Tag: second amendment
Another Day, Another Massacre: 18 Dead And 13 Wounded In Maine

Another Day, Another Massacre: 18 Dead And 13 Wounded In Maine

Dear readers, I ask you: how many of these stories have I written about mass shootings in my Substack column? I lost count some time ago and cannot remember the last one. Was it the shooting in Nashville, when a 28-year-old gunman killed three nine-year-old children and three adults at a private school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church using two AR-15 rifles, one of them configured as a pistol with a folding stock so it could be easily concealed? Or was it Uvalde, when 19 children and two adults were killed at the Robb Elementary School by an 18-year-old who had bought two AR-15 rifles soon after he reached the age when it is legal to buy such firearms in Texas?

I know I wrote about two more mass shootings in Texas, one at a private home in Cleveland, when five were killed by a shooter with an AR-15 rifle, and the other at an outlet mall in Allen, when a shooter killed eight and wounded seven using, once again, an AR-15 rifle.

And now I’m writing about last night’s mass-shooting in Lewiston, Maine. Robert Russel Card, age 40, is the man police suspect of killing seven people in a bowling alley and eight people in a bar and wounding 13, again using an AR-15 rifle. Three of the wounded died later in a hospital. He is described as a sergeant in the Army Reserves and a “trained firearms instructor.” He has not been captured by the police and is at large as I write this, described as armed and dangerous.

I think the first story I wrote about a mass killing was in 1998, about the school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, when two boys, age 13 and 11, used rifles taken from the home of one of their grandfathers to kill four of their fellow students and a teacher, shooting at them from a hill overlooking the schoolyard when the kids were at recess. I wrote the story for the New York Times op-ed page. What astounded me about the shooting was the fact that both boys had been taken to so-called practical shooting courses by their parents, where participants were taught to shoot and move in a tactical military fashion using human silhouette targets.

At that time, it had been 30 years since I had fired a rifle on a shooting rage at a human silhouette target. I did it during marksmanship training at West Point, using first an M-14 and then an M-16, the military progenitor of the AR-15 rifle used by nearly every shooter in every mass shooting in recent years.

The M-14 was a big, unwieldy rifle with a wooden stock that weighed 10 and a half pounds when loaded with its 20-round magazine. The M-16, which the Army had begun using in Vietnam, was smaller, had a composite stock and a shorter barrel and weighed only seven and a half pounds and used a magazine carrying 30 rounds of ammunition. The M-14 fired a 7.62 mm bullet and had a sharp kick that would leave you with a bruise on your shoulder after a few hours of shooting it. The M-16 fired the much smaller 5.56 mm bullet and had almost no recoil at all. It was easier to carry, easier to shoot, and was just as accurate as the M-14 had been.

I’m telling you all this because every time I type “AR-15,” what I’m doing is using the designation for a weapon that was designed for and is still in use by the military for combat. It is, therefore, a machine invented and manufactured for killing human beings, which is what I was being trained to do when I first fired an M-16 at a human silhouette target at West Point in 1965.

Firearms training was a serious business. There was such a priority on safety that we initially fired the M-16 for most of a day using single bullets which we hand-loaded and fired on command by the range officer. Then we were issued magazines, which we loaded with 30 rounds of ammunition and fired with the fire selector set on single-shot for at least a couple of days. Later, we were taught to fire the M-16 with the selector set on three-round bursts and then full-automatic, enabling you to empty the magazine of all 30 rounds with a single pull of the trigger.

I used to get criticized by gun enthusiasts when I called an AR-15 rifle “military grade,” but their criticism was bullshit. The AR-15 is identical to an M-16 with only one difference: It does not have a selector switch enabling burst and full-auto fire. The AR-15s are manufactured for single-shot fire, but it is well known that many of them can be easily altered to fire on full-auto by purchasing a kit at a gun show or on the dark web. We don’t know if the gunman in Maine had altered his AR-15 to shoot on full-auto, but as an Army Reserve sergeant and a firearms instructor, he would certainly have the know-how to do it.

But it doesn’t matter whether the AR-15 used by the shooter in Maine had been illegally altered. Even in its legal form, the weapon is as deadly as they come. The bullet fired by the AR-15 is the same bullet fired by the Army’s M-4 carbine, the modern replacement for the M-16. It shoots with an extremely high muzzle velocity, and when the bullet hits the human body, it is designed to penetrate the skin and immediately tumble as it goes through the body, shredding muscles, bones, and organs. It is designed to kill, and last night, bullets fired from yet another AR-15 did just that in Maine.

