200

The second biggest mass killing in this country happened today in Texas.  This was the two hundredth mass killing in this country this year.  Two hundred!!!  There are so many killings in this country that there is now a Gun Violence Archive.

What is happening to this country?  It seems like the answer to anything one finds negative is to kill people.  Ask a guy to please shoot his gun in a different direction because the noise is keeping a baby awake and he kills a family, try to get into the wrong car and get killed, go shopping in a mall and get killed.  Go to school and get killed.  Where are we safe?

The Texas governor today said that the problem is not guns, it's mental health. The alleged shooter was discharged from the military in 2008 due to “mental health concerns,” yet from 2016-2020 he worked as a security guard, where he received firearms training.

While access to mental healthcare in the U.S. is a problem, blaming it for mass shootings ignores the research and the guidance provided by public health experts. Studies show that what’s at the root of this flurry of mass shootings isn’t inadequate mental healthcare, but the fact that our country’s awash in firearms. As one witness to the carnage in Allen, Texas put it: “Mental health didn’t fire that gun. Those people were killed with bullets.”

I was talking to Jeri this morning and we decided  that what is happening in the country right now is a division between people who are being more kind and understanding of everyone...people who find mixed relationships, Jews, and gay people, etc. on TV to be normal and so accept it in their normal life -- and people who think carrying a gun in pubic and shooting anybody who does something you don't like, or who is of a different race, should be shot.  Sadly, many of the shooters are neo Nazis.  Not all, but many.  After World War II and genocide, how in the world has the Nazi party become so big in this country?

Jeri is in a bad position, as a teacher.  She explained to me how her students are pretty much all stressed about one thing or another.  Tuition, for one thing, is in the thousands of dollars, where my tuition at UC Berkeley and hers at UC Davis was under $100 a year.  Students who have to take 8 classes a semester have to hold down jobs to pay their tuition.  They get upset if they don't get top grades and give her a hard time if she doesn't give them an A when they haven't done the work.  Many of her students are from foreign countries where things in that country are not going well and they are concerned about that.  So many other stressors that the faculty at Berklee has to have meetings to figure out how to keep the students from going off the deep end.  It's hard to imagine a group of music students taking out a school full teachers and students, but who knows?

It's so very sad ... and so very scary. I think of the guy they just arrested for the multi stabbings here in Davis.  A university student who left the university a week before he started killing people.

And yeah, not all of these 200 mass murders were with assault rifles, but many were and still you don't hear a single word from any Republican politician about changing anything where guns are concerned.

I usually turn on the news first thing in the morning when I'm waking up and drinking my coffee and it's very depressing to hear how many of the top stories involve mass murders.

What is this doing to my grandchildren?  I certainly never grew up with that kind of fear.  What will they be like as they become adults?

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