Perhaps you missed it. It hasn’t been picked up for syndication yet but I’m sure some sharp TV programmer will have it ready in time for the first Fall season cancellations. And it beats the heck out of “Lock-Up” on MsNBC:
A total of 67 people were shot between Friday and Monday and 13 of them died.
That included this gunfight in NYC:
Three people were killed and two police officers were injured in a gun fight in Brooklyn Monday evening — the latest bloodshed in a violent holiday weekend in New York City that saw at least 48 people shot. […]
Of course since then, we’ve had a few more. First there was the IHOP shooting in Nevada by a man with what has been described as an AK-47 for which no one can provide a motive:
And today, West Virginia joins the show:
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Authorities say a man who killed five people near Morgantown and ran down an elderly woman in neighboring Pennsylvania also shot and wounded a gas station attendant as he crossed back through West Virginia. He then took his own life in Kentucky.
The path of violence that Shayne Riggleman cut through three states before committing suicide during a police chase was “one of the most heinous crimes I’ve ever witnessed,” State Police Capt. James Merrill said Tuesday.
Why did he do it? I don’t know. Here’s what was on his Facebook page; see if you can make sense of it.
On a public Facebook page for a Shayne Franklin Samuel Riggleman, a string of Wall Posts from the past week seem to hint at a troubled relationship.
“There is a direct corelation between the amount of love you have for someone and how crazy you go when you lose them,” reads one.
“I mate for life, not like a penguin though,” reads another. “I mate for life like a praying mantis.”
And one, ominously, says only, “We’re not promised tomorrow.”
Riggleman’s profile page, meanwhile, contained several quotes.
At the top of the list, unattributed, was this one: “I ain’t goin’ out without a fight. I’m with whatever. it WILL be YOUR LIFE before MY LIFE.”
Some of you may think I’m being insensitive regarding the victims of these shootings so let me say that I deeply grieve the deaths of these shooting victims and the losses suffered by their friends and families. I once met a man and woman, husband an wife, who belonged to an organization for which no one would willingly become eligible: people who have lost loved ones to murder. The man told me that it didn’t much matter why someone was murdered–the loss was just as bad whether you knew the motive or not. He also told me no one but those who have endured such a loss can understand the pain that he and others like him suffer each day. I believed him. All I can do is offer my condolences. I cannot comprehend the pain the families of these shooting victims are going through.
Some others of of you may think I’m waving the bloody flag of gun control in this post, but that’s not true either. We are beyond any ability to control the hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of American citizens. We live, whether we like it or not, in a society that at any moment can erupt into a shooting gallery, in the public square or in the privacy of individual homes. Children, police, physicians, ordinary people in the wrong place at the wrong time and even members of Congress have all been targets of gun violence. Some of these shootings have been motivated by specific political or religious beliefs, and others appear meaningless, the last desperate act of delusional or mentally unstable individuals. It matters little though, in the final analysis.
You know what happened when everyone knew Obama was going to be elected back in 2008? Rumors and lies were spread that he and the Feds were going to confiscate everyone’s guns, or make it illegal to buy guns, or illegal to buy ammunition (none of which happened) and so Americans, during the worst collapse of the global economy in my lifetime rushed to gun stores and gun shows to buy more guns and more ammunition. They bought so much that there was a shortage of bullets for all those guns, for which predictably many gun people also blamed Obama:
“It started the day that Obama got elected,” Johnny Dury, who owns Dury’s Gun Shop in San Antonio, tells NPR’s Michele Norris. “It is when everything just went crazy in the gun business.”
Dury says people are buying guns as well as ammunition, creating a shortage of both. He says people are buying the guns to protect themselves because they perceive Obama’s policies as socialist and rewarding those “people who are not working hard.” They are also afraid, he says, of more restrictive gun laws.
No, this isn’t a post calling for more gun control. I’ll let Mayor Bloomberg try to slay that dragon. But I do believe that much of what he says is true. We have created a society which rewards the very few at the expense of the very many:
Mayor Bloomberg on Wednesday blamed last weekend’s spate of violence on what he said was a national scourge of “young, disaffected people with guns.” He said there were remedies, however, including … social programs like his new initiative to help black and Hispanic young men. […]
Mr. Bloomberg said that violence was also caused by “an educational system that hasn’t included everybody,” a condition he suggested that his young men’s initiative would attempt to redress. The initiative will include, among other things, assessing city schools based on the academic progress achieved by black and Hispanic male students.
