#except the bodybounts

[shinobicyrus]

After the mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school that killed three nine-year old children and three staff, Tennessee Rep Tim Burchett said of the tragedy, “It’s a horrible, horrible situation, and we’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals.”

He went on to say: “My daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me … ‘Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.”

It’s striking how mass murderers with a gun is the sole thing that Conservatives are perfectly okay feigning powerlessness about. Imagine if this same principle was applied to other Conservative bugbears:

“Listen I know we’re all concerned about the gay agenda but there’s just no way to fix it. Gays are gonna be gay.”

“Abortion is a horrible, horrible thing, but if somebody wants to end a pregnancy there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do to stop them.”

“We can’t really stop illegal immigrants coming over the border. Criminals are gonna be criminals!”

"If a jihadist wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.”

But of course, they have no issue at all passing laws restricting bodily autonomy, forcing victims of sexual violence to remain pregnant, persecuting queer people, banning books, enacting draconian restrictions of free speech at schools and sending undercover cops to drag shows. Nor do they have any qualms about mass surveillance on US Citizens and immigrant communities, illegal incarceration and child separation of asylum seekers. Border walls and ICE raids and bans on people from Muslim-majority countries.

They will trample and restrict on every right except guns, because it’s the perfect fusion of violent American machismo, the profits of the Arms Industry, and their secret, romantic belief that someday they’re going to be Noble Revolutionaries fighting a Tyrannical government.

The tyranny, of course, not being all the things I mentioned above, but the government suggesting that maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t be allowed to own a weapon that can kill a dozen people in a matter of seconds. That’s real tyranny.