We Need More Than 'Thoughts and Prayers' After Las Vegas

[signalmankenneth]

Don't mistake grating cliches for genuine compassion.

Whenever someone commits a heinous gun crime like the massacre in Las Vegas, politicians swiftly assure us that the victims and their families are in their "thoughts and prayers." What these mush-mouthed messages mean, in plain English, is that government, as embodied by those politicians, will do nothing to make the country safer from gun violence.

Thoughts and prayers are all we're going to get.

These same elected officials are almost always poised to rubber-stamp statutes that will make us less safe, such as congressional Republicans' upcoming proposals to deregulate silencers and expand concealed-carry rights. The Vegas shooter got nearly two-dozen weapons into his hotel room at Mandalay Bay, but our brilliant legislators believe it's still too difficult to transport weapons of mass murder.

That killer in Vegas could have mowed down dozens more innocent people, if only he could have put a suppressor on his weapon, preventing anyone from seeing the muzzle flash up on the 32nd floor.

So when they tell us we are all in their thoughts and prayers, don't mistake that grating cliche for genuine compassion. In thrall to the National Rifle Association, as so many legislators are, they are ensuring that more of us—and yes, our families—will suffer violent deaths. The NRA compensates them lavishly to betray us. The last time Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ran for re-election, the gun lobby, which represents firearms manufacturers far more faithfully than ordinary gun owners, gave him almost a million dollars.

With 58 dead so far and hundreds wounded, the Vegas shooting is reportedly the worst in U.S. history, breaking the record set in 2016 at Orlando's Pulse nightclub. This year alone, America has endured 273 incidents of mass shootings, adding to the list of thousands of slaughters over the past 10 years.

Such phenomenally destructive acts, even as they become more commonplace, shouldn't make us forget the toll that daily gun violence inflicts on the innocent. Every year, more than 110,000 Americans are shot and more than 20,000 Americans kill themselves with a gun. American women are far more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other advanced countries.

Yet so powerful is the dictatorship of the gun-makers and their servants in the NRA that anyone who dares to mention gun regulation, even in the aftermath of a bloodbath, is castigated for "politicizing" tragedy. In a democracy, this taboo amounts to moral idiocy, enforced even by the "liberal media." The cable news and broadcast commentators praised Donald Trump's meaningless statement about Las Vegas as "pitch perfect" precisely because he didn't mention guns. Of course, Trump knows very well that the NRA spent millions on his election, so the "carnage" that they encourage is perfectly acceptable to him.

Except it is neither acceptable nor inevitable, as the dimmer media bulbs always suggest at these moments. The simple truth is that states with stronger gun regulation are safer than those without similar laws, even though gun traffickers can and do cross state lines. And states with weaker gun regulation—like Nevada, where certain kinds of machine guns are legal, where no permit is required to purchase a firearm, and where Republican Governor Brian Sandoval vetoed universal background checks—are considerably less safe. (Naturally, Sandoval offered his "prayers" for "the victims & all affected by this act of cowardice" in a cheap tweet.)

With murderous neo-Nazis, ISIS-inspired fanatics and assorted other lunatics at large, we need to make it far more difficult to obtain the semi-automatic weapons that can be converted into fully automated killing machines. Instead, as many law enforcement officials worry, our political paralysis enables terrorists of any stripe to acquire as many weapons as they want.

Someday, even the dullest commentators may understand that politicizing urgent public issues is essential to a democratic society. Someday, even the stupidest voters may come to realize that the proliferation of weapons doesn't protect them or their families, but only increases the likelihood that a maniac will take the lives of their loved ones. Someday, even the most blind and venal politicians may stop tweeting out rote condolences, and take action to end the madness.

Before that day arrives, hundreds and thousands more will surely die.

By Joe Conason

[evince]

thoughts and prayers.


its designed to include all beliefs


its now so overused it grates on the ears


I cant stand the "now is not the time" to analyse what went wrong and how to fix it.

they dont want it EVER analysed

[Ralph]

Reality: If you are truly DEPENDENT upon Big Brother to protect you.....you are already living in a world of shit, as there is not a government on earth that can protect against FREE WILL and the evil choices made by some.



