Thoughts On A Massacre

And an invitation for Friday's Office Hours

That Uvalde, Texas police chief has two officers outside his home right now sitting in a patrol car. His cops will keep him perfectly safe. Unless of course an armed intruder brandishing an assault weapon storms inside. Then the chief’s completely on his own for at least an hour.

This was the week America woke up and finally realized The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good armor plated robot guy with a gun.

Half of Uvalde’s budget goes for police. Had the town’s entire budget gone for police they still would have been too terrified to confront a semi-automatic assault weapon designed to butcher a nest of enemy snipers.

The conversation on mass shootings shifted dramatically this week. For the first time the Right is shamelessly blaming our cops for Tuesday’s staggering body count. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said of his police’s lackadaisical response that he’s “livid.” Because he couldn’t possibly blame his precious assault weapons, or the laws he passed last year that make AR-15s easier for an 18-year-old to purchase than a pack of cigarettes.

When Republicans are humiliated, like they were in Uvalde, they send out a posse searching for a scapegoat. They found one, our pusillanimous cops.

The cops, according to the GOP, are now to blame for all those dead children. And so, America was promised that every police officer has been put on notice that when there’s an active shooter DO NOT wait for the SWAT team. Go in there with the weapons you have, not the weapons you wish you had.

Starting now, the rules of engagement couldn’t be more explicit. All cops are expected to walk directly into a shower of bullets. Failure to do so will render them cowards and legally liable.

From now on, mass shootings are the fault of our police. Not my words. The words of Republican governors, mayors, police chiefs and politicians across America.

It’s not the guns. It’s the cowardly police not wanting to get ripped apart by an AR-15.

Nice.

But maybe, just maybe, the REAL cowards are America’s police chiefs. Maybe the REAL cowards are America’s police unions. Maybe our police chiefs and police unions are too chickenshit to take on the NRA and all those gun manufacturers who shower the chiefs and unions with money, vacations, side hustles and other assorted goodies.

Maybe American police chiefs and police unions don’t really care that their officers are unhinged from assault weapons flooding our streets. Maybe American police chiefs and police unions are as afraid of the NRA as our cops are of getting blown apart by weapons of war.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Police chiefs and police unions wield enormous political power. Republicans, especially, are terrified of them because Republicans purport to be the party of law and order so they desperately need these chiefs and these unions on their side.

Until American police chiefs and police unions stand up to the NRA, and stop taking money from gun manufacturers, they must be held responsible for every single mass shooting going forward.

Cops aren’t cowards. Police chiefs and police unions are the cowards for not demanding an assault weapons ban.

This wasn’t always the case. Our police demanded gun control until the NRA panicked and purchased their silence.

Police chiefs and police unions spoke up in 1994, and that’s how America got an assault weapons ban. Police chiefs and unions stood behind Clinton and Gore and helped Democrats get it passed.

The NRA responded by pouring money into police unions and police departments to purchase their political clout. Ten years later, police chiefs and union heads sat back as the assault weapons ban expired and the number of mass shootings exploded.

It’s been nearly 20 years since the assault weapons ban expired.

The NRA is responsible for a new breed of cop and a new breed of school children. One with targets on their backs fully aware they’re on their own. It’s made them sick in the head.

Cops are teaching children to play dead. To dip their hands in their friend’s blood so it looks like they’ve already been hit. And now the new directive. Loud and clear. Police must not to wait for the SWAT team.

This is deranged. Republicans insist the mentally ill shouldn’t be allowed to buy a gun. Our entire country falls into that categorization. We are demented. All of us.

What kind of twisted people would order police officers to run into a barrage of bullets pouring from an AR-15?

Where are the police chiefs and the police unions on this?

Think about this new directive for a second. Police must now run into the line of fire, without protection, and confront an active shooter even when that officer is completely outgunned. Otherwise, they are cowards who are legally liable.

Former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson was arrested on 11 criminal charges, including child neglect and negligence and goes on trial this year for not pursuing the shooter brandishing an assault weapon inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were eventually killed. It’s the police officer’s fault! Not the AR-15’s or the people who sold it.

In America we put the cop on trial for not chasing the shooter, but we don’t arrest or even sue the crackpot who sold another crackpot an AR-15. The fact that we allow this is dispositive that not a single American possesses the compos mentis to own a gun.

What kind of sick country would rather protect gun manufacturers than its own cops and children?

It’s time for American police chiefs and police unions to say their officers, just like our school children, refuse to be cannon fodder for gun manufacturers.

The Republicans are blaming the cops.

Police chiefs and police unions better decide quickly. Who do you speak for? Your officers? Or the NRA?

Right now, it sounds like it’s the NRA.

Protect your officers and demand an assault weapons ban.

Stay strong, protect the weak.

Please join me Friday to discuss all this for Office Hours.

On today’s show I introduce you to Benjamin Hernandez from Indivisible Houston. On Friday, George confronted Senator Ted Cruz while Cruz and his family were trying to enjoy a sushi dinner hours after Cruz spoke at the big NRA convention.

Also, George Carlin’s daughter Kelly talked about the new HBO documentary on her dad.

Best wishes,

David