Tag: mass shooting
J.D. Vance

Exploiting Nashville, Vance Forgets Who's Behind Nearly All School Massacres

Republicans are suddenly super concerned about the gender of the Tennessee mass shooter, whose name was Audrey Hale and who went by he/him pronouns.

"If early reports are accurate that a trans shooter targeted a Christian school, there needs to be a lot of soul searching on the extreme left," tweeted Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. "Giving in to these ideas isn't compassion, it's dangerous."

If it's also accurate that at least 95 percent of mass shootings are committed by cisgender men, as analyses by both Mother Jones magazine and the Violence Project found, then perhaps Vance and other men should do a lot of soul-searching, too.

Indeed, a Mother Jones database of 141 mass shootings in which four or more victims were killed dating back to 1982 found 135 were committed by cisgender men, women committed four (the outlet categorized the Tennessee shooter as a "female" who "identifies as transgender"), and two were perpetrated by male and female shooters acting together. By that measure, men perpetrated at least 95 percent of the mass shootings and, if the Tennessee shooter identified as transgender, then a trans person committed 0.7 percent of those shootings.

The Violence Project documented 172 mass shootings from 1966-2021, and similarly found men perpetrated all but six of the massacres (with four committed by women and two by women working alongside men).

The point is, even if attributes associated with men and masculinity are the problem, fixing maleness in America isn't an achievable solution to country’s gun crisis—or at least not in the short term.

And as Daily Kos' Laura Clawson pointed out, fixating on the shooter's gender identity is just Republicans' latest attempt to jingle their keys in front of Republican voters rather than address the real issue: Anyone of any gender can get their hands on assault weapons in this gun-laden country, and anyone of any gender can use those guns to massacre people—three of whom in America's latest mass school shooting were nine year-old children.

It's unspeakably tragic—as are the lost lives of three other innocent victims—and Republicans are once again proving they would rather scapegoat a clearly sick and disturbed shooter than regulate the ability of that sick and disturbed shooter to get a gun.

Republicans are singlehandedly perpetuating unabated gun violence in this country. As long as they control Congress or have the ability to filibuster legislation in the Senate, the number of Americans and America’s children massacred by guns and assault weapons, in particular, will continue to grow at a breakneck pace.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Mass Shooting Move The Gun Debate

Will Michigan State Mass Shooting Move The Gun Debate? Maybe

And so some angry, mentally ill person decides to shoot random human beings for no particular reason. Although mass killings have become commonplace — the one at Michigan State University was the 67th this year, and we're only in February — something feels different this time.

It's not the number of victims, three dead in this case. The 2017 attack in Las Vegas massacred 60 and wounded over 400. Nor was it the nature of the victims. These were young people with a future but not elementary school kids, 20 of whom were mowed down in Newtown, Connecticut — 19 in Uvalde, Texas.

This one has political ramifications. It occurred in Michigan, a Midwest state that last November reelected its Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and turned control of both the state Senate and House to Democrats.

One must believe that right-wing threats of gun violence moved a lot of voters to change teams in Lansing. There was the unforgettable visual of creeps waving semi-automatics on the steps of the state Capitol over one of the governor's COVID policies. Then there were the head cases shooting off their guns in the woods as they plotted to kidnap Whitmer.

Especially chilling about the outrage at Michigan State was the alert sent by campus security to "run, hide or fight." The horror grew more intense with news that some of the college students had already survived the terror of the 2021 Oxford High School shooting in which four students died. In sum, there are 20-year-old kids who have sheltered in place for two separate mass school shootings.

The Michigan State killings took place on the five-year anniversary of the Parkland, Florida, massacre that left 17 students dead. As tearful commemorations were held, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was campaigning as the most gun-loving Republican evidently vying to become the Republican candidate for president. He's pushing legislation to let Florida residents carry concealed firearms in public without a permit, never mind training.

The Michigan State gunman was arrested in 2019 for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit and had to forfeit the gun. DeSantis apparently doesn't want to inconvenience killers like him by requiring a permit.

