Speaker of the House Paul Ryan Can Bite Me

Michelle Weber, ,

“Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has said that he too is frustrated by inaction in Congress, but he refuses to budge on gun control, insisting that the problem goes to a question of mental health.” (The Guardian)

I think it might be Mr. Ryan’s mental health that is at issue here. But maybe I’m just too cynical for my own good; I’m sure his prayers will take care of the problem any day now.

Also: If you believe in gun control, can vote in the US, and are not voting to elect more lawmakers who don’t understand how the Second Amendment guarantees people the right to own assault rifles, you bear some responsibility. A small part, to be sure, but a part nonetheless.

Also also: If you think we shouldn’t be talking about this because it’s too soon to politicize a tragedy we don’t yet fully understand, when is it that we’ll be able to talk about it? By the time the Politicizing Moratorium Period has ended for this shooting, more people will have died somewhere else. These are not isolated sad events, but an ongoing crisis for the entire country; silence in the face of crisis helps no one.

19 Comments

  1. The love of guns is just so mind boggling to me. But, I get freaked out standing in the coffee line, with the cop in front of me strapping. I’m just not interested in being in such close proximity with a killing machine. It’s way past time to move on from this love affair we have. We’ve deified our countries founders, even though so many other things that they started out with had to be changed. It’s time for us to think for ourselves and the world we’re living in now, and understand that it’s time to move on from that which is clearly not working anymore.

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  4. I never been to the US of A so I have no knowledge of how it goes there. But still I don’t understand the concept of people are allowed to carry a guns or kids can bring them to school. Sooner or later something will go wrong with that kind of policy.

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    1. For what it’s worth: In theory, kids can’t bring them to school. But short of searching every child every day, there’s not really a way to stop that, especially when so many kids have access to guns at home.

      I live here, and I also don’t understanding the concept of people carrying guns around. Like Sreejit, I don’t even like cops with guns.

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      1. Thanks Michele for confirming my thoughts. I was hoping I was wrong. But what is there to understand anymore. Everywhere things starting to go downhill more than ever. Look where I live (Belgium) Not in a million years I would think that I will see military patrolling our neighborhood in daily basis. What a civilized world we have.

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  5. You said what many of us have said for years! I have supported gun control since I first voted in the late 1970’s. When will we finally be heard? I cannot believe that the issue is only one of mental health since there are few health care options for the people who need the care. I do not understand why Americans need to purchase assault rifles. Maybe a stint in the military will help them with that desire. The NRA is strangely silent again with yet another shooting incident. The whole thing is beyond my comprehension. My European friends laugh at the “American Cowboys!” I am ashamed that we Americans have fallen down the slippery slope once again.

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  6. The Second Amendment does not uphold a right to assault weapons. The “founding fathers” did not have assault weapons as we do today, and we need a law to specifically define that the Second Amendment pertains to weapons used to hunting, nothing more.

    Thank you for bringing up this topic.

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  8. How much does Paul Ryan love guns? He recently said that people on the terror no-fly list should be able to buy guns, because not being allowed to would be a violation of their rights. That’s how much. Let that sink in. Why do people vote GOP?

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  9. Any woman who leaves her 6 month old baby with her mom like she is stopping at the ShopRite, straps on all that ammo to kill people and then go to her death is more than just a gun lover. This is crazy. But certainly gun control is a good idea. What makes me crazy that government officials are pointing fingers at each other and NOTHING is moving forward to stop this ongoing blood bath. It feels like we are in a war against ghosts! God have mercy. Meanwhile, I agree with you Michelle.

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  10. I want Americans to have tons of guns. If you want to own a gun, any gun, anything that uses gunpowder to fire projectiles, then you join a well-regulated militia. Done. It’s the Second Amendment. You can’t argue against it. Want a handgun? Join a well-regulated militia. Want to purchase a tub of .50cal bullets? Let’s see your state-issued well-regulated militia ID. You have one those? Excellent, right this way, I’ll even show you the boom cannon. I want an armed populace, because I believe a society with guns has a lot more staying power. But I don’t want massacres. I don’t want kids blowing kids away. The authors of the Second Amendment had far stricter gun-control laws than we do today. Join a well-regulated militia, and buy all the freaking guns you want.

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  11. Michelle, I couldn’t agree more! I’ve been frothing at the mouth for a long time about the effed-up gun culture in this country, and I live in Texas, so believe me, I live it everday. I had a confrontation with the Open Carry wingnuts who showed up en masse in my neighboorhood, and I got so angry that I actually scared them and chased them off. Good. I’m glad I lost my shit on them. I’ll be writing about that encounter soon on my blog, but in the meantime I’ve written a couple of other pieces this week about how sick the relationship between the NRA and Congressional Republicans has become. It’s criminal really.

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  13. Sweden, everyone over 21 is issued an assault weapon and qualifies with it once a year. Yet it is one of the countries with the lowest crime rates.

    The problem isn’t the guns, otherwise Sweden would have a lot more deaths per year related to gun violence.

    The problem is our mutual respect that we have for each other in this country. Limiting access to guns doesn’t change that. It limits the ability of good people from protecting each other from the bad people that we refuse to actually punish anymore.

    Instead we fill the prisons with people that have done no harm to another person.

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    1. I’m not sure why you’d say that James. Sweden has very stringent gun laws, and it certainly doesn’t issue assault rifles to every man and woman on their 21st birthday. Limiting access to guns will, in fact, reduce the terrifically high rate of gun violence in America. In fact, it’s the only thing that will reduce the more than 30,000 gun deaths each year in the United States. Common-sense gun laws work in every wealthy Western nation, including Sweden, where guns must be kept locked away in a gun safe, and everyone who wants to buy a gun has to make a strong case about why they want the gun and what they intend to use it for. The United States has many more guns per capita than Sweden, and our rate of gun violence is an order of magnitude higher than Sweden’s. I’m afraid you may be getting your information from the NRA, which has evolved into a straight-up terrorist organization responsible for thousands of deaths each year in the United States, based on the number of gun-control measures the NRA has blocked by paying off Congress, laws that could have made a difference by now.

      And this idea you’re peddling — that a good guy with a gun will protect himself and others from the evildoer — is a myth, another of the frequent arguments you hear from the NRA liars. It almost never happens, for a very obvious and simple reason: The bad guy has the element of surprise. A household with access to a gun is not safer than one without a gun. It’s just the opposite, in fact. The male of the household with a gun is four times more likely to commit suicide. The woman is three times more likely to be a victim of domestic violence. The kids are much more likely to be victims of accidental shootings. The gun is made for one purpose: Killing. It’s a very simple, direct correlation: The more guns you have in a defined space, the more gun violence you will have in that space. Whether you’re for or against guns doesn’t change the calculation.

      If easy access to guns and living this fantasy that you’re going to save the day with your gun is more important to you than the thousands of children killed annually in America by gun violence, then at least own your argument. Because that’s precisely what it means to block universal background checks for every gun purchase, or to defeat a law that would prevent a man with domestic violence convictions from getting a gun: You’re condemning innocent children to die.

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