This Is America: Here's the Smell of Blood Still

Again. Four people were murdered in a Georgia school shooting in a blood-soaked country that fixates on the unborn, spends $840 billion on defense, bans books despite zero mass reading deaths yet somehow can't protect their children from routine, rampant slaughter. It was the 8th school shooting of a shiny new school year; it happened on the 2nd day of school; the killer was 14 years old. Fucking unreal. Cue witless thoughts and prayers. From the deceased: "Thanks."

Wednesday's rampage at Apalachee High school, in the small city of Winder northeast of Atlanta, killed two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and two math teachers, Christina Irimie, and Richard Aspinwall; at least nine others were wounded and taken to the hospital. Less than shockingly, authorities said the baby-faced killer, 14-year-old Colt Gray, was armed with a “black semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle,” which his father had bought him for Christmas; given Colt's tender age, some bitterly wondered how he even managed to get the bulky weapon into the school: "Surely, his Spiderman backpack must have sagged a little?" Colt surrendered to police, including two resource officers, minutes after the shootings. He has been charged as an adult with four counts of felony murder, and authorities say more charges will be coming. At the scene, Sheriff Jud Smith offered "our sympathies" to the community, adding, "Obviously, what you see behind us is an evil thing today."

Evil, yes. Rare, no. The killing fields that are now America's schools have seen so many shootings and gun deaths in the past two decades the awful data can't keep up with them. According to the Gun Violence Archive, this is the 385th mass shooting in the US this year with over 11,500 people killed by guns, excluding suicide. It was the 45th shooting on school grounds in 2024 - though the number soars to 218 including more varied situations - causing at least 38 deaths and 81 injuries in a country where, said Joe Biden, students now learn "how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write." It's also a country of barricaded schools and bulletproof backpacks where four people gunned down barely made the news, shooting drills are universal, firemen and first responders wear body armor, classrooms can boast sawdust-filled buckets in case of an extended lockdown, and surreal debates rage about the wisdom of arming underpaid, over-worked teachers who never signed up for this.

That's especially true of Georgia, ranked 46th with some of the country's weakest gun laws. Gun-control advocates give the state an "F" and its gun violence - at least 1,927 people killed each year - is well over the national average thanks to Gov. Brian Kemp, who loves guns so much he once ran an ad where he held a shotgun on a kid. Kemp and God-fearing GOP pols oppose red flag laws but passed a law requiring colleges to allow guns on campus; you can buy an assault rifle without a permit or background check, carry a concealed weapon without a license, leave guns out for your kids to find, shoot and kill someone even if you can walk away instead. Kemp has bragged he wears his "F" gun-safety rating ''as a badge of honor" and touted a $103.9 million plan to "harden" schools, with a $10,000 bonus to teachers willing to carry. On Wednesday, he said he was "heartbroken" by the shooting, urged thoughts and prayers, and called it "a day every parent dreads" by dint of his murderous actions.

Also, of course, Colt Gray's, though as a sick kid he's far less culpable. It turns out he'd been on the FBI's radar since last year, after they got several anonymous tips he was making online threats about shooting up a school. They interviewed him and his father, who said he had guns in the home for hunting but his son didn't have access to them; Colt, then 13, denied making the threats, and the FBI determined there was "no probable cause for arrest" or other action. This week, fellow students said Colt was quiet and reserved - "he never really talked" - and he often skipped classes. On Tuesday, the first day of school, he reportedly left classes early to go to a counselor's office because he was anxious. Wednesday, he left math class still going; when he tried to re-enter - killing fields/school doors lock automatically - a classmate started to let him in, saw his gun, and backed away. As she and other kids dropped to the floor, crawled to the back and huddled together, she heard him open fire in the hallway.

Later, dazed students described the bedlam: The screams, blood, terror, crying, teachers frantically yelling to get down, hands shaking as they tried to text family, 10 or 15 thunderous rounds of gunshots. Harrowing details emerged. His family thought and hoped Mason Schermerhorn, who had mild autism, "had just run away to get away from everything." Christian Angulo's father said they'd moved there from California "in search of peace.” Teacher Christina Irimie, a joyful, beloved member of the Romanian community, had baked a cake and brought pizza to school to celebrate her birthday with "her kids." Richard Aspinwall, also a football coach, was "as great as they come. Would do anything for anyone." He was teaching math when he heard the turmoil; he told his kids to stay put and went into the hallway to try to protect them. A few minutes later, they found him lying prone and bloody at the door of the classroom. Said one student, "He was trying to crawl back to us."

