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I live in Australia. After one mass shooting at Port Arthur, Tasmania, the government banned such weapons. Guess what.... no mass shootings again. Yes there are "shoot outs" between criminal gangs with illegal guns, but not people going into a school and shooting people up. More fool Americans!

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Mar 28, 2023Liked by Robert Reich

The party of “pro life” only cares until the child is born, then they couldn’t care less. Hence all the “thoughts and prayers” but no action to stop the atrocities.

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After the shooting in Uvalde Texas, some of the victims were unrecognizable because of the gunshot wounds to their faces.

So what did the Texas state legislature do? They did nothing to ban assault weapons, instead they offered free DNA tests so the next time (and they certainly seemed to think there would be a next time) the parents wouldn’t be traumatized by having to identify their unrecognizable children’s bodies.

At the Michigan State shooting, there were at least two students that had survived school shootings in another school. One was from Sandy Hook, and the other from a local high school. Imagine surviving one school shooting only to go through that trauma again. What are the odds of that? Apparently it’s becoming more likely for our younger generations.

I would like to see a nationwide strike where students from grade school through college refuse to go to school until at the very least assault weapons are banned. It might take some time but I think it’s the only way to send the message to lawmakers that our schools are unsafe. Students have every right to go to school without the possibility of being shot and killed. It’s time to make lawmakers see the obvious.

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The United States lost its collective soul after Sandy Hook. If we can accept the daily grisly slaughter, young bodies ripped and shredded apart by a weapon “with exceptional lethality,” there is no moral ground to stand on. The gun lobby and gun manufacturers wealthy stockholders are literally calling the shots and they get deadlier and deadlier. America is no longer a safe place to live.

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For a low tax loving country, the US seems to be very willing to pay the NRA tax, 30-50.000 lives, mass shootings and massive investments in SWAT teams, armoured vehicles, body armour for police and dozens of extra police officers as they need to be ready for assault rifle war on every street corner.

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The GOP stands for:

Guns Over People

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Mar 28, 2023·edited Mar 31, 2023

We need to disrupt our sociopathic system that does nothing to protect children. There are really no words to adequately describe this horror.

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Mar 28, 2023·edited Mar 28, 2023Liked by Robert Reich

"The Assault Weapons Ban must be reinstated — the greed of gun manufacturers be damned." I totally agree with the last sentence in Dr. Reich's posting. I taught in a high poverty Middle School for the last 23 years of my working life - retiring in 2014. My wife is still teaching and I volunteer two days a week in her first grade classroom. I remember during the final years before I retired always thinking "well, it could happen here, and what would I do if a gun toting person showed up in our school?" Every day as you're driving to work you realize you don't think it will happen here, but it COULD. My wife's classroom is in another high poverty school and the school district has made if more difficult for someone with a gun to get in, but, in reality, it wouldn't be that hard for someone like the person in today's MASSACRE of three little children (and 3 adults) who had mapped out the school - which, every time it happens, it just seems so incredibly senseless. I continue to go to the school, but at 75 I'm physically compromised to the point I wonder if I would be much help in the case of the unthinkable - that little first graders have to practice against - in lockdown drills they have no idea why we're doing them. The failure to continue the assault weapons ban back in 2004 (along with the illegal invasion of Iraq and the "stupid war" in Afghanistan) is what caused me, originally, as an independent voter, to vote AGAINST republicans. It's only gotten worse since then. The republican party IS controlled by the gun lobby and its a pall on "we the people" that we keep voting these people into office. It seems like now the republican House conference is largely controlled by MTG - I can't bring myself to write the name. I'm thankful Joe Biden is president and is calling for the re-authorization of the assault weapons ban. Sadly, it appears to me the forces of the darkest "side" of American History continues to thrive, making this a "pipe dream," and, in fact, it's only getting worse. If the legal authorities in this nation continue to seem AFRAID of, for example, holding Trump accountable for his CRIMINAL conduct "we the people" are facing "more of the same." People protesting while carrying AR-15's. It's time to put a stop to all this. The threats being bantied about regarding more violence shoould Trump face indictment are shameful. However, I say "bring it on." It really is time for "we the people" to take a stand. (Look at what is happening in places like Israel and Georgia - the country brodering Russia) where the people have clearly said "enough already!" Too many in America take our "democracy" for granted and the power of the gun lobby is one of the main reasons this nation seems to be on a precipice.