Mr. Bloomberg is helping to finance the $130 million program with $30 million of his own money. The billionaire investor George Soros has also donated $30 million, and the city is providing the balance.
The trouble is that this isn’t a problem limited to a single city or race or ethnic group much as that quote by Bloomberg seems to suggest it is. You see, we’ve spent the better part of three decades limiting the educational and job opportunities for most Americans. You all know the story of America’s large income inequality by now. You also know how we have cut funding for education, health care, including healthcare for those with mental disorders. You know the massive debts with which most college graduates are saddled as well as the loss of opportunity for many to obtain a college education at all. You know of our the failure to invest in critical infrastructure and cutting edge technologies. You know of the rampant consumerism and “easy credit” that is a plague upon our population. You know the consequences that the deregulation of our financial industry caused.
You also know of the policies of “free trade,” globalization and “neo-liberalism” that have shipped jobs overseas and eliminated well paying jobs at home. You know our manufacturing base has shrunk. You’ve witnessed the war on unions and indeed the eradication of entire sectors of our workforce from the ability to essentially organize and collectively bargain. You’ve seen a generation of people’s lives ruined from lack of good jobs, affordable healthcare and even a place to live when “times are tough.” Tough for some people that is.
You see this is a post at its heart about anger and despair. My despair is over the fact that we have the resources to provide better healthcare to all our citizens, to give a college education to everyone who wants one and to create good jobs. However, since Ronald Reagan became President we have chosen a separate path. A path that prioritized fighting overseas wars, killing and maiming thousands of foreign civilians and our troops and massive spending on the military over the general welfare of our people. A path that made made mega-corporations persons with greater rights than real people. A path that demonized racial, liberal, ethnic and LGBT communities. A path that eviscerated the union movement and lowered taxes on the wealthiest corporations and individuals making it easier to transfer wealth from the Poor and the Middle Class to people like — Charles Koch.
You all know Charlie, don’t you? The man who held a “seminar” at the resort town of Beaver Creek, Colorado for some of his closest billionaire and multi-millionaire buddies in which he compared Barack Obama to Saddam Hussein and applauded guest speaker Anthony Napolitano of Fox News for making this statement:
So what does the government fear the most? I think the government fears fear. I’m afraid the government is going to take the property and the freedom of everybody in this room. The government should fear that we will take its power away from it and put it into the hands of worthy custodians of our freedom.
Napolitano and Koch and all their “friends” in that “room” weren’t talking about freedom for you and me, oh no. They were speaking solely about ensuring that government does their bidding and helps them maintain their wealth, power and influence. As for your freedom, well, that’s not really a priority for them. Their “worthy custodians” will work for their interests not ours.
Oh, they’ll let you keep your guns (and anyone else who has one as well), but protect the social security and medicare benefits for which you paid into during your adult working lives? Perish the thought. Allow you the same measure of “free speech” that they can buy but you can’t? Not likely. Provide educational benefits to all Americans? Not unless they can profit by it. Allow women to determine what happens with their own bodies? Don’t make me laugh. Provide people the ability to actually exercise their “right” to organize and collectively bargain? Who are you kidding? Create well paying jobs in America? Only for themselves.
See, that is why I am angry and sad, both. Because these shooting sprees and other acts of violence have been going on for a while now. They have just been slipping under the media radar, except on your local nightly news, of course, where they help sell advertising for products you likely don’t need. We as a nation are at a tipping point and I for the life of me can’t convince myself that a peaceful outcome is the most probable one.
You know what happens when you put a bunch of rats into a confined space and then begin to cut their food supply? They begin to fight one another. Some even become cannibals. Now go back and revisit that wealth and income inequality gap, and healthcare gap and education gap and employment gap and all the other gaps these high and mighty plutocrats, or to use a phrase that seems fitting, robber barons, of our times have created. Now go look at the vast number of guns estimated to be in the hands of Americans, many of them who have been pushed into poverty and desperate straits, or who live under the threat of losing what little they have, by the very policies Charlie Koch and his pals seek to preserve and even expand.
Now go back and look at the title to this post and tell me how you would answer the question it raises. My answer: All of the above.
