Reaction To Uvalde In Three Parts
Reaction To Uvalde In Three Parts
Might the Republican bromide of "thoughts and prayers" finally be replaced with "Who to vote for?"
An 18-year-old gunman shot his grandmother in the face and left her wounded at her home, drove a pickup truck that crashed at a high speed by a nearby elementary school, and exchanged shots with police officers on the scene who were unable to stop him before he killed 19 children and two teachers in a massacre in a single classroom.
Such was the mass shooting Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles from San Antonio.
Once again, a nation seemingly growing numb to the effects of what appears to have become an endless stream of uncontrolled mass murderer was left to pray, weep and console each other.
And, almost immediately, one of the leaders of the Republican Party was up on social media with the standard right-wing responses — ever invoking the “thoughts and prayers,” which have become as expected as they are unctuous — but what came elsewhere was surprising as it was affecting.
This is a breakdown at these separate responses in a single day.
First came those “thoughts and prayers” everyone was waiting for, courtesy of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
“Horrified and heartbroken by reports of the disgusting violence directed at innocent schoolkids in Uvalde, Texas. The entire country is praying for the children, families, teachers, and staff and the first responders on the scene,” McConnell tweeted.
Horrified, he might have been, but based on his tweet, just as bereft of effective policy solutions to this endemic gun violence as ever.
Clearly McConnell — who is shepherding his right-wing party through an election year already made uncertain by the recent possiblity that the US Supreme Court could be on the brink of overturning popularly supported abortion rights — hoped that the anguish and outrage of the day’s events ended there.
But McConnell's Democratic colleague from Connecticut, Sen Chris Murphy — who remembering well the Sandy Hook massacre, in which 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, were murdered by a gunman in an elementary school in December 2012 — unexpectedly made news by his appearance on the floor of the Senate. With the camera on him, Murphy literally begged his Republican counterparts to do something to solve the mayhem and despair of random gun violence in the United States.
“Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job — putting yourself in a position of authority — if the answer is, 'As the slaughter increases; our kids run for their lives, we do nothing?” Murphy asked, pointedly. “What are we doing? Why are you here, if not to solve a problem as existential as this?”
The answer to Murphy's question came, in a fashion, from another figure before the cameras: late-night host Stephen Colbert, who got deadly serious on his Tuesday night program when he addressed the news from Uvalde upfront.
“And while we can add our add our prayers for the dead, there is nothing that can ever be said that can approach the immeasurable grief of those families,” Colbert began. “But while we're at it, let's pray that, this time, our leaders show a modicum of courage in trying to prevent this from ever happening again.
“Prayers won't end this. Voting might,” he continued. “So, when you vote, ask yourself this question: Who running for office, has publicly stated that they are willing to do anything and everything in their power to protect your children from the criminally insane number of guns in America.”
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