Tag: Gun Tragedies

Categories
Right Wing Morons

Alex Jones Sinks His Own Defense By Admitting The Sandy Hook Massacre Was ‘100 Percent Real’

As he tries to avoid having to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for claiming the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary was fake, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was forced to admit under oath Wednesday morning that the horror which left 26 people dead, including 20 children aged six and seven, was indeed real.

Testifying in a trial that will decide how much in damages Jones has to pay for his lies about Sandy Hook, the host was asked if he understood “how crazy” it was to claim no one died at the school. He claimed he was “under a lot of pressure at the time” and added:

“It was, especially since I’ve met the parents. It’s 100 percent real, and the media still ran with lies that I was saying it wasn’t real…They won’t let me take it back.”

Of course, if Jones hadn’t said such disgusting things in the first place, he wouldn’t need to take them back.

On Tuesday, parents of one of the victims testified, Mediaite reports:

Jones’ testimony came a day after Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis, testified about the torment they’ve experienced since Jones claimed that their son was a child actor. Heslin testified that Jones claims have made his life “living Hell,” and Lewis spoke directly to Jones on the stand as she said “I wanted to tell you to your face because I wanted you to know that I am a mother first and foremost. And I know that you are a father and my son existed. You’re still on your show today trying to say that I’m, implying that I’m an actress, that I am ‘deep state.’”

Jones has already been found guilty of defamation, and the family is seeking $150 million in damages due to the threats and harassment they’ve received since Jones began telling his falsehoods about what happened at Sandy Hook.

Categories
Crime Gun Crime

Uvalde Police May Have Accidentally Shot At Least One Of The Children At Robb Elementary: Report

With news that the Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are refusing to cooperate with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation of last Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary school that left 21 dead, new questions have arisen, including a suggestion that members of the police force may have accidentally killed one of the 19 children who were slain.

ABC News reports:

According to sources, the decision to stop cooperating occurred soon after the director of DPS, Col. Steven McCraw, held a news conference Friday during which he said the delayed police entry into the classroom was “the wrong decision” and contrary to protocol.

Reached by ABC News, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety said, “The Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde CISD Police have been cooperating with investigators. The chief of the Uvalde CISD Police provided an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview with the Texas Rangers that was made two days ago.”

CNN justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz spoke with Uvalde schools police chief Peter Arredondo, who said he will not comment any further about the investigation as long as families are grieving.

And now we have video in which a child can be heard exclaiming “I got shot!” followed by a police officer remarking:

“They shot a kid.”

There are many unanswered questions eight days after the Uvalde tragedy unfolded, and the only way any answers will ever come to light is if every officer on scene the day of the shooting cooperates fully.

Texas authorities also need to release the bodycam footage from every cop who responded to the shooting, along with any audio or cell phone information that could help the public better understand what may have gone wrong at Robb Elementary.

The families of the children and two teachers who were mercilessly gunned down in Uvalde deserve to know everything that transpired that day. If that means includes indicting any officers or other officials who failed to act or shot errantly, then so be it.

Categories
Donald Trump Gun Crime

Trump Stiffly Reads The Names Of Uvalde Victims As A Gong Sounds During Surreal NRA Speech

Speaking to the National Rifle Association (NRA) just days after a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump insisted Friday that there is no need for sensible gun control legislation.

NBC News reports:

Trump described the Uvalde shooting as “a savage and barbaric atrocity” and called for a moment of silence as he read the names of the 21 victims. The former president said those killed “are now with God in heaven” while the shooter “will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of hell.”

Trump then laid into President Joe Biden for urging Congress to take up gun safety legislation, saying Biden’s criticism of the gun lobby was really directed at gun owners across the country.

As for possible solutions, Trump sounded like his speech had been written by the NRA, and he offered nothing in the way of actually preventing such mass shootings in the future, insisting that the issue is one of mental health:

“While we don’t yet know enough about this week’s killing, we know there are many things we must do. We need to drastically change our approach to mental health. There are always so many warning signs. Almost all of these disfigured minds share the same profile.

“Teachers, parents, school officials, and community members need to be recognizing and addressing these alarm bells promptly and very, very aggressively. And our school discipline systems, instead of making excuses and continually turning a blind eye, need to confront bad behavior head on and quickly. And clearly we need to make it far easier to confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions.”

