18 of the dead are reportedly children, some as young as second graders. It’s just fucking horrific.
Details of the shooting are still scarce. The shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was apparently shot dead by police. He didn’t leave behind a manifesto or social media posts shedding light on his motives, at least as far as we know now.
Here’s a thread for discussing the shooting and related topics like why the fuck we don’t have adequate gun control. Add links to any stories/posts/whatever that have more information or a useful perspective.
The “thoughts and prayers” tweets from Republicans began within hours. Thankfully, so did the pushback.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1529214902417637378
Right-wing shitlords on twitter are claiming the shooter was trans, so this is going to get really ugly
A response to all the ‘thoughts and prayers’ garbage certain folks like to through around in times like this.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/freelancechristianity/save-your-thoughts-and-prayers-do-something/
Of course, how many on the Right will listen to something like this is probably vanishing small.
I am sick and tired of the false sympathy from the gun folks. How many kids have died now?
Trans?
Gods, I hope that’s not true.
The shooter also tried to rope in some random woman on Instagram. She tried to deescalate… Tried to do the best she could, and now she’s getting blame and hate mail for it.
https://mobile.twitter.com/MilesKlee/status/1529219876287524864
I’m so tired but IDK how I’m going to sleep now. The awfulness is just so relentless. It’s as though the whole country has become gleefully suicidal.
@Crip Dyke, I’m gonna guess not TBH. They say this about… A lot of awful people. A few years ago I remember they decided another school shooter must be trans fem because he liked My Little Pony.
@Crip Dyke: Regardless of gender identity the shooter deserves to be put behind bars for a VERY long time.
And on a related note, I never want to hear the words “prison abolition” again.
@Crip Dyke. Very unlikely. Trans are the ultimate bogey-man to the alt-right. He was probably a shithead, angry at the world because it wouldn’t bow down and kiss his arse.
@Crip Dyke
The likelyhood that the shooter is trans appears to be 4chan op to try and they appear to be trying to co-op this tragedy in order to demonize and vilify trans people.
Having doing a bit of digging to find the truth of the matter: it appears that the photo that has been making the rounds claiming to be of the currently dead shooter: namely of a woman in a red long-sleeved coca cola shirt and black miniskirt holding a trans flag behind them: is actually of a currently still living Trans person on reddit who doesn’t even live in Texas and trying to inform people that is a photo of them and that they aren’t the currently dead shooter.
It also appears that 4chan (or at least other people are avowing) has just been grabbing photos of random trans people online and trying to falsely claim that they are somehow the currently dead shooter; and said trans people in those photos trying to affirm; “no, we are alive and are not the shooter”.
It’s like to such ilk; the actual deaths of these kids doesn’t really matter: only how they can cynically spin things so they can vilify, smear and harm minority groups they hate.
At this point I am pondering why pandemic supply chain “issues” keep affecting things like TP and baby formula but never guns or ammo …
Hi there, long time lurker, first time commenter.
Doesn’t anybody think its ironic that Republicans want to ban abortions in order to save lives but when a school shooter takes the lives of several innocent children then all of a sudden Republicans decide to sit on their behinds and do nothing but offer thoughts and prayers.
I wonder, what takes more lives every year, abortions or gun violence? Hmmmmm…. (Sarcasm heavily implied)
Whatever happened to protecting the sanctity of life? I guess its just not that important as Republicans say it is. It almost seems like the idea that life is sacred is nothing other than an arbitrary and completely meaningless phrase that Republicans like to use whenever it suits their agenda.
Reminds me of that line from the Princess Bride… “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means”
Anywho, that’s all i really have to say about that.
If it weren’t for Texas’ incredibly restrictive gun laws tying the hands of the common man (‘cause it’s always a man in these little fantasies), then a “good guy with a gun” would have stopped the shooter before he killed anyone.
Thoughts and prayers for all the wanna-be gun owners that Texas keeps unarmed and unavailable to go all Rambo and save the day.
