One thing Abbott said right after the shooting yesterday caught my attention and I’ve looked into it since.  In his first update, Abbott said the shooter, who shall remain unnamed, entered Robb Elementary School with a handgun and “may have had a rifle”.  It later came out that he didn’t use a handgun, but an AR-15 that shoots a 5.56 MM round, a standard caliber for an assault rifle, of which he had just bought 375 rounds.  He carried a bag with 7-30 round magazines which totaled 210 rounds, not counting what was already loaded.  He had another AR-15 in his truck.  There is no report that I’ve seen that he had a handgun.

I doubt seriously that Abbott doesn’t know the difference between a handgun and an assault rifle, so I can only assume that Abbott was trying to misinform/play down the fact that the weapon of choice for mass shooters was also used in this shooting.  You certainly call AR-15s rifles, but there is little resemblance between this rifle and the .22 bolt action rifle I pinged tin cans with when I was a kid being taught to shoot by my uncle.

Abbott leads Texas in gun nut insanity where it’s beyond comprehension that at age 18 you can buy an AR-15 and whatever amount of ammo you want, but you can’t buy a handgun.  This is the stupidity causing the deaths we endure in Texas today.

The problem of gun violence, especially mass shootings, is not all that complicated.  The solution for it has been figured out by every other industrialized nation on the planet.  The US has CHOSEN to not solve it.  Those reasons are also simple – power.  As long as the gun culture has an outsized voice with the electorate, namely the Senate, nothing will happen.  That doesn’t mean the answer is complicated, but money and power wont allow it.  To avoid talking about the real solution to gun violence, politicians and the gun lobby repeat bullshit every time there is a mass shooting, which is now a weekly occurrence.

Let’s review said bullshit:

1. Good guy with a gun – the most common, yet one of the most false.  Almost no mass shootings are stopped by an armed citizen, and in fact, armed citizens are generally killed or wounded trying to help, like the security guard at the Tops Grocery in Buffalo New York a few weeks ago.
2. An armed society is a polite society” – this one is as stupid as it sounds.  Name me an Open Carry Texas member who is a polite member of society and I’ll show you a fictional character.
3. More guns equals more safety – if that were true, we’d be the safest society on the planet.  As it is, our gun violence death rate is 4 times that of industrialized nations.
4. Crime decreased as we loosened gun laws – which equals, “I ate ice cream yesterday, then it rained.  Eating ice cream causes rain.”  Correlation does not equal causality, but I can say now that the states with looser gun laws have greater per capita gun deaths than those with strict gun laws.
5. What about “shall not be infringed” do you not understand – which is one of the silliest arguments.  All historic documents, including James Madison’s own notes, showed that the Founders were terrified of standing armies, (especially the British) and decided to defend the new US government with citizen militias under local authorities federalized during times of war.  That history is well documented and easily studied for those who read past the NRA’s propaganda.  In the early days, firearms were kept at home, but ammunition and gun powder were kept in local armories for safety.  Our founding generation was not populated by idiots.
6. Criminals don’t follow the law – again, an idiotic argument which supports the notion that, if this is true, we shouldn’t have stop signs, traffic lights, or speed limits.  Laws aren’t written for people to obey, since responsible citizens do that.  Laws are written to establish a framework of enforcement and punishment for those who don’t follow the law.
7. We should harden our schools and have armed law enforcement guarding the schools – again a stupid argument.  First, making every school in the nation a fortress is impossible.  Second it doesn’t work.  Case in point, just YESTERDAY, there were armed police at the school in Uvalde when the shooter got there.  They shot at him, but he was wearing body armor and was returning fire with an AR-15.  Even though there were armed officers at the school, he got in anyway, then killed 19 children and two teachers.  The cops got him only after SWAT arrived and blew him away with comparable weapons to what he was using.
8. We should arm the teachers – Ted Cruz made this idiotic statement many times including yesterday. This is the dumbest goddam suggestion of all.  See number 7 above.  If police couldn’t stop him, how the fuck is little Ms. Perrywinkle, the second grade arithmetic teacher two years out of college going to do it?

Ted Cruz, pull your head out of your ass.

Thoughts and prayers. When one hears that phrase they have to suppress the rage that exists inside them. After all, there is nothing inherently wrong with thoughts and prayers. Surely you would rather have someone think about you and pray for you then do nothing at all. Moreover, everyone seems to offer that in these times and not everyone can be a bad actor.

There are three levels of response to these kinds of things. The first level is a gut reaction to the event. We hold our loved ones a little longer. We hug them a little more strongly. We seek the comfort of a beloved family pet and thank our lucky stars if no one we personally know was involved.

