Highland Park Illinois was an exceptional community: Innocence ravaged

On Twitter, there is a popular hashtag that pops up when the word #Republican is entered. Several derogatory slogans immediately come into the twitter screen. I usually choose this one:

#RepublicansAreDestroyingDemocracy 

Dateline Illinois: I worked in Lake Forest when my husband was stationed at the U.S. Naval Training Station in Great Lakes.  In fact, Lake Forest and Highland Park are sister and brother, side by side, exceptional communities. Patients from Highland Park frequently received care at Lake Forest Hospital, where I worked. Both communities are exceptional. They are the upper middle class exceptional suburbs outside of Chicago, conveniently on the train route from the city into North Chicago. Now, Highland Park has lost its innocence as being an insulated, friendly and patriotic neighborhood. Instead, the community has lost its "exceptionalism" because now it is among the places where American mass shootings have tragically erupted the souls of those who believed something like this could never happen in their community. Believe me, if a mass shooter can murder people with an automatic weapon while standing on a rooftop in Highland Park Illinois, then we are all at risk for being victims of random acts of murder. But, if you are reading this, then you are not likely a Republican because #RepublicansAreDestroyingAmerica.  The relentless attraction to the National Rifle Association is superseding and perhaps even eroding their respect for human life.

Essay report published in Aljazeera, by Belen Fernandez

 The ‘terror’ in Highland Park: The US is exceptional, indeed.

But why is it that American ‘exceptionalism’ is now manifested in such uniquely unhinged episodes of mass murder?

On the morning of Monday, July 4, as the United States was gearing up for its 246th, annual celebration of independence from Britain, the National Rifle Association (NRA) – America’s ultra-powerful gun rights organization – offered the following inspirational reminder on Twitter: “The only reason you’re celebrating Independence Day is because citizens were armed”. The tweet ended with the hashtag “#FourthofJuly”.  

Maine Writer editorial statement here:  Proves my point #RepublicansAreDestroyingDemocracy

Senator Ted Cruz is drunk on the National Rifle Association's (NRA) kool-aid #RepublicansAreTheProblem

This was before Monday’s mass shooting in the affluent Chicago, Illinois suburb of Highland Park killed seven people and wounded dozens of others at July 4 festivities in what Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering described as an act of “terror that was brought upon us”. Parents with strollers and children on tricycles fled for their lives. And yet the horrific casualty toll was not even the tip of the iceberg in terms of things that can happen “because citizens were armed”.

As NBC Chicago reported before the clock had even struck 9a.m.,  on Monday, at least 57 people had already been shot in the city of Chicago alone over the Fourth of July weekend – nine of them fatally. Nationwide as of July 4, the US had registered no fewer than 309 mass shootings in 2022, according to the Washington, DC-based Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one with “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter”.

Uvalde Texas Robb Elementary School Memorial

There are more guns than people in the US, and this is certainly a large part of the problem – particularly as states like Texas, which recently hosted the Uvalde massacre of 19 elementary school students and two teachers, ensure that it is essentially as easy to acquire a firearm as it is to acquire laundry detergent.

But why is it that American “exceptionalism” – which we have been hearing about since the 1830s, or so – is now manifested in such uniquely unhinged episodes of mass murder?

I am not saying, obviously, that humans do not kill each other in other countries. Of course they do, and, as luck has had it, the US itself has often been complicit in that killing – from the traditional right-wing slaughter of peasants in Latin America to the systematic terrorization of Palestinians, the kind that Israel undertakes under the guise of fighting terror.

Then there is the more hands-on “global war on terror” and other initiatives directly perpetrated by the US military – which, one could argue, have only helped instill in Americans the notion that life is a video game and that it is absolutely fine to go around slaying people.

And, therefore, while the majority of annual gun-related deaths in the US take the form of run-of-the-mill suicides and homicides rather than Highland Park-type spectacles, mass shootings naturally have a more terrorising effect on public consciousness.

In the latter category of event, as it turns out, there is also a frequent common denominator. In June, the Washington Post reported that, as per the paper’s own analysis of 196 mass public shootings since 1966, “nearly 98 percent” of the perpetrators were found to be men, with 40 percent of them between the ages of 18 and 29.

The Post went on to quote an observation by psychologist Peter Langman, an expert on school shootings, in The Journal of Campus Behavioral Intervention: “The sense of damaged masculinity is common to man196 mass public shootings since 1966, “nearly 98 percent” of the perpetrators were found to be men, with 40 percent of them between the ages of 18 and 29.

The Post went on to quote an observation by psychologist Peter Langman, an expert on school shootings, in The Journal of Campus Behavioral Intervention: “The sense of damaged masculinity is common to many shooters and often involves failures and inadequacies.”