Florida gun deaths have risen nearly 19% from 2015 to 2020. In 2020, 13.7 Floridians out of every 100,000 died from gun violence. By contrast, the number of gun deaths per 100,000 was only 5.3 in New York. Hawaii posted the lowest and best number, 3.4.

How many times have we heard that the vast majority of Americans, most Republicans included, want at least universal background checks for all purchases? They want red-flag laws to remove guns from those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. And majorities want bans on certain weapons of war.

Say what you want about Donald Trump, he's showed a modicum of guts in entertaining some gun control measures after the Parkland tragedy. Sadly, he wimped out after the NRA bared a few teeth at him.

We've been here before: shocked calls for an even modest tightening of gun laws and Republicans killing almost all efforts to do so. No doubt letting demented 18-year-olds obtain weapons more deadly than those used in the Vietnam War somehow fits into DeSantis' cracked culture war campaign.

But it's increasingly hard to see how he or any other politician is going to overcome growing public dismay at the crazy gun violence now stoking fears among parents, students, grocery shoppers, concert attendees, and churchgoers — as well as drug gangs. More and more Americans know an innocent who has been shaken or killed by criminal or mentally ill gunmen.

Michigan may have been an early indicator of a voter rebellion.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

In America, Just Another Normal Mass Shooting — And The Usual Political Indifference

In America, Just Another Normal Mass Shooting — And The Usual Political Indifference

This, apparently, is “normal” in the United States: Earlier this week, in the small town of Benton, Kentucky, a high school sophomore walked onto his campus and started shooting, wounding several schoolmates and killing two — Bailey Nicole Holt, who died at the scene, and Preston Ryan Cope, who died after he was transported to a hospital. Americans barely noticed.

It was the 11th school shooting of this year (and this month), according to the New York Times. (Some were suicides; some resulted in no injuries.) As Katherine W. Schweit, a former FBI official and an expert on school shootings, put it: “We have absolutely become numb to these kinds of shootings.”

There is no other country on the planet that tolerates gun violence as we do. We have about 5 percent of the world’s population, but we account for 31 percent of the world’s mass shootings. Between 1966 and 2012, there were 90 mass shootings in the United States, according to University of Alabama professor Adam Lankford, who has published a study about shootings that kill four or more victims. We also rank No. 1 in gun ownership; in a nation of 317 million people, there are about 357 million guns. As Lankford notes, there is a connection between that staggering number of guns and the number of people who die as a result of gun violence.

“For decades, people have wondered if the dark side of American exceptionalism is a cultural propensity for violence,” he wrote, “and in recent years, perhaps no form of violence is seen as more uniquely American than public mass shootings.”

His study did not include the October 2017 horror in Las Vegas, where gunman Stephen Paddock fired into a crowd of unsuspecting concertgoers, killing 58 and injuring countless others. These atrocities, if they are awful enough, capture our attention for a week or so. The Benton shooting hardly induced a raised eyebrow. Such is our capacity for denial, for resignation, for apathy.

Polls show that most Americans favor stricter gun laws, but Congress has failed to pass any. The gun lobby holds Congress hostage, refusing to sanction even the mildest restrictions. The National Rifle Association believes that any man, woman or child should be able to buy his or her own shoulder-fired grenade launcher, and the American public doesn’t care enough to fight against that nonsense. If the 2012 massacre of babies at Sandy Hook Elementary School didn’t change us, what will?

Some blame our renowned founding document, the U.S. Constitution, which includes a Second Amendment that explicitly states, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” But you cannot read that sentence and ignore its opening clause, which sets its context.

The amendment was meant to protect a citizens’ militia, such as the National Guard, not individuals. In recent years, federal courts have grossly distorted its meaning. In prior generations, jurists agreed that it did not protect the right of individuals to own any weapon they wanted.

