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kp777 · 1 year

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By Mychael Schnell

The Hill

May 8, 2023

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) asked Monday that a congressional field hearing focused on red flag laws be held in Parkland, Fla., where such provisions were enacted in 2018 after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The request — made to House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — came days after a gunman fatally shot eight people at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas.

“Guns have become the #1 killer of children. Parents worry as they send their kids to school, to the mall, or the movies. It’s a fear all parents live with. Public places once considered safe are now targets for gun violence,” Moskowitz, a member of the Oversight Committee, wrote in a letter to Comer and Jordan.

“I request that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and House Judiciary Committee hold a field hearing in Parkland, Florida, to learn about the success of ‘red flag laws,’” he added.

In March 2018, the Florida legislature passed and then-Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a gun control bill into law that, among other provisions, instituted so-called “red flag laws,” which authorized law enforcement officers to request a “risk protection order.” The order would “prevent persons who are at high risk of harming themselves or others from accessing firearms or ammunition.”

The law also raised the minimum age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21, imposed a three-day waiting period for most long gun purchases, allowed certain trained school employees to have concealed handguns on them while on school campuses, and established new programs focused on mental health for schools.

The GOP-led Florida legislature approved the measure less than two months after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in which 17 students and staff members were killed. Moskowitz — who is an alum of the school — was serving in the Florida state legislature when the gun control bill passed.

The Republican legislators and governor backed the measure despite strong opposition from the National Rifle Association.

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 4 months

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#gun violence #mass shooting #gun crime #ocala #Florida #fuck the nra #the nra is a terrorist organization #republican assholes

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cyarskj1899 · 8 months

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Welcome to Florida: where your children will be forced to carry their rapists’ babies but are forbidden to learn why white supremacists with AR-15s commit mass shootings that target black people. It’s on you ron desantis you will never be our president in 2024. Fuck. You!

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gwydionmisha · 8 months

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#Neo-NAZIs #Mass Shooting #Jacksonville #Florida #Kathleen Belew #News

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randyite · 6 months

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#health insurance #poverty #literacy #mental illness #health care #medicare #mass shootings #gun violence #second amendment #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #income tax #income inequality #wealth inequality #AR-15 #Congress #Florida

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destielmemenews · 8 months

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#destiel meme #destiel meme news #united states #us news #news #gun violence #tw shootings #tw death #gun tw #mass murder #jacksonville #florida #florida news #this is in quotes because i'm directly quoting the articles and i apologize if it comes off in a weird way

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cyarsk52-20 · 8 months

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Fuck Ron DeSatan for acting surprised when somebody acts on his hateful rhetoric.

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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BY AMANDA MARCOTTE

Republicans know exactly what they believe is the greatest threat to American students: books.

In Florida, the possibility of a student choosing a book to read was deemed so threatening that teachers were ordered to lock up all the books until they could be — slowly, painfully — combed over by censors. Now, as the censors make their way through the books at a snail's pace, word of what has been officially banned from shelves thus far is starting to trickle out. Unsurprisingly, in a state controlled by a retentive fascist like Gov. Ron DeSantis, the books deemed too dangerous to read mostly involve ideas like "gay couples exist" and "there was once a civil rights movement." As Tom Fontaine of Trib Live reports:

"PEN America, a New York-based nonprofit that works to defend free expression, reported the district had removed at least 176 titles from classrooms. They include works such as ‘My Two Dads and Me,’ ‘My Two Moms and Me,’ ‘Celebrating Different Beliefs,’ ‘The Gift of Ramadan,’ ‘The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question’ and books about Rosa Parks, the Underground Railroad and Japanese internment camps during World War II.

Also removed was ‘Roberto Clemente: The Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates,’ a 2005 book by Dormont's Jonah Winter.

The 32-page book references racism Clemente sometimes endured."

Republicans are also deeply worried that a child might enjoy a drag queen story hour, in which drag performers use their skills at entertaining a crowd to get kids excited about reading. The threat that a funny person in a flashy costume might make a child happy is such that Republicans in state legislatures are considering bans so draconian that they could criminalize merely being a trans person in public or wearing makeup on a stage.

Of course, considering the Republican hostility to children reading, the "story hour" may be as offensive to them as the "drag" part.

