23 min
God Bless the Disarming Gabby Giffords Charlotte's Web Thoughts
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- Society & Culture
[As always, this little blog/newsletter is how I pay my bills, and I would be so grateful if you support my writing with a paid subscription.]
Four months is a long time these days.
At least for me, it used to be that four months was a bit of a jog but easily contextualized in the brain’s aerial view. I could look backwards and easily spot that marker. Now, it seems, the space-time continuum has been cruelly mocked and warped by current events in such a way that a month in 2022 honestly feels legitimately equal to a quarter in 2011 and looking backward that far, even that much, is a fool’s errand, only bound to disappoint.
Whatever you were doing four months ago, the world continues to indifferently spin into spun-up difference from what it once was. Four months ago was before 19 children and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, TX. Four months ago was before a white supremacist murdered ten innocents, targeting the Black community in Buffalo, NY. Four months ago was before—wait, be honest with me: without looking it up, how easily can you recall the details of that horrific mass shooting on the New York City Subway in April?
That wasn’t even four months ago.
Exactly four months ago yesterday, I was at SXSW watching the world premiere of “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down”, a documentary about the former Arizona congresswoman who survived a brutal assassination attempt in 2011 that left six others murdered and has since been on a journey of remarkable advocacy, both in her medical rehabilitation after being shot in the head at point-blank range and the widely-praised leadership role she has undertaken in the gun reform movement.
The documentary is superb, and we’ll get to that in a second. I want to further underline that four months ago was a completely different world, especially for the families in Highland Park and Tulsa and Uvalde and Buffalo and Pittsburgh and Sacramento and I wouldn’t blame you at all for missing details on a few of these.
In America in 2022, it’s hard for even the most news-centric among us to keep up with the mass shootings that make national news, let alone the unending cascade of underreported mass shootings that tear through communities across the country.
Since March 12th, 2022—the date of the world premiere at SXSW—there have been 250 mass shootings, according to The Gun Violence Archive.
In other words, there has been an average of more than two mass shootings per day since Gabby Giffords premiered her deeply moving and galvanizing documentary in Austin. More than twice daily has there been a mass shooting in the United States over the past four months.
More than twice daily. Think about that.
This past Monday, July 11th, was a good day for America but particularly meaningful for Gabby Giffords and every other survivor and advocate in the gun reform movement.
Just before noon, President Biden presided over a ceremony on the White House South Lawn to celebrate the signing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first gun reform legislation signed into law in three decades.
Brilliantly shepherded through the notoriously inept upper chamber by Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), the law does a hell of a lot more than we’ve seen in recent memory and yet has also drawn criticism for falling well short of what our lawmakers should be doing to curb gun violence in America.
That’s an observation which, forgive me, seems pretty goddamn redundant. Of course it doesn’t do enough. No bill short of taking every single common sense measure would be enough in this crisis. Universal background checks are common sense. Registration of every firearm is common sense. Proper licensing for every gun owner is common sense. Banning civilian ownership of assault weapons is common sense.
The absence of any of these in a bill would make the legislation inherently flawed, even if they were the sole absence. That must be the good faith reading of any rational adult in government.
But our
[As always, this little blog/newsletter is how I pay my bills, and I would be so grateful if you support my writing with a paid subscription.]
Four months is a long time these days.
At least for me, it used to be that four months was a bit of a jog but easily contextualized in the brain’s aerial view. I could look backwards and easily spot that marker. Now, it seems, the space-time continuum has been cruelly mocked and warped by current events in such a way that a month in 2022 honestly feels legitimately equal to a quarter in 2011 and looking backward that far, even that much, is a fool’s errand, only bound to disappoint.
Whatever you were doing four months ago, the world continues to indifferently spin into spun-up difference from what it once was. Four months ago was before 19 children and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, TX. Four months ago was before a white supremacist murdered ten innocents, targeting the Black community in Buffalo, NY. Four months ago was before—wait, be honest with me: without looking it up, how easily can you recall the details of that horrific mass shooting on the New York City Subway in April?
That wasn’t even four months ago.
Exactly four months ago yesterday, I was at SXSW watching the world premiere of “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down”, a documentary about the former Arizona congresswoman who survived a brutal assassination attempt in 2011 that left six others murdered and has since been on a journey of remarkable advocacy, both in her medical rehabilitation after being shot in the head at point-blank range and the widely-praised leadership role she has undertaken in the gun reform movement.
The documentary is superb, and we’ll get to that in a second. I want to further underline that four months ago was a completely different world, especially for the families in Highland Park and Tulsa and Uvalde and Buffalo and Pittsburgh and Sacramento and I wouldn’t blame you at all for missing details on a few of these.
In America in 2022, it’s hard for even the most news-centric among us to keep up with the mass shootings that make national news, let alone the unending cascade of underreported mass shootings that tear through communities across the country.
Since March 12th, 2022—the date of the world premiere at SXSW—there have been 250 mass shootings, according to The Gun Violence Archive.
In other words, there has been an average of more than two mass shootings per day since Gabby Giffords premiered her deeply moving and galvanizing documentary in Austin. More than twice daily has there been a mass shooting in the United States over the past four months.
More than twice daily. Think about that.
This past Monday, July 11th, was a good day for America but particularly meaningful for Gabby Giffords and every other survivor and advocate in the gun reform movement.
Just before noon, President Biden presided over a ceremony on the White House South Lawn to celebrate the signing of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first gun reform legislation signed into law in three decades.
Brilliantly shepherded through the notoriously inept upper chamber by Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), the law does a hell of a lot more than we’ve seen in recent memory and yet has also drawn criticism for falling well short of what our lawmakers should be doing to curb gun violence in America.
That’s an observation which, forgive me, seems pretty goddamn redundant. Of course it doesn’t do enough. No bill short of taking every single common sense measure would be enough in this crisis. Universal background checks are common sense. Registration of every firearm is common sense. Proper licensing for every gun owner is common sense. Banning civilian ownership of assault weapons is common sense.
The absence of any of these in a bill would make the legislation inherently flawed, even if they were the sole absence. That must be the good faith reading of any rational adult in government.
But our
23 min