Are Republicans Now Ready To Talk About Gun Control? Trump Calls Shooting “Incredible”, Americans Call It Daily – CAFFEINATED POLITICS

After we arrived back home from a weekend birthday dinner with a friend, James was yelled at by a neighbor asking if we had heard the news about Donald Trump being shot at a Pennsylvania rally.  We had not heard as we were at an isthmus restaurant and none in our group is connected 24/7 to any devices.  Upon hearing our neighbor, I yelled out for details.  With the increased rhetoric and vile discourse that has been used in this presidential cycle and the fetishized frenzy too many people have with guns the news, though a shock, was also not unbelievable. This is the United States which has proven a lust for guns that far exceeds a reasoned position about gun control.  As news trickled in from CNN, NPR, and The New York Times it was reported the shooter used an AR-type weapon.  Again, that news also is not unbelievable given the data we have in our nation about these types of shootings by angry white males.

Readers of this blog know of my blunt views about the abhorrent number of gun shootings in our nation and the reason gun violence has increased due to the merchants of death, those being both gun manufacturers and the soulless NRA. I have no respect for the selfish ones who, without even understanding the Second Amendment as originally written and understood, side with their deadly guns over the safety and health of the nation. 

What is especially repugnant is the political aspect of this shooting. I recall, as a boy, when George Wallace was shot, and the senselessness of such violence has never left me. Wallace was severely wounded 52 years ago at a Maryland political rally. I was home the afternoon when President Ronald Reagan was waving and then shot outside a Washington, D.C. hotel.  Again, the madness made no sense to me. The crazy idiotic culture of guns in our nation plays out every day with mass shootings.  Today was different only that a soon-to-be presidential nominee was a target. But let us not forget that over the July 4th weekend in Chicago over 17 people were killed in gun violence. Today is no different as we live in a gun-soaked society.  

That is why it is audacious for Trump to write this evening “It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country.”  No, it is not incredible because the conservatives that Trump placed on the courts refused to do anything in a logical and meaningful way to address gun violence. This deadly outcome with guns is not something that happens only in poor Black sections of urban environments.  They happen in white places like Butler, Pennsylvania, too.

How can Trump say the event tonight was “incredible” when people know, some from reading this blog, that there are more guns than people in this country. The estimate from the Brady Center is there are more than 20 million AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles in private hands. Think about that number and ask yourself why in the world anyone ‘needs’ an assault weapon? So how can it then be “incredible” that someone with such a weapon came after a political figure? As horrific as that is.

I have stated my views following the coup attempt on January 6^th, 2021, that the acceptance of political violence was growing in our land and those in leadership positions needed to lower the temperature.  I have talked with local election officials who fear violence may threaten them as they undertake their roles on Election Day this year. Tonight, another angry and despicable episode resulted from the hate that brewed in the political cauldron. Hate alone is bad enough, Add in the sickness of guns and we are in a very tenuous time as Americans.