What in the name of (your choice) must happen for Americans to see that guns have become the religion of the right? The United States leads the mass shootings “contest” in “developed” countries with 101 to second place France’s eight between 1998-2019.
Last Tuesday, Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s exhorted the faithful to not “politicize the deaths” of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas murdered by a teenage shooter. “We don’t need more gun control. We need to return to God,” she said.
Christian right provocateur Matt Walsh tweeted just after a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado that killed 10 people, “Gun ownership is a more important right than voting. Voting is not really a human right at all but a privilege that should be reserved for those who are qualified to do it properly. It should be easier to buy a gun than vote.”
How much easier? Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos “legally” bought his AK-15 assault rifle the day after he turned 18. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz opined “Inevitably, when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it. You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work.”
Last Tuesday Cruz proposed that more armed officers be stationed at schools. “We know,” Cruz said on MSNBC, “from past experience that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus.”
There have been 231 school shootings since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, not including misfires and stopped attempts. If a mass shooting is defined as resulting in the death of four or more people, not including the perpetrator, 169 people have died in 14 such tragedies in U.S. schools since the Columbine murders.
By the time you read this we’ll know whether Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott showed up at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Houston this weekend, where they are slated to speak. Former President Donald Trump has stated that he will attend, no doubt relishing the opportunity of speaking at the 55,000 NRA members expected to attend. Attendees will suffer the inconvenience of their guns banned at the event due to Secret Service safety restrictions.
How much more pain can we possibly endure before racist killing sprees can be stopped?
What will it take to awake us from our sociopolitical slumber to see, to witness and to be reviled by the ruthless, recurring racism that has metastasized throughout America? And here at home in the city of Greenfield?
I know I am not alone in feeling “dissed” by Mayor RoxannWedegartner and police Chief Robert Haigh Jr. I define “dissed” as being treated in a disrespectful manner and because as a Greenfield resident I find myself enabling racism in our city’s police department. Disrespectful because my tax dollars — and yours — are supporting a police department which a jury of peers in the Hampshire County Superior Court found that Haigh and the police department’ discriminated against Patrick Buchanan, the department’s only Black officer when he was denied promotion due to “racial animus.”
Our mayor has placed Chief Haigh and Lt. Todd Dodge on paid administrative leave. Wedegartner said the information leading to the administrative leave is “totally unrelated” to the verdict of racial discrimination. Chief Haigh said in a prepared statement, “I support what the mayor needs to do and I respect her doing what she feels is the best for the city.”
That said, Judge Mark D. Mason has denied the city’s request to release the sealed testimony by Lt. Dodge who the mayor has asserted made “false allegations while under oath.” The jury, however, agreed with Buchanan and Dodge’s evidence that the two internal “investigations” of Buchanan were discriminatory.
What is the inconvenient truth in this matter? Shouldn’t Greenfield voters/taxpayers know why their police chief is on administrative leave? Or why the only white officer in the police department to substantiate Buchanan’s case in court is on administrative leave?
For me, Human Rights Commission member MpressBennu nailed it when she said: “If you don’t stand for anything, you will fall for anything.” It’s well past time to stand for honest information, not ‘diss’-information.
“Connecting the Dots” appears every other Saturday in the Recorder. Readers of today’s column who would like a PDF of the Hampshire County Supreme Court jury verdict may request a copy at john01370@gmail.com.