On February 24, 2005 David Hernandez Arroyo Sr. opened fire on his ex-wife and son in front of the Smith County Courthouse in Tyler, Texas. It was a courthouse, so of course police were there, and there was a shootout. Mark Allen Wilson intervened, but Mr. Arroyo was wearing body armor. Mr. Wilson struck Mr. Arroyo several times, to no effect, and Mr. Arroyo eventually killed both his ex-wife and Mr. Wilson, and was only killed by police after a high speed pursuit.
I mention this because Louie Gohmert mentioned it last summer in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado shooting:
GOHMERT: OK. It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly? I mean, in Tyler, Texas, my home town, we had a shooter come in over a domestic matter and just start shooting people. And it was a guy with a concealed carry—he got killed, but his shooting at this guy caused him to run and no doubt saved a lot of lives. He was hero.
Mr. Wilson probably saved Mr. Arroyo's son's life. But Arroyo didn't run because of Mr. Wilson; Arroyo exchanged fire with Wilson, then walked up to Wilson and finished him off, exchanged more gunfire with the police, and finally fled the scene. Mr. Wilson got himself killed. The police fired more than 116 rounds, and had a trained sniper on hand. Mr. Arroyo had body armor. He killed two people, and three police officers were wounded. He was finally shot in the back of the head at close range, after a car chase. It wasn't a movie; it was real life. In real life the "heroes" die.
I mention all of this, because Mr. Gohmert is loose again:
GOHMERT: Having been a judge and reviewed photographs of these horrific scenes and knowing that children have these defensive wounds, gun shots through their arms and hands as they try to protect themselves, and, hearing the heroic stories of the principal, lunging, trying to protect, Chris, I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids. [...]
I have heard, once again, although at this point anything I've heard about the Newtown shootings that didn't come from the police is suspect, that Adam Lanza was wearing body armor. Perhaps he wasn't, but if he went to the school expecting to eventually face a police SWAT team, perhaps he was. Given the outcome of the Tyler courthouse shooting, why does Mr. Gohmert think two people spraying bullets in a crowded elementary school would be such a good idea? Why does he think storing a gun at a school is a good idea at all?
It can only be because Mr. Gohmert is dumber than a box of rocks. I'm amazed his brain generates enough electricity to allow him to walk, much less think. Even the NRA understands enough about gun safety to know you do not keep guns in areas where there are large numbers of children for hours at a time.
Hopefully it will take him about as long as last time to apologize.
This man is an embarrassment to the country. An international embarrassment, no less.
Gomert should ask why Lanza's mother, who was obviously fully armed, didn't stop her clearly mentally ill son from having access to assault weapons instead of regularly bringing him to the range to become a better shot. I hope we find out what her and her families' politics and participation in gun culture have been because as I see it, she and likely others in her family and the gun cult she was a member of brought this about.
ReplyDeleteThis is a crime that is directly attributable to gun nuts, including those members of the NRA who claim to be in favor of reasonable gun laws. They don't get to escape blame when they are funding murder inc. Nor can the Republican Party that has made guns sacrosanct and the media that has enabled them. They have the blood of 20 children and 7 school workers on their collective hands.
NPR actually mentioned this morning other gun deaths, the products of the random violence on our city streets, deaths so common we usually ignore them entirely.
ReplyDeleteIt was only in passing, but the reporter was trying to underline the fact this massacre is unique only for the attention it attracts.
Will we begin to understand how much slaughter we tolerate in the name of "bearing arms"? Will we begin to connect that violence with this, realize it spills over from the invisible communities of the poor to the highly visible communities of the middle class? Will we connect Adam Lanza's mother's alleged "doomsday preparations" with the violence that kills people randomly across America, a violence we almost never mention in our daily news, except at the local level where "if it bleeds, it leads"?
As Forster said: "Only connect."
Like SNL, I somehow have been thinking of "Silent Night" these past few days, but this version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgYFXCUEL4Y
ReplyDeleteSomehow, even though it is a kids' song for Passover (sung along the same lines as "The House that Jack Built" is read) with usually an entirely different interpretation, Chad Gadya also seems oddly appropriate.
In Gohmert's nutso world, shouldn't Adam Lanza have been shot by his mother before he even got to the school? After all, she had plenty of guns, apparently.
ReplyDeleteHE WAS A JUDGE!!??
ReplyDelete