To be sure, in a society predicated on violently patriarchal capitalism and mass alienation – in which collective, collaborative existence is abandoned in favor of a focus on dog-eat-dog individual triumph – it is perhaps less than shocking that perceived “failures and inadequacies” might sometimes produce violent, overly masculine responses.

This is no doubt especially the case with disillusioned young white men, who according to the American script are the ones supposed to be doing most of the triumphing. Indeed, in 2021, NPR cited statistics from the nonpartisan research group The Violence Project indicating that “white men are disproportionately responsible for mass shootings more than any other group”.

In the end, it seems that when young men are sufficiently alienated and isolated by a society whose expectations they have failed to fulfil – and vice versa – some opt to just shoot it all up.

The 18-year-old Uvalde shooter was bullied extensively during his youth; ditto for other killers whose visions of revenge against society have been greatly facilitated by easy access to weaponry.

For his part, the 21-year-old suspect in the July 4th, Illinois massacre is described by the Daily Beast as a “wannabe rapper” and apparent “video-game enthusiast”, whose social media operations suggested a predilection for “violent imagery and mass-shooting fantasy”.

In her remarks following the shooting, Mayor Rotering lamented: “On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we are instead mourning the tragic loss of life.” 

Indeed, while the tragedy and terror are very real, it bears remembering that July 4th, itself commemorates the “freedom” of a nation founded on genocide and slavery – another contributing factor, you might say, to America’s high degree of “exceptionalism”.

And as American violence proceeds unhinged, the truth of the matter is that it has all become tragically unexceptional.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Horrible to report more serial massacres caused by unbridled gun violence

July 4, 2022- more gun violence now in the most unlikely community - Highland Park Illinois! So soon after Uvalde's massacre where 19 children were murdered.  

One of the Uvalde victims' mothers warned us- "it can happen to you". Americans live in a gun culture. Although all gun violence is preventable, it is clear that our freedom from fear of gun violence is NOT among the rights we are granted in our Constitution. 

Moreover, Kimberly and Felix Rubio, parents of Lexi Rubio, one of the students who died at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, testified virtually, calling for members to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, to raise the age to purchase assault weapons from 18 to 21 years of age, to implement red flag laws and to strengthen background checks and to repeal gun manufacturers liability immunity.

Calls for help in Uvalde, Texas

Two opinion letters published in the Uvalde Leader-News

School district police Chief Arrendondo’s decision to “wait for reinforcements” was a cowardly act, and a death sentence for 19 children and two teachers.

His decision was contrary to rapid response and established law enforcement policy. I don’t think Arrendondo is qualified perform a menial task, let alone be a police chief or councilman. (Maine Writer: So,  Arrendondo said he didn't know he was the incident commander at the shooting scene in Uvalde Elementary School!  That is an impossible and cowardly statement, from a man who has clearly resorted to telling the community a lie about his important role at the scene! His training has taught him otherwise. He was the incident commander.)

CNN is now reporting that two children made a combined eight calls to 911 begging for help. Uvalde police did nothing except run and hide from danger.Uvalde police have now set a new record for cowardly behavior while on duty.

https://www.uvaldeleadernews.com/articles/letters-to-the-editor-26/#:~:text=Uvalde%20police%20did%20nothing%20except%20run%20and%20hide%20from%20danger

From Darrell K. Lilja in Sun City Arizona

Killing weapons- better known as "guns"

I was born and raised in Uvalde, graduating from high school there almost 50 years ago. Having been brought up in a ranching family just outside of town, you could say we lived in a well-established gun culture. Our pick-ups regularly carried bolt action deer rifles in the highly visible gun rack behind the seat, along with a shotgun for killing rattlesnakes. We never kept more than a handful of shells with us at any time.

During a press conference following the recent massacre at Robb Elementary, Gov. Abbott (reading from a carefully prepared statement!) defended current gun laws by stating that 18-year-olds have always been able to purchase “long guns” in the state of Texas.

He conveniently left out the fact that current gun culture has expanded to include easy access to weapons of war, the kind that an 18 year old can use to cower several armed cops, take over an entire campus, and destroy the lives of 21 families.

My dad served in World War II, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and earned a Purple Heart before returning to Uvalde. He of course knew about and used weapons specifically designed for killing other humans. If he were still around, I imagine he would be saying something like, “How in God’s name did that boy get his hands on that weapon?”

What would you need that for, except to kill people?”

From Jack Marsh in Brackettville in Texas

Journalism coverage about the Uvalde Texas massacre focused on truth

Echo comprehensive review published in the Columbia Journalism Review, by Jon Allsop.

UVALDE, Texas, the day after a gunman killed nineteen children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas—Ted Cruz, the state’s Republican US senator, attended a vigil in the city and faced some tough questions from Mark Stone, a journalist with the British network Sky News. 

Ted Cruz walks away from a reporter who asked why the U.S. has so many mass shootings- NPR, Ayana Archie.