The nation woke on Tuesday to familiar news that doesn't get any less disturbing, despite being painfully common. There was another mass shooting, this time at Michigan State. A gunman left three dead and five more critically injured. This is in a year where there has been an average of more than one mass shooting a day. At least one of the survivors of this latest shooting also survived a mass shooting 14 months ago at Oxford High School.

At this point, the Republican callousness to the carnage is so baked in that it barely feels worth remarking upon. Nor is this just a matter, as so many claim, of Republicans being too "afraid" of the NRA to stand up for meaningful gun safety laws. As I've written about before, there's plenty of reason to believe that the reason Republicans block most efforts to prevent mass shootings is that they benefit politically from both the feelings of helplessness and social decay that such shootings sow in the public.

"Please don't tell me you care about the safety of children if you are not willing to have a conversaion about keeping them safe in a place that should be a sanctuary," Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who represents the Michigan district the shooting happened in, said during an emotionally raw press conference Tuesday morning. She didn't need to elaborate on who claims to "care" about children but certainly does not.

We've been subject to a yearslong effort to ban books and gut the rights of LGBTQ people, all justified by GOP claims to be "protecting" children. The College Board, under pressure from DeSantis and the larger Republican establishment, has even gone so far as to remove books by renowned writers and poets like bell hooks, June Jordan, and Ta-Nehisi Coates from an African-American studies course. The excuse is that the fragile self-esteem of white students cannot withstand learning about the realities of racism.

But while Republicans fret and moan over the supposed damage done to students' minds by learning that racism happens or LGBTQ people exist, the much more real danger that comes from a bullet tearing through a body is not considered a priority. In the Republican imagination, a high school or college student is too delicate to read about the Holocaust or slavery, but should also be tough enough to stand up to an armed madman mowing down kids with a semiautomatic weapon. And if such kids do survive the kind of graphic violence that Republicans believe they're too sensitive to read about, then such kids are also expected to be tough enough to endure members of Congress like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., denying the violence ever happened and harassing those who survived it.

After last year's shooting in Uvalde, Texas — which left 19 kids and two teachers dead — a handful of Republicans decided it was becoming politically untenable to maintain the "thoughts and prayers, but nothing can be done" position that has characterized the party for so long. So 15 Republican Senators crossed the aisle to vote for a gun safety bill last June. The Beltway media, longing for a narrative of bipartisan comity, swooned rapturously over this supposed evolution away from sociopathic disregard towards gun violence towards something more humane.

But, at the cost of sounding overly cynical, the whole thing was probably more of a ploy to get people off their backs than anything else.

For one thing, for every Senate Republican who did vote for the bill, there were more than two who refused. Second, while there were some good items in the law that President Joe Biden signed last summer — especially closing the "boyfriend" loophole that let domestic abusers buy guns — the legislation stops well short of what's needed to keep guns out of the hands of unhinged people who want to shoot up nightclubs, schools, and shopping malls.

To make it worse, what little Republicans are willing to do in Congress is in real danger of being dismantled by Republicans in the federal courts.

The same week Congress passed their watered-down gun safety bill, the six Republican Supreme Court justices overturned a New York state law that is over 100 years old, which restricted who can carry guns in public. As Slate's legal expert Mark Joseph Stern wrote at the time, the decision rests on "a maximalist opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas that renders most of the nation's gun control laws presumptively unconstitutional."

Sure enough, other Republican-controlled federal courts took note. Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit used Thomas's decision as a pretext to rule against a law barring domestic abusers from owning guns. This law not only protects the lives of women who are being stalked by former partners, but it's useful in preventing mass shootings. Over half of mass shooters had a known history of domestic violence. Sadly, many of them were able to commit their crimes by taking advantage of the pro-gun, anti-woman views of local Republican politicians, who won't enforce existing gun laws. That appears, for instance, to be the case in the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs in December. The suspect had been previously arrested after a reported domestic violence incident involving his mother, but the right-wing sheriff who had bragged about being a gun rights absolutist did not enforce a law allowing the government to take the shooter's guns from him.

When faced with the carnage that their gun fanaticism inflicts on our nation, Republicans will often pretend that their hands are tied by the constitution. The GOP cowards who rule against the ban on wife beaters owning guns used this excuse. The court claimed there is no "historical tradition of firearm regulation" regarding domestic violence and that therefore they are forced — forced I tell you! — to believe the Second Amendment's language about a "well-regulated militia" somehow covers unregulated, non-militia wife beaters.