It is madness that I am describing for the umpteenth time the AR-15 rifle, its military history, how deadly it is, and yes, how it has become ubiquitous. There are estimated to be more than 20 million of these terrible things in private hands in this country, and they are the weapon of choice for people who are looking to kill a lot of people very quickly. And yet, you can walk into a gun store in every state in the union but the ten that ban the sale of the AR-15 and buy one.

Wait. Make that nine states that ban the gun, because a federal judge in California last week ruled in a case involving the AR-15 that the state’s ban on sales of the weapon violates the Constitutional right to bear arms. That decision is on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but if upheld, would apply to the laws in all 10 states that ban sales of the gun.

The Supreme Court has upheld a law in Illinois banning the sale of the AR-15, but it did so temporarily on its so-called shadow docket, meaning a case involving the legality of the AR-15 for sale and ownership will eventually reach the Supreme Court and be heard on its merits. If the doctrine put forth by Justice Clarence Thomas in his Bruen decision holds – that gun laws today cannot differ materially from those in place in 1791 – well, we can already see which way the court will rule.

If the Supreme Court rules that because the Founders thought owning a flintlock musket was pretty cool, and that every American should have the right to buy, own, and shoot an AR-15, we will be seeing each other again in these online pages when yet another AR-15, or more likely, many AR-15s are used in more and more mass shootings.

It’s madness, sure, but it’s our madness because citizens of this country have elected the politicians who put the jurists on the court who make these things legal, and the same voters put the legislators in their seats who refuse to pass laws to make AR-15s illegal.

I pray that one day, my grandchildren will look back and wonder what their country was thinking when their grandfather and his generation allowed such deadly guns to be sold to anyone who wants one. The saddest thing is, right now, I don’t have an answer for them.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

American Madness: Gun Nuts Keep Pushing Our Nation Toward Mass Mayhem

American Madness: Gun Nuts Keep Pushing Our Nation Toward Mass Mayhem

I wrote about the mass-killing of children and teachers at the school in Nashville just a month ago. I will keep writing about this gun madness for as long as it takes. To support my efforts in this cause, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

The manhunt for the suspect accused of killing four adults and a child last week in Cleveland, Texas, ended on Tuesday when a team of U.S. Marshalls, Border Patrol agents and officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety found him “hiding in a closet underneath some laundry,” according to San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers. A tip called in to the FBI hotline sent the team of heavily armed officers to a home in Cut and Shoot, Texas – yes, you read that right – where the suspect, Francisco Oropesa, 38, was arrested without incident. The manhunt had lasted for four days after the murders were committed.

Over the weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott caused something of a firestorm when he referred to the five victims of the shooting as “illegal immigrants.” On Monday, after news reports identified one of the victims, Diana Velazquez Alvarado, as having permanent residence status in the U.S., the Republican governor’s office issued a retraction. “We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal,” Abbott’s spokeswoman, Renae Eze, said. However, Abbott’s tweet calling the victims “illegal immigrants” was not deleted.

The outright madness of blatant racism clearly played a part in the deaths of the victims. After the shooting on Friday, evidence emerged that the response by the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s office was, not to put too fine a point on it, severely lacking. The husband of one of the victims, Wilson Garcia, told reporters that members of the victims’ family called 911 five times complaining about Oropesa firing his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in his yard after 11 p.m. at night. Each time they called 911, they were told that sheriff’s deputies were on the way.

After the shooting began inside the house, Ramiro Guzman called 911 several more times to report that people were being killed, and each time he was told that deputies were already present at the address. “Then why is he killing my family now?” Guzman told reporters he said to the 911 operator. Press requests for tapes of the 911 calls involved in the incident have not been answered. Nor has the sheriff’s office released any specific information about why they were so slow to respond to the shooting, other than a statement to reporters by Sheriff Capers that his office has only three deputies to cover a 700 square-mile area, and they responded as fast as they were able. Interviews by reporters in the neighborhood in Cleveland, Texas, where the shootings took place, revealed that police response to 911 calls by residents of that neighborhood has been slow to non-existent in the past.

Another factor in the slow response to the initial 911 calls might be the fact that people shooting their guns on their properties has become commonplace all over the country in rural areas. “Texas law affords broad leeway to people firing weapons in rural areas,” the New York Times reported yesterday. “Counties may explicitly bar shooting on smaller lots in subdivisions, but many have opted not to do so, relying instead on more general rules preventing recklessness or firing over property lines. Some rural officers may also have difficulty distinguishing between noise complaints related to legal and harmless shooting activity and those that represent potential threats.”

All of which can be summed up this way: There are so many guns out there in the hands of so many people that law enforcement officials cannot keep track of the proliferation of guns because they are prevented by state laws from doing so. Because gun ownership is so widespread, local sheriffs and town police departments don’t have the manpower to respond to every report of a gun going off.

