The Gun Industry Wants America’s Malls and Schools to Be War Zones
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Gun Industry Wants America’s Malls and Schools to Be War Zones
The bodies pile up. Republicans say it’s in God’s hands. And the new weapons coming to market are even deadlier. There’s only one logical conclusion.
Steven Spainhouer’s son worked at the H & M at the Allen, Texas outlet mall and called his father Saturday night when the shooting started. Spainhouer raced to the scene and arrived before the first responders. And here is the sight that greeted him : “The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes, so I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side, and she had no face.”
That’s not a scene from a shopping zone. That’s a scene from the Normandy invasion recreation in Saving Private Ryan . It’s a scene from a war zone. But lately in the United States of America, shopping zones are war zones .
For the record, it’s the 199 th mass shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive . The 200 th will happen today, or maybe has already happened between the time you’ve read this. We’re on pace for close to 600 shootings, and perhaps 60,000 willful, malicious, or accidental deaths (there’ve been 20,200 so far this year, according to the GVA, in the first four months-and-one-week of 2023). That 60,000 is roughly equal to the number of Americans who died in Vietnam in nearly a decade. We’ll witness the same amount of carnage in one year. Shopping zones are war zones.
But it would seem that little girl getting her face blown off as if she lived in Stalingrad in 1943 is just God’s will. This was the verdict of the Congressman who represents Allen, Republican Keith Self, who went on CNN after the shooting. He offered his prayers. The anchor interjected that some people think “prayers aren’t cutting it.” Self responded: “Well, those are people that don’t believe in an almighty God who is absolutely in control of our lives. I’m a Christian. I believe that He is.”
Self, we should note, is about as accidental a Congressman as a person can be. In 2022, he challenged GOP incumbent Van Taylor in the primary. Taylor was seemingly headed toward a win when, two days before the primary, an Alex Jones-founded far-right web site published an interview with a woman who claimed that she and Taylor had been having an affair. The woman was the wife of an American who had joined the Islamic State in 2013 and had been dubbed the “ISIS bride” by British tabloids. The revelation helped keep Taylor just below the 50 percent threshold required for a primary win. The next day, he withdrew. (I’d love to know the details behind all that!) Self cruised to victory.
And now, Self gets to use his perch as a duly elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives to say with a straight face that there is nothing we can or should do about these massacres. God will sort it out.
Governor Greg Abbott, meanwhile, offered the usual pointless bromides : “unspeakable tragedy,” “our hearts are with” the people of Allen. Well, at least, as of Sunday afternoon, he hadn’t gone out of his way to discuss anyone’s immigration status, as he did the previous week after the Cleveland, Texas shooting, when he took pains to note the status of both the shooter and the victims.
Yes, that shooting, which left six dead, was just eight days before this one. What thoughts are exploding in the mind and conscience of a man who presides over such carnage and does nothing? From the evidence, Abbott’s only thoughts are in the direction of how he can create the conditions for more girls to get their faces blown off. In 2021, Texas passed a law allowing Texans to carry guns in public without a permit or the licensing a permit would require, and another law prohibiting state agencies and local governments from enforcing new federal gun rules (you read that right—prohibiting).
He called this “freedom.” I wonder what that little girl’s parents think of this definition of freedom.
There’s a bill pending in the current session that would actually close a small loophole in teen mental health reporting that might have some vague impact on gun accessibility. The senate passed it, but it languishes in the house . The legislative session ends May 29.
Meanwhile, newer and deadlier guns are coming on the market at a steady pace. That’s right: If you thought gun manufacturers might hit pause on all this, think again. After all, there’s a market out there, and it’s booming.
Last year, for example, saw the introduction to the U.S. market of the Sig Sauer MCX Spear, the “civilian version” of the U.S. Army’s new XM7 rifle. Have a gander at this beast . It retails for $4,200, so it’s probably not within the reach of your average mass murderer.
But your mass murderer of above-average means will find a lot to like. It is, according to some reports I read, twice as powerful as an AR-15 , and it’s specifically designed to tear through Kevlar or any other supposedly bullet-proof material. (If the Uvalde police were too scared to intervene in that town’s school shooting, just wait until this weapon permeates the market.)