However, the strangest part of Trump’s address to the NRA was him reading the names of the victims (and mispronouncing nearly every one of them), followed by a gong that made it sound as if a game show was being conducted, HuffPost notes:

The names of the 19 children and two teachers, broken up into hardly recognizable syllables in Trump’s stumbling pronunciation, were interspersed with the funereal sound of a gong.

After reading the names, Trump then danced for the adoring NRA gun worshipers.

Twitter users had some thoughts.

https://twitter.com/bourgeoisalien/status/1530325776851251200?s=20&t=knxQRBhsMNacFt-6Apl7PA
https://twitter.com/citizenpi314/status/1530313814452981761?s=20&t=1QpwPqNJJ5q7gLRZzpbcHQ
https://twitter.com/fji002/status/1530323582454317058?s=20&t=z-hn3ZX55sg88aO9l8WwYg

Categories
Gun Crime

Stephen King Explains Exactly What It Will Take To End Mass Shootings In The US

Novelist Stephen King has never been shy when it comes to saying what he thinks on any number of issues, and once again he’s using common sense to solve a problem that’s been on the minds of nearly every American this week: Mass shootings in the United States.

Uproxx notes that King calls his proposal “simple.”

King supplies a very “simple” take (he uses that word, too), one that cuts through all the deflecting from Texas Republicans like huffy Sen. Ted Cruz (who walked out of an interview while complaining that people are politicizing the inherently political issue of gun violence) and Gov. Greg Abbott (who couldn’t believe that Beto O’Rourke called him out for doing nothing to stop the madness). These confrontations, while necessary, will likely go nowhere. To that end, King appears to suggest that there’s no changing the minds of these public-facing representatives. Instead, transformation is only possible by pushing them out of office.

Here’s King’s recommendation:

“If the gun protectors in Congress are voted out, things may change. If they retain their seats, nothing will change. Pretty simple.”

King is absolutely correct. And it probably won’t surprise you when you see who has taken the most cash from pro-gun groups, with Aljazeera reporting:

The top recipients so far in 2022 in the US Congress were Republican Senators Rand Paul and John Kennedy, who each received over $38,000 from pro-gun groups, according to OpenSecrets. US House of Representatives Minority Whip Steve Scalise received $25,610 from pro-gun groups during that period.

In 2018, during his re-election bid, Texas Senator Cruz received $311,151 in direct contributions from pro-gun groups.

If every registered Democrat shows up at the polls this November, we can have sensible gun reform that will make all of us safer. We have the power in our hands, and now it’s time to use it.

Categories
Elections GOP Gun Crime WTF?!

Herschel Walker’s ‘Plan’ For Preventing School Shootings Is Nonsensical Gibberish

There was a time back in the early 1980s when Herschel Walker was undoubtedly the greatest running back in the country, earning him the Heisman Trophy in 1982 as the best player in all of college football while playing for the University of Georgia.

Now, however, 40 years later, Walker is the GOP Senate nominee for the Peach State, and it seems every single time he opens his mouth these days, he winds up making little to no sense whatsoever.

Such was the case today when Walker appeared on Fox News to discuss the horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 elementary school children and two of their teachers dead this week.

Walker, who has the full support of failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump, had this to say when asked about the most recent shooting in the United States:

“You know Cain killed Abel, you know, and that’s a problem that we have. What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things, you know, they talked about doing a disinformation.”

Cain and Abel? Last time I checked, Cain didn’t mow Abel down with an AR-15 and then go kill an entire village of people. And do we even have any factual proof that such an event ever took place?

But it was what Walker said next that suggested he isn’t fit to be elected to any office, let alone the U.S. Senate:

“What about looking at getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media? What about doing that, looking into things like that? And we can stop that that way. But yet, they want to continue to talk about taking away your constitutional rights.”

A department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media. What in the hell does that even mean?!

Walker added:

“This has been happening for years, and the way we stop it, by putting money into the mental health field, by putting money into other departments rather than departments that want to take away your rights.”

Putting money into the mental health field is a good idea, and yet legislators in Walker’s former home state, Texas, have repeatedly slashed funding for mental health services. Why doesn’t Herschel call on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to convene a special session of the Texas legislature and allocate millions for better mental health infrastructure in the Lone Star State?

As for Walker’s suggestion of department to look at social media postings, the Brennan Center for Justice notes that there are already over a dozen federal agencies that monitor social media sites.

Herschel Walker was a great football player, and no one can ever take that away from him. But he’d be a disaster as a senator, and hopefully Georgia voters will reject his brainless gibberish in November.