Second Amendment

Guest Essay – Doses Of Reality


POST 1113

It’s a wonder that in the face of our ongoing gun deaths and the forever heartache attached to them that all we can do is pass a limp-wristed gun safety bill that has no chance of protecting any of us.

This stuff is uncomfortably close to my daughter, Amy, and her six kids. She explains here.

Doses of Reality
                         – by Amy Tucker
.

It is easy to become caught up in the news when something tragic happens. We look at the ever-constant news feed on our phones for the details and the latest updates. And then  .  .  .  we move on to the next thing. But the individuals who have been directly affected or those close by never get to just move on. They carry the trauma all the time.

In a five-month time span in 2022, there were three incidents that were close by and in 2024 there were two more.

On July 4, 2022, Robert Eugene Crimo III fired his semiautomatic rifle into the crowd at the Highland Park, IL Independence Day parade. He killed seven people and wounded forty-eight more. This happened fifteen minutes from my home. I was standing in the park at our annual pancake breakfast with two of my children. Emergency vehicles began racing past us with their sirens blaring and another one of my children texted me the story of what was going on. I grabbed my children and hurried home.

We later discovered that my dad had been talking to Crimo at a political rally in our town in September 2020. There was a Trump rally and my dad had organized a counter rally. He made a point of talking with Crimo and his friend. That friend was in classes with one of my children. Dad wanted to understand their beliefs. I stood by while they talked and I have a picture of Crimo and my dad on my phone. I have a picture of the Highland Park shooter on my phone. My dad was talking to him!

On August 14, 2022, my son was working at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, IL.  That night, he was running the carousel, which is at the main entrance. His shift ended at 7:45 PM and he left his post. At 8:00 PM, there was a shooting right there at the main entrance. Three people were injured. By that point, my son was on the way to his car in the parking lot. His friends began texting him that they had to run from their posts and hide. My son missed that shooting by just fifteen minutes.

On November 19, 2022 at 11:56 PM suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich opened fire at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He killed five people and injured nineteen. Six more were injured in the chaos that followed. My son had left Colorado Springs the day before to come home for Thanksgiving. He knows the location of this club and lives nearby. He missed the shooting by just one day.

On February 16, 2024, there was a double homicide in a dorm room in the building next to my son’s dorm in Colorado. This is the same son who left Colorado Springs for Thanksgiving and missed a shooting by one day. For these most recent murders, he missed the shooting by just one building.

The victim had complained several times to the university about this roommate. He and his girlfriend died. A third roommate hid in his bedroom listening to the moaning of the two people who were shot until they died, likely praying for his own life. I had the privilege of being able to stop reading about that event. That young man who hid in his bedroom will forever see that scene and hear those moans replaying in his head.

On September 29, 2024, I was awakened at 3:00 AM by text alerts from my other son’s university indicating that there was a double murder and students needed to take shelter. This was the same son who was present for the shooting at Six Flags.

These are terrifying, senseless, and life-altering events. My family and I are among the lucky ones who get to “move on” from them. We do not have to live with the injuries or the death of loved ones. If I wanted to, perhaps I could forget about these tragedies and not worry about them. The universe has continued to protect my babies and for that I am grateful. But I think that instead this should be a reminder to me and to all of us that there are those who can never forget.

All six of my children have grown up in a world in which they’ve needed to practice lockdown drills in school in case there is an active shooter. Wouldn’t it make more sense to prevent active shootings than to raise children in a world in which we teach them to be scared to be in school?

Moreover, any time I have checked in with them about violence in our world, several have respond with something to the effect of, “I don’t know. I’m not really bothered by it. It happens all the time.” My son in Colorado knew one of the dorm room homicide victims. When I asked him how he was doing, he responded saying, “I’m fine. Another day. Another shooting.” My children are that desensitized to gun violence. That is even more worrisome to me than if they were calling me panicking!

None of my six children likes the world in which I have raised them – none of them. My heart aches from sadness and guilt every time they say this to me. I brought them into this crazy, senseless, anxiety-producing world. They didn’t ask for the world we adults have presented to them.

These five events struck way too close to home. I vividly remember on the night of the Six Flags shooting ranting on the phone to my parents, sheer rage and fear spewing out of me. I was wishing a shooting tragedy on a family member of any politician who refuses sensible gun laws. Perhaps then they would understand the terrible pain and the senselessness and the preventability of it all and it would hit them too close to home for them to ignore it. Of course, I don’t really want such a terrible thing to happen. But I do want them to end their self-serving political dance that allows these much-too-common lethal events.

I’ve had a powerful dose of reality from these experiences. They urge me to remember those who are grieving and hurting – and wonder: How big of a dose of reality do you suppose it will take for the resisters to make changes to protect us all?

Who do you suppose are the “resisters” Amy accuses? Circle all that apply.

1. Second Amendment contortionists who believe they have a right to own any weapon including weapons of war and to carry them to intimidate others

2. Militia puff-ups, patriotism delusionals, who think it’s their right and obligation to attack and take down whatever they think is an oppressive government

3. Politicians who care more about their careers than they do about our children

Reading Assignment

Brooke Harrison was a student at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL on Valentine’s Day 2018. Following the horror that visited that day she penned an essay for ABC News. Listen to her voice, both in her writing and in the video. Listen to what we have allowed to be done to her and to so many others because of our tolerance – our cowardice in the face of the demands of a selfish and angry minority. Listen to a voice that is just like tens of thousands more every year, forced into suffering they do not deserve.

