It’s Saturday and I’m drinking my morning coffee and while you drink yours, let’s play a game. Try to guess what group of Left-Wing-Commie-Pinkos supports the following positions on guns:
No mail order sales of bulletproof vests to anyone but a cop.
No carrying a concealed weapon on a college or university campus.
Banning semi-automatic assault weapons and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds except for use by the cops and military.
Creating a federal registry of people with felony firearm convictions.
A mandatory five-day cooling off period before you can buy a handgun.
Closing gun show loopholes.
Prohibiting the possession, import, manufacture, transfer and sale of devices designed to turn semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons and anyone who already owns any of these devices would be required to surrender them or register their devices with the ATF.
OK, that was definitely a trick question because the Left-Wing-Commie-Pinko group that supports all those seemingly Wacko Liberal positions is actually the International Association of Chiefs of Police, who think gun violence has gotten way out of hand and anytime you’re farther out on the Right Wing Limb than the cops, just maybe you need to crawl back a foot or two toward the center.
If you want to read more about what Chiefs of Police think about guns, here’s a link:
https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/IACP%20Firearms%20Position%20Paper_2018%20(1).pdf
(And right now that link isn’t playing nice with the Substack platform so you’ll have to cut and paste it, which I don’t actually think you’ll do, but I provided it anyway just in case you’re over-caffeinated and want to check up on what I’m saying.)
In an effort to make it look like they are actually doing something about gun violence, Democratic and Republican senators reached an agreement on a gun control bill that would:
Include enhanced background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21.
Give states incentives to enact red flag laws which help temporarily keep guns out of the hands of people facing a mental health crisis.
Crackdown on “straw” gun purchases where one person illegally buys guns for another.
Contain protections against gun purchases by domestic abusers.
Increase funding for mental health programs.
Include funds for improved school safety.
Read that list one more time and notice all the weasel words and qualifiers like “enhanced” and “incentives” and “help” and “temporarily” and “contain” and “crackdown” and “improved” which should alert you to just how watered down this proposed bill actually is, but politicians like those words because while they sound strong, in reality they’re pretty damn vague.
If you and I were dating (you never know, it could happen) and I said I was going to increase funding to temporarily enhance our dating experience which would help contain and crack down on me trying to get to third base, which would also temporarily provide incentives to improve our relationship, you’d probably break up with me for being full of crap and possibly high, but we listen to politicians say the same kind of stuff and then vote for them.
As many a philosopher has asked: WTF?
Now here’s what the proposed bill doesn’t do:
Outlaw the sale of guns that mimic war weapons.
Or…if you’re going to continue to sell those weapons…raise the age for buying one from 18 to 21.
Nevertheless, the proposed weak-ass bill still went way too far for some Republicans and one of them called red flag laws gun confiscation because apparently people who are having intense conversations with dogs and household appliances still deserve to own an AR-15.
Now here’s a story from the San Jose Mercury News about California’s red flag law and while my home state does some really goofy stuff, their red flag law may have prevented 58 mass shootings in the last six years by disarming 58 people who had threatened a gun massacre:
Which, according to some Republicans, is a bad thing.
Those Republicans are trying to avoid any meaningful gun legislation by saying it’s actually a mental health issue and that’s what we should worry about, but if some nut gets on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram and says, “Tomorrow, I’m going back to my high school and kill all the people who were mean to me, even though they all graduated five years ago” some Republicans think that’s insufficient reason to take away that nut job’s guns.
Apparently you need to let him kill a few kids first, just so you know he’s serious.
And if you think that’s nuts, get a load of this…
According to the Washington Post, the state of Ohio recently made it easier to arm more school teachers by reducing the training requirements for carrying a gun on a school campus.
Ohio’s Governor and NRA hand puppet Mike DeSwine (wait…Freudian slip…that’s actually Mike DeWine) said the Uvalde school shooting “increased the urgency to act.”
And I think “act” is the exact right word because the gun nuts and the politicians that are afraid to piss the gun nuts off “act” like the answer to gun violence is even more guns, but I’m guessing the cops who waited in the Uvalde school hallway while kids were getting shot had guns of their own, but their failure to act meant all those good guys with guns didn’t make a difference.
As you might have already noticed, reality tends to kick the shit out of fantasies.
According to the Texas Tribune, that failure to act has Texas police departments thinking maybe they need even more training, but Gov. DeSwine (dammit…did it again) thinks even less training is the answer.
In the past, if an Ohio school teacher wanted to have a gun in a classroom they needed 700 hours of training as a peace officer, but that has now been cut to just 24 hours of training because if there’s anything that’s going to stop gun violence, it’s more scared shitless people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing, shooting guns in a classroom full of kids.
Shari Obrenski, president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, called it “ironic” and pointed out that state lawmakers sought to ban how teachers talked to their classrooms about race, but now want them to carry guns. She summed up the situation like this:
“Educators are being told we are not trusted to decide what to teach in a classroom, a job we study for and are licensed to do. But we are trusted to have loaded guns around children with far less training than is required to drive a car.”
That quote inspired the cartoon you see above and I think the obvious lesson here is Ms. Obrenski needs to run for governor and get rid of that fucking moron, Mike the Swine. (I decided to quit fighting my Freudian-slip impulses.)
And, yeah, as you might have guessed from my overly-colorful language, I’ve pretty much lost patience with Republican Bullshit on this issue.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/13/uvalde-school-shooting-texas-police-training/
OK, so Republicans claim gun violence is actually a mental health issue which…let’s face it…Republicans don’t actually believe or they’d be in favor of red flag laws.
And now a word about the word “Republicans”
As I’ve pointed out before and no doubt will again, I’m well aware the not all Republicans think the same thing, but the majority do and if the “good” Republicans want to quit getting lumped in with the “bad” Republicans, they need to quit voting for morons and con men (and/or women) and refuse to buy their bullshit.
For instance:
Despite Donald Trump’s own Attorney General and Justice Department and every court that looked into it saying there was no significant election fraud, in a July of 2021 poll sixty-six percent of Republicans still said Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.
So if Donald Trump said the world was flat it sounds like sixty-six percent of Republicans would start worrying about falling off the edge and anytime the guy you’re following also thinks you might be able to kill a virus by injecting bleach into your body, you might want to start following a different guy.
I don’t think all Republicans are bad, but when one of them shows signs of courage or common sense or the ability to think for themselves, they get attacked by the Walking Dead Republicans (who clearly need the brains they’re seeking) and if you don’t believe me, just ask Liz Cheney or Mike Pence.
And anytime what you’re doing is so goddamn crazy you can make Mike Pence look like an American Hero, maybe you’ve let things get out of hand.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
Lee,
Sadly, your comments and cartoons are an infuriatingly accurate take on where we find our country on the issue of gun violence and gun politics.
Great writing and toons!
Thanks for a column with common sense!