This feigned constitutional absolutism is ridiculous on its face. It's even more obviously a lie in the context of GOP enthusiasm for book banning. Unlike the Second Amendment, which puts strong limits ("well-regulated militia") on the right to bear arms, the First Amendment grants Americans expansive rights to free speech. It very clearly states that there should be "no law...abridging the freedom of speech." That's without caveat, unlike the Second Amendment. And there are certainly no exceptions for "unless it offends the bigoted sentiments of Ron DeSantis."

Most of all, of course, this exposes how Republicans are only interested in controlling students, not protecting them. The threat of the targeted books is not to students, who will only benefit from learning more about the world around them. The threat is to the fragile egos of the right-wing bigots who make up the Republican base. This focus on control also explains the GOP's disinterest in doing anything to save students from mad gunmen. They may be saddened by a dead child, but they aren't threatened by them. A murdered child, after all, is unlikely to think for themselves, much less grow up to vote against Republicans. And ultimately, that's all the GOP is really worried about when they talk about "the children."

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wonderlandmind4 · 11 months

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Went on Twitter. Saw a popular Florida beach where i used to go to all the time is trending. For a mass shooting. On Memorial Day. A mass shooting. ANOTHER mass shooting in Florida.

There was one at the high school I went to. There was one at a gay night club in my now town. This looks one in a hometown beach.

When the fuck is even ever going to be enough!? Nope. Instead we get what is well on his way to be a fucking Nazi governor who wants to ban all books except for cis-men white history. Wants to ban queer people. Wants to fight with a mouse and throw a fit and put a prisoner next to a the states BIGGEST source of income. Wants to take away women’s right. Yet. Guns are cool. Guns are great. No gun ban! Let everyone have guns!

And then this happens. Over and over and over and over. It’s not just Florida, I know that. It’s everywhere. When will this stop!? Having several mass shootings a month!? No wonder other countries put a warning and travel ban on coming here.

I shouldn’t have to go out to a shop with my sister with my eyes constantly scanning out surroundings and noting the best places to hide, where to escape, how to get out. Politicians want to give children bulletproof backpacks instead of books and free lunch and Disney movies that are now bam from being shown.

My heart is breaking and it’s so so terrifying that this keeps happening.

#tw: mass shooting #tw: guns #tw: violence #tw: Florida

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whenweallvote · 3 months

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Today marks six years since the tragic mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

As we honor the 17 Parkland victims and send love to their families today, we also mourn for all lives lost and forever changed by gun violence since — including everyone impacted by the shooting at the SuperBowl Parade JUST a few hours ago.

Don't let ANYONE tell you there's nothing to be done about gun violence. It’s up to the politicians WE elect to propose and enact critical gun safety measures, and other bills to protect our children and communities.

Our Vote is Our Voice. Make sure you, your friends, and your family members are all registered to vote today at weall.vote/register.

#gun violence #msdstrong #marjory stoneman douglas #msd high school #parkland florida #vote #register to vote #mass shooting #superbowl parade

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tomorrowusa · 8 months

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Yet another racially motivated mass shooting was perpetrated by a shithead with an AR-15. This one occurred in Jacksonville – the largest city in Florida.

There will undoubtedly be a formal Thoughts and Prayers Declaration from the GOP-NRA even as they plot to make it even easier for the unhinged to conduct future orgies of violence.

Three people were killed Saturday in a racially motivated attack after a gunman targeted Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, in one of several weekend shootings that again shocked Americans in public places – from stores to football games to parades. “This shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said at a news conference early Saturday evening. Waters said the shooter, who he described as a White man in his 20s, shot and killed himself after the attack. The suspect left behind what the sheriff described as three manifestos outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate” and his motive in the attack. All three victims, two men and one woman, were Black. Waters said the shooter lived in Clay County, Florida, south of Jacksonville, with his parents. Jacksonville is located in northeast Florida, about 35 miles south of the Georgia border. Waters said the shooter told his father by text to “check his computer.” The father found documents described by Waters as manifestos and called authorities.

At least the Nazi attacker is dead.

Waters showed photos of the weapons during a news conference, which showed swastikas were drawn on one of the guns with white paint. “We have opened a federal civil rights investigation, and we will pursue this incident as a hate crime,” said Sherri Onks, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville office.

This is coverage from the CBS station in Jacksonville.

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#mass shooting #racially motivated violence #jacksonville #florida #t.k. waters #clay county #the far right #nazis #hate crime

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