Three children, three adults, dead in shooting at Nashville grade school
They’re children, pre-kindergarten to sixth grade. Their ages are unknown at this moment, but even the sixth graders probably weighed less than 100 pounds, the younger kids as little as 50. Their fathers and mothers woke them up this morning and fixed their breakfasts and probably packed a school lunch. Then they drove their children to the Covenant School, a private Christian school associated with the Covenant Presbyterian Church in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, TN, as they’ve have most likely done every day since the school year began last August.
Now three of the children are dead, along with three adults at the school, killed by yet another coward armed with two AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles and a handgun. Every Town for Gun Safety is reporting that this is the 33rd shooting on school grounds this year. The Washington Post reported just this morning that 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings since 2012 were done using AR-15 style rifles. Twenty million of these weapons of mass destruction are in private hands in this country. The Post reports that 1 in 20 American adults own at least one AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, about 16 million people in all.
An AR-15 was used to kill 21 school children and teachers in Uvalde, TX, last year. An AR-15 was used by the shooter in Parkland, Florida, who killed 17 children and adults. A shooter used an AR-15 and a second, back-up weapon to kill 25 churchgoers in Sutherland Springs, TX, in 2017. An AR-15 and another weapon were used to kill 27 grade school children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, in 2012. Multiple AR-15 style rifles, some fitted with so-called bump stocks to make them fire automatically, were used to kill 60 people attending a rock concert in Las Vegas, NV, in 2017.
Last month, according to the Post, Republican Barry Moore of Alabama introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to declare the AR-15 “The National Gun of America.” Well, at least he got the “national” part right, because the AR-15 has been used in all 50 states to murder and maim people, some as young as five and six years old, since Smith & Wesson began selling a version of the AR-15 in 2006. Today, the AR-15 is manufactured by dozens of companies and accounts for billions of dollars in gun sales at prices that begin at $1,000 and go steeply up. The AR-15 is such a “cash cow,” according to the Post, that the private equity firm Cerberus Capitol Management bought several gun-makers and combined them as the “Freedom Group.” One of its AR-15 manufacturers, DPMS Panther Arms, accounts for more than $100 million in sales of the gun every year, according to the Post.
With three more grade school children in Nashville lying dead, and others in critical condition at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, you have to wonder what all these men who own gun manufacturers think about the weapons they sell that have been used to kill so many American children. I’m sure they think about their profits, because Cerberus Capital Management freely provided the $100 million figure they make selling versions of the AR-15 manufactured by DPMS.
But when they lie their heads down at night, do they think of the dead bodies their guns leave on the floors of grade schools and Walmarts and nightclubs and churches and synagogues? Do they think of the parents and brothers and sisters grieving for the dead children who never got a chance to start their lives, much less live them into old age? Do they think of the costs of all those funerals? The costs of caring for gravely wounded children who will not be able to care for themselves for the rest of their lives?
To the gun manufacturers and the gun owners and the politicians like Barry Moore in Alabama, it’s all about the “freedom” granted by an utterly bogus conservative interpretation of the Second Amendment to buy and own and carry without licensing these deadly weapons of mass destruction.
It would be nice if all these right-wing gun nuts started to think about the freedom of children to attend school without fear, the freedom of synagogue and churchgoers to worship without someone walking in the door and shooting them dead just because he – and it’s almost always a “he” – had the right to buy one of these nightmarish weapons.
Have a look at the AR-15 pictured above, one of those made by DPMS Panther Arms. Does that look like a weapon of war, or a gun anyone should be able to own and keep on a wall or in a closet in their homes?
What manner of madness is it that on a Monday morning we are once again confronted with the incredibly tragic fact that more school children have died at the hands of a maniac, and lawmakers are not only doing nothing, but proposing laws to celebrate the weapon of mass destruction that brings death and destruction by design?
It will never be enough. They just don't care. They claim abortion is child murder (a cluster of brainless cells) but the real murder, the gunning down in cold blood of children and innocent adults are not.
Mass murder is acceptable. Abortion is not. Special place in hell for them.
Understand this: Gun manufacturers don't make and sell these weapons because the manufacturers are evil. Rather, they are amoral, literally without moral restraint. They make and sell these weapons because they want to make money, and they make lots of money. This illustrates the cruel heart of capitalism: it has no moral dimension. It exalts greed, a deadly sin according to the Catholics. But not all capitalists are bad people, you say? True enough, but that is because some temper their capitalism with moral restraint.
We in the USA are the most capitalist of the western democracies, so we suffer most from the absence of moral restraint. The gun manufacturer, the middle man, the gun store owner, the paid-off politicians, they all profited from the blood of those victims, as the laws of capitalism says they should.