This is the madness we have arrived at in a country with more guns than citizens.

Much is being made on conservative talk radio and on Fox News about the fact that the shooter had been deported from the U.S. four times prior to the murders last Friday. A neighbor living across the street told the Associated Press that Oropesa had lived in his house for five or six years, and that sheriff’s deputies had responded to complaints that Oropesa had fired his gun several times in the past. Conservative commentators are also all worked up by the fact that an undocumented immigrant had apparently possessed five firearms.

Which brings up another madness involved in this mass-shooting incident. The weapon used in the murders, all of which appeared to be execution-style shots to the head, was an AR-15 style semiautomatic weapon. Every recent mass killing has been committed with an AR-15 style rifle. Conservatives are pointing to the fact that the shooter had been able to obtain the deadly firearm as evidence that “gun control” doesn’t work, despite the fact that the state of Texas had no laws that could be identifiable as attempts at controlling the spread or use of firearms. Texas is a so-called constitutional carry state, meaning people can carry firearms openly or concealed without a permit.

If sheriff’s deputies had in fact responded previously to reports of Oropesa firing his AR-15 in his yard, they obviously made no attempt to take his gun away from him. Texas does not have a red-flag law that would enable law enforcement agents to confiscate a firearm from someone because, for example, that person was showing signs of using the gun to harm himself or others.

Madness multiplies in this tragic incident. Gun-rights people defend the right to own deadly military-spec guns like the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. They defend the right to use such a firearm on property you own because the land is yours, and you can do what you want on your own land. They defend the right to own high-capacity magazines for such a weapon – that would be the 30-round magazine used by the shooter. And they defend the right to buy and own as much ammunition as you want. Clearly, the shooter had plenty of ammunition on hand if he had been firing the AR-15 indiscriminately in his yard immediately before using it to kill five people in the house next door, two of them women who were found by police lying on top of little children they were trying to protect.

The shooter was undocumented. Four of the five victims were undocumented. The conservative response to these facts is as predictable as it is odious: “See? What did we tell you about these terrible immigrants who are flooding across our border?”

As for gun control, the right-wing response is identical: “See? What did we tell you about gun control laws? You can’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals. This is an example of why we gun owners need our AR-15’s to defend ourselves against criminals like the shooter in Cleveland, Texas.”

Liberals are in a situation where they’re damned if you do, damned if they don’t here, except for two facts: Yet another AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle was used in a mass killing, proving that the spread of these deadly weapons of war is and has been completely out of control. The shooter in Cleveland, Texas, could have bought his rifle from a private seller at a gun show, where he wouldn’t have been asked to show a valid ID like a driver’s license or undergo a background check that might have shown him to be in this country illegally. The other four weapons found by police in his home after the killings could have been purchased in the same way, or even stolen from a vehicle in a parking lot.

States like Texas with no-permit open carry laws have reported increasing numbers of gun thefts from parked vehicles, as well as thefts of guns from homes which have been burglarized.

The right-wing gun-nut crowd is right about at least this much, even though the laws of states like Texas are largely to blame: People can get guns if they want them. It would be just as easy for a convicted felon who has just been let out of jail to obtain an AR-15 as it was for an undocumented immigrant like the shooter in Texas.

So, where do sane people go when confronted by such a vile, explosive mix of horrible facts?

I have to tell you that I do not know. I’ve been writing and speaking out about mass-killings in this country since two grade-school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas used one of their grandfather’s guns to shoot and kill four of their classmates and a teacher in 1998. That was 25 years ago. At that time, after writing an op ed article about the shooting in the New York Times, I appeared on the Today Show with a spokeswoman from the NRA and asked her a simple question: Did the NRA support parents teaching nine and ten year-old boys to shoot weapons at human silhouette targets at a so-called practical shooting course that taught tactical military-style firearms training?

The answer from the NRA, after some hemming and hawing, was yes, they did support teaching little kids to shoot at targets depicting human beings. I thought that day in 1998 was a nadir for the gun nuts in this country, but it’s been downhill ever since.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

In Leaked Video, Greene Hints At Assassinating Vaccination Surveyors

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is at it again, as evidenced by a leaked video of the Georgia representative's appearance at a Republican women's event in Alabama. As per the video, Greene suggests that Alabama residents would shoot President Joe Biden's "police state friends" if they went door to door asking if residents had received their COVID-19 vaccinations and taking down their names, family names, address, cell phone number, and "probably" social security number, as reported by AL.com. So yes, it's her usual conspiracy theory hysteria—and then some.

