Pete's plan to combat the national threat posed by white nationalist terrorism...

[littlemissmartypants]

Today Pete announced a new plan to combat the national threat posed by white nationalist terrorism and the gun lobby. Read it here: http://lil.ms/3c3c/5l1ouw/

An Action Plan to Combat the National Threat Posed by Hate and the Gun Lobby
Team Pete

Aug 5 · 10 min read
By Pete Buttigieg

When America was attacked on 9/11, we immediately said that we would never allow it to happen again. We declared that those attacks would change us for the better and we mobilized to action. Today, America is under attack from homegrown white nationalist terror — facilitated by an unchecked corporate gun lobby — and the response from too many of our leaders is still “thoughts and prayers.” After foreign terrorist attacks, airport travelers have to take off their shoes. After three mass shootings in a single week, Congress takes off for recess.

I was a junior in high school when the Columbine shooting took place. This week, as we mark the 7th anniversary of the shooting at the Oak Creek Sikh temple, a mall in El Paso where my grandmother used to take me as a teenager turned into the scene of yet another massacre. For my entire lifetime, after each mass shooting we’ve seen politicians in Washington condemn the loss of life and offer their condolences. They talk about change, but it remains easier to buy weapons of war than a bottle of beer. They condemn the acts of lone individuals, but are too embarrassed or evasive to confront the hateful ideology that spurs so many to act — because an unrestrained gun lobby and racial division serves so many of their political interests. We’ve traumatized an entire generation and are set to traumatize yet another.
Meanwhile, every day, one at a time, we continue to lose an average of 100 lives to gun violence — disproportionately in black and brown communities — all around the country, including in my hometown.

Enough.

Weapons like the one I carried in Afghanistan have no place on our streets or in our schools — least of all in the hands of white nationalists. I want to be able to look back on this moment and tell my children that we brought people together to deliver gun safety. I want my children to be able to go to the mall with their grandmother, or to school, or to the movies, without living in fear.

More at the link.

[democrank]

1. Recommended

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Pete Buttigieg is fearless in the face of white supremacy and their plans.

This is just one of many reasons why I support him.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. "Weapons like the one I carried in Afghanistan have no place on our streets or in our schools --

least of all in the hands of white nationalists."

One could make the argument that white nationalism has been our policy in Afghanistan for like 15 years.

I'm not saying Buttigieg is a white nationalist. I'm saying I'm tired of him invoking his time in Afghanistan as if it were a "good war" that makes him an expert on which weapons are good and which are bad. U.S. imperialism is not a strong argument for gun control.