Stone asked whether now is the right moment to pursue gun reform; Cruz tried to brush off the question as a politicized media talking point; Stone countered that mourners were asking the question, too. 

Stone then told Cruz that people around the world “cannot fathom” why mass shootings keep happening only in the US, asking, “Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?” Cruz said that Stone had a “political agenda,” then tapped him on the shoulders and said “God love you” before turning heel and walking away. 

But, Stone followed, politely insisting that this is purely an American problem, and saying, “You can’t answer that, can you?” Cruz suddenly turned and hissed at Stone about American greatness. Then he left.

Artist Greg Zanis and his organization Crosses for Losses memorialize the victims of mass shootings. Scott Olson/Getty Images.

Also on Wednesday, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, hosted a press conference at a local high school. He said that the shooting “could have been worse” if law enforcement hadn’t done “what they do” and shown “amazing courage.” When Abbott stopped talking, Beto O’Rourke, his Democratic opponent in the state’s upcoming gubernatorial election, made a dramatic intervention, approaching the stage and speaking up at Abbott from the floor of the auditorium. “You are offering up nothing,” O’Rourke said. “You said this was not predictable. This was totally predictable when you choose not to do anything.” Abbott stayed quiet, but others on stage shouted back, including Don McLaughlin, the mayor of Uvalde, who called O’Rourke “a sick son of a bitch.” 

O’Rourke was eventually ushered out by law enforcement as a media scrum formed around him; it continued into the parking lot, where dozens of journalists soon found that they had been locked out of the auditorium. The footage of the confrontation was shared far and wide, as were instantly iconic images taken by news photographers showing O’Rourke standing calmly as officials towered over him and pointed in unison for him to leave. The takes soon flowed; Newsweek wrote that the episode could cost O’Rourke the governor’s race.

Journalists that followed Beto O'Rouke when he was escorted out of Governor Abbott's media event were then locked out of the auditorium.

Also on Wednesday, just after 7pm local time, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, on the scene in Uvalde, interviewed a local med aide named Angel Garza, who explained how he found out that his daughter Amerie had been killed in the shooting from a friend of hers to whom he was tending. Amerie was trying to call the police when she was shot. She was ten. The camera zoomed in on a photo of Amerie that Garza was cradling in his arms as he bowed his head and sobbed. Cooper put a hand on Garza’s shoulder and kept asking questions. “She was so sweet, Mr. Cooper,” Garza said. “She was the sweetest little girl who did nothing wrong.” Cooper took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. Garza apologized for breaking down again. Cooper said it was okay.

Victor Escalon, an official with the Texas Department of Public Safety, convened a press conference with the stated aim of clarifying the events of the shooting. He failed. Escalon did offer that the gunman had stayed outside of the building for twelve minutes before entering and that a school police officer did not, contra other officials’ prior claims, confront the gunman on entry, but he also made confusing statements about officers’ entry into the school and didn’t answer other, simple questions from reporters, including officers’ response time to the initial 911 call. 

Journalists seized on the mixed messaging and gaps in the official timeline. “We’ve been given a lot of bad information,” CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz told Escalon, “so why don’t you clear all of this up now?” Escalon said he would “circle back.” As he walked off, reporters clamored for him to take a question in Spanish. (Uvalde is heavily Latino.) He did not.

Also yesterday, parents and other members of the local community talked to reporters from various outlets about their frustration with the police response to the shooting and subsequent lack of clarity, amid growing reports, and videos circulating on social media, showing parents urging law enforcement to enter the school and suggesting that they might have to go in themselves. One parent, Angeli Rose Gomez, who has two children at the school, told the Wall Street Journal that as she desperately urged law enforcement to go in, US Marshals arrested her for interfering with an investigation, and handcuffed her. (Local police officers persuaded the Marshals to free her; the US Marshals Service denied cuffing anyone.) Gomez said she saw other parents being pushed to the ground, pepper-sprayed, and Tasered. “They didn’t do that to the shooter, but they did that to us,” she said. “That’s how it felt.”

Back on Wednesday, in France, Le Monde ran an editorial about the massacre in both French and English. “America is killing itself, as the Republican Party looks the other way,” the headline read. “If an American exceptionalism still exists, it’s in tolerating schools regularly being transformed into blood-soaked shooting ranges,” the piece itself said. “Always more weapons: that’s the only Republican credo.” The editorial was widely read, and various major US news organizations deemed it noteworthy enough to share with their readers. 

HuffPost described it as “damning.” The New York Times described it as “scathing.”

