Just days after the mass shooting of children at school in Connecticut, Congressional Embarrassment, Louie Gohmert of Texas, added his “thoughts” to the discussion on Fox News Sunday; his voice quavering with simulated emotion he said that when the Newtown principal lunged at the gunman, he “wished to God she’d had an M4 in her hands.”
He, like the bloodthirsty Tea Party goons sponsoring the message linked here, answer the cries of the families of dead children in Sandy Hook with the vulgar, sick-minded suggestion that their children, our children, would be made safer by the arming of faculty.
Gohmert and the weapon-lusting, gun-pumping masturbating riflesuckers want their guns so much—are so infatuated with the sexy hardware of assault and human destruction–they are willing to profane public discourse with their childish, irrational commentary. While the literally bullet riddled bodies of Newtown children lay still unburied, they dare to offer suggestions that good educators would be better if they were trained to kill. They offer the wise counsel that children’s elementary school experience would be better if school employees were trained and equipped to shoot it out with mass murderers in the school hallway–gun fanatics who enter schools armed for public massacre with weapons and body armor designed for military and police SWAT engagements–all of which are protected for legal public purchase with the lunatic excuses of ‘hunting, ‘sporting’, ‘home protection’, ‘hobby interest’, ‘check on the authority on our (elected) government’…
By all accounts Principal Dawn Hochsprung was an outstanding school administrator, gentle and present to the students in her care, a highly trained educator.
Kindergarten teacher.Victoria Soto wanted to be a teacher all her life. Parents and students confessed to responding to her display of love for her students with their own love for her.
Yet, by the reckoning of Gohmert and supporters of “I Am the Tea Party”, these two ideal educators were insufficiently trained for their positions as elementary school educators. Shame!
Listen to the voices of support sampled from the “I Am the Tea Party” FB posting:
Dennis Hand They should get rid of the “Gun Free Zone” classification and not only have armed guards, but they should train and arm staff. There is no reason that there should have been this much carnage. If there had been armed staff members, there may have been a couple of deaths or injuries, but the assailant would have been brought down in short order.
Kristy Kirk We need the principals of schools all around the country to at least have a gun in their offices to protect their school and us at home as well.
Mary Grimm Bunker Let’s train our staff with firearms and prayer
Debbie Wood Scrimshire Have to fight fire with fire. Be prepared to defend and protect our children.
Scott Swigart Until the school teachers and staff of these schools are armed this is going to continue to happen…a few AR’s in the principals office and a little training would have gone a long way towards stopping the insanity of this young man that dreadful day. Imagine the difference it would have made if the principal and perhaps his secretary would have come around the corner with their own AR’s to confront this man.
Jimmy Dempsey It is way past time for our people to arm the teachers and staff at all of our schools. It is a must that they ALL (teachers and staff) get psycological evaluations, but then give them the arms they need to protect our children. Why is it so hard to understand that?
Beth Harmon Stadlmayr Travers I say we only hire teachers who can speak English , have a degree to teach and have a CCW!…Good people with guns will always prevent murder! DUH! [1]
GOOD THINKING FB TEABAGGERS! Teacher education programs could follow the course on student management with a course on the “12 Critical Elements of Modern Firearms Training”–How many Dawn Hochsprungs and Victoria Sotos will aspire to enter that kind of teaching profession?
You’re right Congressman Gohmert and Tea Party geniuses, American education will certainly improve when educators like Victoria Soto are driven out and gun-toting, weaponhead gym teachers take control of our schools.
Idiots.
If after what we have seen now, we cannot have a serious discussion about the status of guns in America without the intrusion of idiotic nonsense, then we deserve the violence we allow to continue through our unwillingness to call stupidity what it is.
The gun crazed right has come out in force to deflect all attention away from the role of firearms in the growing epidemic of mass public shootings. In the case of this shooting, the removal of God, Jesus, prayer, religion, and the Bible were cited as “the real cause” of hyper-lethal public shooting sprees in schools.
Also blamed were lack of corporal punishment at school and at home, the influence of liberalism, socialism, and Marxism (no, really), video games, Hollywood, and the ever popular “culture” (with no supporters of the post citing specifically gun culture as a problem.)
And, most of all, mental illness. And this deflection is deployed not only among Tea Party types; all over the mediaverse entire constellations of ink, electrons, and slobber have been spewed into the public square intimating that this tragedy (and all the string of tragedies that make up the American gunslaughter epidemic) should focus our national attention on “mental health” aspects of the phenomenon.
On the rifle right, this usually involves arm waving about keeping guns out of the hands of the “mentally ill”, “psychopaths”, “crazies”, “lunatics”, “sociopaths”, and “the sick”. Sure let’s scapegoat and demonize people with health problems–recall that that’s what folks suffering with mental illnesses are: people with health problems.
On the “I Am the Tea Party” chain, on average every third comment indicated that mental illness or medications for mental conditions (which many of these libertarians would ban—not guns, medication) are “the real problem.”
I agree that mental illness is a real problem in the context of gun use: After watching two decades of increasing gun violence go unaddressed by craven lawmakers cringing before the power of the personal weapons lobby and their bogus membership association–the NRA–while all the while the whiteright paranoia chorus chants its claims that the gubment is about to seize their weapons, I would think the upcoming edition of the DSM ought to include a newly recognized mental illness: Second Amendment Derangement Syndrome.
And after a season of watching Tea Party sociopaths marching outside presidential appearances with assault weapons slung across their backs, a season in which right-wing candidates openly spoke of “second amendment remedies” to public policy differences, a season in which a top leader of the right stiffened the spines of ‘conservatives’ with her inane motto: “Don’t retreat, reload,” I want to state in complete seriousness that the real mental illness we need to be talking about is right-wing ideology. It has long since become a deadly sociopathic disease.
NAME IT SO.
NOTE: No essay, article, or comment on matters of gun violence should ever end without calling attention to Mother Jones brilliant Guide to Mass Shootings in America; be sure to check out all the links.
Related articles
- Victim Vigil: My Sister Was A ‘True Hero’ (news.sky.com)
- For Sandy Hook’s sake: learning from the tragedy of Newtown | Michael Williams (guardian.co.uk)
- An Atheists thoughts on the Newtown school shooting (allthatsevil.wordpress.com)
[1] Hey, Beth. How come Nancy Lanza didn’t “prevent murder”? Reporting indicates that she was a good gun mother. She taught her children how to use guns, took them shooting, and by all accounts spent a great deal of time working with her son’s learning problems. More evidence that Mrs. Lanza was one of Beth’s “good people”? All agree she was one of your tribe: a “gun enthusiast”!
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