Indeed, much about gun culture has changed since my childhood. I grew up in the Deep South — rural Alabama — with a father who loved hunting and who owned firearms. He was typical of his time and place; he hunted with brothers, brothers-in-law, and friends. But my father was strict about gun safety, and he would not have recognized a culture that allows worshippers strapped with holsters to take their guns into church. An educator, he would have been aghast at a gun lobby that insists that teachers should be able to carry their guns into the classroom.

Some blame our frontier heritage for our fondness for firearms. Yet, Australia has a similar frontier heritage — cowboys, ranches, endless prairies — and that nation got a grip on gun violence. After a mass shooting in 1996 that left 35 people dead, Australia’s then-prime minister, John Howard, pushed through a set of strict gun laws and instituted a gun buyback program. In the years that followed, gun deaths plummeted.

We seem incapable of that sort of rational thinking. We are caught up in a uniquely American form of madness, suffering a sort of paralysis that has normalized the unthinkable.

Gunman Opens Fire At Ft. Lauderdale Airport, Killing Five

Gunman Opens Fire At Ft. Lauderdale Airport, Killing Five

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) – A gunman wearing a “Star Wars” T-shirt opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing at least five people before being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said.

Five people died and eight were wounded in the incident, the local sheriff’s office said.

Police shot the shooter as he attempted to reload, MSNBC reported, citing witnesses. It said the man, who said nothing, appeared to be in his 20s and was wearing a “Star Wars” T-shirt.

He carried a U.S. military identification, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told MSNBC.

The Florida attack was the latest in a series of mass shootings that have plagued the United States in recent years, some inspired by militants with an extreme view of Islam, others carried out by loners or the mentally disturbed who have easy access to weapons under U.S. gun laws.

About 90 minutes after the attack, panic broke out anew with passengers and police running frantically about the airport.

Dozens of police sprinted back and forth with automatic weapons drawn, directing a large group of travelers.

A police officer screamed “Get down, get down!” from a parking garage across the street from the airport terminal, a Reuters reporter witnessed.

John Schlicher, who told MSNBC he saw the attack, described the shooter as a “slender man” who was “directly firing at us” while passengers waited for their bags to come off the carousel.

“I put my head down and prayed,” Schlicher said, adding that his wife gave first aid to someone who had been shot in the head. His mother-in-law used her sweater to tend to another victim but it turned out that person was already dead, he said.

The shooter reloaded for a second burst of shooting, Schlicher said, but could not say how many bullets were fired.

Mark Lea, another eyewitness, told MSNBC “there was no rhyme or reason to it.”

“He didn’t say anything, he was quiet the whole time, he didn’t yell anything,” Lea said.

Security officials corralled passengers underneath jetways and on the runway apron, according to images on television.

A woman tended to a bleeding, seated man outside an airport building, according to a photo posted on Twitter by a Michigan information technology company.

Air traffic was temporarily suspended.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is the second largest in South Florida, serving as an intercontinental gateway, with Miami International Airport known as the primary airport for international flights in the area.

HISTORY OF SHOOTINGS

Friday’s attack comes nearly two months after a former Southwest Airlines worker killed an employee of the company at Oklahoma City’s airport in what police called a premeditated act.

The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place in June, when a gunman apparently inspired by Islamic State killed 53 people and wounded 49 others at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

One of the most shocking took place in 2012, when a man entered an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot dead 20 first-graders and six adults.

Attackers from Fort Lauderdale to Brussels have exploited security officials’ focus on preventing attacks on airplanes rather than inside airports. In Western Europe and the United States, terminals are easily accessible public spaces.

But at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, widely seen as a model for security, private companies trained by the national security agency use bomb-detectors, profile passengers and question travelers under the watch of police at the airport’s entrance. That approach has its limitations and may just shift the target to another location at the airport, experts have said.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins, Jeffrey Dastin, Joseph Ax, Jonathan Allen, Gina Cherelus, Letitia Stein and Laila Kearney; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by James Dalgleish)

IMAGE: Travelers are evacuated out of the terminal and onto the tarmac after airport shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida, U.S., January 6, 2017.   REUTERS/Zachary Fagenson