Guns Continue Their Senseless Death Streak
So it goes.
A student walked into study hall at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, and opened fire. Now, at least three people are dead, including a teacher and the shooter, and six people are injured. This is America.
According to CNN, this is the year’s 83rd school shooting, which means 2024 officially surpasses 2023 for the most school shootings in a single year since 2008 (apparently, that’s when someone at CNN started keeping track).
There have been 56 shooting at K-12 schools and 27 on university and college campuses. Tuesday’s school shooting could rival the death toll at Apalachee High school in Winder, Georgia. That was September.
One parent told reporters that every day, her family prays that a shooting won’t happen at their school. Eventually God will have all related prayers sent straight to voicemail with a message stating, in Morgan Freeman’s voice, “Please do something about the guns.”
As of this writing, it was unclear how the shooter acquired the gun, but it could’ve been almost anywhere. Wisconsin has weak gun safety laws, with no universal background checks, gun owner licensing, or waiting periods.
The shooter reportedly used a 9 mm pistol. On a Reddit gun board, a user recommended the 9 mm pistol as ideal for concealed carry: “Cheaper to train with, 9mm guns are generally easier to conceal, easier to shoot, and higher capacity.” Another freedom-loving gun owner posted, “9mm for the hoods, 10mm for the woods. Really 9mm is the better option overall.” It would not surprise me if this person hasn’t ventured into the woods or the “hoods.”
Law enforcement has identified the shooter as a 15-year-old female student (she was her final victim). This is statistically rare, but gun supporters have long boasted that these weapons of death are the “great equalizer” in the battle of the sexes. During those depressing Senate Judiciary Committee hearings after Sandy Hook, lawyer and guns rights activist Gayle Trotter argued that violent criminals “prey on women who are at a severe disadvantage.” She cited an incident where an Oklahoma woman was able to fatally shoot an intruder armed with only a knife, like a sucker.
“Guns make women safer,” Trotter testified. “In a violent confrontation guns reverse the balance of power. An armed woman does not need superior strength or the proximity of a hand-to-hand struggle.”
“Concealed carry laws reverse that balance of power even before a violent confrontation occurs,” she went on. “For a would-be criminal concealed carry laws dramatically increase the risk of committing a crime. This indirectly benefits even those who do not carry. Research shows that in jurisdictions with concealed carry laws, women are less likely to be raped or murdered than they are in states with more restrictions on gun ownership. Armed security works.”
(Here’s Trotter talking more nonsense on Sean Hannity’s show in February 2013.)
Trotter also insisted that women needed access to assault weapons in the home to “defend her babies.” Sen. Lindsey Graham agreed: “Six bullets in the hands of a woman trying to defend her children may not be enough,” he said.
The Sandy Hook gun massacre inspired Shannon Watts, a mother of five, to found Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement that works to reduce gun violence. Of course, Trotter’s “gun control is sexist” argument helped Republicans and the gun lobby cynically leverage (white) women’s fears and present guns as the answer. They are not. Women are more likely to be victims of gun violence than to successfully use a gun in self-defense. However, more women vote than men, so gun lovers need to sell this narrative.
A female school shooter does not fit the standard profile, but that doesn’t stop idiots from immediately blaming whichever groups they loathe. Someone posted on the site that’s not Bluesky, “This was a Democrat/ transgender who has mental health issues. That person was not getting any help and being bullied in school. Yet not one word from democrats about Chicago mass shooting or United Healthcare ceo shooting was said from democrats.”
This toxic drivel was in response to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s posted message: “My heart breaks for the victims impacted by the tragic shooting at the Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin. We are better than this — our country is better than this. Enough is enough. We must end this gun violence epidemic.”
Unfortunately, it seems enough is never enough. Republicans have expressed little collective interest in any serious solutions to gun violence, and Americans just gave them control of the White House and Senate. Maybe they’ll pass an aggressive “door control” package.
Last September, Vice President-elect JD Vance dismissed school shootings as a “fact of life.”
“If these psychos are going to go after our kids, we’ve got to be prepared for it,” Vance said at a campaign rally in Phoenix. “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it.”
Republicans like Vance have proposed “hardening” schools to the point that children can endure the TSA without pre-check experience every morning before class. Abundant Life reportedly didn’t have a school resource officer, but Apalachee High did have one on duty to no avail. The school doesn’t have metal detectors, either.
At a news conference on Monday, Police Chief Shon Barnes seemed utterly defeated.
“I think you’re asking me how can I say 100 percent that no child will ever be harmed in school? I can’t. No police chief can,” he said in response to the usual questions asked after every school shooting. “All I can tell you is that we have systems in place so that if something happens, we can respond like we did today. I can tell you that our mayor and our county exec has committed resources to not only public health, but also mental health.”
Republicans will likely post “thoughts and prayers” messages where they mention “mental health” (though probably nothing this time about putting God back in schools, considering where the latest massacre took place), but congressional Republicans have consistently voted against expanding school mental health services, presumably because it won’t directly lower taxes for billionaires.
Even “mental health” is a bit of a dodge. A deeply disturbed child is not necessarily a candidate for Arkham Asylum. Sure, some reports indicate that the shooter might’ve held extremist views, but she was only able to act on her violent fantasies because of her easy access to guns. People like Gayle Trotter insist we need them as defense against the “monsters” she claims are just outside our door, but as the body count continues the rise, the only victims are ourselves.
>> People like Gayle Trotter insist we need them as defense against the “monsters” she claims are just outside our door, <<
First comment: "criminals as monsters" is a trope that has hurt women especially but many people generally over hundreds if not thousands of years. The always-present corollary is that we can tell who is a threat because they appear monstrous as a result of their looks or their anti-social attitudes. This allows the rich, white abusers to get away with horrific crimes (particularly but not only against their own family members) because juries have historically been averse to convicting someone of a monstrous crime unless they **look like** they are monstrous themselves. While there have been some improvements over the last 40 years, to the extent that those improvements are not down to challenging the monster myth, they're largely due to DNA analysis after a crime has been committed. Thus it's completely unhelpful in figuring out who is a threat before they start killing.
>> but as the body count continues the rise, the only victims are ourselves. <<
Yep. A callback to the obvious and oft-repeated stats about the presence of legal guns (even when purchased with a supposedly good motive) within a home increasing the risk of someone in the home dying of gun violence, not narrowly escaping gun violence through self defense. This has held so perfectly true for so long, we must at least consider the possibility that the presence of many legal guns within a nation only increases the likelihood that residents of that nation will die in gun violence.
It's downright evil that Republicans won't let the NIH study this.
You are wrong, Rep. Swalwell, we are not better than this, because it keeps happening, and we never do the things that will keep it from happening. Face the fact, that this is who we are - a nation that worships guns.