The great Michael Daly of The Daily Beast was on this story last year . This lengthy quote he extracted from a former firearms executive turned policy analyst is worth taking in: “There’s been this huge craze in shooting competitions to become a thousand-yard sniper. A lot of people want to be that long-range, thousand-yard sniper. Like they literally fantasize about taking some guy out from a mile away, because the gun will shoot a mile. You don’t hear it coming, you don’t see the shooter. The bullet just hits somebody. And this MCX Spear will essentially introduce that kind of capability to the semi-auto AR-15 world. All of a sudden, people will be able to kind of live out their fantasy of becoming a long-range sniper with an AR-15-style gun.”
This is the truth about where we are. The gun industry is bringing to market weapons capable of dispensing more death, in more violent fashion. Republican members of Congress say it’s in God’s hands, not theirs. And malls and schools are war zones. One witness in Allen was quoted by The New York Times as saying: “It was just kind of chaotic for a second. Then when someone said, ‘shooter,’ we all ran to the back of the store. As Americans, we’re used to this, because everyone knew exactly what to do.”
There’s only one logical conclusion to be drawn from all this. This is the America gun manufacturers, the NRA, and right-wing politicians want: a country where we know that any trip to the mall involves a certain rolling of the dice. After all, that’s freedom.
Michael Tomasky is the editor of The New Republic.
A lot of these things will be sold. MAGA's will take their kids college fund money and use it to buy the latest "toy".
That quote was written by a dumbass that has probably never fired a gun in his life. He has no idea how much practice it takes to be able to hit a target from that type of distance. Or the amount of effort that it would take to get a clean shot. Then there is the tiny problem of not being spotted while you are lining up that all critical shot. Followed by the noise of the weapon- which will be substantial- giving the shooter's position away. This is not a weapon that can be easily hid either. But it is a gun grabbers worst nightmare. With Hollywood making it look so damn easy and cool!
If people just want them for target practice, why not have all of them owned by the shooting range and "customers" rent them by the hour. Then you dont get to take it off site.
With that type of weapon it will be customized to the hilt. Special scopes, triggers, etc. Not to mention that each shooter will have it set up on siting to their specific needs. Guns like that are used in long range shooting competitions. No one is going to rent a gun from a range and expect to be competitive.
No shooting range is going to take the liability of having weapons that cost that much and are that specialized on their premises at all times. The insurance and security needed alone would ruin them. Not to mention they would be the target of every criminal, and gang, under the sun looking to make a quick buck on the black market.
Please quit while you are way the hell behind.
Once enough of those guns get into the hands of the public, they will be used to kill people for "sport".
Remember the Las Vegas massacre? People were being shot with no idea where the bullets were coming from.
You really, really, really, don't know jack about guns.
My friends think my knowledge of guns is bad; but at least I am willing to learn.
There goes your notion that they didn't know where the bullets were coming from! Think about how many lives were saved if officers wouldn't have waited for 15 minutes before proceeding to the shooter's floor?
Also, the shooter didn't need precision weaponry- he was on the 32nd floor overlooking the concert. He used a semi automatic weapon with a bump stock. Accuracy wasn't even a concern! It was point in the general direction and pull the trigger. The packed concert victims did much of the damage for the shooter by trampling each other trying to get away.
I'll be voting on the president's performance in office and nothing else.
I am not answering any questions, so dont ask me any. This is an opinion forum, if you have an opinion of your own on the topic feel free to express it.
If you ask me questions after I said I'm not answering any questions your comment will be deleted.
newrepublic.com /article/171784/grim-truth-war-guns-lost
The Grim Truth: The War on Guns Is Lost
Brynn Tannehill 7-9 minutes 4/9/2023
I wrote this article long before the latest mass shooting that just happened, this time in Louisville , Kentucky, because we all know the pattern, and it never changes. There’s a mass shooting and dead innocents, often children. Angry calls for Republicans to do something, and nothing gets done. The incident fades from the 24-hour news cycle, and we resume the waiting game for the next one. It’s Sisyphus with a boulder that rolls downhill and crushes him over and over for eternity.
That’s something that people who support gun control measures need to understand: The war is lost. There is no conceivable way for things to change for the better within the next 20 to 30 years, short of a national divorce. There is no way to change hearts and minds of Republicans or the courts. There is no way to change who is in office in most states. There is no way to replace who sits on the courts quickly or change conservative disdain for stare decisis.
In reality, mass shootings will only become more and more common over the next few years as Republicans have decided that the only solution to gun violence is adding as many guns as possible to the mix.
