The Governor of Florida and The President Of The United States, who winters in Florida, did not attend a meeting about the mass shooting in Florida. They were smart cowards. Marco Rubio, and a spokes person for the NRA, had to take the punishment and jeers from the parents and students in the audience. Rubio was asked if he would continue to take money from the NRA. His answer was as slippery as each of the positions that he took from the audience. He claimed that the $3,000,000 in contributions he has received from the NRA had nothing to do with his position on guns. After the jeers from the audience ended, he claimed that his position reflected the views of the public which he represents. That was a bit more truthful because the NRA has a propaganda arm that defends the economic interest of gun producers. A substantial portion of the Republican base has been convinced that government controls on access to guns violates their Constitutional rights. Rubio and other Republican politicians depends upon their votes in elections. They are a minority but their votes can be counted on by politicians like Rubio. That explains why a politician as smart as Rubio pretends that access to assault weapons is protected by a Constitution that was written when the US military consisted of private citizens who served in state militias with their own muskets. He knows that the second amendment to the Constitution has provided a smokescreen that was invented by the NRA. He is constrained, however, to defend that nonsense in order to protect his seat in the Senate.
Rubio, and the NRA propagandist, took another position that makes Republicans comfortable. They argued that guns are not the problem. People who misuse guns are the problem. That position is consistent with Trump's current views on the subject. Instead of preventing dangerous people from having access to assault weapons we should try to cure their mental illnesses. That is utter nonsense. We do not have more mentally ill citizens in the US than other nations. We lead the rest of the world in deaths from guns because we possess almost half of the world's supply of guns available to households. Politicians in Australia decided to reduce the number of deaths from guns by addressing the real problem. They took actions to reduce the number of guns held by households. That produced a huge decline in deaths from firearms.
Marco Rubio, and the NRA representative, may have lost a bit of sleep after hearing from the parents who lost one of their children and from students who lost classmates from the shootout. They can also expect more pressure from the public to take some actions that might reduce senseless murders. Their usual approach is to tinker around the edges of the problem. They will not deal with the crux of the problem. They will not ban the sale of assault weapons. That is because our democracy is being held hostage by around 35% of the electorate. Their votes can be counted upon in any election. The only real competition in elections is for the 65% who are open to debate on most policy issues. We don't have majority rule in the US for that reason. That is also why the Russians have used cyberwarfare in the US and in Europe to exacerbate divisions over cultural and social issues like gun control, race and religion. The goal is to undermine democracies without the use conventional warfare.
The social media contribute the divisions that are being exacerbated in the US. It didn't take long for a video posted on YouTube by an obscure individual in Idaho to go viral with a conspiracy theory about the murders in Parkland. Mike m posted a video of David Hogg is who a student at Parkland. The video is about another incident that happened in August. Mike m declared that David Hogg is an actor who has been hired the MSM (short for networks other than Fox News) which promote left wing ideologies. The video was picked up other conspiracy sites. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter as well as on YouTube which is owned by Google. There were over 200,000 hits to the "trending" video before it was blocked by YouTube. Mike m was encouraged by his success. He posted another video that YouTube blocked. His account will be deleted by YouTube if another of his posts is blocked. Of course, he can also create another account on YouTube to move from obscurity in Idaho where he resides.
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