It’s not the vibes and it’s not the polls: it’s the votes. 
Are you registered to vote? Check it out on any of these websites:
.

https://www.vote.org/am-i-registerilled-to-vote/

https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration

https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/am-i-registered-to-vote/

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore, even if that makes them a few bucks more expensive. That will help to keep them your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Voter Fraud – and Others


POST 1111

One More Look At Our Terrible Voter Fraud Problem

You’ve heard the statistics about our voter fraud problem, like that it’s 0.00001% of votes cast, clearly not enough to sway even the election of a candidate for the mosquito abatement board, much less a megalomaniac fraud and sexual assaulter to the presidency. Nevertheless, we must have some fun with the numbers from the off-the-right-edge-of-the-continuum Heritage Foundation because they are Trump suck-up misleaders.

The Brookings Institution did that in a paper entitled Widespread election fraud claims by Republicans don’t match the evidence. Note that their analysis has nothing to do with how anyone feels or their confirmation bias or their delight in demonizing. They’re just the facts, ma’am.

Brookings reports,

[The Heritage Foundation finds] that there have been 1,465 proven cases of election fraud — 1,264 of these resulted in criminal prosecutions and the remainder resulted in civil prosecutions, diversion programs, judicial findings, or official findings.

These may sound like big numbers, however, they must be examined in context. The findings encompass more than a decade of data during which, nationally, hundreds of millions of votes have been cast. For instance, in Texas, Heritage found 103 cases of confirmed election fraud. However, those 103 ranged from 2005 to 2022 during which time over 107 million ballots were cast. There were 11 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election alone. The fraud in Texas amounted to 0.000096% of all ballots cast — hardly evidence of a fundamentally corrupt system.

Need more?

in Arizona, where President Biden won by a mere 10,457 votes in 2020, Heritage documents just four cases of fraudulent voting in the general election. Furthermore, while former Republican gubernatorial candidate and 2024 Senate candidate Kari Lake falsely claimed widespread fraud following her loss in 2022, there have been zero reported cases from that year thus far. To put these cases (or lack thereof) in perspective, Arizonans cast over 6 million votes in the 2020 and 2022 general elections. [That’s fraud  of 0.0% of votes cast.]

Other swing states have also recorded negligible numbers of election fraud. In Georgia, Heritage has reported no cases of fraud in the 2020 or 2022 general elections, in which nearly nine million votes were cast. [That, too, is 0.0% of votes cast.]

So, now we’re all convinced that there is no voter fraud problem, right?

So, what’s going on here? Nothing. Confirmed conspiracy theorists never take no for an answer, so they will certainly insist that there was massive fraud or that prosecutors were bought off.

Mmm, that right, Kemosabe. They will say that. And they will be wrong.

We have only one voter fraud problem and it’s the fraud that attacks voting rights, like:

  1. gerrymandering
  2. kicking eligible voters off voting rolls for specious and discriminatory reasons, especially when it’s done just before an election so there is no time to appeal
  3. limiting access to voting, like closing polling places to make it extremely difficult to vote and eliminating drop boxes for mail-in ballots
  4. requiring voter ID that is difficult for a targeted population to secure

Click here for a more extensive list of Constitution stomping, rights killing manipulation by .  .  .  guess who?

Note especially that even before mail-in and absentee ballots began to be filled out this year and with zero evidence for their claims, Trump and his entire entourage and his parroting millions were already claiming voting fraud. So, 1. Are they clairvoyant? or, 2. Are they frauds? You choose.

From The “Ya Gotta Read This” Department
First

Perhaps you’ve heard that right wing extremists, including our twice impeached, four times indicted, 34 counts convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter former president, Donald Trump, have used our hurricane disasters to demonize FEMA, saying they don’t have enough money for disaster relief because they gave away money to undocumented immigrants (they prefer to call them “illegals”). That’s complete  .  .  .  how is it said? .  .  .  you know. See this and this.

These lies are just a current attack on our institutions designed to make the easily manipulated distrustful of government. It’s so dumb that even “no stranger to airhead conspiracy stupid stuff” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) smacked down the no FEMA money idiocy.

Now the rabid right has told hurricane and tornado victims that FEMA is coming to seize their land and worse. That’s led to armed militias – actually, vigilantes – roaming western North Carolina hunting FEMA people. That has caused relief workers to pull back, interfering with relief getting to hurricane victims. Again, it’s just your presidential candidate doing what he can to stoke violence and undermine our trust in ourselves.

Here’s more on hurricanes from CNN:

Last week, [Rep. Marjorie Taylor] Greene, without specifying who “they” is, posted, “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

She offers quack patent applications from a hundred years ago to prove her airhead point.

Most important is that you’ve heard this kind of idiocy many times from those who were the kids who flung spitballs from the back of their science and civics classes. The problem now is that such inanities get forwarded millions of times until some people believe it, putting themselves and others at risk through their denial of reality and further eroding our trust in our institutions.

The scariest part of this latest MTG lunacy is that citizens of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District keep sending her and her AR-15 to Congress. What do you suppose is the key contaminant in their drinking water?

Right: it’s fraud.

Second

Read Prof. Timothy Snyder’s new post, From the Storm to the Stormtroopers. The Fascist Logic of Climate Lying.

Third

Are you a Boomer? If so, you’re a child of the Greatest Generation. Read Lessons From My Father. Then say a quiet – perhaps even sacred – thank you.

Bang Bang

Click me

We have 48 dead kids already this year, hundreds wounded and ten of thousands traumatized for life. And all of us are living with the threat of a grotesquely distorted Second Amendment hanging over our heads. Watch for a very personal account of that this Sunday.

It’s not the vibes and it’s not the polls: it’s the votes. 
Are you registered to vote? Check it out on any of these websites:
.

https://www.vote.org/am-i-registerilled-to-vote/

https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration

https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/am-i-registered-to-vote/

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”
  • – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore, even if that makes them a few bucks more expensive. That will help to keep them your town or neighborhood vibrant.
    6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

 Scroll to top