"What they don't know is in the South, we all love our Second Amendment rights," Greene told the audience at the Alabama Federation of Republican Women event on July 23, who responded with cheers. "And we're not big on strangers showing up on our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get." Her framing for this bizarre and horrifying scenario rested on Alabama's concerningly low vaccination rate.

You can watch some of this leaked video here, as shared on Twitter.

"We all love our Second Amendment rights," Greene stated, as reported by the Alabama Political Reporter. "And we don't like the federal government coming on our property to tell us what to do. You have HIPAA rights and you do not have tell your medical information and you can tell them to get off your front porch and get off your front lawn."

Somehow, Greene's shocking statements did not end there. Greene discussed a range of opinions with the crowd including communism, Dr. Anthony Fauci, reproductive health, trans rights, and, of course, holding barbeques during the pandemic. She reminded the audience Biden "takes" his paycheck but that Donald Trump didn't.

In speaking to the crowd, Greene reminded the group she's a supporter of Trump and that she continues to believe he won the 2020 presidential election (Trump did not win, of course). She told the group "We have got to take out the trash in Washington," and mentioned firing Dr. Fauci, impeaching Biden, and expelling Rep. Maxine Waters.

Greene flung out conspiracy theories, including alleging that the coronavirus had not only been developed in a lab in Wuhan but that Fauci knew and concealed this information. "This man sent your dollars and my dollars to the Wuhan lab," Greene spewed, alleging that Democrats "protect" Fauci as people die all over the world. She painted a surreal picture of Fauci getting to watch the virus spread from a "front-row seat" and framed it as his "experiment."

Perhaps the scariest part? The crowd reacted with cheers and applause.

She also said parents should be able to choose whether or not their children wear masks or receive the vaccine, and suggested that Democrats wearing masks is mere virtue signaling.

Mind you, for the QAnon congresswoman, much of this isn't surprising. As Daily Kos has covered, Greene compared COVID-19 vaccinations to the Holocaust and to Nazi experiments. She's suggested vaccines are merely a "political tool" to control people. Greene has been booted from her House committee assignments after downplaying the insurrection on Jan. 6 and endlessly promoting the conspiracy theory that Trump actually won the election (again, he did not). She's also suggested the Sandy Hook and Parkland mass shootings were staged. Surprising absolutely no one at this point, she's even a 9/11 truther.

Greene is dangerous, and her rhetoric and conspiracy theories really might get someone harmed, if not killed. It's not just that Greene is a Republican, or that her views are abhorrent and non-inclusive, but her platform and message are legitimately concerning for the safety of people in general, and especially Democrats.

Rep. Matt Gaetz speaking to a crowd of supporters.

Gaetz: The Second Amendment Is Meant For ‘Armed Rebellion’

Reprinted with permission from from American Independent

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told an audience of supporters at a rally on Thursday that the Second Amendment is about "the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government."

Gaetz spoke in Dalton, Georgia, in his latest in a series of appearances alongside Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Telling the crowd that they must fight to preserve their rights under the Constitution, he referred to its Second Amendment.

"The Second Amendment is not about, it's not about hunting, it's not about recreation, it's not about sports," Gaetz said. "The Second Amendment is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does, but it sure is important to recognize the founding principles of this nation and to make sure that they are fully understood."

Gaetz also told his audience, "The internet's hall monitors out in Silicon Valley, they think they can suppress us, discourage us ... Well, you know what? Silicon Valley can't cancel this movement. Or this rally. Or this congressman."

Gaetz was possibly thinking of media reporting on the fact that he is currently the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation. His close associate, former Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg, recently pleaded guilty to six federal charges and admitted to a federal judge that he paid and solicited a minor for sex.

Reporting has indicated that Greenberg is cooperating with prosecutors in their investigation.

From a May 27 "America First" rally in Dalton, Georgia:

MATT GAETZ: In this fight back, we are not powerless. This is a powerful movement. We are powerful people. As President Trump reminds us, we are the elite now.
And so let us use the Constitution to strengthen our argument and our movement. We have a First Amendment right to speak and assemble and we better use it. The internet's hall monitors out in Silicon Valley, they think they can suppress us, discourage us, maybe if you're just a little less patriotic, maybe if you just conform to their way of thinking a little more, then you'll be allowed to participate in the digital world.
Well, you know what? Silicon Valley can't cancel this movement. Or this rally. Or this congressman.
We have a Second Amendment in this country, and I think we have an obligation to use it.
The Second Amendment, this is a little history lesson for all the fake news media, the Second Amendment is not about, it's not about hunting, it's not about recreation, it's not about sports.
The Second Amendment is about maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does, but it sure is important to recognize the founding principles of this nation and to make sure that they are fully understood.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.