Once again the left has no qualms about standing on the back of the dead to promote a political agenda. Idiocy. Anyone familiar with the use of an automatic weapon knows that the use of a flash suppressor/silencer is not realistic due to the mechanical failure soon to follow as the automatic weapon uses the expended GAS in order to function as an auto or semi-automatic where the heat generated tends to make the weapon malfunction within seconds )......... or as Hillary said with the first thought in her evil head after the attack, "IMAGINE what COULD HAVE (the leftist hypothetical) if he had a silencer.....as the NRA wants them easily purchased....

Question? Why does the military....while training fresh recruits in the use of the auto/semiautomatic weapon....train soldiers to fire in short 3 round bursts? Could it be they know the capacities of what an automatic weapon and what it can and cannot do when your life depends upon that knowledge?

Did anyone doubt the demwits first thought would be to attack the 2nd amendment while the bodies of dead are not yet COLD? Never allow a good crisis to go to waste. Indeed the party of compassion. Just what we the people need.....more laws not to enforce.

This man obviously was very well versed in the use and tactics of how to use a weapon....does anyone doubt the demonstrable probability that this person (who illegally had no problems in laying his hands on a fully automatic weapon) COULD HAVE (the favorite term of all leftist....would'a, could'a, should'a...imagined hypotheticals) also laid his hand on a flash suppressor/silencer?

This event proves one thing and one thing only. Evil lives and gestates in the heart.....not in some inanimate tool.

[Getin the ring]

thoughts and prayers.


its designed to include all beliefs


its now so overused it grates on the ears


I cant stand the "now is not the time" to analyse what went wrong and how to fix it.

they dont want it EVER analysed

well, a good start would be to spell analyzed right?

And one could "analyze" until the cows come home, conclude and get all to agree that ALL guns should be banned overnight. We would still wake up tomorrow and thousands of more tomorrows and have millions of guns in the hands of crazy people, or at the very least crazy people with the access to millions of guns.

Most of us are all for solutions, come up with one and just maybe someone will listen to your nonsense.

[evince]

the political agenda of wanting fewer dead Humans.


its you who are evil

[tsuke]

every single person will do a thoughts and prayers bit after what happened from trump to obama to sanders.

[domer76]

Reality: If you are truly DEPENDENT upon Big Brother to protect you.....you are already living in a world of shit, as there is not a government on earth that can protect against FREE WILL and the evil choices made by some.



Once again the left has no qualms about standing on the back of the dead to promote a political agenda. Idiocy. Anyone familiar with the use of an automatic weapon knows that the use of a flash suppressor/silencer is not realistic due to the mechanical failure soon to follow as the automatic weapon uses the expended GAS in order to function as an auto or semi-automatic where the heat generated tends to make the weapon malfunction within seconds )......... or as Hillary said with the first thought in her evil head after the attack, "IMAGINE what COULD HAVE (the leftist hypothetical) if he had a silencer.....as the NRA wants them easily purchased....

Question? Why does the military....while training fresh recruits in the use of the auto/semiautomatic weapon....train soldiers to fire in short 3 round bursts? Could it be they know the capacities of what an automatic weapon and what it can and cannot do when your life depends upon that knowledge?

Did anyone doubt the demwits first thought would be to attack the 2nd amendment while the bodies of dead are not yet COLD? Never allow a good crisis to go to waste. Indeed the party of compassion. Just what we the people need.....more laws not to enforce.

This man obviously was very well versed in the use and tactics of how to use a weapon....does anyone doubt the demonstrable probability that this person (who illegally had no problems in laying his hands on a fully automatic weapon) COULD HAVE (the favorite term of all leftist....would'a, could'a, should'a...imagined hypotheticals) also laid his hand on a flash suppressor/silencer?

This event proves one thing and one thing only. Evil lives and gestates in the heart.....not in some inanimate tool.

