Guns, Guns and more Guns

I’d been working on a post about the shooting of a local 16 year old by 2 Dayton Police officers. ^[1] It was a struggle to put my thoughts into words that would move the conversation forward. That post is on hold for right now. The question we need to answer as a nation is are we safer with our “2nd Amendment Rights” or something entirely different.

I have a very clear position on gun control on my congressional site ^[2]. It includes some of the most convincing advertising that’s been made that advocates for new gun control initiatives.

And, then, some 20 year old climbs up on a roof outside a Trump rally, lines the former president up in his sights (at this point we don’t know if he was working with a scope or iron sights) and he manages to kill a volunteer firefighter, severely wound 2 other folks, and does a body mod on Trumps ear.

As far as we know, Thomas Matthew Crooks had no military training, so he was never part of “a well regulated militia ^[3]” and yet, here he was on a path to change history before a Secret Service counter-sniper ^[4] killed him. I’m sure we’ll learn more about misguided Tommy, his weapon, the failings of the Secret Service, and we’ll wonder why when bystanders tried to warn local cops that there was a guy on the roof- they didn’t act.

This is the first US political assassination attempt of a President/Presidential candidate in the social media age. But, hardly the first time that an AR15 was involved in a shooting of consequence. We had a mass shooting in Dayton in 2019 in the Oregon district ^[5]with a variation of the same weapon.

As an Army veteran who has experience with not just the M16 (the military version of the AR15), I spent a few days on a range at Ft Bragg (Now Ft. Liberty) with every weapon from every country on the planet- testing a new type of optical site from a company named Aimpoint ^[6]. I got to fire everything from MAC-10’s and H&K MP5K’s to M2 50 cal tripod mount machine gun and even a M40 105mm recoilless rifle (the sighting round was a 20mm shell). None of these weapons have any civilian use or need. They are all weapons of war, and no matter what some “patriots” think, we aren’t celebrating the 4th of July because citizens had access to military grade weapons. The weapons available to those who were fighting in 1776 don’t compare to anything we shoot today. And anyone who thinks that their AR15 with a bump stock, an extended clip, is any match for the US Army is clueless. There is no legitimate need for our citizens to have any semi-automatic weapons- except that everyone else has them- and one day this whole country may erupt in one giant blaze of glory.

Frankly, if little Tommy Crooks had brought a bolt action .308, with a decent scope- and knew anything about shooting, he would have had better odds at turning Trumps head into an exploding pumpkin. Luckily for all of us, Tommy’s daddy who supplied the AR15 to him, wasn’t smart enough to know this.

The US Secret Service Counter Snipers don’t mess around with AR15s, they use a really big gun, you can read about it here ^[7]. The facts are, once again, the Secret Service is in some serious hot water (they are still smarting from the deleted texts from Jan 6, 2021 ^[8]), you know that saying “you had one job.” Well, it’s pretty clear they somehow failed their job yesterday.

The immediate outpouring of rhetoric from leaders that political assassination isn’t a good look for America- and not the way we roll, was not because they cared about Trump- but that they know this country is one giant powder keg, much of it thanks to Trump’s divisive theatrics. Remember, on Jan 6th as the crowd was gathering Trump was told that the entry point magnetometers were detecting people with weapons and they were being sent away. Trump wanted the magnetometers removed so he could have a larger crowd. He said those people weren’t there to harm him- but, if they took out his VP, well, that’s another story.

Now, we’re starting to look like every other banana republic in the world, where political assassination is the norm not the exception. We’ve already had Gabby Giffords shot while talking to constituents ^[9], Steve Scalise was shot playing baseball ^[10], and there have been 15 members of Congress that were killed going back to 1827. The question should be, is this the kind of country we want to live in?

Although my social media feed is far from a good sampling, I have a cross section of friends and the number of them saying they are “More MAGA” after this event makes me even more sure that Biden is done. Trump, being the master media manipulator made sure to take advantage of his situation to project strength under fire- something that will cement his win in November compared to Biden’s bumbling delivery of almost everything lately. The fact that Biden already called Trump his VP accidentally in his UN Summit presser ^[11], should have been the final nail in his campaign’s coffin. Now a single round from an AR15 piercing Trump’s ear was like a thermonuclear bomb destroying Biden’s entire campaign.

There’s no question our “system” of selecting leaders has become a shit show, with money interfering at every twist and turn. We’ve got crooks like Bob Menendez ^[12] and imposters like George Santos ^[13], we’ve got Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas ^[14] taking liberties with ethics, and old farts like Mitch McConnell ^[15]having mini-strokes, and Dianne “just say Aye” Feinstein being told how to vot ^[16]e, and and then we have Trump who tells us everything is rigged and that all news is fake (almost every speech he gives).

What happened to an America we can believe in, stand up for, and that is a government of the people and for the people? How did we get so far away from the ideals that this country once had?

Do we really want to use guns to decide our elections? Do they really make us safer (absolutely not ^[17])? What would happen if we did an Australia and implemented real gun control ^[18]? What kind of country do you want to live in?

This is the pivotal point for our country, and if the Democrats have any sense at all, tomorrow, while Trump basks in his glory and announces his running mate, the Dems spoil his party and announce a new ticket, with a clear platform built to start protecting American’s from guns, predatory health care, systematic inequity, and most of all, from the divisions that are tearing our country apart.

I still think that we need to firmly put Jan 6th into our rear window- and I’d love to see former Rep Adam Kinzinger ^[19] (a military veteran)on a bi-partisan ticket as VP for his heroic work on the Jan 6th committee , and either Gretchen Whitmer ^[20] or Pete Buttigieg ^[21] (another veteran) at the top of the ticket. It’s time to bring true anti-Trump messengers to the lead- from a younger generation, with a mission and a vision of a truly different kind of America, one where elections aren’t decided out of a barrel of a gun.

The song for this post: Gun’s aren’t America’s answer. I wrote it, I made it.