash in deadly firearms.

All the arguments made about all the many and varied reasons for mass shootings are crap. They’re meaningless. And they completely and deliberately gloss over the proximate cause of mass shootings.

IT’S ABOUT THE GUNS.

IT’S ABOUT THE GUNS.

IT’S ABOUT THE GUNS.

And, in case anyone may have missed that,

IT’S ABOUT THE GUNS.

There may be many reasons that explain WHY an individual mass shooting occurs, but there’s one constant running through all of them:

IT’S ABOUT THE GUNS.

There won’t ever be a single factor that explains the psychology of every mass shooter. Some grew up in poverty while others didn’t. Some have diagnosable mental illnesses while others don’t. Some are motivated by a specific ideology of hate while others are driven by nebulous rage at the world. But there’s one thing every last one of them has in common, without exception, and it isn’t pot smoking or being nagged by women. It’s that they were able, with little difficulty, to get their hands on a weapon that they could use to kill as many people as they wished.

So when the Far-Right begins talking about things they believe are responsible for mass shootings, we need to be able to separate the signal from the noise because what they’re peddling is pure, meaningless noise. They’re trying to deflect attention from what they KNOW is the thread connecting mass shootings because they’re afraid of what might happen if people begin to connect the dots. We need to break through the noise.

It’s not that difficult to connect the dots. We’re splitting atoms. It’s not about porn. Or video games. Or taking God out of public schools. Or even pepperoni pizza. It’s about one thing and one thing ONLY.

IT’S ABOUT THE GUNS.

Any questions?