At the state level, gerrymandering ensures that red states will never put in place elected representatives who would pass gun control. With the primary system as it is, there is zero chance that Republican primaries in these states would suddenly start producing candidates who would support limiting access to guns, much less taking away assault rifles.
In blue states, they already know that there is no hope that the courts will uphold the laws they pass. The Supreme Court effectively overturned the California law that limited magazine size, after ruling in 2022 that states can do little to prevent anyone from buying a gun in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen . The conservative Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, ruled in 2023 that the Second Amendment prevents the government from taking guns from people under restraining orders for committing domestic violence . Nor is the government allowed to prevent them from buying guns.
Some Republicans still want to pretend that they’re engaging with the subject seriously: blaming mental health issues, video games, lack of prayer in schools, and transgender people for mass shootings. But this is simply a distraction: Other countries have all those things, but they don’t have mass shootings. The United States is the only country where people have such ready access to hundreds of millions of firearms, and we are the only country where mass shootings happen with such grim regularity.
The only solution proposed by Republicans is “more guns,” which is the modern equivalent of “No, no. Dig UP, stupid! ” Proposals to arm teachers are obviously infeasible: If you don’t give teachers immunity from prosecution and lawsuits, they won’t carry and nothing changes. And if you do give them qualified immunity like cops, then you have the same problem you do with police: namely teachers blowing away mouthy eighth graders (who would be disproportionately Black or Hispanic), which is even worse than the status quo.
Anyone who actually understands the issue knows: It’s the guns, stupid. Which is why in moments of candor Republicans tell the truth: “ We’re not gonna fix it. ” The Biden administration admitted there’s nothing else feasible that can be accomplished given the structure in place that guarantees nothing can, or will, be done. And the truth is, they’re correct.
Republicans have no intention of doing anything because they’d get primaried if they did. And even if some Republicans agreed to try something, they’d need 60 votes to overcome the filibuster in a Senate where the system of apportionment gives Republicans a +7 advantage in elections (i.e., the Democrats would need to win the national vote by seven points every year just to keep the Senate 50–50, and win by more than 15 points over three election cycles to get to 60 votes).
So substantive federal legislation is nigh impossible, but even if it did manage to get through the House, Senate, and White House, it would have to survive a Supreme Court that has already made it clear that it is not going to allow the government to come between people and unfettered access to weapons of war. These Supreme Court rulings will stand for decades. It is unlikely that anyone reading this will be alive when (and if) the Supreme Court ever reverses itself on gun laws. Any measure that survives both the legislative process and the courts cannot conceivably be substantive enough to have an effect.
But even if you take this scenario a further order of magnitude into fantasy, there is still the reality that there are 400 million unregistered guns in this country, and 20 million of them are AR-15s. That’s more guns than are possessed by the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security , and police departments combined. That’s more than all the guns manufactured by the U.S. in World War II. Any attempt to register this staggering array of weapons, much less take them away, is an impossible task with owners who are largely unwilling to comply.
At the same time, red states have gone all in on weaponizing our society. We’re seeing permitless concealed carry, open carry, allowances to carry in more places, ending gun-free zones, laws banning red-flag laws; all the while, the number of guns in circulation keeps rising by the millions, year after year after year. Republicans keep insisting that the solution to gun violence is more guns, and they’re going to keep going with that theory no matter what the results are.
This is a one-way ratchet: The path going forward has only one possible outcome. More guns, less regulation of their lethality, and less government authority over who owns them. Predicting the results is tragically easy: more lethality, more frequent mass shootings, more deaths per mass shooting, and more piles of dead children.
For those advocating gun control, you can be civil if it makes you feel morally superior. You can be uncivil if it makes you feel better. You’ll get the same results either way: namely, nothing. I admire those working to try to change these policies. But it is counterproductive to pretend that there is a “normal” political or legal solution: Things are only going to get worse for at least the next 20 to 30 years, if not more, based on the stacked political system and the courts. The system is broken, and it is not fixable in any meaningful sense.
