I'm not going to talk about basketball. Nothing's happened with our team in the last six hours. We're going to start the same way tonight. Any basketball questions don't matter.
Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here. And a teacher. In the last 10 days, we've had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we've had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California. Now we have children murdered at school.
When are we going to do something? I'm tired. I'm so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I'm so tired. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm tired of the moments of silence. Enough!
There's 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on HR8, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago. It's been sitting there for two years. And there's a reason they won't vote on it: to hold onto power. . . .
Texas Senator Ted Cruz offered prayers. Shannon Watts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were unimpressed.
The governor and Republicans in the Texas legislature have repeatedly promised after mass shootings to do something to protect lives, but after time has passed (as the Texas Tribune reports) "Confronted with mass shootings, Texas Republicans have repeatedly loosened gun laws."
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. -- Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously (in United States v. Miller) that the right to bear arms was connected to "the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." The intent of the Second Amendment is clear from the historical record. Firearms regulations were commonplace in urban areas in the Colonial era. As the late Chief Justice Warren Burger stated in 1991 regarding the individual right to bear arms, "This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."
Our country's continuing experience with mass shootings in schools, churches, supermarkets, theaters and other entertainment venues is no accident. Powerful political agents have made this possible -- and, not incidentally, made boatloads of money as the death tolls mount year after year like clockwork.
It doesn't matter to them that the semi-auto ban gives jack-booted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us. -- April 28, 1995 NRA fundraising letter, emphasizing the angry shift in NRA policy begun in 1977, which has made the NRA a rich organization has made Wayne LaPierre a rich man.
But not nearly as rich as the gun industry, which also made a decisive shift. It wasn't that long ago that the gun makers' trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, embraced a strict code of conduct and there were industry-wide norms regarding trade shows and advertising -- all of which served to encourage responsible use of firearms. That's long gone as the gun makers have vastly increased the sales of assault weapons (which have much higher profit margins than other guns).
Both the NRA and the gun manufacturers have chosen to partner with a far right that is itching for a fight:
Today the industry is all in on any pro-gun influencer, especially if they spout hateful, racist, or misogynistic rhetoric. People like Ted Nugent and Sebastian Gorka are received as heroes at gun industry trade shows. Instigators like Alex Jones are discussed in hushed tones as if they are deities. Even after fomenting insurrection, Donald Trump is welcomed as the main draw of the NRA convention and most gun companies eagerly line up to court the resulting frenzied masses.
Today, there is only one guiding gun industry principle, and it’s found in the NSSF’s marketing material: “always shooting for more.”
The most critical player guaranteeing that gun massacres continue to happen again and again, of course, is not the NRA and not the gun makers, but the Republican Party.
[Editor's note: headline inspired by the Onion, May 27, 2014.]