[Amadeus]

Thoughts and prayers are useless without a magic lamp.

[chink]

Don't mistake grating cliches for genuine compassion.

Whenever someone commits a heinous gun crime like the massacre in Las Vegas, politicians swiftly assure us that the victims and their families are in their "thoughts and prayers." What these mush-mouthed messages mean, in plain English, is that government, as embodied by those politicians, will do nothing to make the country safer from gun violence.

Thoughts and prayers are all we're going to get.

These same elected officials are almost always poised to rubber-stamp statutes that will make us less safe, such as congressional Republicans' upcoming proposals to deregulate silencers and expand concealed-carry rights. The Vegas shooter got nearly two-dozen weapons into his hotel room at Mandalay Bay, but our brilliant legislators believe it's still too difficult to transport weapons of mass murder.

That killer in Vegas could have mowed down dozens more innocent people, if only he could have put a suppressor on his weapon, preventing anyone from seeing the muzzle flash up on the 32nd floor.

So when they tell us we are all in their thoughts and prayers, don't mistake that grating cliche for genuine compassion. In thrall to the National Rifle Association, as so many legislators are, they are ensuring that more of us—and yes, our families—will suffer violent deaths. The NRA compensates them lavishly to betray us. The last time Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ran for re-election, the gun lobby, which represents firearms manufacturers far more faithfully than ordinary gun owners, gave him almost a million dollars.

With 58 dead so far and hundreds wounded, the Vegas shooting is reportedly the worst in U.S. history, breaking the record set in 2016 at Orlando's Pulse nightclub. This year alone, America has endured 273 incidents of mass shootings, adding to the list of thousands of slaughters over the past 10 years.

Such phenomenally destructive acts, even as they become more commonplace, shouldn't make us forget the toll that daily gun violence inflicts on the innocent. Every year, more than 110,000 Americans are shot and more than 20,000 Americans kill themselves with a gun. American women are far more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other advanced countries.

Yet so powerful is the dictatorship of the gun-makers and their servants in the NRA that anyone who dares to mention gun regulation, even in the aftermath of a bloodbath, is castigated for "politicizing" tragedy. In a democracy, this taboo amounts to moral idiocy, enforced even by the "liberal media." The cable news and broadcast commentators praised Donald Trump's meaningless statement about Las Vegas as "pitch perfect" precisely because he didn't mention guns. Of course, Trump knows very well that the NRA spent millions on his election, so the "carnage" that they encourage is perfectly acceptable to him.

Except it is neither acceptable nor inevitable, as the dimmer media bulbs always suggest at these moments. The simple truth is that states with stronger gun regulation are safer than those without similar laws, even though gun traffickers can and do cross state lines. And states with weaker gun regulation—like Nevada, where certain kinds of machine guns are legal, where no permit is required to purchase a firearm, and where Republican Governor Brian Sandoval vetoed universal background checks—are considerably less safe. (Naturally, Sandoval offered his "prayers" for "the victims & all affected by this act of cowardice" in a cheap tweet.)

With murderous neo-Nazis, ISIS-inspired fanatics and assorted other lunatics at large, we need to make it far more difficult to obtain the semi-automatic weapons that can be converted into fully automated killing machines. Instead, as many law enforcement officials worry, our political paralysis enables terrorists of any stripe to acquire as many weapons as they want.

Someday, even the dullest commentators may understand that politicizing urgent public issues is essential to a democratic society. Someday, even the stupidest voters may come to realize that the proliferation of weapons doesn't protect them or their families, but only increases the likelihood that a maniac will take the lives of their loved ones. Someday, even the most blind and venal politicians may stop tweeting out rote condolences, and take action to end the madness.

Before that day arrives, hundreds and thousands more will surely die.

By Joe Conason

let me help you out here,we are a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC,not a slimy Democracy ,where the rights of the few are trampled by the rights of the many.
calling TRUMP VOTERS stupid tells me all i need to know about you .

[Ralph]

Reruns already? I thought the fall season had begun.

