I have been following the congressional hearings on the the events of January 6th, 2021 when hordes of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol building, breaking in and defacing it and stealing property, in their futile effort at stopping Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. They were responding to Trump’s call to action, duped into believing his pathetic and obvious lie that the election had been stolen from him and that he had been re-elected.

One feature that is emerging is that the people who were employed by the White House in any kind of professional capacity, such as his attorney General Bill Barr, lawyers or employees of various governmental agencies and even his campaign manager, kept telling Trump that there was no evidence of massive fraud.
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As if having to deal with the senseless slaughter of their children by someone who has easy access to high-powered military style weapons is not enough, the bereaved parents frequently have to then deal with people on the internet who will say that the whole thing did not happen and was staged by gun control groups. The gun lobby and their supporters clearly fear that so many mass shootings, especially of schoolchildren, will result in at least some action being taken and so they will unleash these conspiracy theorists who will accuse the parents of being ‘crisis actors’ and will proceed to put their names and addresses and other contact information on the internet to encourage others to target and harass these parents individually, making their lives an even greater hell than it has become. Those parents who speak out publicly against the lack of gun control, in an effort to try and prevent other parents from having to endure what they are experiencing, will be particularly targeted for this treatment.
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The recent mass shootings using military-style weapons like AR-15s have reopened the debate about whether we should show images of the victims. Generally, media show just photos of the children when they were alive, grieving families, memorials erected in their memory, and so on. While these are heart-wrenching, some argue that they do not convey the full horror of what happened, leaving most people with simply no idea of the massive amount of damage that these weapons can inflict even on adults, mutilating them beyond recognition so that they can be identified only by their clothing or DNA. The effect on small children is even more devastating.
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People who oppose any changes in the absurdly easy access to massively powerful guns in the US act as if this is some immensely complicated and intractable problem. That is utterly false, an image created to discourage attempts at reform. The fact that other countries have managed to pass laws that limit gun ownership while still allowing people to have them and have nowhere near the level of gun deaths that we have in the US shows that the problem can be meaningfully addressed.

Let me start by dismissing the main argument of the gun nuts, and that is that the Second Amendment to the US constitution is an insurmountable barrier to setting any limits. That is utter rubbish. Even religious gun nuts must know that the amendment is not something that was handed down by their God to Moses on Mount Sinai however much they might try to act like it was. It was created and interpreted by humans and anything that humans make, they can unmake. The constitution was designed to be amended and constitutional amendments have been passed and repealed and re-interpreted many times in the past and there is no reason why this amendment should be any different. Making changes requires political actions and political will and thus gun control should be viewed as a political problem that requires marshaling enough support for reform of the laws and the constitution if necessary. I grant that it will not be easy but it can be done, although the NRA and its supporters, as part of their propaganda campaign, try to give the impression that it would be impossible. Gun reform advocates should gain confidence from the fact that majorities of people support some reform of gun laws.
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I think it should be obvious by now that the Republican party and the NRA do not give a damn about the people who are being slaughtered in the US on a regular basis by people armed with military style weapons. When the only response is to offer ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the families and to suggest absurd ‘solutions’ that urge the arming of teachers and more armed guards and buildings with single doors, it is clear that the ‘tears’ that these people are shedding are entirely crocodile ones, and that their main goal is to make sure that nothing changes or that even more easy access to guns is provided.
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