I started this post today before current US Representative George Santos (R-NY) was arrested by federal authorities and “charged with fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and false statements.” This follows a day when now-indicted, twice-impeached former US president Donald Trump was found to be liable for sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll.
Most Republicans in federal office so far refuse to condemn either man; some going so far as to diss the criminal justice system itself. A few have criticized the jury in Trump’s case, and so far Speaker Kevin McCarthy has refused moves to push now-arrested US Representative Santos out of the US House of Representatives. House Republicans want the alleged criminal’s vote. They don’t need it — they want it. They could choose ethics and integrity, but that ship sailed long ago.
Also in the news, this weekend a vehicle crashed into a Texas crowd killing 8 and injuring 10 perhaps inspired by extremism, and a mass shooting at a Texas mall killing 8 and injuring 7 was also likely inspired by extremism.
Related, Republicans have dismissed the threats posed by domestic violent extremists while at the same time continuing to back the widespread availability and access to firearms. It doesn’t matter how horrible the mass shooting is, elected Republicans and the right-wing media world continue to support gun access for everyone everywhere all the time.
The Republican party that claims to be outraged and shocked (shocked!) about crime is instead condoning it, enabling it, dismissing certain types of it, and weakening institutions that prosecute crimes and hold up the rule of law — undermining juries to prosecutors to law enforcement agencies.
Republicans are enabling crime by making guns super easy for criminals to get.
Republicans are enabling terrorism by making guns super easy for terrorists to get.
Republicans are enabling future insurrectionists by making guns super easy for insurrectionists to get.
Republicans are enabling Instant Terrorists up here in the US — after years post-9/11 of claiming they were soooooooo worried about even the slightest whiff of a terrorist threat to Americans.
That sensitivity is why we’re all still taking off our shoes and leaving bottles of fluids behind before boarding an aircraft. Wouldn’t want to enable terrorists! On airplanes anyway! Anywhere else — looks like it’s a-okay for the Republican crowd.
Non of this is breaking news, but it is getting worse — both the gun violence, and the Republican defense of all the firearms everywhere all the time.
The spectacular American firearms availability means we’re actively enabling American terrorists.
How are we not?
We’re making it easier to buy guns anytime. Nearly anyone can get guns in many places. No waiting period in some states. No or almost no background checks in some places. Open carry in some places. Permitless carry in some places. No required safety training in some places — which goes with the permitless carry. Which means no firearms licensing or tracking in some places. Plus: tons of guns (and bullets) that can pierce armor. Guns that blow up children and internal organs and whole adult bodies too. Guns that pierce armour and vehicles and walls. Gun owners with access to body armour and tactical gear, too.
Mix all that in with a domestic violent extremist (DVE) threat that the US intelligence community (IC) has assessed to be one of the greatest threats to US national security — if not the greatest threat. Has the IC even done an assessment of US gun availability combined with the DVE threat? Would they tell us if they had?
Does it matter? Would we change anything?
Also, you don’t have to be in some domestic violent extremist group to become an Instant Terrorist in the US.
Nearly anyone can do it.
A person in many states in the US can become a terrorist almost instantly with a little bit of cash. A person who is unstable, who’s having a bad day, or who is angry at their neighbor or wife or teacher or society or the neighbors can just pop over to the local gun shop and/or gun show, grab one or more AR-15s, head to a crowded spot, and do serious damage — fast. The music festival mass shooting near Mandalay Bay in October 2017 involved one shooter who fired over 1,000 bullets, killed 60, and wounded at least 413. At the time, it got media attention for a short period… and then slipped into the backwaters of the ongoing news tsunami of the Trump presidency.
Who would have made a change as a result of the shooting? Trump certainly wouldn’t have, and neither would the Republican-controlled Congress at that time. They all did find the time just after the Vegas shooting to pass a massive set of tax breaks for the rich into law which they currently do not want to raise the debt ceiling to fund, but that’s a side-note to this post.
