‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

October 20, 2024   Dr. Roger Ray            click here to see the video

 

For a decade now, the satirical news site, the Onion, has run this same headline every time there is another large mass shooting. They change the article very little, placing the news story in a fictitious town but always including the quote

 

“This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.”

 

Of course, maybe the Onion should make a joke about any mass shooting just as many right wing politicians and gun fanatics always insist, in the wake of a shooting, that “this is no time to talk about politics.” They will feign concern for grieving families, insisting that this is a time to mourn, not to debate gun legislation. It is, of course, a ruse. They know that the public’s attention span is very short. 

It was almost 12 years ago now when a lone gunman with an AR-15 went into the Sandy Hook Elementary school and killed 26 people, 20 of whom were six and seven year old children. President Obama thought, surely now the nation will get behind serious gun reform. 

But even the bodies of 20 little children, torn apart by the battlefield force of the bullets from an AR-15, even though many parents have tried to keep their children’s memory alive, continually lobbying Congress for serious action . . . but nothing happened. People get distracted, they forget, and they move on.

The deadliest mass murder came less than five years later when a man with an AR-15 killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 others from his hotel window in Las Vegas, randomly shooting into the crowd at a country music concert. It was symbolic, really, but at least after that incident the infamous “bump stock” was outlawed…. A device that used the recoil of the rifle to turn a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic rifle, a virtual machine gun. But this summer, in June, our out-of-control Supreme Court overturned the legislation that made bump stocks illegal. 

 

Machine guns were outlawed in the United States almost a century ago, but this Supreme Court put them back on the streets. 

 

Then, six years ago, when a former student from the Parkland High School in Florida went into his school and killed 16 people, that seemed to ignite an organized protest that featured several amazingly articulate students who went on a speaking tour of the country, I tried to get one of them booked to come speak at our church and couldn’t even get the booking agent to return phone calls because they were so in demand. But still, nothing changed. 

 

Defenders of the gun industry have tried to tell us that we have these shooters because our young people play violent video games all of the time. But, folks, kids in Japan play video games more than American kids. Do you know how many school shootings there were in Japan? Zero. None. Nada. 

 

Like it or not, the Onion is still right, we are the only country where this regularly happens. We know why it happens here. And we lack the political will to do anything about it. 

Of course, school shootings are just a small fraction of the gun murders in the United States ever year but they are among the most noticeable. Just over 300 students were killed in school last year and 288 of those were in the USA. 8 in Mexico. 6 in South Africa. 5 in India. 4 in Pakistan and Nigeria. 3 in Afghanistan. 2 in Brazil, France, and Canada. Only one each in China, Russia, Turkey, Germany, Kenya, Greece, Azerbaijan, Hungary, and Estonia. None in most of the rest of the world. But we lost 288 students. Unimaginable. Indefensible. Isn’t it fair to say that it is insane? 

 

Of course, the death toll is the worst but the beyond the dead and wounded, there is to be considered how every school child in the country is traumatized by these constant “active shooter” exercises. Bullet proof backpacks for your kids is now a thing. Schools, which are always strapped for resources, are now having to spend precious dollars on security guards, metal detectors, hardened doors, additional staff.

 

And what’s more, schools and police departments are now always on edge and our schools are awash in cell phones so that anyone who wants to create some excitement or get their school closed down for the day just has to make a call. Late last month, April Ruben reported in Axios that:

 

• In a single afternoon last week, schools in Tennessee, South Carolina, Minnesota, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Texas, Michigan and Maryland all received threats.
• In Volusia County, Fla., the sheriff's office received 54 tips about potential threats in a single night this month. All the threats turned out to be false.
• In Springfield, Ohio, schools closed over hoax bomb threats following the GOP presidential ticket's amplification of a debunked conspiracy theory that immigrants in the city were eating pets.

The threat of gun violence is real. We have nearly 300 dead students every year to prove that, but then schools across the country are regularly disrupted by fake reports that, regardless of the fact that they are fake, have to be taken seriously and investigated. Is it any wonder then that so many of our schools have become so ineffective in performing their primary mission which is to educate?

Law enforcement officials across Florida have started to arrest students who call in threats and they perp walk the student and the student’s parents hoping that public humiliation will help to curb this dangerous trend. School has just started and they have already arrested dozens of kids between the ages of 11 and 15. One 11 year old turned out to have a small arsenal of guns and swords in his room, stockpiled for when he actually would attack his school. 

 

Nothing can be done, says the only nation where this regularly happens.

