CNN Re-Ups False 22 School Shootings Stat
Is this the apple or the banana? . . .
The list of school shootings used by CNN and other news outlets, however, wildly exaggerates the number by lumping in accidental firearm discharges, domestic disputes, and events that don’t involve students with the active shooter situations that most people don’t lump into the specific category of school shootings.
CNN’s list includes one shooting incident in Alabama where one person was injured at an on-campus apartment building. Another shooting at Savannah State University in Georgia is counted despite the fact that the two people involved were not students.
JJ Watt to pay for funerals of Santa Fe shooting victims
There’s Colin Kaepernick, and then there’s . . .
Houston Texans superstar JJ Watt pledged to pay for funerals of all victims from Friday’s school massacre, the NFL team said.
Shortly after gunfire erupted at Santa Fe High School, Watt tweeted: “Absolutely horrific.”
Watt is renowned for his civic involvement, having led fundraising efforts following Hurricane Harvey. He intended to raise $200,000 but ended up with $37 million.
Surge in armed police at schools
This story ran the day before Santa Fe . . .
Five years after NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre urged schools to increase security there has been a surge in those with armed police to nearly 50 percent of all primary and secondary schools in the nation.
According to the report from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 65 percent of secondary schools and 36 percent of primary schools have a “sworn law enforcement officer,” and most are armed.
A new Pew Research Center analysis of the data shows that despite some public outcry about stationing cops in schools, communities around the nation have been doing that for 10 years.
We’d guess the trend will only accelerate.
Angry Parkland dad makes bold proposal on MSNBC to bring the NRA to its knees
Well, that’s one plan . . .
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was gunned down in Parkland, Florida, called in to MSNBC to push for a more direct strategy: curb the NRA’s ability to buy off politicians, who are then too cowed by the gun lobby to pass meaningful reforms.
“We have irresponsible pathetic leaders who are letting it be that way, but it is changing on local levels. Laws are changing in cities, in states, every day right now. What’s happening is the NRA is suing all of those states and cities for doing it. So, here’s what you do,” Guttenberg says. “Every city, every state should go pass gun safety legislation now. Force the NRA to file a lawsuit all over this country against everybody.”
Every day that we fail to act on gun violence, we are failing our children. This should be a day for soul searching across America – and that soul searching should be matched with legislating to begin dealing with this national shame.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 18, 2018
Hillary Clinton’s Santa Fe Shooting Tweet Doesn’t Hold Back At All
Even the left is sick and tired of Hil, not that it makes one bit of difference to her . . .
Clinton, 70, has been a staunch proponent of gun control reform for years, dating back to her time as a senator from New York. During the 2016 presidential campaign, she ran on reinstating the assault weapons ban, expanding background checks, and restricting people suffering from mental illness from being able to purchase firearms. …
In short, Clinton was undeniably the most pro-gun control candidate in the race, much more so than then-candidate Donald Trump, and also more so than her primary opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who drew criticism for his relatively softer record on guns and gun manufacturers.
I’ve covered gun violence for years. The solutions aren’t a big mystery.
When you want answers to the really big questions, turn to Vox . . .
If the fundamental problem is that America has far too many guns, then policies need to cut the number of guns in circulation right now to seriously reduce the number of gun deaths. Background checks and other restrictions on who can buy a gun can’t achieve that in the short term. What America likely needs, then, is something more like Australia’s mandatory buyback program — essentially, a gun confiscation scheme — paired with a serious ban on specific firearms (including, potentially, all semiautomatic weapons).
But no one in Congress is seriously proposing something that sweeping. The Manchin-Toomey bill, the only gun legislation in Congress after Sandy Hook that came close to becoming law, didn’t even establish universal background checks. Recent proposals have been even milder, taking small steps like banning bump stocks or slightly improving the existing system for background checks.
Part of the holdup is the Second Amendment. While there is reasonable scholarly debate about whether the Second Amendment actually protects all Americans’ individual right to bear arms and prohibits stricter forms of gun control, the reality is the Supreme Court and US lawmakers — backed by the powerful gun lobby, particularly the NRA — widely agree that the Second Amendment does put barriers on how far restrictions can go. That would likely rule out anything like the Australian policy response short of a court reinterpretation or a repeal of the Second Amendment, neither of which seems likely.
.@CNN, why no town hall for the #SantaFe school shooting?
Is it because he didn’t use an AR-15 and the community supports the Second Amendment?
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) May 20, 2018
I support the real 2nd Amendment, not the imaginary 2nd Amendment.
And the real #2A isn’t absolute. It allows Congress to wake up to reality and ban these assault rifles that are designed for one purpose only – to kill as many people as fast as possible.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 19, 2018
.@MomsDemand is going to make sure an @NRA A-rating isn’t a badge of honor, but a scarlet letter. November is coming…
Text ACT to 64433. pic.twitter.com/jTS5yd30QM
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) May 19, 2018