If that Vegas music festival level of shooting, injury, and death had happened in the decade following 9/11, the entire US homeland security enterprise would have been laser-focused on the threat. As it was, the local/regional response after the 2017 Vegas shooting damage stopped went reasonably well because US casinos and certain metro areas were very involved in post-9/11 work to mitigate damage from terrorist attacks or other potential mass casualty scenarios. The Vegas metro area had great interagency coordination, public-private-partnerships, and other preparedness work in place for responders and for private facilities. But those are other side-notes. The out-of-control gun threat remains; no matter how prepared any region is for chaos. Responding well to death and injuries doesn’t stop the the death. It’s band-aids and triage; transport and clean-up. The dead people are still dead.
I watch this spectacular terrorist risk steadily unfold in the US in shock partly because of my own journey. I left my very awesome wildfire career in the post-9/11 world to work on big picture national homeland security stuff. Back then the US government was trying to legally track things like purchases of burn phones and explosives components in an attempt to get organized and coordinated enough between agencies to figure out where some Bad Guy might be thinking about hurting Americans — and cutting that activity off before Bad Stuff could happen.
That was back when we collectively cared (sometimes) if Bad Stuff happened to Americans.
These days we have a Republican party aggressively making it so that anyone — ANYONE — can get a gun anytime any day anywhere with no background checks and no tracking. Gun laws and gun safety provisions are falling in state after state, as warfighter grade weapons are made available to any criminal, mentally unstable person, angry boyfriend, racist, misogynist, anti-Semite, cartel member, human trafficker, drug runner, gang member, insurrectionist, accelerationist wanting to take out the power grid, or angry kid.
Personally, I can’t believe I spent so much time in so many government meetings trying to help the law enforcement and homeland security communities make this country safer from terrorism when we have an entire political party now making it way, way, way, way easier for any American to become an Instant Terrorist.
It is terrorism. We should call it that.
The Republican party is helping it along.
They’re not just helping. They’re cheerleading.
Republicans are wearing AR-15 lapel pins, for crying out loud. They’re bragging about enabling their grandkids to have guns. Here’s South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem talking about her granddaughter who is not yet 2 years old: “I want to reassure you. She already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle.” Republicans send out Christmas cards with family firearms photos.
What are they going to say when one of these terrorists starts shooting politicians with AR-15 style weapons? Or Justices? Or judges? Or influencers? Or cabinet members? Law enforcement and black SUV caravans are not a defense against rapid-fire assault weapons and bullets that pierce armour, vehicles, and walls. We’re not set up for war domestically; although these guns are. Security is never, ever 100% effective. It is delusional to think otherwise.
Members of Congress have a short memory when it comes to their own risk — the shooting at a Congressional ball game in Alexandria, Virginia was also in 2017. But then, many of these legislators are the same people who both incited an insurrection and then hid behind the wall of security protection provided at great cost by the US Capitol Police (USCP) and the DC Metro Police Department (MPD) when things got dangerous. And then had the nerve to call it normal tourism once the danger passed. Spines of jello, these folks.
Finally, this isn’t all happening solely because of a) the gun lobby, or b) Republicans in federal and state legislatures, or even c) the enormous right-wing media empire.
This is also happening because Americans support it. My neighbors support it. My relatives support it. My ex-colleagues living out in the boondocks in rural state after rural state support it. My relatives’ neighbors support it. They sit around and talk about it.
Guns are a way of life in rural America… and now increasingly so because Republicans have been cultivating a gun culture.
Yes that’s right. Americans are supporting Republicans making it easier for anyone anywhere to get a gun. Americans are supporting legally arming US terrorists.
They don’t think of it as arming terrorists, of course. In gun land, guns sounds good to so many people. Like an old Oprah show. “You get a gun and you get a gun and you get a gun!!…”
Only the people who are getting the guns are not just your friend Chad who keeps them unlocked and piled in a corner of a bedroom, or your uncle Frank with his stash mounted all over the walls of his garage, or your friend’s boss who has a whole barn full of them.
