Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Texas school shooting won’t change a thing

The more America falls apart, the more Americans want guns

(Getty)

Joe Biden gave one of his more eloquent speeches yesterday in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. He didn’t sound doddery, possibly because it’s pretty much the same speech that he and/or Barack Obama have given after almost every school shooting for over a decade. He’s passionate about this issue. He’s also well-rehearsed.

‘To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,’ he said, speaking as someone who has lost two of his own children:

There’s a hollowness in your chest you feel like you’re being sucked into it. And never going to be able to get out. Suffocating. And it’s never quite the same. It’s the feeling shared by the siblings and the grandparents and the family members and the community that’s left behind.Scripture says – and Jill and I have talked about this in different contexts, in other contexts – the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

America is falling apart, as shootings such as yesterday’s show. That makes Americans want more weaponry, not less

Fine words, no doubt, and emotive – but just words. ‘As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we doing to stand up to the gun lobby?’ That sounds like a good question – but it is one that never gets answered, least of all by politicians like Joe Biden. Who is the ‘we’ there? America? Or the White House? Or the Democratic party? He never quite specifies.

The awful truth is that mass shootings – even ones as shocking as yesterday’s – have just become a regular part of political life in 21st century America. The same pattern plays out. First, the shooting happens.

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