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We must unite and stand up to this by showing up to vote and getting everyone we know who agrees to show up to vote-for President, Senator, House Member, Governor, State legislators, council and commission, mayor, school board up and down the ballot. The politicians who refuse to heed our voices about assault and other guns are the same ones who vote the way all the other oligarchs tell them to vote. It’s time to get off our butts-stand up and speak up and vote up. If it takes rewriting the 2nd, so be it or all the way down to the gun safety laws, the most anemic for the safety of our childrens and others lives. And while I write, my own DeSantis and his lapdog legislators are passing permitless open and concealed carry of any type of gun, assault rifles notwithstanding. It has passed the FL House and its companion Bill awaits FL Senste approval which is assured and on to the even-more assured DeSantis signature into Law. Are we too lazy to have not fought harder to keep these nut cakes out of office?

We get the government we deserve. Simple.

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There's a simple solution: don't vote for Republicans. That's really all there is to it.

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I don't understand why Americans need a assault weapon, they are not good for hunting, they vare made for killing of people and that is what these nut jobs are doing, killing humans

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I saw Michael armoire on TV yesterday and he pointed out that only 30% of people own guns. 70% do not. Our fundamental rights and freedoms are being stolen by the corrupt fascist Republican Party. It is time for a true revolution. Our democracy is hanging by a thread. The corrupt illegitimate Supreme Court selected by the Federalist Society must be fixed. This can not stand.

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Am deeply saddened by this latest mass shooting, because it comes on the heels of so many before -- yes, Robert, it makes me weep, as well. We must push for an assault weapons ban, but I think we also must push for repeal of the second amendment-- it has no legitimate purpose in today's society and I don't see the US ever getting a handle on gun violence unless and until it repeals that amendment. I am a former gun owner -- primarily for hunting. Do I see the end of the second amendment as threatening this pursuit. No more than I see requiring a license to drive a car as threatening my desire to drive. But such licensing will never happen with the second amendment in place.

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I heard about Nashville right away yesterday and again horrified! Nobody mentioned that Tennessee has recently CHOSEN to be an open carry state. That’s the beginning of “open carry!” One gun store owner had expressed how AR15 selling like hotcakes! Now everyone horrified by another mass shooting! Seems prophetic to me when you encourage ownership of AR 15s, you’re perpetuating more murder and deaths. Tennessee is a conservative state and I didn’t hear one person interviewed state the chicken had come home to roost. What the hell do people expect??

America is about money, money, money! Guns are a big money-maker. The majority of guns sold, as I read come from China -right into the port of LA (That was on 60 minutes last year sometime. ) STOP gun ownership-PERIOD. Like Japan or New Zealand or any other functional government!! Our government is not doing their job. Maybe because the government is owned by the moneymakers Period. .

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The Republican Party, in it’s fervor to preserve the NRA as a continual donor, has shown through shooting down reasonable gun reform legislation that they don’t value families more than those campaign dollars.

The “family values” party is #ProSTRIFE. If a child is not in the womb, it means far less, even when it can suffer pain and a lifetime of PTSD fear.

It would seem the AR-15, in its list of selling points, should include giving killers more confidence that the havoc they cause will make them more famous.

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I think Americans should begin to use the strategy often used by the French: national strikes. We know that the majority of Americans support certain things (bans on assault weapons, background checks, etc.; reproductive rights; voting rights; health care reform, etc.) but their wishes are ignored and overriden by, primarily, Republicans who do NOT represent us, often not literally and almost always not figuratively.

If American citizens organized national strikes - i.e. work stoppages - to DEMAND genuine representation, things might change since clearly nothing is going to change under the status quo. When assault weapons are used to murder children in schools and nothing is done by our "representatives" - not about guns and not about the mentally ill - and this goes on for YEARS, we must use different strategies. When an elected member to the United States Congress from Georgia actually chases and harasses a young man who, as a high school student in Florida, survived a horrific school shooting and she was so proud of her bullying him that she arranged for it to be on film so she could parade her ugly cruelty in the name of gun-worship to her fans and HE is "the enemy" in her eyes, we have to use different strategies. When the majority of Americans support very basic, common sense changes to gun laws, to reproductive rights laws, to voting rights laws and our wishes and support are ignored, we must use different strategies. When the primary instigator and chief seditionist and his mob are still free and roaming the country and the media with their un-American/anti-American traitorous lies and fraud, we must demand that the rule of law actually be honored by our law enforcement and judicial systems!

When elections don't seem to yield honest representation, and we repeatedly see too many of those who are getting and being elected using their elected position as a path to self-enrichment with corruption and fraud as an m.o., then we must use other strategies to force them to REPRESENT us!

National strikes, bringing everything to a screeching halt, might get their attention and our demands might result in change. When these bullying cowards find life made difficult and inconvenient for themselves, maybe they will stop with the "thoughts and prayers" and actually MAKE THINGS BETTER, SAFER, SANER for all of us and most especially for little kids simply going to school!

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