Tuesday’s horror naturally brought to mind the similar event ten years ago in Newtown, CT when 20-year-old Adam Lanza went on a shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He killed twenty of the school’s children and six teachers, then shot himself. Before setting out on his rampage he’d shot and killed his mother, with whom he lived. Lanza’s parents had separated when he was nine; he hadn’t seen his father for two years.
The killer in Texas this week was 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. The town was Uvalde, TX; the school, Robb Elementary. Ramos killed nineteen children and two adults before being shot dead by a Border Patrol agent. Before setting out on his rampage Ramos had shot his grandmother, although not fatally. He lived with the grandmother because his mother had thrown him out.
Aside from noting these obvious parallels I can’t think of much to say that I didn’t say ten years ago about the Sandy Hook massacre—listen here.
I’m skeptical of talk about causes and solutions. I don’t believe this is a zone of cause and effect, of problem and solution: I think this is a zone of chaos; a zone where stuff happens, without any rhyme or reason we can comprehend at the present state of our knowledge.
For sure, the event itself is not an issue on which any sane person can take sides. There is no argument to be made for the mass murder of little children. Even in the worst extremes of total war, where things can get pretty indiscriminate, the deliberate targeting of children is beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior, by common agreement among civilized peoples.
The main thing I’d change: my 2012 description of the NRA as “one of the best-organized and most effective lobbies in our political life.”
I’m still an NRA member and I still donate when I can, but they have foolishly gotten themselves into legal tangles [The lawsuit seeking to impose the “death penalty” on the NRA, explained, by Ian Millhiser, Vox, May 13, 2021] that I believe with good sense, good accounting, and foresight they could have avoided. I doubt those tangles will end with the NRA being dissolved, but it will be less able to stand as first line of defense for our Second Amendment rights.
That’s a big blow to our rights just by itself. The power-hungry government gun-grabbers will worm their way into any cracks in our defenses, and right now the NRA is showing a lot of cracks.
The Uvalde killings actually illustrated some of our favorite Second Amendment talking-points. For example, we have all enjoyed the quip: “Call for the cops, call for a pizza delivery, see which one gets to you first.”
Click for Full Text!