After yet another mass shooting – this time in Umqua Community College in Oregon – Barack Obama questioned why he has to make speech after speech after speech after shooting after shooting after shooting: ‘As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough.’
‘It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America next week or a couple of months from now.’
He added: ‘We are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses who want to do harm to other people. We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.’
Exasperated, he continued: ‘Somehow, this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We've become numb to this.’
And yet, no matter how hard he tries, there are enough gun-keen Republicans to shut down any attempt of his to make it so that guns are that much harder to obtain. Way too many Americans, unfortunately, feel it is their god-given right to bear arms.
Before the mass shooting, America’s right-wing have been focused on clamping down on women’s access to healthcare, as an inquiry into Planned Parenthood (a bit like Marie Stopes here) is carried out. The healthcare provider, which gives women access to STD tests and contraception and mammograms as well as abortions, has had its government funding taken away for a year pending this investigation into whether it really sells baby parts (it sells foetal tissue for research and for zero profit).
The investigation has seen the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, forced to listen to stupid questions and look at incorrect charts provided by the Republicans in order to defend what she does: providing necessary healthcare to women. One Republican even started his question with ‘as a man’! Yes, a question about female healthcare started from that unique male perspective…
Anyway, some bright spark got to thinking; why is it that it’s made so much harder for women to get abortions than it is for young men (and it is nearly always young men) to go into a gun shop and get a gun to then shoot loads of people with it? If pro-lifers are really so pro-life, shouldn’t they be focused on cracking down on the mass shootings of up to dozens of people a little bit more than the quiet and private termination of a foetus inside a woman’s body?
Taken slightly from a piece American teacher and therapist William Hamby wrote, this post has been doing the rounds on Facebook:
I'm not the author of this quote, it's just something I came across and shared. I wish I could take credit, it's kind of...
Posted by
And we can’t help but wholeheartedly agree.
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Mass Shooting in Oregon: Shooter Wrote Plans On 4Chan Thread
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.