Disgusting

Survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting are speaking out, and gun fanatics don't like it. In Florida, condemning pornography was deemed more important than banning assault weapons.

The students have been shamefully attacked. Two were accused of being "actors that travel to various crises when they happen". A video spreading conspiracy theories had to be removed from YouTube. A Texas district threatened to suspend protesters.

And the cowards in government don't give a shit about trying to stop mass shootings. They've decided that any number of deaths, every few weeks or so, is simply the price to pay for an imaginary "freedom".

Update (February 24):  Andrew O'Hehir applauds teenagers for opposing inaction and cynicism.

It was profoundly satisfying to see [Dear Leader] and Marco Rubio and NRA spokesbot Dana Loesch and various Fox News talking heads taken completely off guard, as a narrative they thought they understood spun out of control. How dare these kids express forceful and angry opinions, instead of weeping incoherently in the parking lot or organizing silent prayer vigils? The far-right conspiracy theories describing the Parkland young people and others like them as “crisis actors” — as far as I know, a term Alex Jones simply made up — is both a projection and an admission of weakness. Anyone who challenges the increasingly elaborate fictions through which the American right constructs its worldview must themselves be fictional.

Update (February 28):  Cody Fenwick reports on polls showing more enthusiasm on the side of gun control advocates.

Update (March 14):  One month after the Parkland, Florida shooting, thousands of students held walkouts all over the country to protest gun violence. Listening to a news report reminded me that among the schools participating are several with their own victims to commemorate.

Update (March 15):  Jeremy Adam Smith discusses a study that finds half of the guns in the U.S. are owned by only three percent of the population--and they are stockpiling even more.

The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives.

Update (March 23):  Hundreds of thousands of students are expected at the March For Our Lives.

Update (March 25):  Even as they uphold the interests of the gun manufacturers, the NRA claims to be the group truly concerned with children's safety.

Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.

Update (March 26):  The disgusting smears against teenagers continues.

[T]he right is attempting to weaponize the Parkland survivor's newfound fame in the form of a photoshopped image of her tearing up a copy of the U.S. Constitution.

Update (March 27):  John Paul Stevens criticizes a 2008 Supreme Court decision that prevented Washington, D.C. from enforcing strict gun control for constitutional reasons.

Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the NRA’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.

Update (March 29):  Fearless indeed.

Several companies announced Thursday that they were pulling the plug on advertising during Laura Ingraham’s show after the Fox News host bashed a teen survivor of the Parkland school shooting.

The companies’ announcements came a day after Ingraham mocked David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for not getting accepted into a few of the colleges he’d applied to.

In response, Hogg called on people to pressure a dozen companies to remove their ads from Ingraham’s programs.

Hogg and his 14-year-old sister, Lauren, responded to Ingraham’s attack Wednesday night, calling out the Fox News host for cyberbullying students.

Update (July 25):  After a mass shooting, Toronto seeks to ban the sale of all handguns.