Tim Walz has said he’s “sick and tired of hearing about thoughts and prayers” following the Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia, which left four dead.
Walz, who was named as Kamala Harris’ running mate in the race for the White House in August, spoke about the Wednesday (4 September) shooting at a campaign rally at the Highmark Amphitheater in Erie, Pennsylvania on Thursday.
He told his supporters: “We believe in the freedom to send our kids to school without being shot dead in the hall.”
“The news cycle moves on within a day,” he commented of the incident, adding that kids had returned to school feeling excited and “now we have four dead”.
I used to be lukewarm on the issue of gun control, ya know… “Yes, it’s a tragedy… but, we’ve got a second amendment, just increase security in schools or something.”
But… eventually it got to the point where I realized I felt nothing hearing about the dead kids and the constant shootings. I was just completely numb to it, and that’s when I realized “Oh shit…”
When I found that the death of children wasn’t something that even made me flinch anymore, I realized… That even if we have to destroy every gun in the West, something has to be done.
“They’ll just use knives”
And when you can kill as many people with a knife in as short of a time as an AR-15, that’s when I’ll give a shit about knives.
PS: I totally call it the Assault Rifle 15. I know it’s the “Arma Rite 15” or whatever, but it pisses conservatives off when I get it wrong intentionally.
One thing that really made it hit for me was when Australia had a mass knifing so bad the fucking pope commented on it and the numbers felt low for it to be such a tragedy of violence. It felt like it wouldn’t hit the state level news in America with a gun.
Knives are easier to defend. That’s why the gun was made. If it didn’t make warfare cheaper and quicker, they would have stayed with knives and swords.
It’s really fun to call it an “assault weapon”. That pops them off to an astonishing degree.
Which very clearly states itself as being relevant to citizen militias, and somehow says nothing about a fundamental right to murder children in large numbers.
I actually does if you know the historical subtext. Militias weren’t actually considered a significant check on federal power, they were encouraged so slave states could put down slave rebellions and frontier areas could gradually conquer land from the natives.
It was specifically written at a time when all states’ militias combined totaled about 500,000 men and it was being proposed to limit the federal troops to 16,000 men. So it most certainly would have been a significant check on federal power.
And they had just got done fighting a war where the militias were basically useless, except for the Swamp Fox, who used them in the only way they can be effective, as terrorists.
The actual war plans were always to turn militia into regulars, as seen in the Civil War when you had a similar situation.
Exactly. It was Written CENTURIES ago so we NEED to talk about it in Context! But ALSO they TOTALLY were Referring to Weapons we have TODAY!
I’m torn on this issue. I want the sort of gun control that you’re describing, but I really don’t know if it would be constitutional, and defying the constitution is a slippery slope that could cause more harm than even gun violence. The problem in my view is the second amendment itself - it’s vague, outdated, and in desperate need of clarification. The fact that it deals with possession of technology but hasn’t been updated in 250 years is insane.
I’m with anyone calling for gun control, but we really ought to be demanding constitutional revision to address this issue.
But also you were lukewarm and other people are now because someone who is making millions and is spending millions on lobbying so that children continue to be killed so that they keep making millions. Even though the additional millions they’ll make won’t change their net worth by any significant amount…