Wearing the Gun

Nothing makes a difference on a national level in this country when it comes to guns, I know. 

But today, when six more people were killed at a school by a teenager with two assault rifles, there is one thing I want to say.

A few days ago, Lawrence O'Donnell had a segment on The Last Word explaining why the 400 cops didn't go into the classroom in Uvalde for 77 minutes. 

According to a Texas Tribune story that he cites, it wasn't because they were afraid of the teenager himself: it was because they knew what his AR-15 could do. "He has a battle rifle," one of them said. That gun, the civilian version of the M-16 designed for U.S. troops in Vietnam, can kill someone on the other side of a wall, or explode a head at a distance of half a football field. Its exit wounds are designed to be much larger than its entrance wounds. The cops, some of whom were also armed with AR-15s, were not willing to be its victims. One of them is heard on tape saying just that.

Since Uvalde and until today, there have been more people killed in mass shootings in the U.S. than I can count, many of them with an AR-15. 

And during that time, not only has Congress failed to do anything about it, but some Congressional Republicans taunted us by wearing an AR-15 pin for at least a few days:

These are people who think it's funny, or good politics, or both, to wear jewelry of a weapon that has killed children in gruesome ways. These are people who claim to want to protect children from predators (or from their own parents or from the Deep State or whatever). 

Protect them from anything but the things that may actually do them harm: cars, diseases, and most of all guns. 

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After posting this, I saw this Washington Post story (gift link), which attempts to illustrate the damage done by an AR-15. It also contains this fact: the bullet goes so fast, it can cross six football fields in a second.