The second visceral reaction is one of unadulterated anger. My initial reaction was the same as Sandy Hook. It was the same as Santa Fe. It was the same as Columbine and Florida. It’s the exact same as Virginia Tech and Boulder as well. It was the same as Vegas. It was definitely the same as Buffalo.

People doing nothing other than going about their daily lives don’t deserve this. No one deserves this. It’s particularly cruel when it involves children. They had their whole lives in front of them. My first immediate thought is that the right can take their second amendment and shove it up their sanctimonious ass. They can take their thoughts and prayers and shove it up their sanctimonious ass. They can take their pro life hypocrisy and shove it up their sanctimonious ass. They don’t get to speak anymore. They get to sit down and shut the hell up so the adults can get to work.

Admittedly, as great as that feels to say, it doesn’t help the situation either. Sadness doesn’t help prevent the next one. Anger doesn’t help prevent the next one. Only action will help prevent the next one. So, any overtures to repeal the second amendment are going nowhere. We know that. The only thing it does is provide the other side with a juicy soundbite to play on the campaign trail. It’s time for adults to sit down and figure this thing out.

Universal background checks should be a thing. The assault weapons ban should be a thing. Mandatory waiting periods should be a thing. Gun registration should be a thing. Let the right prattle on about how this is a mental health issue. Great. Get up off your ass and actually do something about mental health then.

You don’t get to make excuses you have no intention of following through on just to deflect from the obvious gun problem we have. You don’t get to offer platitudes about this, that, and the other without offering real solutions. We pay you for solutions. We don’t pay you for thoughts and prayers. We don’t pay you to flee to Cancun. We don’t pay you to make excuses, obfuscate, or derail the legislative process. We pay you to make our lives better. We pay you to make our lives safer.

Maybe repealing the second amendment isn’t reasonable. We are allowed our immediate thoughts as we process yet another one of these. We are allowed our outward signs of anger after one of these that never should have happened in the first place. We are allowed to dream of a world where the United States can manage to be like every other industrialized nation in the world. So, no I will not take your guns. Joe Biden will not take your guns. Kamala Harris and every other Democrat will not take your guns. Just understand that deep down inside many of us want to.

Just no.

Happy Texas Election Day!  I’ve got two candidates – Dexter McCoy for County Commissioner in my district and Suleman Lalani for state representative in the district I just got redistricted out of.  Both of them are worthy candidates to take on Republicans in November.  Both districts lean blue so we need strong candidates.  I’ve spent the past month phone banking and hand writing postcards for them. Keep your fingers crossed.

And keep your eye out for this Dexter kid. He’s gonna be president one day.

I’ll probably try to post something new tonight while waiting for results.

Meanwhile, this just totally cracked me up.

Now, if you don’t get it … spend a leisurely afternoon learning what you can about The Charlie Daniels Band, “Fire on the Mountain Go, Boys, Go” and Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. You’ll be a happier person for it.

I know sometime in the past I’ve written about Loving County. It’s way out in West Texas and has a current population of 57. Most of them hate each other.

The county is run by one family or the other one depending on the outcome of some of Texas’s most outrageous elections. Back when the Democrats were in control I used to tell people that I had voted Democratic all my life and when I die I want to be buried in Loving County so I can continue to vote Democratic.

I was pretty much serious about that.

And then, bygawd, along came fracking and Loving county got rich.

The tax base hovers around $7 billion to $9 billion. And the county’s budget has grown from about $2 million in 2008 to more than $28 million.

The salaries for many of the top officials in town — the judge, auditor, treasurer, clerk, justice of the peace, county attorney, constable and sheriff — are $100,000 or higher.

The current County Judge is Skeet Jones and pretty much every other county official is related to Ole Skeet.

Now I’m just kinda skipping over the background here but suffice it to say that Skeet is just a tad too big for his britches. And it appears he just popped a button.

Lawmen came to remote Loving County, Texas, on Friday to arrest the county judge, a former sheriff’s deputy and two ranch hands on one of Texas’ oldest crimes — cattle theft.

Judge Skeet Jones, 71, the top elected official since 2007 in the least populated county in the continental United States, is facing three felony counts of livestock theft and one count of engaging in criminal activity, accused of gathering up and selling stray cattle, authorities said.

They are cattle rustlers. I’ll be damn. As if there wasn’t enough graft going on to sustained 4 cowboys in the middle of damn nowhere.

I hate to see someone named Skeet – and that’s his legal name – suffer a tragic end, but Skeet made his bed, you know.

You can read more about it right here.  It’s worth your time.