We used to hear the NRA claiming that gun laws don’t work, except for the fact that they do work in every other nation of the world. They point at murder rates in Chicago and New York, where there are strict gun laws, as their proof that they don’t work, when, obviously, a city law doesn’t keep someone from just outside the city from bringing a gun in. 

 

I have pointed out before that Mexico only has one legal gun store in the whole country and they only serve members of police forces but there are more than 6000 gun shops in the United States, just across the border from Mexico so that our gun shops are literally arming the drug cartels in their civil war in Mexico. You know, a lot of the undocumented immigrants to the USA are coming here because it is so dangerous in Mexico but, come on, why are there so many guns in Mexico? Where there are a lot of guns, there are a lot of shootings. This is how it works.

 

The NRA has said for years that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but the truth of it is that people with guns kill people, particularly people with assault rifles and hand guns, both of which are made solely for the purpose of shooting people. You don’t deer hunt with a pistol. You don’t shoot pheasant with an AR-15. If you need to defend your home, get a shot gun. If you need to shoot a duck, get a single shot rifle. If you need to shoot a duck four or five times, that bird is probably too tough to eat anyway. 

 

I have no idea how many credible assassination threats are made against presidents, candidates, politicians, and celebrities. The secret service doesn’t give out that information. We only hear about it when shots are fired, or a gunman is apprehended. 

Naturally, when Donald Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt, Trump allies tried to blame Kamala Harris and those of us who have been warning for years that Trump is a danger to democracy. But the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans who have made it absolutely certain that almost anyone with enough money can buy a battlefield styled assault rifle. 

 

I don’t think that the USA has a much larger population of crazy people compared to other countries. Probably, we have an average number of crazy people, it is just that this nation is so awash in guns that crazy people, kids, angry people, or just lonely teenagers who want attention, can get their hands on lethal weapons, and thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition and in that context, it is a wonder that we don’t have more people killed than we do. 

 

Look people, the Second Amendment was written when the arms they referenced where highly inaccurate, single shot, muskets. There is no rational argument that the authors of the constitution could have imagined assault rifles with a 100 round capacity. It should also be noted that the Second Amendment was added to the bill of rights as a concession to slave owners who were frequently dramatically outnumbered by their slaves and in constant fear of a very reasonable revolt. This was a very real fear of George Washington’s. 

 

I know it will get some people all twisted up like a pretzel to hear me say it, but the Second Amendment is in sore need of amendment. Jesus didn’t write the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment was written by paranoid slave owners. 

Our children and grandchildren should not be traumatized every school year with active shooter drills and seeing armed police officers storming the building because someone called in a fake threat. Every other developed nation in the world has found a way for people to own the arms they actually need, and to store their hobby guns at shooting ranges so that our kids can feel safe when they go to school without having to wear a bullet proof vest on the school bus. 

 

The NRA, thankfully, does not have the political clout they once had, and they no longer have the financial resources to buy politicians that they once had. But still, we have a shortage of courage among our legislators but here is the good news:

The majority of Americans favor sensible gun laws, and so if we just stop voting for the politicians who refuse to give us sensible gun laws, we will have sensible gun laws, much like the rest of the world, in a single election cycle. It is just that easy, if only people would begin to vote in favor of their children living long enough to graduate. 

 

The only reason that the most common cause of death among children in our country is being shot is because of the indifference of voters who will not vote for change.

Gaza One Year Later: The Publicity War

Gaza One Year Later: The Publicity War   

October 6, 2024       Dr. Roger Ray

 

click here to see the video

 

 

 

 

One year ago, Hamas terrorists launched an attack within Israel. It started on that Sabbath morning with more than 2000 rockets being fired into 21 communities in Israel. Then 6000 militants poured through, over, and under the border, killing more than 1000 men, women, and children. Elderly people were gunned down as they ran to take shelter in bomb shelters. They attacked day care centers, brutally murdering children and babies. 

 

Some 250 men, women, and children were taken as hostages during the attack; taken back into Gaza and hidden in the tunnels for which Hamas is famous but also some were housed in the homes of Gaza residents who support Hamas. Both men and women were subjected to rape and sexual violence. There are accounts of prisoners being beheaded and people in Gaze literally playing with body parts. 

 

Bloodied, naked women were paraded through the streets of Gaza. Several were gang raped and at least one was apparently raped to death, dying with a crushed pelvis. Several captives have died in captivity. A few have been released. Now, one year after the attack, there are still about 100 people unaccounted for; but it is reasonable to assume that only a couple of dozen are still alive. Survivors reported having been beaten and starved and kept in darkness in tunnels too cramped to even stand up. 

