I predict the survivors of this shooting will be cited in years to come as the turning point, where the NRA's stranglehold on Congress began to fade. If #Metoo is galvanizing women, this shooting - if this video is an indication - is going to galvanize students and their parents. Any time the pendulum goes too far in one direction, it can start swinging back very quickly.
I urge you to send the link to this video -
https://youtu.be/ZxD3o-9H1lY
- to your US Senators and Congress Member. Just google the name + contact info. If you don't know the name, google [Your State} US Senators Contact Info and [Your Zip Code] US Congress Member Contact Info. Or go to
- this US Senate link that lists all senators and contact info.
- this link gets you your US Representative by zip code.
The forms are quick and easy. If each Senator and Rep get 100 people sending in this video, it will make a difference. 1000 people would be even better.
I'd note my previous post was about Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the woman after whom the high school was named. She is credited with saving the Everglades among other things and died at 108.
I'd like to think that the young woman in this video got some of her passion and courage to act from having a school named after such a powerful and determined role model. (I would just note that I'm sure that during much, if not most, of her life, Marjory Stoneman Douglas didn't think of herself as powerful.)
I submit the problem, thus:
ReplyDeleteThe Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "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."
In its June 26 2015 decision, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment was not so much a 'collective right', but an individual right to keep and bear arms, and that the D.C. provisions banning handguns and requiring firearms in the home disassembled or locked violate this right.
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Steve, I think it's fair to say that there are only a handful of contemporary US Supreme Court decisions which work to divide the Union as grievously as this one.
I can wish all of you the best, but to many outside your borders, the USA certainly doesn't appear a 'shining city upon a hill.'
From a Kurt Eichenwald tweet:
Delete...and if you didn't catch the earlier Scalia quote from the most pro-gun ruling ever:
“Like most rights, the 2d Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep & carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever & for whatever purpose”
Yes, as in permitting limits on 'dangerous speech' or 'fighting words'. What happened to accepting such boundaries, Steve, when it came to the second amendment?
DeleteThe US has long since passed the milestone turning fiction to fact as when Archie Bunker, a television sit-com character, offered his solution of arming all passengers to prevent 'sky-jacked' flights!
And here it is (and more), from IMBd:
DeleteAll in the Family (TV Series)
Archie and the Editorial (1972)
Quotes (showing 4 items)
Gloria Bunker-Stivic: Daddy, did you know that sixty percent of the people murdered in this country in the last ten years were killed by guns?
Archie Bunker: Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?
[Archie is now delivering an editorial on a local TV station]
Archie Bunker: [on TV] Good evening, everybody. This here is Archie Bunker of 704 Hauser Street, veteran of the big war, speaking on behalf of guns for everybody. Now, question: what was the first thing that the Communists done when they took over Russia? Answer: gun control. And there's a lot of people in this country want to do the same thing to us here in a kind of conspiracy, see. You take your big international bankers, they want to - whaddya call - masticate the people of this here nation like puppets on the wing, and then when they get their guns, turn us over to the Commies.
Archie Bunker: [on TV] Now I want to talk about another thing that's on everybody's minds today, and that's your stick-ups and your skyjackings, and which, if that were up to me, I could end the skyjackings tomorrow.
Archie Bunker: [on TV] All you gotta do is arm all your passengers. He ain't got no more moral superiority there, and he ain't gonna dare to pull out no rod. And then your airlines, they wouldn't have to search the passengers on the ground no more, they just pass out the pistols at the beginning of the trip, and they just pick them up at the end! Case closed.
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Indeed, it is.
The Scalia comments were about the Second Amendment, not the First. And the SC denied appeals on bans of open carry and semi assault weapons last November. Not denying we've gone to extremes. But pointing out that when you do go to extremes, it eventually provokes a reaction. And I'm predicting that's what these students represent. Time will tell.
ReplyDelete