#ThoughtsAndPrayers and #hypocrisy from Greg Abbott after latest, Santa Fe, school shooting

Greg Abbott thinks unlucky accidents of nature are the same as deliberate killing of one human being by another.

The thoughts-and-prayers deluded crowd after the Santa Fe school shooting bought it, too.

Unfortunately, not only are they unlike Greg Abbott in suffering from wanton killing rather than natural tragedy, none of them is going to get a multimillion lawsuit settlement, either:

Really, .@GovAbbott? Paralysis from an act of nature followed by a multimillion dollar lawsuit victory is nowhere FUCKING near kids getting shot by guns. Greg Abbott, this is possibly the most ARROGANT and the most EGOTISTICAl thing out of your mouth. https://t.co/64roKrqAtF

— @realDonaldTrump  🌻 (@SocraticGadfly) May 19, 2018

And, they still believe it.

Even as they continue to believe in a god who has allowed more than 200 school shootings in the US since the turn of the century. I'm sure that some of them, like the good conservative Lutherans who were in his audience, blame human original sin for that, or the inscrutability of god, rather than face the fact that said god either isn't omnipotent or else isn't omnibenevolent, and that said inscrutability is part of the theological and philosophical conundrum, not the solution. (And, yes, like Ken Ham, some Xns actually will attribute the cause of anything wrong in our world to original sin.)

That's the message for them.

The message for Abbott is posting a photoshopping I did during his last guv run.

Because, Greg, your call for new gun laws now is bullshit. Gun shootings have happened in Texas and elsewhere since you were first elected governor, and this is nothing but campaign rhetoric bullshit.

So, in my opinion, you need to note that mock cellphone text message that I photoshopped into that picture.

Beyond that, "calling for" new legislation and proposing new legislation are two entirely different things.

Abbott said he'd been planning to roll out several proposals for new gun laws in Texas before the shooting, including "speeding up background checks" and keeping guns out of hands of those "who pose immediate danger." He also praised the mental health screening and preparedness protocols for students implemented at Lubbock Independent School District.

Does anybody really believe Greg Abbott intended any of these #GunControl bill ideas to actually become public until a school mass shooting that happened just three days before the Democratic gubernatorial runoff? When Abbott has had four years, two regular sessions of the Lege and one special session, to do something, and hasn't?

And, he doesn’t really intend them to become law, per that same story:

Abbott hopes the roundtable discussions will involve state lawmakers, educators, Second Amendment advocates and the victims and families of shootings, perhaps including survivors of the November massacre at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. 

Emphasis added. We know that means the likes of Dana Loesch from the NRA. (Nazi Redneck Assholes, more and more.)

Show some actual integrity, without hypocrisy, next time. If we're lucky, there won't be a next time, but, this is Merika, Tex-ass division. We won't be lucky on either the school shootings or this year's governor's race.

Unfortunately, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is a bit schizophrenic on this issue. In two back-to-back Tweets, he first says, I quote —

"Spare us your thoughts and prayers."

But in the second, he drinks the Abbott Kool-Aid in believing he really does mean it about those wondrous new laws.

The Dallas mayor's position is officially nonpartisan, but Rawlings is a known Democrat. He should know better on Abbott.

We even have a 2015 Abbott Tweet to prove Rawlings should know better;

I'm EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans. @NRA https://t.co/Ry2GInbS1g

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) October 28, 2015

THAT is the real Greg Abbott on gun issues. The Greg Abbott of post-Santa Fe statement is the real Greg Abbott on political hypocrisy, but nothing else.

Or, per a new AP piece, this is the real Greg Abbott on guns:

Abbott and Texas Republicans have embraced a steady relaxation of gun laws in recent years. Since 2013, Texas has reduced the cost and hours of training needed to be licensed to carry a handgun, allowed "open carry" for handgun license holders, and allowed concealed handguns in college classrooms and dorms.

That's Greg Abbott.

Of course, both, per the standards listed on Rawlings' account, are actually from his staff, though perhaps dictated by him or something.

That said, Abbott still is 10 percent sane among Texas GOP leaders.

There’s always Danny Goeb, who now wants our schools to become firetraps rather than face reality, to show full-on nuttery.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, also a Republican, said, "We have to look at the design of our schools moving forward and retrofitting schools that are already built. And what I mean by that is there are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas."  

"There aren't enough people to put a guard at every entrance and exit," Patrick added. "But if we can protect a large office building or a courthouse or any major facility, maybe we need to look at limiting the entrance and exits into our schools so that we can have law enforcement looking at people who come in one or two entrances."

I will give Goeb credit for telling parents to secure firearms. That's very small, though.

Ted Cruz at least was only hypocritical enough to be in the thoughts and prayers crowd. He said nothing about new federal legislation.

Hell, we're so gun-drunk we had a SECOND school shooting, at a high school graduation for Mount Zion High in Georgia, that same night!

And, what about the shooter?

Some of his teachers seemed to try to “normalize” Dimitrios Pagourtzis, per the New York Times. Daily Beast paints a darker picture. The Chronic adds to that picture by noting he had not only additional guns, but some sort of bomb-type devices. The AP adds yet more details, noting he had journaled about killing people and confirming that the explosives included a Molotov cocktail. (And Mark Ames, who I first saw tweet the NYT link, should know better. Intelligence — per the school honor roll issue — is no guarantor of either moral or psychological firm ground in a person. And making a high school honor roll doesn't fully statistically correlate with general mental intelligence, and not at all with Daniel Goleman's other types of intelligence. Mark also knows better than to give too much credence to an early story.)

Problems with American school students — especially ones like this, who aren't bullied, but are willing to voluntarily at least dabble in elements of the alt-right world, and possibly in his case, bits of the alt-left, too (hammer and sickle ain't fascist), are themselves a problem, especially in a state like Texas where such thinking runs rampant already.

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Update, based on an acquaintance's Facebook reposting of someone else's comment.

To Christian parents of children wounded or killed in school shootings telling people like me to STFU?

I sympathize with your tragedy. As the victim of an armed robbery, I can even empathize with it to some degree.

However, two points back.

One, secularists suffer the same tragedies as Christians (and the non-Christian religious).

Two, the god you claim is both omnibenevolent and omnipotent failed to prevent those other tragedies as well as yours.