Alex Jacobs: Our elected leaders do little to address gun violence


Democratic members of Congress staged a 26-hour protest on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on June 22-23, 2016, to protest the lack of action on gun control legislation. Photo from Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) / Twitter

Another mass shooting left 49 people dead in Orlando, Florida, but it will take more than sit-ins to release the nation from the grip of the gun control lobby, argues Mohawk artist and poet Alex Jacobs:
This disturbed man killed 49 people with a Sig Sauer automatic pistol shooting 30 rounds a minute and so many people got everything so wrong about him and what happened. Toxic masculinity, shame, unworthiness, revenge, trained to kill and operate lethal weapons, placed on a watch list and questioned twice by the FBI and passed over. The man was trained by a global security outfit called G4S, he wanted to be a cop and hung out with NYPD officers, his father was connected to the CIA via Afghanistan. He drank and did drugs at the club Pulse and had sex with men from the club. He is clearly not an Isis/Daesh fighter, but a disturbed individual who decided to kill a club full of defenseless people over his own issues and tacked on the ISIS/Daesh tag at the end.

Congress in response offered up the typical, Democrats offering a bill that Republicans said was too restrictive while the Republican bill was weak and ineffective. Somewhat atypical was a large group of Democrats staging a sit-in to denounce the never-ending non-activity and non-job-doing of taxpayer paid Congressional representatives. It was theatre since no work was done or bills passed. Perhaps these Democrats could’ve actually put up a fight and done something more. ANYTHING more. But the country is paralyzed by the death grip of the NRA on the private parts of its so-called elected leaders.

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Alex Jacobs: It Wasn’t Radical Islam That Killed 49 in Orlando (Indian Country Today 6/28)

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