F’ed Up

America’s latest mass shooting killed 7 and injured 22.

A 36-year-old man, fired from his job hours earlier on Saturday, led police on a high-speed chase where he fired an AR-15 style assault rifle indiscriminately at motorists and officers. Police initially tried to pull the suspect over for failing to use a turn signal, which turned into a chase that created 15 crime scenes along the highway between Midland and Odessa which included car dealerships and shopping mall. The man hijacked a postal van before he was finally shot and killed in the parking lot of a movie theater.

Those killed raned in age from 15 to 57, including the driver of the postal van. One of the injured was a 17-month-old toddler who is recovering from shrapnel in her chest. This occurred one day before 10 new laws loosening gun restrictions took effect in Texas. Some of the new laws are that renters can’t prohibit guns from being stored or carried onto their properties and schools can’t enforce gun safety rules for staff and visitors.

The governor argued that the new laws were enacted “for the purpose of making the community safer.” The National Rifle Association praised the governor and state legislature for “protecting your Second Amendment rights.” There have been five mass shootings in Texas over the past three years. Apparently, the state with the most guns doesn’t have enough guns yet to make it safe (and the majority of gun owners are white men). Texas has the most lax gun laws in the nation and they haven’t made the connection yet as to why they also lead the country in mass shootings.

Donald Trump said Saturday’s shooting could have been worse and that background checks wouldn’t have stopped Saturday’s shooting spree. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he was “heartbroken” and “tired of the dying of the people of the state of Texas,” and then he cried about the threat to gun rights.

And then, conservatives and gun owners finally found something about a mass shooting to get upset about. Beto O’Rourke dropped an F-bomb.

O’Rourke told CNN’s Dana Bash. “The rhetoric that we’ve used — the thoughts and prayers that you just referred to — it has done nothing to stop the epidemic of gun violence to protect our kids, our families, our fellow Americans in public places — at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where 22 were killed, in Sutherland Springs — in a church. One or two a day all over this country; 100 killed daily in the United States of America. We’re averaging about 300 mass shootings a year. No other country comes close.” And then he said, “So yes, this is fucked up.” He used the word again while campaigning in Virginia.

Immediately, Fox News ran a segment on CNN’s failure to bleep out the F-bomb. Conservatives took to social media, pausing from defending guns, to express outrage at Beto’s profanity.

Beto later tweeted, “Profanity is not the f-bomb. What is profane is a 17 month-old baby being shot in the face.”

Beto’s language isn’t the outrage.

If you’re still defending private ownership of assault weapons, that’s fucked up.

If you’re more upset over talk about gun control than deaths from mass shootings, that’s fucked up.

If you value guns over the lives of children, that’s fucked up.

If you’re a member of the National Rifle Association, that’s fucked up.

If you’re OK that we have to have metal detectors at school entrances and we have to send our children to class in bulletproof backpacks, that’s fucked up.

If you’re more upset over Beto saying “fuck” than you are about murder victims, that’s fucked up.

If you think it’s more upsetting for children to hear the F word on TV than to have to endure coverage of another mass shooting, that’s fucked up.

If you think a mass shooter being shot by a “good guy with a gun” after he kills 26 and injures 20 (Sutherland Springs, Texas, 2017) is proof the “good guy with a gun” argument works, that’s fucked up.

Quite frankly, you “Second Amendment” people’s priorities are fucked up.

The shooters neighbor said, “Although I feel bad about the situation, I feel at ease knowing that he was killed. That tells me the threat has been removed and my family is safe again.”

Here’s the thing. His family isn’t safe again (especially in Texas), and THAT’S FUCKED UP.

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