The fish are in the barrel.
The kids are back in school.
—and in Winder, Georgia a few days ago, a 14-year old boy with a gun went fish hunting. He killed four.
It’s the 45th school shooting this year, the 385th mass shooting in the United States.
Newsweek has counted 2,034 school shootings in this country since 2004. California has had the most, 169. Texas has had 141, to rank second. In today’s culture, these numbers should not be unexpected; they’re our two most populous states.
A few days ago—September 7—the Associated Press reported the Georgia incident was the 30th mass shooting of 2024, producing 131 deaths. Four or more people have to die to be considered a “mass shooting” as compiled by the AP and USA Today, working in conjunction with Northeastern University. Last year was one of the deadliest on record, 42 incidents, 217 deaths..
It might surprise some people to hear someone such as Jennifer Briemann say it’s time to take school security seriously. Briemann is the Deputy Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. But she also tells Newsweek “The reality is that the proposals put forth by those who wish to disarm law-abiding citizens would not have prevented this senseless tragedy in Georgia.”
The rhetoric remains unchanged. So do the school shootings. There is a place for reasonable, pragmatic discussions—but they can’t happen as long as the political parties talk at each other instead of to each other.
A six-year-old video has re-emerged in the wake of the latest killings. It is an example of ongoing political unwillingness to confront this issue, the tendency to divert attention away from it, and the tendency to hide behind an illogical argument.
On March 24, 2018, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, whose critics consider her one of the nuttier members of Congress, decided to drive to Carbondale, Colorado where students were taking part in the national March for Our Lives in the wake of the 17-death school shooting in Parkland Florida. She apparently Facebooked as she drove and she said:
“So, I am on my way to Carbondale Colorado. There’s supposedly an organized march. The March for Our Lives is going to take place and I’m really interested to see if people know what they’re marching for. I guess this is supposed to be the beginning of people speaking out to take away our Second Amendment Rights, and I’m not happy about it. If this is really a March for Our Lives, let’s march against abortion, because I was looking at statistics and there are nearly one million abortions per year in America. One million! Do you know how many gun violence deaths there are, gun related deaths there are in America, per year? 15,000. Hmmm. A drop in a bucket, I’d say. So, I left Rifle, Colorado; I’m not going into Shooters right now. I’m going to Carbondale and I’m going to see what these people really believe, if they know what they’re marching for. If they know that they are marching against their rights. They’re marching, saying, “Hey, I have a right that I don’t want. Take it away from me. Get rid of this. (she is smiling as she makes these comments, by the way.) I want the people around me to not be able to protect themselves, to not be able to defend me.” I’m not—you know, I’m driving here, I think it’s kind of similar to talking on speaker phone so I guess I’m safe. But, I was thinking, my government requires me to wear this (shows her seat belt). I have to wear them to protect myself. And I can’t have my 9 millimeter to protect myself? I don’t think so. I don’t think so, not today, no. (laughs).
She apparently though herself humorous for talking about the town of Rifle (a nice place on I-70 in the Rockies) and Shooters, the sports bar, in her soliloquy in which she ignored any of the humanity behind the demonstrations, showed no awareness of any of the pathos so many felt and were feeling, and offered nothing of comfort to the affected or a cure for the problems that compound the school shootings other than seemingly suggest that everybody should have a 9 mm pistol.
She was driving and glancing at her cell phone during the presentation, unaware that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated almost 44,000 people died in traffic crashes last year.
They’re just bigger drops in the bucket. The agency thinks more than 13,500 of those fatalities were alcohol-related. Eh. If it’s not an aborted baby, these deaths seem to be insignificant to her.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 3,000 of the 44,000 people who die in traffic crashes each year die because of distracted driving. Maybe they’re just mist in the bucket to her.
If those are just drops, how would she rate the World Health Organization’s estimate that eight-million people a year die because of tobacco-related issues. The CDC says more than 480,000 deaths a year result from cigarette smoking—almost sixty years after the first warnings appeared on cigarette packages by federal mandate. More drops.
The National Center for Health Statistics estimated 49,476 people committed suicide in the United States in 2022. Of those, 27,032 used firearms.
Drip, drip, drip.
Every one of those deaths, whether by traffic crash, smoking, or suicide is a tragedy to somebody. As is an abortion. But she seems to be saying that abortion is her only concern.
For one thing, her “15,000” gun related deaths are pretty low. But looking for ways to minimize those deaths is too insignificant for her to worry about.
As for the seat belt—It’s a government mandate that reduces the chance of death or injury, not just for her but for others riding with her or in the other vehicle.
Comparing a seatbelt to a gun is over the top. Seat belts protect those who should not be driving as well as those who have no restrictions. There are few mandates that affect people who should not have guns. Instead, her argument seems to be that if everybody had a 9-millimeter gun, they’d be safe.
Yeah. Right. The students and the teachers in Georgia or in Parkland, Florida in 2018 or at any of the other mass-shooting sites in the last few decades would have had the presence of mind and the time to draw their Glocks from their holsters, backpacks, or desk drawers when someone walked into their rooms and immediately started shooting that the shootings would not have happened?
The students and others who were marching in Colorado, D.C., and other places that day were not saying they wanted to eliminate a right—the Second Amendment. They were saying THEY have a right, too. And if Boebert and other pro-life, pro-gun zealots don’t see the hypocrisy of the overlaps of the two issues and quit bloviating about the exclusivity of both, more fish in more barrels will be shot.
The right to life and the right to live are separate issues. Policy makers who strain to put them together solve nothing and avoid arriving at responsible difficult answers. There is shame in the repetition of that pattern.
And that is why more children will become fishes in barrels this year.
The school year is still young. Who will be the next fish in the next barrel while nothing is done by those who know a 9 millimeter pistol is not the real answer?