Christmas cards sent out by gun-fetishist GOP lawmakers and their families. Photos from Twitter

There's been so much carnage - so much bloodshed, anguish, rage, grief - it's unfathomable that nothing has changed, that no substantive gun control measures have passed, that none of the morons and sociopaths who send out Christmas cards of their smirking kids cradling fucking assault weapons have stopped doing it, that none of these witless gun freaks have seen slaughter follow slaughter and not come even this excruciatingly slowly to the realization that, in the words of one gun-control advocate, "There is no world in which this is acceptable." Hell, even a Fox News host, in an interview after the Georgia shooting, exclaimed to his guest, "To be honest, this is so frequent it's almost surreal." Almost? In truth, many Americans have come to the sorrowful conclusion that if Sandy Hook didn't change any hearts and minds - those 20, small, shredded, shattered bodies - then nothing would. Which is why, even now, the inane thoughts and prayers and platitudes are still flowing.

"Let us join together in prayer for the victims," nattered Marjorie I'll-Take-Whatever-Publicity-I-Can-Get Greene, who's opposed a federal program to help states pass "red flag” laws, filmed herself accosting Parkland survivor David Hogg, pushed bonkers conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook and other tragedies, and made campaign ads featuring her shooting or giving away massive assault weapons. "This you?" asked multiple people re-posting those horrors. "Hey MTG," wrote John Pavlovitz. "How do you type with so much blood on your hands?" "And the guns?" asked another critic. "Or is this a bad time to mention them?" As always, probably. On Fox, a Blue Lives Matter spokesman argued it's all the fault of violent video games: "Human life has less value because many of the social mores have changed...It hardens the heart, if you will." Actually, experts say they won't, citing studies finding "absolutely no causal evidence" of a link between video games and "gun violence in real life.”

As mainstream news did a quick, deep, thoughts-and-prayers dive into the Georgia killings, they naturally entirely ignored those in Gaza City, where an Israeli air strike killed more children, including Tala Abu Ajwa, 10, hit minutes after her mother gave in to her pleas to let her go outside to roller blade. Seeking her body after the blast, her father recognized the pink skate on her foot. In this country, we have technology to aid in that search: Officials praised school faculty as "heroes" who likely saved lives by using a new panic button alarm that notifies police of an "active situation." Still, students were spooked and angry about being left to fend for themselves in a hapless, bloodied country, echoing a 10-year-old Onion headline: "No Way To Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens." "I really don't want to go back," said one girl. "I want to go to school worrying about my GPA (and) my career. I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying about dying.”

Of course teachers also were and will remain traumatized in a mix of grief, guilt, rage. Writing online about "planning no teacher should ever have to plan for and fear no one (teacher, child, parent, or anyone else) should ever have to experience," Jennifer Carter wrote, "I lied to my kids today in second period. I told them it was just a drill. I told them to get behind my couches (thank GOD I ditched desks and have bulky furniture!) and be quiet...The more quiet we are, the faster the drill will end." Trauma on trauma, victim after victim. In back-to-back hearings Friday, Colt Gray appeared in court - small, blank, bleach blond - followed shortly after by his father Colin Gray, 54, who wept and rocked in his seat as the judge calmly spoke. Colin is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. Behind them sat victims' families and other supporters; court workers had set out tissue boxes at intervals.

Away from court, the story of Colt Gray's broken, "hostile," gun-obsessed home, where a Stars and Stripes flies and child services often visited, emerged. His mother Marcee has a long rap sheet spanning 17 years for buying/selling drugs, mostly meth and fentanyl, with arrests for domestic violence, bad checks, vehicle misdemeanors. With the parents locked in an ugly separation and custody battle - she has the two younger kids, he had Colt - Marcee charges Colin with abuse, and they were evicted. Neighbors describe "devastating," "constant" abuse: no food or clean clothes, Marcee driving drunk to take the youngest to day care, passing out in the driveway, locking the kids out of the house in winter, them banging on the door, crying, screaming, "Mom!" A former landlord said Colin was "trying (to) be a stand-up guy - I think the man really went through it." As to Colt, "This child has fallen between the cracks." Colt's aunt said he'd been "begging for help for months, but the adults around him failed him."

In response to Georgia's shootings, Dems offered empathy and cogent calls for gun control measures most Americans support. The GOP, short on empathy or cogent calls for anything and not up to domestic tragedies, stall in their thoughts-and-prayers shtick. In another dreadful speech, Vance, who took $493,000 from the NRA to declare school shootings "a fake problem," said it 's too bad about kids and teachers being gunned down, but with schools "soft targets, we’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to." He doesn't like school shootings but they're "a fact of life," says "the coward ass bitch guy standing behind bulletproof glass" who doesn't seem to get that "lots of horrible things were once facts of life until the government did something about them." So: women should both have kids and accept they might be shot dead at school. Give this guy a bulletproof Spiderman backpack, pray for the dead, fight for the living.

"Here's the smell of the blood still. What, will these hands ne’er be clean?" - Lady Macbeth

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