The three interviews, two press conferences, and editorial mentioned above were all shared or referenced widely. Of course, they are far from the only notable examples of journalism—or public information—to come out of Uvalde since Tuesday; they just stood out to me through an impressionistic blur of grief, outrage, and fatigue. Taken together, though, they illustrate broader truths about the coverage as a whole. I wrote in Wednesday’s newsletter, borrowing from the Texas Tribune’s Matthew Watkins, about the “numbing script”—parts of it necessary; others regrettable—that the press as a whole tends to follow in the aftermath of atrocities like this one. The six stories above collectively show different elements of that script: the factual struggle to piece together what happened, efforts to learn about the victims and center their grieving relatives, and the impulse to slot all the horror into a framework of national political debate and electoral contestation.

These stories illustrate something more, too. The official obfuscation and heavy-handed policing of traumatized parents, in particular, fit a script that is not limited to mass shootings; similarly, the rush of coverage that follows such events, while repetitive and distinctive in its rhythms, cannot be divorced from the way we approach other big stories across the sweep of society. In all such cases, the need to probe and scrutinize the official line, rather than just regurgitate it, is paramount. And Stone’s questioning and the Le Monde editorial, in particular, show ways—sharpened in each case by outside eyes—in which we might think about flipping the script, both on mass shootings and more generally. All of us should assess how America is exceptional—and how it’s not—with the clearest of eyes.

American exceptionalism: Since 2014, the satirical site The Onion has responded to mass shootings by running pieces with the same headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” This week, the publication used the headline for the twenty-first time, and, in a first, featured all the other stories that use the headline on its homepage at the same time. “It kind of shows how powerful that looks when the entire homepage is filled with showing that nothing has been done for eight years,” Chad Nackers, The Onion’s editor in chief, told BuzzFeed. “It’s not two seconds. It takes you probably 30 seconds to scroll through all the articles if you just keep moving. And that’s just incredibly sad and it’s horrifying.”

American has failed these children- Supreme Court upholds politically driven agendas

Editorial echo opinion published in The Denver Post:

‘I lost a piece of my heart,’ says mom of 10-year-old shot dead along with his classmates, educators when gunman barricaded himself in 4th grade classroom at the Texas Robb Elementary School.

Look at the photos of the 19 children – fourth-graders about to celebrate the beginning of summer – and ask if collectively we did all we could to protect them from a traumatic, painful death in a place they thought was safe. Many of the photos grieving families are releasing were taken the day before the shooting as students celebrated making the honor roll.

America failed these children.

We failed the students and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, just as we failed students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a decade ago.

The gunman may solely be responsible for firing the bullets that shattered bodies in these and other schools, but we supplied the tools and the vulnerable target.

More than half of our country believes that this price – dead bodies in elementary schools, teachers lives cut short trying to protect children, lost lives in grocery stores, stray bullets that hit sleeping babies – is worth the freedom to own almost any gun and ammunition desired.

The Denver Post editorial board does not hold that belief.

On the contrary, we support an abundance of simple regulations that would pass constitutional scrutiny, prevent mass shootings, and reduce casualties when shootings occur. These policies are simple, popular, and should be bipartisan: impose mandatory waiting times, and require gun safety training and much more rigorous background checks, regulate ammunition sales and gun features. This is by no means a comprehensive list, nor would it be true that any politician should require all of these to be part of a bill.

Legislation at both the state and federal levels reasonably restricting what type of “arms” Americans can “bear” and more specifically which Americans should be barred from bearing any arms is fully in accordance with past rulings of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008, District of Columbia vs. Heller, that reasonable restrictions on firearms were constitutional.

The case was built upon United States vs. Miller, in a ruling that found a ban on sawed-off shotguns to be constitutional.

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority, in an opinion that was long overdue. “We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ ”

The case built upon United States vs. Miller, a ruling that found a ban on sawed-off shotguns to be constitutional.

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority, in an opinion that was long overdue. “We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ ”

Law are in place to impose restrictions on all sorts of constitutional rights. The right to bear arms is no different.

Unless the new court veers dramatically from these precedents — as a majority of justices seem likely to do with Roe vs. Wade — it would be prudent for lawmakers to operate under the assumption that this is the test for reasonable restrictions on weapons in this country.

If the new conservative majority of the Supreme Court wishes to, once again, show disdain for precedent and the rulings of their predecessors, we should give them the room they need to expose their politically driven rulings.

Tragically, Congress allowed a ban on semi-automatic rifles with certain features to expire. Millions of these deadly weapons have been sold, making it likely that a court would struggle to find that these guns are not in common use. But we think restrictions on the features of these guns would withstand the Heller/Miller test. 

Shotguns cannot be outlawed but sawing off the barrel makes the gun an entirely different tool. At a minimum, semi-automatic rifles should be required to have a permanently affixed magazine, like a cylinder in a revolver, that must be reloaded one bullet at a time.

Neither the Constitution nor the Supreme Court stand in the way of life-saving restrictions on guns and ammunition. 

Men and women who serve this country in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are the only impediments to protecting our children.