Blood Money Going to Lawmakers
To the Editor:
Our recent Memorial Day was rightfully dedicated to the brave men and women who serve in the military to protect our sacred Constitution’s representative democracy, in which Americans have the ultimate moral and fiduciary duty at the voting booth to protect all people but especially our children. Given what we now know regarding the senseless slaughter of elementary school children in Uvalde last week, this year’s Memorial Day should challenge us to not only never forget our debt to those slain in action defending our country, but to also never forget those increasing number of school children being needlessly maimed and killed by ammunition designed and intended only for the battlefields on which our veterans fought.
We must never forget that such military style weapons and ammunition horrifically mutilated those dead and dying children to the point that their grieving parents could no longer recognize their loved ones and so DNA testing had to be conducted to identify their children. We must never forget how Governor Abbott and Senators Cornyn and Cruz, instead of comforting these grieving families, staged a press conference that was nothing but a dog and pony show boasting about the effectiveness of Texas law enforcement when avoidable mistakes were made not only at the scene, but also in failing to address the threats to kill students in Uvalde some four years earlier.
Background checks and the banning of military style weapons and ammunition would have saved the lives of 19 children and two teachers. Instead, that 18-year-old was able to buy an AR-15 rifle that discharged no less than 100 rounds in less than two minutes (exactly what “immediate response” by law enforcement will deter that?) to create unfathomable carnage in one of the classrooms filled with children of all ages. Yes, due to the number of military style weapons owned by civilians in our country, school campuses must be more secure. Security officers need better weapons and body armor. But that is nothing more than preparation for an inevitable military style battlefield on a school campus.
Eighty percent of the American people demand background checks and 70% of the American people want military style weapons to be banned (when they were last temporarily banned, the number of victims killed by these weapons dropped precipitously). But the likes of Governor Abbott and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who are shameful examples of almost every Republican Governor, State Legislator and Member of Congress, refuse to require background checks and refuse to ban military style weapons.
Why? Because their desire to remain in power depends on the extreme right-wing base of the Republican Party who now control the GOP primaries due to the rabid racism and mendacity of right-wing cable talking heads on Fox News and their narcissistic circus like ringmaster, Donald J. Trump. Pathetic and disgusting. But not as pathetic and disgusting as the refusal of Republican leaders to support the pending background check bill passed long ago now by the Democrats in the House of Representative and waiting for Republican Senators led by Mitch McConnell to vote to make that bill law.
But that should come as no surprise, given the following partial list of key Republican U.S. Senators, who accept blood money funded directly or indirectly by the NRA. They are beholden to the NRA and gun manufacturers as part of their desire for political survival no matter what the human cost: Marco Rubio (Florida): $3,303,355; GOP Senate Leader, Mitch McConnell (Kentucky): $1,267,139; Ted Cruz (Texas): $176,274; Rand Paul (Kentucky): $104,456; and John Cornyn (Texas): $78,945.00; Ron DeSantis (Florida Governor): NRA “A” rating and years of gun lobby contributions. To gun manufacturers, this kind of blood money spent annually on lawmakers is just a cold-blooded cost of doing business to sell extremely profitable military style rifles like that 18-year old’s AR-15 whose price ranges from $500 to $2,000 each. Governor Greg Abbott proudly signed bills which make it easier to obtain military style weapons and ammo than to obtain a driver’s license.
Given the decades of avoidable slaughter of school children in the U.S. that seems to only occur in our country and far too often in Texas, Americans, who vote for these Republican lawmakers whose actions are not unlike paid shills for gun manufacturers, are guilty of shirking their God given fiduciary duty to our children at the voting booth and ultimately being the ones with blood on their hands.
John W. Mikus
Houston