Brad and Dan begin by discussing the mass shootings that took place this week at a funeral, a hospital, and more. They ask what can be done about gun violence in a country where one party has chosen to worship handheld killing machines (and the money it brings their leaders). Should laws be passed that allow for civil suits against gun owners responsible for violence and/or manufacturers?
They then turn their attention to an op-ed at the New York Times that tries to downplay the GOP's Christian nationalism and present the party as the "nonreligious right." Brad and Dan dissect the analysis, showing how it rests on faulty metrics and erroneous assumptions.
At the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/opinion/republicans-religion-conservatism.html
They end with a report about the "army" of GOP trained poll workers who plan to saturate voting places across the country in this year's midterms. At Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/01/gop-contest-elections-tapes-00035758
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Good to see you, Brad, on the Weekly Roundup.
Once upon a time, I think I've said this before, we first started talking about this, like, what if there's not enough every week to have to, like, round up?
And then, unfortunately, we live in this, like, dystopian Yeah, I agree, and I am exhausted.
I'm not going to lie, Dan, I'm exhausted.
Just emotionally exhausted.
not glad that we have so much to talk about again.
Yeah, I agree.
And I am exhausted.
I'm not going to lie, Dan.
I'm exhausted, just emotionally exhausted.
It's just, and I'm sure many out there are too, in terms of, yeah, just this timeline and living in kind of what we live through.
I think so many folks have made their way best they could through the pandemic.
There's been so much loss.
I think there's just been so many other things that have happened in terms of our politics and our country.
Last week we had this just unthinkable tragedy at a school and that followed on an unthinkable tragedy at a grocery store.
And I think this week there's a sense of just absolute, just completely, completely wiped out.
And yet, and I'm sure some of you've seen this already, there's been more shootings.
And so there's a shooting at a Tulsa hospital.
that killed numerous people, including surgeon.
A gunman showed up in the afternoon with an AR-15 and began to shoot.
And in less than very soon thereafter, Dr. Preston Phillips, Dr. Stephanie Hoosen, Amanda Glenn, and William Love had all lost their lives.
And then I guess this brings up the fact that in the United States, in the last couple weeks here, we've had shootings at a grocery store, at a church, at a funeral in Wisconsin that I'm sure some of you haven't heard about, but that happened yesterday as well, at a hospital and at a school.
And it makes you just think, and I know that we all do this, Dan, and I do it too, that we really want there to be places where we're safe, but when you start naming all those places and all those locations, school, church, grocery store, hospital, Funeral.
There's really nowhere you're safe in the United States from gun violence.
And so I'll throw it to you.
There's been some bold proposals about what to do, what Democrats should do.
Can they get past the mansion cinema blockade?
What is what is on the table?
There's a group of senators who are meeting for quote bipartisan solutions, which I'll have I have my opinions about, but I'll save those here for.
A couple minutes, but I'll throw it to you.
What's on your mind in terms of what we might be able to do here?
So, first, like, as you say, it becomes so routine.
And in getting ready for this, right, and thinking about this, I came across a piece of Mother Jones that said some sobering statistics about mass shootings involving kids.
And just to put it in perspective, right, that since the Columbine shooting in 99, 311,000 kids in the U.S.
have experienced gun violence at school.
kids in the US experienced gun violence at school, right?
Right?
Like 311,000 kids.
In 2020, firearms surpassed cars as the leading cause of death for people under 19 in the US, to put that in perspective.
And other kinds of mass shootings have also accelerated, which brings us to Tulsa, right?
So it's like not just school shootings, but other kinds of mass shootings as well.
And as you say, this person went in, apparently had back surgery and was still in pain and blamed the surgeon, and the police say went in gunning for the surgeon.
The other people were just sort of in the way.
He took them out.
You mentioned that you used an AR-15, which I read was bought like that afternoon.
I purchased it that day.
A .40 caliber pistol that was purchased a few days earlier at a pawn shop.
The same day as what happened in Tulsa, there was an inmate in Ohio at a hospital who stole a guard's gun, killed the guard, escaped, and killed himself, like another medical place.
And there have been at least six deadly assaults in medical buildings in the last three years.
So we focus on the school shootings, I think, for lots of reasons, not least of which is the nature of the victims.
I think that's completely appropriate.
But Lots of work showing that first responders and healthcare workers are increasingly at risk and that this accelerates.
And so, just some takeaways and like big thoughts about this.
One was, It's the same old playbook, right?
So the GOP is doing its standard thing, and people are mocking Ted Cruz, because Ted Cruz, one of the things he said with the Evaldi shooting is that schools should only have one entrance.
And they were like, when this shooting happened in Tulsa, some people tweeted in response to him were like, so I guess this is another door problem, right?
And people know that the hospitals already have not very many doors and restricted access and all of this other kind of stuff because of the danger to medical workers.
Or people said, oh, so I guess the next thing we're going to do is we're going to need to arm doctors and nurses now.
Same way you want to arm teachers.
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