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Quite simply, the Parkland shooting irrefutably illustrates that even the relative insulation from a host of social ills, gun violence among them, upper-middle class and entry-level wealthy families and neighborhoods enjoy is not enough to protect them from gun violence. The Parkman shooter went into a school populated with a subset of some the nation's most fortunate kids and today, those kids are every bit as dead as a doornail, and those "white picket fence" families are no less aggrieved. The same can be said of the shooting yesterday in Annapolis, MD. Nonetheless, it seems Congressional Republicans cleave to the will of the NRA, profoundly bereft of the will to endure a non-A rating from the NRA.
But M. Stoneman Douglas is a public school, and though it's students/families are well-off, mostly, they aren't in the same social cohort as are the kids/families at the nation's premier day-hop schools and boarding schools nestled in the bucolic solitude of America's countrysides and having students hailing from posh families around the world. The minute, God forfend, a gunman shoots a kid(s) at any one of those schools, the gun debate will come to a screeching halt because people paying $50K+/year in tuition, nevermind room, board and activity fees and cost, will demand and receive, as with everything else, precisely what they want. The instant that happens, the blinders and gossamer veils facilitating the 1% of the 1%'s forbearance of what in their hearts they know is the spurious "guns aren't the problem" canard will fall.
There're, of course, currently "woke" folks in the donor class; there's no question about that. As yet, however, they and their "dozing" peers have been essentially untouched by random gun violence. The donor class isn't immune to one-off shootings and other violence -- Menendez brothers, the Kalorama shooting, and so on -- but as yet elite bastions have yet to have their denizens become targets of gun violence. Poor and middle class citizens have endured gun violence of all sorts for decades. Aside from 9/11, various plane crashes, the Lusitania and Titanic, the country's economic elites largely have not, and even considering their exposure to non-random events ( e.g., Arlington shooting) and special circumstances (e.g., POTUSes and the occasional political assassination mostly), not in any way comparable to Aurora, Columbine, Parkland, Pulse, Las Vegas, etc.
I absolutely hope that nobody else will have to suffer shootings of any sort. If/when I ever hear of another mass shooting, it'll be too soon. That said, I do fear the only other thing, besides what I've described above, that will move Congress members irrevocably out of their political quagmire is the 2018 plebiscite outcome's sending a clear message that a material share of the citizenry's GOP has abandoned the NRA.
Note to the "peanut gallery":
But M. Stoneman Douglas is a public school, and though it's students/families are well-off, mostly, they aren't in the same social cohort as are the kids/families at the nation's premier day-hop schools and boarding schools nestled in the bucolic solitude of America's countrysides and having students hailing from posh families around the world. The minute, God forfend, a gunman shoots a kid(s) at any one of those schools, the gun debate will come to a screeching halt because people paying $50K+/year in tuition, nevermind room, board and activity fees and cost, will demand and receive, as with everything else, precisely what they want. The instant that happens, the blinders and gossamer veils facilitating the 1% of the 1%'s forbearance of what in their hearts they know is the spurious "guns aren't the problem" canard will fall.
There're, of course, currently "woke" folks in the donor class; there's no question about that. As yet, however, they and their "dozing" peers have been essentially untouched by random gun violence. The donor class isn't immune to one-off shootings and other violence -- Menendez brothers, the Kalorama shooting, and so on -- but as yet elite bastions have yet to have their denizens become targets of gun violence. Poor and middle class citizens have endured gun violence of all sorts for decades. Aside from 9/11, various plane crashes, the Lusitania and Titanic, the country's economic elites largely have not, and even considering their exposure to non-random events ( e.g., Arlington shooting) and special circumstances (e.g., POTUSes and the occasional political assassination mostly), not in any way comparable to Aurora, Columbine, Parkland, Pulse, Las Vegas, etc.
I absolutely hope that nobody else will have to suffer shootings of any sort. If/when I ever hear of another mass shooting, it'll be too soon. That said, I do fear the only other thing, besides what I've described above, that will move Congress members irrevocably out of their political quagmire is the 2018 plebiscite outcome's sending a clear message that a material share of the citizenry's GOP has abandoned the NRA.
Note to the "peanut gallery":
This is not a gun control thread, so don't go there.
Well, this little peanut notes that you have mentioned guns, congressional republicans, NRA, and for all the wordiness of your post noted that nothing is being done. As such, yes, this is a gun control thread. As such it has been moved to the Gun Control sub forum.