(Fucking sarcasm, because I can’t even deal with this shit right now.)
Sorry to add to the sad news, but I saw this news this morning; it’s now 19 children dead, and two teachers. Four other children are in hospital, two in a critical state, and the murderer’s grandmother, who he shot before driving to the school, crashing his vehicle into a ditch and then going to the school. Murderer was 18 and attended the local high school. He had a hand gun and probably a rifle.
I do not understand why anyone would do this. I don’t understand the attraction of firearms. It just doesn’t make logical sense to me. And those poor children! Their families! I am heartbroken for the entire community.
And also, shamefully, glad it doesn’t happen here. From a purely selfish stance, I don’t think I could cope with the emotional battering all the time or the constant fear that it would be the children I know who might be hurt/killed.
Yes, we have knife crimes here, but generally people don’t think everyone should carry a knife ‘just in case’; firearms are so much more deadly. There are legitimate reasons for carrying knives that aren’t hunting and sports related (they are quite handy for allotments, and gardening generally, historical re-enactment events where it’s historically accurate for people to have knives as utensils) – they are tools; unless you are specifically going hunting or to engage in target shooting as a sport, there are no legitimate reasons to be randomly carrying a gun. Firearms are not tools. I don’t agree with hunting for sport and the sound of shotguns killing pheasants every autumn and winter makes me jumpy. I still remember the Dunblane massacre in Scotland that made getting firearms really hard here, and the amnesty afterwards so people could safely hand in weapons, and the fuss sports shooters made about their handguns being made harder to get and use. It’s been decades and the scar is still there; how do U.S. people cope with the weekly massacres?
@Chris Oakley: I think the shooter is dead so they aren’t going to prison.
But also, clearly the current criminal justice system is not preventing mass shootings so I’m not sure how this is an argument against prison abolition.
A bit of background on Texas gun laws: when I was growing up in Texas in the 70s and 80s, Texas actually had very strict concealed weapons laws. If was so difficult to get a concealed-weapons permit, basically no one bothered unless they needed to carry for work.
Then their was a mass shooting at a cafeteria in Killeen in the early 90s. At least one of the folks in the cafeteria had a gun, but had left it in the car because you were allowed to carry guns around back then. Although this was long before anyone would use the phrase “good guy with a gun,” the open speculation the one or more armed patrons could have prevented or stopped-short the shooting was the catalyst for Texas enacting very permissive concealed-carry laws.
If you accept the premise that abortions are “killing babies”, then technically that would be abortion. There’s about 600,000 abortions per year in the U.S., and about 40,000 deaths from gun violence.
Comparing medical procedures carried out to safeguard the bodily autonomy, health, and well-being of people who do not wish to be pregnant with the loss of life from murders, suicides, and accidents is a laughably flawed comparison, though.
Republicans only care about children if they can use them as an excuse to exert power and pander to their base, so they will do nothing at best, and more likely will try to use the tragedy to give more power and funding to the police. The Democrats might do something, but after the nothing following Sandy Hook and all the myriad other shootings I don’t have much faith in that.
I’m so sick of hearing about these tragedies playing out again and again.
Senator Cruz is doing his usual “not going to do anything that would upset the people who give me money” reaction. Bastard.
The shooter was not a trans person as far as anyone knows – the manufactured chaos and conspiracy suggesting this has started from 4chan and has used photos of THREE different latina trans women so far, all of whom are alive. The Trans Safety Network was able to contact them and advise them https://transsafety.network/posts/disinfo-uvalde-shooter/
Crip Dyke:
It isn’t true. The photograph that’s being bruted about on the usual suspect websites is a photo from a trans girl someone found online. He was not transgender, and despite his name, may not necessarily be Latino either. But the transgender sht was definitely pulled that out of their a$$es.
Why is it the cops can kill a mass murderer when they’re a PoC, but not when they’re white?
I haven’t been following this story too closely; although there was some good commentary on “No-money Mark’s” show on WCSB.