It is unbearable to think that there are still young men and women in captivity, regularly being sexually assaulted and tortured by Hamas and, sadly, other residents of Gaza. The news often comes to us in a way that suggests that there are two kinds of people who live in Gaza: Hamas terrorists, and innocent Palestinians who happen to live in Gaza. It only takes a moment’s reflection to realize that this bifurcation of the population is anything but that clean. The children in Gaza are reared with school textbooks that tell them repeatedly that their highest moral obligation to their faith and to their families is to kill Jews however they can and to work for the end of the state of Israel. Obviously, everyone in Gaza is not supportive of Hamas but a lot of people are, and some are sometimes and not at other times and there is no way for spy satellites or Mossad intelligence to tell definitively who is Hamas and who is not Hamas. I will simply make the observation that while these hostages have been held in Gaza, none of the innocent citizens of Gaza has stepped forward with information to help these poor elderly and children to be returned to their families. We have to be honest about this.

 

Of course, it is impossible to ever be certain of any news accounts since both sides engage in repression of the media as they attempt to put their own spin on everything, portraying themselves as victims and the other side as being guilty of the worst war crimes and even the word “genocide” has been cheapened by how much it has been thrown about. 

 

The terrorist attack last October 7 was horrific but that didn’t keep partisan rumor mongers from trying to make it worse. Hamas did kill 38 children and infants in one daycare center but almost immediately it was reported that they were beheaded. They weren’t. Isn’t it bad enough that they were murdered? 

 

We depend on good journalism to fact check these things and to keep the public informed about what is really going on. But Israel doesn’t give journalist the freedom to report on their own in Gaza. They rarely take journalists into the war zone to show them what they want to show them and, of course, nether Hamas nor Hezbollah allow unfettered journalism to happen under their watch because they also want to control the narrative. Both sides are deeply invested in propaganda, and we are left to wonder what is happening.

 

I have just returned from a month in Thailand where I couldn’t easily access my usual news sources, so I was left to try to figure out what was going on my switching between Russian TV, Al Jazeera, Fox News, and some Chinese news services, all of which had their own agenda and spin. RT can be a pretty good news source until they talk about the war in the Ukraine. I like Al Jazeera on the whole until they talk about Israel and the war in Gaza. Maybe they can’t help themselves but we, as news consumers, have to try to filter out the propaganda and work hard to understand the partisan world we live in.

 

Remember, this is not just a war about land and political power, it is also a war for public opinion, for sympathy, and for support. Even President Biden said that he had seen evidence of beheadings of children, which his administration had to walk back because he hadn’t seen any evidence because it didn’t happen. 

 

The Hamas led attack was an unspeakable act of terrorism, aimed at forcing a response from Israel that Hamas leaders hoped would draw other Muslim militias and nations into a final battle with Israel. You have to understand, Hamas made their attack as outrageous and heinous as they possibly could in order to provoke a similar response out of Israel because they then use Israel’s retaliation both to draw other Arab states into war with Israel and more importantly, to try to turn the world against Israel. 

 

Iran has been funding and supplying Hamas all year and Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel from Lebanon, threatening an all-out attack which has become increasingly likely since Israel’s technologically surprising response with explosive pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah leaders and militants. 

 

If you are a regular listener, you know that I have spoken out against the way that Israel has prosecuted its war against Gaza. I have decried the civilian casualties, the inhumane blockade of food, medicine, water, and fuel from Gaza.

Israel’s tactics have been reprehensible but, even with such unreserved military attacks, Hamas members have made it clear that they would repeat October 7 anytime that they could muster the men and material to do it. They plead for a ceasefire but still have not returned the hostages they are still torturing daily. 

 

Likewise, Hezbollah has called the pager bombs an act of war, but they don’t want you to think about the rockets they indiscriminately fire into population centers in Israel on a daily basis. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have raised gaslighting to an art form that would be funny if it were not being offered seriously. 

 

They want to attack and murder in Israel without reprisal, knowing all the while that reprisals are guaranteed. Again, those of you who have been consistent listeners know that I am a very reluctant supporter of the existence of Israel. Land should never have been taken from Palestinians to establish a Jewish homeland when the Holocuast was a European crime…. Engineered by Germany but assisted in ways that Poland, Russia, and other states want to deny now, but at the time . . . well, more Jews died in Poland than died in Germany and it is debatable how many Jews were killed by invaders and how many were killed by neighbors. There is always the war that is fought on the battlefield and the later war that is fought in the pages of history books and the two can be in open conflict with one another. 

