The presents are all wrapped under our cute little tree, many
of our neighbors have strung bright lights on the outside of their houses, and
the mail box takes in a handful of Christmas cards every day of the week.
However, there WAS a time in America, not long ago, when
Christmas never came (at least for some people), and we just passed the
anniversary of an event that caused that to happen.
On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza burst into Sandy Hook
elementary school and started shooting. By the time he was done, he had killed
20 children and six adult staff members before he turned the gun on himself.
You may have forgotten some of the details, but the link below will help you
remember:
If you would like even MORE information, the link below can
help you:
Lanza suffered from depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive
disorder, as well as Asperger’s syndrome. Asperger’s is a form of autism, and
people who are afflicted from it feel a
strong need for a rigid daily structure, which Jodi Picoult explains very well
in her book, “House Rules”.
His mental instability would not have been enough to prevent
the purchase of the Bushmaster rifle that he carried, but he was not old enough
to purchase the Glock pistol that was owned by his mother. Shortly before the
shooting, his mother announced that she was thinking of moving to another town,
which would be devastating news to a person with Asperger’s, and probably was enough
to lead to his last desperate act.
After the shooting, people from around the country clamored
for tougher gun laws, but Connecticut (where the shooting occurred) was one of
the few that did. States around the country continued to loosen, rather than
tighten, their gun laws, but that all changed early in 2018, and for one
reason:
Parkland.
After the shooting in Parkland, Florida, Congress STILL took
no action, but state legislatures did. State legislatures passed 69 gun control
measures this year, more than three times the number that were passed in 2017.
In addition, legislators rejected nearly 90% of the state-level laws backed by
the NRA. Although the Parkland shooting was part of the reason for the increase in gun control
laws, the national school walkout on April 20 (the anniversary of the Columbine
shooting) also got the attention of lawmakers across the country.
Parkland became different due to the fact that the student
survivors themselves took action, and it wasn’t long before most of the people
in the country knew who Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg were. In March 2018,
González was on the cover of Time magazine along with fellow
activists Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, and Alex Wind. That same month
she was profiled by France 24.
Not surprisingly, Gonzalez has come under attack from right
wing conspiracy theories and hoaxes since the shooting – but she got results.
In
March 2018, the Florida Legislature passed a bill titled the Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. It raises the
minimum age for buying firearms to 21, establishes waiting
periods and background
checks, provides a program for the arming of some teachers and the
hiring of school police, bans bump stocks, and bars
potentially violent or mentally unhealthy people arrested under certain laws
from possessing guns. In all, the law allocates around $400 million for
implementation. Rick Scott signed the bill into law on March 9.
The governor commented, "To the students of
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, you made your voices heard. You didn't
let up and you fought until there was change.
In
2017, the U.S. gun death rate hit a 20 year high, when nearly 40,000 people
lost their lives due to firearms. Included in that total are the 58 people who
were killed in Las Vegas in November. As the charts below show, the gun death
rate has been on a steady climb since at least 2000.
Fortunately,
gun deaths appear to have gone down in 2018, even though the decrease appears
to be modest.
The
response to the Parkland shooting was one of the reasons for the decrease, but
there are THREE factors that are going to lead to further declines:
1)
The House of Representatives will be controlled by the
Democrats after the 1st of the year, and one of the items that will
be discussed is universal background checks for ALL gun purchases
2)
The NRA itself had a tough year financially in 2018. The
organization lost $55 million, and a large part deficit was due to a large
decline in membership dues.
3) The NRA spent $30 million to help Donald Trump to get elected
– but that is about to backfire on them
in a huge way, due to the actions of a red-headed Russian named Maria Butina. Some
of that money, you see, apparently came from Russia, which is highly illegal.
On Deceber 12, Maria
Butina pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act illegally as an unregistered Russian
foreign agent. Since 2011, she has worked for Alexsandr Torshin, who was a
former member of Vladimir Putin's United Russian Party.
Torshin
started attending NRA meetings in 2011, and then-president David Keene attended
a meeting of the Russian group "Right to Bear Arms" in Moscow in
2013.
In
2013, Butina met Republican political operative Paul Erickson
in Russia. The two became close, started dating, and eventually moved in
together. In 2015 she emailed him a description of her plan to help the
Republicans win the 2016 elections through the National Rifle Association
(NRA).
In
2015, a number of NRA officials attended Right to Bear Arms's annual gun
conference in Russia. Among them were Keene, gun manufacturer and NRA first
vice president Pete
Brownell, conservative American political operative Paul Erickson,
and Milwaukee County
sheriff David
Clarke. One of their hosts was Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin,
who in 2014 was sanctioned
by the White House following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Clarke's trip cost $40,000, with all expenses paid by the NRA, Pete Brownell
(an NRA board member and CEO of a gun-parts supply company) and Right to Bear
Arms. According to a disclosure Clarke filed, Right to Bear Arms paid $6,000 to
cover his meals, lodging, transportation and other expenses. During the
meeting, Clarke met the Russian foreign minister and attended a conference at
which Torshin spoke. In November 2016, Torshin tweeted that he
and Butina were lifetime NRA members.
In a
June 2015 article published in The National Interest,
a conservative American international affairs magazine, just before Trump
announced his
candidacy for president, Butina urged better relations between
the United States and Russia, saying, "It may take the election of a
Republican to the White House in 2016 to improve relations between the Russian
Federation and the United States."
Her
biography on the article did not mention that she worked for the Russian
government. The next month, Butina attended FreedomFest,
where Trump gave a speech, and asked him from the audience about ending U.S.
sanctions against Russia, to which he replied, "I don't think you'd need
the sanctions." Butina hosted a birthday party attended by Erickson and
Trump campaign aides shortly after the 2016 election
To
paraphrase one of Trump's tweets, the connection between the NRA and the Trump
campaign is a "smocking gun"
To
bring a sense of closure to the tragedy, the city of Sandy Hook razed both the
elementary school where the shooting occurred, as well as the home where Adam
Lanza lived with his mother – but that apparently was not enough.
On
the morning of December 14, 2018, a bomb threat was called into the new Sandy
Hook school, forcing the evacuation of the school.
It
appears that our country is FINALLY moving in the right direction on gun
control, but yesterday’s bomb threat is a reminder that there are far too many
crazy people that live in the United States, and it will take continued
vigilance to minimize that damage that they can do.
Having
said that, though, it’s time to set the nonsense aside, and focus on the fact that
Christmas IS supposed to be a time of joy and sharing. On that note, all I can
say is this:
Merry
Christmas !
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