We Failed the Children of Uvalde
May 28, 2022
As I walked along Main Street yesterday, the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend, it saddened me to realize that the Republicans who fervently worship the flag are determined to make this a country in which it perpetually has to be flown at half-mast.
If we had enacted common-sense gun laws after Sandy Hook, most if not all of the children and teachers at Robb Elementary School would be alive today. Most likely, no one outside that area of Texas would’ve heard of Uvalde, and those children would be happily enjoying the beginning of their summer vacations. But those children and their teachers are gone forever because people keep voting for the violent NRA agenda. I’d like to ask most people who voted Republican after Sandy Hook if the tax cuts they received were worth the massacre of children, except that, since most Republican voters aren’t uber-wealthy, they probably didn’t even benefit from the GOP tax scam at all.
If we had made civilian ownership of weapons of war illegal after Sandy Hook, it’s more likely than not that Salvador Ramos would not have inflicted any carnage at Robb Elementary School. I’m specifically naming the killer, because giving these rage-filled men the he-who-shall-not-be-named Voldemort treatment doesn’t seem to be working. Disturbed young men who glorify violence are always going to be able to find the names of previous mass murderers anyway. And it’s the violence and carnage and utter devastation that they seem to glorify more than the particular killers themselves. The Voldemort treatment might actually be an incentive for would-be killers who believe they’ll become part of an un-named, mythological personification of evil instead of picked apart as the violent, cowardly, pathetic losers they are.
Without the capacity for a high body count that military weapons provide, it’s likely that Ramos would’ve just impotently stewed in his rage at home, killing no one. But if he really was hell-bent on committing whatever kind of violence he could, even if it wasn’t on a mass scale, perhaps he would’ve obtained a regular pistol—one that requires a manual pull of the trigger to fire each bullet…one that can only fire a limited number of bullets before it needs to be re-loaded. Or maybe he would’ve gone to Robb Elementary with a large, sharp knife. Either way, if that had been the case, some lives might still have been tragically lost, but how many? Three? Four? Certainly not 21. If he had attacked the school with a knife or a smaller caliber gun, it’s much more likely that more children could’ve run away…or a teacher could’ve stopped him…or any one of the 19 police officers in the area could’ve shot Ramos before he re-loaded his gun or ran toward another child with a knife. It would’ve been a horrible, tragic situation for those whose lives would still have been lost. But probably at least 17 of the 21 people dead in Uvalde would be alive today. If not all of them.
Could he have inflicted murder on Uvalde by taking his grandmother’s truck and plowing into a crowd instead of using a weapon of war? Possibly. But, again, the body count is not likely to have been as great. The 2016 terror attack in Nice killed 86 people using a truck, but that was a 19-ton cargo truck that someone like Ramos never would’ve been able to rent—especially since he was still seven years too young to rent any kind of vehicle at all. Most vehicular terrorism with standard vehicles has inflicted a much lower body count. So even in the unlikely event that Ramos still wanted to indulge his lust for murder and carnage even without easy access to a military caliber weapon of war, and he found the exact right opportunity to attack a crowd of people, he realistically would’ve killed no more than 10 people. That of course would have been utterly devastating for the victims and their families, but there would be at least 11 fewer corpses than what actually happened in Uvalde. It’s more likely that Ramos would’ve been stopped before he killed anyone at all. Even more likely, he probably wouldn’t have even thought about this type of murder—it’s the Rambo-esque gun fetish that seems to be the main draw for violent young men. How do we know that? Because, in addition to the fact that our peer nations that prohibit civilians from obtaining weapons of war almost never have mass shootings, their disturbed 18-year-olds don’t seem to compensate via vehicular manslaughter on any recognizable scale either.
“He would’ve just bought an ILLEGAL AR-15,” NRA-defenders often say, implying that those who believe in common-sense gun safety laws are the stupid ones. “Criminals don’t obey laws!” (Which is actually an argument against ALL laws, but okay whatever.) Sure, it’s true that, with so many weapons of war circulating among violent civilians in this country, he could’ve possibly obtained in illegal AR-15. But would he have? If he couldn’t legally purchase a military weapon on his 18th birthday, would he have had the connections to do so illegally? With FBI stings targeting illegal weapons of war, would Ramos have found an illegal arms dealer willing to take the chance and sell to him? Would he have been swept up in an FBI sting himself? Even if he did manage to buy a weapon of war illegally, it would’ve taken him more time. The children at Robb Elementary were enjoying their last week at school before summer break when they were killed. If we had outlawed weapons of war after Sandy Hook and even delayed Ramos from obtaining an AR-15 for another week, all of those children in Uvalde would be enjoying the beginning of their summer vacations now. If weapons of war were illegal, chances are they would be more expensive—maybe too expensive for Ramos to afford right then or ever. Even if—at worst—Ramos was able to obtain an illegal weapon of war sometime during the summer and planned to go on his murderous rampage when school was back in session, those 19 children would’ve been able to have enjoyed another summer of family and friends and sports and playgrounds and pools and lots and lots of love. And there would’ve been more time for Ramos’s anger issues to trip some red flags.
