In the Republican imagination, shared most notoriously by Trump, video games have somehow come to surpass killer-diller automatic weapons as the instrumental cause in the American sport of Gun Massacre. Let studies and experts show that video games produce violence at about the same rate as brushing your teeth, the right-wing (Trump plus the entire Republican party) covets this ridiculous whipping boy. Not out of righteous indignation but because of intellectual and moral degeneracy (and also money from the NRA).
Another familiar love-the-gun sidestep is to call virtuously for better mental health treatment. This one really taxes my memory, as I go in search of a time when Republicans have issued a clarion call for better and more widely accessible public mental health clinics. Even now, under the pressure of El Paso and Dayton, I’m sure Republicans would say to themselves, “Yes, but not publicly-supported; let’s keep it in the private sector.”
Another warmed-up chestnut is background checks. Strengthen these and you are supposed to detect and reject those who are insane or have a criminal record. But although these shooters are surely some species of “crazy,” you’d be hard-pressed to find them clinically insane. As for criminal records, El Paso Gunner and Dayton Gunner don’t seem to have them; what they have is guns and manifestos. And what about those guns — those endlessly repeating, high-volume killing automatics? It’s a deadly absurdity that any American civilian should possess one.
In the ugliest possible response, Trump is visiting El Paso. This is not a trip of commiseration; it’s indecent piece of effrontery, a twisting of the knife.
P.S. Aspenites, as I’m sure they know, are going to wait in vain for those for four figures Trump stable boy Pence owes you. Chief mount Trump owes El Paso in the six figures.
By the way, Aspenites, as I’m sure they know, are going wait in vain.
David Chamberlain
Denver