The people getting the guns are anyone anytime with any gripe and any emotional state and any set of ethics and any state of mind and any anger and any criminal goals and any level of ego and privilege and sense of self-righteousness.
The people getting a whole lot of the guns are often criminals — or they will be soon.
We’re arming terrorists.
Republicans, specifically, are enabling terrorists and criminals and killers.
Why is it that Republicans are the ones driving the national narrative all the time about all this, though?
Why is it that after every single damn mass shooting in this country that the media ends up responding to right-wing talking points yet again about mental health?
I’ll tell you why: because the opposition is not even trying at a concerted, large-scale level to be proactive or coordinated about driving the narrative, and about pushing the moral high ground.
The gun-safety side of the majority of Americans is in such shock and has been so reactive on messaging for decades that we don’t even seem to know how to do it anymore. A few do. There are exceptions. Watch the March for Our Lives kids, and other survivors of mass shootings. But it’s not enough.
We need more outrage, and we need more activity, and we need to shift the moral direction this country is headed in. We have to make this uncool. You’d think the bodies piling up or getting blown apart would get that word out but that’s not doing it. We can help change come along by getting louder and making all of this a whole lot more uncomfortable. Clearly, it’s not yet.
As it is, the Republicans are still on messaging offense. The rest of us aren’t — and we’re also hoping not to get shot. For real. Like we’re genuinely hoping we don’t get shot.
Anyway.
I just think about our reaction to 9/11 and the threats… and how many billions of dollars and two major wars and thousands of lives that we spent supposedly to protect precious American lives.
Why don’t we care now about precious American lives? What changed?
So yeah. This nonprofit is fixing to work on all this stuff. We think we can help a coalition of the majority fight a moral fight, make it messy and loud, raise a ruckus, put our moral courage out there more, and work on turning this ship of a country a few degrees, or more. It’s worth it. We’re worth it.
But we need to fight in bigger and more coordinated ways that show up more in small-town America and in rural communities. There are lots of things we can do. Join us at one of our online Zoom calls to get things going, sign up to volunteer, or share this post to help grow the work. Next call is Thursday May 11 in the evening.
We’re just getting started and we’re having a hard time getting the word out, so every bit helps. And we need the cash! Donate here! It’s tricky trying to create a new and disruptive political thing out in the middle of nowhere outside the political establishment. But arguably — this kind of thing is exactly what we need to fight in different ways.
Our future depends on the fights we’re in today, and that’s not even a little bit rhetorical. We’re in a long reckoning, and we’re not yet collectively acting like it. But we can.
Join us. Bring your friends.
And for crying out loud, be safe. Learn what to do in an active shooter scenario. Have tough talks with your people. Learn how to Stop the Bleed. Because you just never know, and we live in a country that’s enabling terrorists.
Preach
Yes. All of this. And...at least part of the answer to Why? is that the Republicans want as many people to have guns as possible. The more the merrier, because it feeds their delusions. About overthrowing the government. Their fascist delusions. If they can't win elections honestly, they've proved they are willing to attempt to steal them. And since that didn't work out so well, they've crossed the Rubicon of embracing whatever is necessary to wrest power from the people, up to and including armed insurrection. Yah, they tried that, too. The next time--and there will be one unless we DO something about all the damn guns--they may even succeed. Or at least wreak even more havoc than they accomplished January 6.
As for people you know, your family, the people you live with eating it up...that's part of the plan. To normalize guns. To make those people "feel safe" because they've got "protection"; it's too bad that they don't understand they need to be worried about protecting themselves FROM the Republicans. It feels almost blasphemous to say this, but I am beginning to look back on trump's term as being "easy" compared to where the country is now. He managed to unleash all of the nation's darkest tendencies--and now, they are running virtually unchecked. He emboldened them. And as long as he walks free, as long as he can run again for president, those tendencies will grow stronger and more violent--and guns play a pivotal role in the grand plan.