Apparently some of the usual suspects have been implying this was an attack on ‘white’ people in response to the Buffalo shooting.
Well looking at the initial names of some of the victims they are all so far Hispanic sounding.
It says everything about how ugly, and dangerous, the right wing narrative is that my first thought was phew but at least it can’t be used to inflame in that way.
(I appreciate the complexity of how Hispanic people are categorised in the US, but hopefully you get the point)
@ Alan Texas south of downtown San Antonio is pretty solidly hispanic, excepting the coast.
thanks for the people who followed up on the bullshit trans-blaming (and, as it turns out, immigrant-blaming).
As for Chris Oakley, while you get no less gratitude for following up on that, when it comes to prison abolition, I will not let the issue go.
I am what is known as a practical prison abolitionist. Does that mean that I think that no one should ever be kept segregated from free society? No it does not. But it does mean that the prison system we have does not work. At all. And it needs to be scrapped and whatever we come up with to replace it has to be built from scratch on the basis of good research, hard data, and strong values.
Some people think that prison abolition means a blind faith that people will simply stop committing violent crimes if we agree to stop locking people up. That’s not prison abolition at all.
I doubt you’ve read deeply on prison abolition. If you have, then we simply disagree. But I think it’s much more likely that you simply aren’t aware that the prison abolition movement wants to create structures in countries (like the USA) that have major problems with violent crime that we know from research prevent such crime, and that respond to violent crime without punishment, but instead with honest, thoughtful, evidence-based assessment about what response is best for all involved.
Would that include locked doors for some violent criminals? Of course. But the facilities in which they would be confined would be unrecognizably different from the state and federal penitentiaries in common use in the USA today.
My wild-ass guess is that we could, after a generation of building new capacities, reach a place where the number of persons confined at any given moment is less than 10% of the number confined today, and that after two generations of building new capacities that we would reach a level of confinement potentially under 1% of today’s level, but certainly no higher than 5% of today’s level.
But I’m also aware that
1) that assumes that our society does a LOT of very fucking hard work
and
2) the ultimate level of confinement isn’t based on my whim or desire, but on what actually produces the best outcomes.
I want prison abolition now, not in some distant future, but that means passing legislation today that makes for-profit prisons illegal, punishment (rather than positive outcome) a banned consideration in sentencing, housing a human right, and mental health care a priority.
These are steps that we know work immediately, with no preparatory groundwork necessary. At the same time we pass these, we must pass legislation to fund the production of a plan, written by actual experts (e.g. not me) on a transition to a less carceral, less violent society. As soon as another step to take has been reliably identified, legislation should be passed to take that step, building on what has come before or revising the preceding legislation as necessary.
There are many societies that are both less violent and less carceral than the United States or Canada. A desire to prevent or avoid discussions of the valid criticisms of the USA status quo is a de facto desire to support the violent status quo.
Maybe I’m completely wrong, and that the least violent version of the USA possible can only exist with the use of prisons as we know them. But sure as shit this isn’t the least violent version of the USA possible, so something has to change, and declaring that you won’t listen to criticisms of the status quo isn’t going to help us get there.
I am proud to say that I stand for prison abolition. Are you proud to say that you stand for not listening to people who want to talk about it?
Apparently he was attempting to harass some girl into dating him (her name is being withheld for privacy reasons) in the weeks before the shooting. It’s unknown whether the shooting is related to her refusal (likely age range makes her much too old to be an elementary student and too young to be a teacher, and there’s no mention I’ve seen of her having any connection to the school), but there are apparently people blaming her for it, some of them calling him her “boyfriend”. She says that she barely knew him, the harassment was entirely online, and they never interacted in person.
The Onion (https://www.theonion.com/ ) today is brilliant (in that horrible way it has to be). I’m not sure how to do images here, but if someone emails me I can send them the images to post; I screen-captured what it looked like today (May 25) – 3 screens full of the “same” headline (which of course they’ve run every time it’s been needed, changing ONLY the city & victim count), then a few other related horrific stories.