[evince]

let me help you out here,we are a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC,not a slimy Democracy ,where the rights of the few are trampled by the rights of the many.
calling TRUMP VOTERS stupid tells me all i need to know about you .

note that russobots hate democracy


they also hatre dictionaries and encyclopedia which prove this assholes right wing meme a fucking lie

[Ralph]

Thoughts and prayers are useless without a magic lamp.

You mean like "POOF".....spontaneous generation of life from non living matter? There are two possibilities concerning LIFE. First possibility: It began by random chance or it happened by design. Second possibility: it began as if by magic in an ignorant spontaneous manner or it began intentionally from intelligence. I choose to believe there is design in life and nature....door number 2.

Why? Simply because you or anyone might be "ignorant" concerning the original creation and gestation of life does not mean that it was not designed by a force more superior and intelligent than the life it created. Science agrees: Its called the law of causality. Nothing comes from nothing there must be superior creating cause to any effect, even life. There is nothing in this reality called nature that can produce life from dead matter. In nature only the living can reproduce/create, its a FACT of Science. What? Does pure objective science evolve...what was true yesterday (history) is not necessarily true today (the present)? Really? If life was once created from dead matter....why is it not observable or reproducible TODAY?

No I don't believe in the magical self generation of life from NOTHING as you do, I accept the only logical and reasonable conclusion....some superior force to nature itself caused everything you see today. Call it what you will but clearly it is SUPER(ior) to Nature(al)...i.e., a SUPER NATURAL FORCE.

If not...simply use the Scientific Method to prove me wrong. Show us from the beginning how life "evolved" from NOTHING.

[evince]

You mean like "POOF".....spontaneous generation of life from non living matter? There are two possibilities concerning LIFE. First possibility: It began by random chance or it happened by design. Second possibility: it began as if by magic in an ignorant spontaneous manner or it began intentionally from intelligence. I choose to believe there is design in life and nature....door number 2. Why? Simply because you or anyone is "ignorant" concerning the original gestation of life does not mean that it was not designed by a force more superior and intelligent than the life it created. Science agrees: Its called the law of causality. Nothing comes from nothing there must be superior creating cause to any effect, even life.

No I don't believe in the magical self generation of life from NOTHING as you do, I accept the only logical and reasonable conclusion....some superior force to nature itself caused everything you see today. Call it what you will but clearly it is a SUPER(ior) than Nature(al)...i.e., a SUPER NATURAL FORCE.

If not...simply use the Scientific Method to prove me wrong. Show us from the beginning how life "evolved" from NOTHING.

who created god idiot

[SmarterthanYou]

the political agenda of wanting fewer dead Humans.

its you who are evil

then disarm government/law enforcement as a start.

[Amadeus]

You mean like "POOF".....spontaneous generation of life from non living matter? There are two possibilities concerning LIFE. First possibility: It began by random chance or it happened by design. Second possibility: it began as if by magic in an ignorant spontaneous manner or it began intentionally from intelligence. I choose to believe there is design in life and nature....door number 2.

Why? Simply because you or anyone might be "ignorant" concerning the original creation and gestation of life does not mean that it was not designed by a force more superior and intelligent than the life it created. Science agrees: Its called the law of causality. Nothing comes from nothing there must be superior creating cause to any effect, even life. There is nothing in this reality called nature that can produce life from dead matter. In nature only the living can reproduce/create, its a FACT of Science. What? Does pure objective science evolve...what was true yesterday (history) is not necessarily true today (the present)? Really? If life was once created from dead matter....why is it not observable or reproducible TODAY?

No I don't believe in the magical self generation of life from NOTHING as you do, I accept the only logical and reasonable conclusion....some superior force to nature itself caused everything you see today. Call it what you will but clearly it is SUPER(ior) to Nature(al)...i.e., a SUPER NATURAL FORCE.

If not...simply use the Scientific Method to prove me wrong. Show us from the beginning how life "evolved" from NOTHING.

You're right, Odin clearly created the universe.