open fire

Had a great dinner with Linda Monk, constitutional scholar and great friend.

Another shooting. It is so crazy. I would say, “Something would happen in this country if there were…” But we’ve seen almost every scenario imaginable. We’ve seen a shooting in the middle of an army base. Fort Hood. We’ve seen a shooting in the middle of a elementary school. Sandy Hook. These horrors simply keep happening. Aaron Alexis, someone with mental illness, opened fire and killed 14. The Washington Post has several great articles. There’s one about the anatomy of the shooting with exactly what happened inside of building 197. Then there’s more and more background on the shooter, Aaron Alexis. As I’ve mentioned before, I think we have to approach this problem from two separate vantage points. First of all, we have to do a better job of taking care of mental illness in this country. Secondly, too many people have too many guns (recent study shows that more guns equals more gun violence). Gun ownership is a privilege. If you had a run-in with the law in Seattle which seems to suggest mental illness, you really shouldn’t have a gun a decade later unless you’ve proven to be mentally stable. I guess the biggest question that remains unanswered is how did this gentleman, Aaron Alexis, pass a background check? How was he allowed on a Navy shipyard?

Oh, by the way, I didn’t talk about the election that was going on in Colorado. Colorado voters who were infuriated over their representatives’ having the audacity to pass a bill that limits gun violence, had a special recall election. Basically, the NRA decided that they did not want two progressive state Senators and signed a petition to have both senators removed. Yes, the actual details are more complex, but that’s basically what happened. There was a special election which included many special caveats, like no absentee ballots, which seem to always benefit the conservative candidates. The bottom line is that two progressive senators are out and 2 NRA stooges are in. DKos has more – 1) Core Democratic groups (Latinos, African Americans, youth voters, single women) have the worst voter performance, and 2) Republicans will do everything they can to prevent our people from voting.