If he was able to illegally obtain a weapon of war, it’s possible Ramos would’ve decided to pick another target during the summer. Maybe. But, again, every day he would be delayed from carrying out his horrific act would be another day when his anger issues or any “mental illness” could’ve been identified and treated. Any day’s delay is another day he could’ve been stopped by someone seeing and reporting the red flags. Any day he didn’t commit mass murder would’ve been another day he could’ve been apprehended for a smaller violent incident and either treated or incarcerated or both. Or—at the risk of sounding too sympathetic and Pollyanna-like, any day might’ve been a day that something GOOD happened to him and gave him incentive to seek help to fight the darkness and anger inside him. We’ll never know. What we do know is that if we had enacted common sense gun regulations and banned weapons of war after Sandy Hook, there’s still a possibility that Ramos would’ve killed other children in another location at another date…but there’s a much bigger possibility that he wouldn’t have.
If, after Sandy Hook, we as a society had done the bare minimum and enacted regulations to keep weapons of war out of the hands of men younger than 21 (aside from military and police), the victims who died at Robb Elementary School would similarly be alive today in all likelihood. And the innocent people shopping at Topps Supermarket in Buffalo a few short weeks ago would also be alive.
It’s true that an age restriction wouldn’t have stopped Adam Lanza from slaughtering 20 six- and seven-year-olds and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT. He didn’t need to go anywhere to purchase a gun since his mommy was a gun-fetishizing ammosexual who kept a military arsenal in easy reach of her disturbed teenager. But, by all indications, she was a law-abiding citizen who probably wouldn’t have kept a military arsenal if it was against the law to do so. She probably would’ve just done her Mrs. Rambo Cosplaying at an authorized gun range where weapons of war could be secured and handled responsibly. And if his mommy hadn’t had an arsenal at his disposal, would Lanza have found a way to acquire one on the black market? Again, probably not. From what little we’re allowed to know about him due to our Voldemorting of mass shooters, it doesn’t seem like he was particularly competent or clever. So it stands to reason that if we hadn’t let the ban on weapons of mass murder expire in 2004, the children who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School would be preparing for college today.
Voldemorting mass killers and denying them name recognition may seem like a way to honor victims, but it essentially helps the NRA perpetuate the myth that mass shootings are the result of unpreventable “evil.” Yes, it’s unfathomable to imagine anyone being able to inflict so much carnage on young children’s bodies that their remains can only be identified by DNA. The gruesome, unspeakably horrible nature of the crime itself leads to the automatic verdict of “evil.” But evil is not a clinically defined mental illness. Was Payton Gendron mentally ill when he took the Bushmaster XM-15 rifle he legally purchased to murder black people because of his belief in the same far-right “Great Replacement” conspiracy frequently spewed by Tucker Carlson? Hate and racism are evil, but not clinically defined mental illnesses. The photos we’re allowed to see of Salvador Ramos and Adam Lanza certainly look like the faces of disturbed young men. But if they were in fact mentally ill, what WERE their specific mental illnesses?
The knee-jerk proclamation of “Mental illness” as the cause for slaughter, without any specific diagnosis, allows the NRA cult to conveniently sweep aside the fact that these “evil” people could’ve possibly been diagnosed, treated and cured if they hadn’t been able to obtain weapons of war and carry out their worst, most violent impulses first. At the risk of sounding sympathetic to the perpetrator of the country’s worst school shooting, I can’t help but to wonder what Lanza would be doing now if he hadn’t had an arsenal at his disposal when he was a violent, disturbed 20-year-old. It’s possible he could’ve killed his mother by other means and would be serving time in prison for that now. It’s also possible that his well-to-do mother could’ve gotten him the psychiatric treatment he needed, and with a few medications he could be living a productive life right now, grateful that he was able to find help instead of being consumed by his demons.
The common-sense truth that the NRA cult constantly tries to obscure is that criminally deranged and violent people who aren’t able to easily access weapons of war are obviously not as dangerous as those who have easy access to those powerful weapons. We know this beyond any doubt. As many others have noted across social media, our peer nations around the world have just as many mentally ill people as the United States…they have the same video games…the same internet…they are often LESS religious…they have just as much divorce…they have just as many single parents. But they don’t have the mass shootings and gun violence that we have in the U.S. because they simply don’t let civilians own weapons of war.
It's the guns. We know it’s the guns. If we had stopped voting for NRA Republicans after Sandy Hook, we could’ve saved the children and teachers in Uvalde. We failed to honor the memory of the Sandy Hook children by letting Uvalde happen. It’s too late for them now, but it’s not too late to save students who will otherwise predictably be murdered in their classrooms five or ten years from now. Anyone who continues to vote for the NRA cult agenda, knowing without a doubt that it will lead to the future slaughter of American children, is perpetuating and mainstreaming the worst kind of violence. THAT is a form of mental illness. We can do better. We need to do better.
I want to be proud of my country. I want to feel safe in my country. I want to fly the flag at full height, and not be in a constant state of mourning those whose lives were stolen from them by NRA and Republican greed.
