The following statement is by Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint. She is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress.
I didn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking: What kind of nation are we when we watch our school children get gunned down and do nothing about it? Littleton, Red Lake, Newtown, Pittsburg, Parkland, Buffalo, Uvalde and too many other communities. We should do more than feel sickened and outraged by it all.
Today, grieve for those beautiful humans killed in yet another depraved massacre, but tomorrow I am asking all of us to organize and MARCH and DEMAND change. It is the very least we can do for all those devastated families.
We don’t have to live with these horrors. The slaughter of our children is not the price we have to pay for freedom.
This is a man-made epidemic and we cannot pretend that the answer is out of reach.
Americans overwhelmingly support criminal background checks and other sensible gun laws. We want change. We have wanted change for years, but Congress refuses to act. Comprehensive gun safety legislation must be brought to the floor of the House for a vote. Let parents of school children know where every single member stands. The Senate must end the filibuster, then expand background checks and waiting periods for people who do not pass a background check. The Senators protecting a centuries old procedural rule— as our children are murdered—are betraying their oath to protect and serve the American people.
I have seen the power of parents when they demand change, I have seen high school students speak with righteous anger and brilliance and move mountains. Here in Vermont I have been part of the collective force to change gun laws in the face of empty rhetoric and we have saved lives. We must take every legal measure available to us to stop the murder of our children.
Hey Balint if you want to stop school shootings there is a simple way, proven to work. Apply a modified version of the USAF Human Reliability Program to kids in high school, starting at age 14. — In short if their behavior is beyond the norm, their name goes on the NCIS list of people who cannot have guns.
The program has prevented prevented people with problems from having access to nuclear weapons and information since 1946. It works on the local level and is proven. Now do it and zip the whining until you do.
The “semiautomatic” firearm or some type of repeating arm that uses a cartridge has been in COMMON USE by both civilians and the military for about 150 years now. The Second Amendment has been around since Bill of Rights was adopted. So, common guns haven’t changed much and the law that protects the right to use them responsibly is intact, reinforced by many Supreme Court rulings. The mass shootings are statistically a more recent aberration and are one downside of living in a free society.
Two things HAVE changed, starting about 60 years ago:
-people who have been determined to be a danger to themselves or others due to mental illness are rarely institutionalized.
-The Great Society programs have significantly dismantled the concept of the nuclear family by attempting to substitute a welfare check for a father.
Violent, prolific video games over the last 30 years have not helped either. More recently, the social isolation from the pandemic lockdowns have driven some youth over the edge.
The human element is what has changed, not the tools nor the laws that protect their use.
It is policies of the left, such as comprise much of Balint’s legislative “accomplishments” that have led us down the path where life is cheap and personal responsibility is a forgotten concept.
Legislation by people like you has led to the mental degradation of our society. We have a mental crisis that must be dealt with. Traditional family values, respect, religion are good places to start. If you want to ban devastating, harmful things, start with social media. This crap didnt happen pre-internet, and yes we had guns back then, and yes even semiautomatic ones.
First things first. Triage! Armed security guards at all public schools. Then we talk about gun laws.
And exactly how would your comprehensive gun safety have stopped this or
any of the other shootings carried out by mental deficient criminals hell bent
on making a statement by killing innocents beckkah? Maybe stop telling the
mush minds they can be any gender they wish would have prevented two of
them (this slug was a trans and the Colorado one was too), or public execution
of ones caught would surely deter any with the intent. What we don’t need is
leftist knee jerk laws piled on the ones that are not enforced now. I also doubt.
you lost a minutes sleep but like the kenyan reject saw a opportunity to spew
crap about his love of st floyd of fentnayl on the sad occasion
Ms Balint is only outraged at the murder of children outside the womb. The slaughter of thousands of unborn children every day in the USA they call “reproductive autonomy”, a woman’s right to choose, or protected healthcare. Every life matters and we grieve every death. This is not a political problem, but a moral problem to be addressed on our knees. May God have mercy on America.
For some reason, I have a hard time in believing Ms Balint cares about anything other than her own ambitions. I agree that her priorities are skewed in thinking babies don’t matter while those outside the womb do. And how did she become spokesperson for what actually constitutes ‘life’? This is political jumbo-jumbo attempting to disguise itself as caring and compassionate. In the end, all that really matters is for political animals like Ms Balint to change career paths.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot
A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We can do better than her.
DemocRAT, Rahm Emanuel ” You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”
apparently, Ms.Balint found the gamebook……….. pretty pathetic !!
A problem-solver, nope she’s just an agenda promoter or look at me scenario,
I have a plan…………..they don’t get it.
As Senate President pro-tempore, balint has done nothing but hand wringing on the root causes of these tragedies. No viable action. In fact under balint’s tenure as the Senate leader there is more violent crime in Vermont. More people seeking but not finding mental health services. More drug trafficking and use. More of the core issues that cause tragedies such as occurred in Uvalde Texas.
SRO’s and police in schools have been deemed “offensive” and “creates emotional trauma” and in order to appease the “offended” SRO presence is less, while school behavior problems increase.
So while you are MARCHING and DEMANDING action in lockstep with ms. balint- remember she had the opportunity and the responsibility to propose, debate and enact legislation to address these core problems- and instead blamed the gun. Apparently, accountability is not a concept balint demands from herself nor those she purports to govern over.
Here we go again: Beware the false logic stated by Ms. Balint, democrat or otherwise.
Re: “What kind of nation are we when we watch our school children get gunned down and do nothing about it? Littleton, Red Lake, Newtown, Pittsburg, Parkland, Buffalo, Uvalde and too many other communities. We should do more than feel sickened and outraged by it all.”
All of these citations occurred since the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, in Littleton, CO (Columbine) in which two students plotted for a year to kill at least 500 people and blow up their school. And while all of the subsequent shootings have occurred since then, there has been significant research on this issue in the interim.
And Ms. Balint is choosing to ignore it.
“Within hours of mass public shootings, even before we know how the shooter obtained his gun, there are immediate calls for laws such as universal background checks. Ironically, there is not one mass public shooting this century that would have been stopped by universal background checks, even with a perfectly enforced law.”
Ms. Balint would have us believe that anyone who disagrees with her doesn’t want to ‘stop the murder of our children’. Even when the research shows that the legislation she is proposing is ineffective. So, who is it, again, that doesn’t want to ‘stop the murder of our children’?
As before, I propose consideration of the following research. The data is unambiguous (unlike Ms. Balint’s hyperbolic rhetoric).
https://crimeresearch.org/2019/05/major-new-research-on-school-safety-schools-that-allow-teachers-to-carry-guns-havent-seen-school-shootings-during-school-hours/
This information is based on research conducted over the last 20 years or so. If anyone has any data supporting an alternative to these findings, speak now. Change my mind. Don’t accuse me of murdering children. Otherwise, we know what must be done.