Uvalde and the transparent absurdity of American gun laws

The emerging details continue to make the police response look awful:

JESUS CHRIST “When her brother Angel, who is Amerie’s stepfather, learned from a fleeing child that a girl named Amerie had been shot inside, he ran to try and reach his daughter but was handcuffed by a local police officer”
https://t.co/fZJSeLbssD pic.twitter.com/fp7M3S1PkP— Caity Weaver (@caityweaver) May 26, 2022

There is no defense of the behavior of the Uvalde PD — American police are generally paid a lot of money and universally given many legal privileges and immunities with the expectation that they will be put at risk to protect members of the public. But the implication of the fact that a group of armed, trained law enforcement officials were unwilling to confront a single random teenager with an AR-15 should be obvious: no civilian should be allowed to possess such a weapon. Their sole purpose is to allow people to completely destroy as many bodies as possible in the shortest time possible. The idea that countless people need to die sudden deaths, destroying families and undermining communities, because of some people’s hobby is absurd, and yet it’s almost certainly about to become a requirement of American constitutional “law.”

Personal to Joe Manchin: the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1996 passed the Senate 52-48. The idea that the filibuster should be a de facto supermajority for virtually all legislation is a very recent one, not some immutable tradition of American politics handed down by our infallible framers.