“Thoughts and prayers” may do f**k-all to prevent mass shootings, but Kyrsten Sinema is tired of hearing them mocked. On Tuesday, as Mediaite reports, the senior senator from Arizona addressed her fellow lawmakers from the Senate floor ahead of a vote to discuss the details of a bipartisan bill that would create more “red flag laws,” allowing firearms to be taken away from people who have indicated a tendency to hurt themselves or others.
While Sinema was one of the key negotiators in creating this bill, she also wanted to make it clear that she’s tired of hearing her fellow elected officials mock each other in the wake of mass tragedies like the recent shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York. As Sinema explained:
Elected officials have made a habit of insulting one another for offering thoughts and prayers, for blaming violence on strictly mental illness or video games or particular kinds of weapons or any cause that didn’t align with and confirm their own predetermined beliefs.
Casting blame and trading political barbs and attacks became the path of least resistance. But the communities across our country who’ve experienced senseless violence than Washington politics as usual.
Sinema’s right: those communities do deserve better—but clichéd “thoughts and prayers” are still the lazy person’s way of dealing with America’s gun problem and a way to offer faux outrage without the willingness to do anything about it. Bipartisan bills like the one she helped to create, however, are a welcome first step.
Simena: “Elected officials have made a habit of insulting one another for offering thoughts & prayers, for blaming violence on strictly mental illness, or video games, or particular kinds of weapons, or any cause that didn’t align with & confirm their own predetermined beliefs” pic.twitter.com/rBOOURtMBb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 22, 2022
(Via Mediaite)