Short of a national divorce, there is nothing that can be done at this point. Mass shootings, and the accompanying piles of dead bodies, are as American as Mom and apple pie. Continuing to pretend that our current system can fix this is tantamount to accepting the status quo. This is going to upset a lot of people and make them angry. I could be wrong; I’m not a psychic. However, no one has proposed a plausible way to get meaningful gun reform through. It’s not for lack of trying either: Every effort for the past decade has failed despite public outcry after each horrific mass shooting. If there was a way, someone would have already found it. But the truth hurts when it means changing your whole worldview: that the war is lost, and your country cannot be saved from not only what it has become but what it chooses to be.
Dystopia here we come.
More mass shootings than days in America defines "dystopian!"
I think that just about covers where we are headed.
The only reason for a gun that can fire more than three rounds without reloading is to kill lots of people. A hunter doesn't need more than three rounds. A target shooter doesn't need more than three rounds.
A mass murderer needs more than three rounds.
America loves its mass murderers
Another completely ignorant comment.
You're right. Not all of America loves its mass murderers. Just the ammosexuals. That's tens of millions, still...
How many ammophobes do we have, Bob?
I don't know what that is.
I think it means you afraid of being shot. s/
Ammophobe - Any individual with an unrealistic fear of legal gun ownership, guns, ammo, magazines, sights, stocks, slings, ...
I know that I have an ear out for gunfire every time I go to a mall.
Ear out?
You will hear any shot close enough to hurt you without having to try to hear it.
Learn English.
Do you think I hat I’m a victim of a public school education?
I neither know nor care.
You are beginning to bore me.
That’s a shame, my apologies.
This whole article belies the very idea of honest and law abiding gun owners who have never done anything wrong, but the anti gun lobby would punish them just for being gun owners. Disgusting and pathetic! They won't be happy until the 2nd Amendment is completely rescinded.
"all the while, the number of guns in circulation keeps rising by the millions, year after year after year."
This is the fault of the idiot Democrats because of their sympathy for the criminals and their refusal to prosecute them and also for their failure to enforce existing gun laws. The people realize the Dems don't care about the safety of the citizens who in turn arm themselves resulting in more guns.
As usual, I see no solutions being offered by the virtue signaling leftists. Just mindless hate filled blaming.
It means a Constitutional Amendment.
For some reason, I don't they like the Constitution.
Very much looks that way.
We dont need a constitutional amendment, we need a non far right Supreme Court.
Lets have a liberal Supreme Court and we will see how long it takes for assault weapons to be banned.
No, it means a different interpretation of the 2nd. The current interpretation would allow private citizens to hold nuclear weapons. So it's obvious that a limit is needed. The question is, where to set the limit.
Three rounds before reloading. More than three rounds are needed only for killing people.
You mean a Constitution trashing leftist Supreme Court.
Democrats already failed once at packing the Supreme Court. If voters are smart they will never give them another opportunity.
"The current interpretation would allow citizens to hold nuclear weapons."
That's really going out on a thin limb there Bob. Please enlighten us as to where it says exactly that in the 2nd Amendment.
That's not how it works. Currently, there is no restriction whatsoever on the right to keep and bear arms. So nukes, poison gas, ... whatever.
How much does N Korea charge for a nuke?
Please try assembling or bringing a nuclear weapon in(to) the US and see what happens.
Better still try buying the materials to create plastique in enough quantity to make any type of large bomb. Ask US farmers what regular visits from the FBI are like since many use that explosive for stump removal.
Poison gas? Better damn well have a black market source for the raw materials; because the FBI knows the materials used and tracks them.
Why not just go for a fully functional M1Abrams tank with depleted uranium shells while you are at it?
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the Scalia led court in 2008 (the Heller decision) interpreted the language of the second amendment to fit the conservative agenda. The language of the second amendment is wide open to interpretation. If a future court bans assault weapons they wont be trashing the constitution, they will be giving the current understanding of it.
When the Amendment was written, personal firearms were single-shot.
I'll go for the A-10 "Warthog" myself!
A ground soldier’s best friend,
The only difficulty is finding a seller. There are lots of old Soviet ground-attack aircraft still flying in Latin America, so perhaps...
Exactly, and abortion was common law legal if before fetal movement was detected.
Surprisingly, abortion become criminalized at the urging the medical establishment.
De you have a point? Other than that time passes?
Do you? Waiting for some practical common sense solutions that really might work,
Then you have the problem of all the weapons in the hands of criminals, terrorists, cartels...etc.
No more than your point in 6.1.12
And Africa.
I suppose...
Yep. Along with the AH-64 Apache and the AH-1Z Zulu Cobra!