 

I will add as a footnote to the initial theft of land to establish Israel that America and Great Britian did not give the small parcel of land they took very defensible borders. When their neighbors later attacked Israel, Israel’s armies pushed the invaders back and annexed land that gave them control of the high land from which Israel suffered constant mortar attacks in early years. There is no legal defense for their expansionist settlements in the West Bank but the current borders of Israel, if you ever bother to go and see for yourself, were established to give the country security from constant attacks. All of this is more complicated than the media stories we are fed in seconds on TV.

 

I am sympathetic with Palestinian anger over the theft of land that was theirs for generations before being taken to establish Israel. It was a bad idea based on Sunday School nostalgia and it should not have been done but we are at least 50 or 60 years past being able to undo that crime. Palestinian terrorism now, which is motivated by a desire to wipe Israel off of the map, only makes things worse.

 

Even though I think that reparations should be made to descendants of African slaves in America, realistically, we know that no dollar figure will actually fix that sin. Nothing we can do for Native Americans who have managed to survive the occupation of Europeans on this continent could ever unravel what we did to them. 

 

Similarly, there are things that the world should do to help Palestinians to have self-governance and an equal place in the modern world but driving the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea, as the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” suggests is not how Palestinians will get justice. Palestinians want the sympathy of the world, and they have won a lot of the propaganda war, but, terrorism is still terrorism and you can’t have a seat at the table if you are still stabbing the other people at the table with your steak knife.

Last spring we saw a lot of pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses in the United States. Outrage about the Israeli assault on Gaza led to demands that the USA stop supplying Israel with arms and financial support. The protests often went pretty far beyond calling for a cease-fire and waded, knowingly or unknowingly into anti-Semitism.

 

Now, let me be clear, you can criticize the state of Israel and not be anti-Semitic. There are those who seem to want to play that card the minute anyone objects to anything that Israel does and that is not honest and no one should be afraid to speak up when the war is being prosecuted directly against a civilian population. 

I think that we should applaud student protests that were focused on war crimes being committed by Israeli forces without trying to whitewash the terrorist provocations of Hamas.

 

However, when students began rallying with chants of “Gays for Hamas,” you realize that enthusiasm has drowned out rational thought. The LGBT community is still violently and often lethally oppressed in most of the Arab world, and no one should kid themselves about how bad it is. 

 

I’m excited to hear young adults taking a passionate interest in world events and protesting for social justice but when they try to make Hamas out to be heroes of some sort, they just look like there are being manipulated and used in the propaganda war. Clearly, we can rationally protest Israel’s excesses without having to forget about the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah. 

 

Again, let’s be honest about this: If the government of the Bahamas started shooting hundreds of rockets into population centers on the Florida coast, would you think that we should respond? If Mexico started firing hundreds of mortars and rockets across the southern border, or Canada was attacking American cities across our northern border, if a thousand rockets flew into apartment buildings in New York, would you think that America should respond? 

 

Historically, we stole a lot of land from Mexico. We invaded Canada and tried to take it over. We participated in a virtual genocide of indigenous people in the Caribbean and replaced native populations with African slaves. But, in spite of that history, if a hot war started between our neighbors and Americans living on our borders, you can bet that our response would hardly be as measured and restrained as many of us expect Israel to be. Israel doesn’t get a green light on war crimes but, folks, Israel has a right, an obligation, to defend itself and if it ever stopped then they would be driven into the Mediterranean Sea and that is a fact. 

 

The reasonable discussion in America should not be about whether or not Israel should defend itself, but we have reason to talk about when and how we will help them to defend themselves and when they have gone too far, and we have reason to withdraw our support. 

 

In my opinion, asking for a ceasefire while there are still hostages being raped, beaten, and starved to death is a non-starter. If Hamas and Hezbollah cannot sign onto any peace accord which accepts the fact that, no matter how wrong and poorly conceived its creation was, Israel is where it is and it is going to stay there, then there is no peace to be had in Palestine. 

 

The current government of Israel doesn’t want a two state solution to this problem because they don’t want a shared border with a strong Palestinian government. The Palestinians don’t want a two state solution because they just don’t want Israel to exist, at least not in the Middle East. But folks, there can be a two-state solution and I insist that nothing less than a two state solution can bring permanent peace to this region of the country. There is a way for Palestine to be free, self-governing, and successful but that way must include making peace with Israel. 

 

I am certain that this talk will be offensive to many of my progressive friends. I still hate war and I even wish that I could figure out a way to be a solid pacifist but in the Middle East, powerful self-defense still seems to be necessary. If you have a workable solution to suggest, I would love to hear from you.