The killer elite

The latest massacre is a reminder

The pseudo-moderate-conservative David French:

I was intending to write about the Georgia Republican primary, but then—just as I was walking back to my hotel—I saw the horrific news out of Uvalde, Texas. Another school shooting. Another elementary school. This time at least 18 children are dead, along with three adults. God have mercy on our broken nation and redeem our broken culture.

I’m definitely not a person to denigrate “thoughts and prayers.” I believe prayer is powerful and effective. We should pray for the victims and their families. Pray for comfort. They are enduring unimaginable pain. Pray for those who treat them and care for them. But we also need to pray for wisdom, because there are things we must do to protect our children from this awful scourge.

And that’s why I’m writing about red flag laws.

(Long, silent scream.)

Red flag laws! As you might imagine, French goes on to tell us that of course wider gun control measures — like banning assault rifles and carrying in most social situations — just can’t possibly work, so we must attempt, if we remember between this massacre and the next one, to get some guns away from some disturbed people under some circumstances.

Which, if you’re sane, might make you say: You mean we’re not doing that already? And no, we’re not, because much more sacred than habeas corpus or the right to a fair and speedy trial or the right to vote (LOL) or your right to choose (ROTFLOL) or any of that shit we pretend to care about is the right to unlimited firearms for anyone who can afford them. French again:

A well-drafted red flag law should contain abundant procedural safeguards, including imposing a burden of proof on the petitioner, hearing requirements, and a default expiration date unless the order is renewed through a clear showing of continued need.

Are you wondering why French is even talking, on the heels of yet another horrific mass gun murder of children, about how limited these proposed laws to keep nutjobs from having guns would be? It’s because even French’s namby-pamby, just-the-tip-Trumper constituency thinks any restriction on universal gun suffrage is inherently socialist-snowflake-gay, and they only tolerate French mentioning it because, from the way he talks about it, it’s clear he’s not really interested, much less excited, about getting it enacted; the tacit understanding is it will never actually get passed in any jurisdiction where Republicans have close enough to 40% of the popular vote to have a clear legislative majority in the hidebound and unrepresentative system we call American Democracy.

I’ve talked myself blue in the face on this subject. I have observed the rich irony of Rudy Giuliani — back when he was still “America’s Mayor,” before he became America’s Gargoyle — losing the 2008 Republican presidential nomination that once seemed his for the asking at least partly because his claim to have saved New York from crime rested on his drive to confiscate illegal guns — which enraged the proto-MAGA hayseeds who thought the solution to any problem should be more guns, and any solution that called for fewer guns was an outrage, and there went President Giuliani.

(No wonder the old bastard was screaming about his crime record at New York’s Israel Day parade last week. Think how intense his frustration must be — that his signal achievement (besides pretending not to have fucked up 9/11) is something he can’t even talk about except in incoherent shrieks because the rubes on whom he relies for such support as he has would turn on him if he mentioned how he achieved it.)

And as we’ve seen from rightwing jurisprudence, conservatives are way less interested in stopping mass gun murders than they are in making more of them in their opponents’ homes, by flooding cities like New York and Washington with guns so we too can enjoy the blessings of liberty — and 1970s street violence statistics — that they associate with freedom.

As I have mentioned, rightwingers don’t want the destruction of abortion rights limited only to the hellholes they govern — they want it also made law for blue states that overwhelmingly don’t want it, because what’s the fun in turning bitches into brood-sows if they have somewhere to escape? Similarly, they don’t just want the streets and malls of red states running red with blood spilled by gun-packing anti-social fuck-ups — they fantasize about forcing the rest of us to suffer it, too, so that whenever some nut shoots up a school there’s an even chance it’ll be full of liberals’ children, and they can say haw haw, see, y’all ain’t no better’n us.

As I have said before, these people — including the thoughts-and-prayer frauds like French — are mad and must be stopped.