The Dallas Stars handled the Allen mass shooting better than Texas’ elected officials
Leave it to a Canadian to address an American crisis better than an American-elected official.
The Dallas Stars showed more awareness than nearly all of Texas’ elected officials in the wake of yet another mass shooting in our state.
On Saturday afternoon at an outlet shopping mall in Allen, a gunman opened fire and murdered eight people, including among them children.
These people went to a mall on a warm May afternoon, and didn’t come home.
Thoughts. Prayers. Mental health. Guns. AR-15. Bump stock. Elementary schools. Malls. Concerts. Night clubs. Video games. Movies. TV. Fox News. CNN. Media. Social media.
In the end, it’s just more dead Americans, all over the place. We do nothing.
We’re numb.
Shortly after news spread of America’s latest mass shooting, a term we now use like “traffic jam,” Texas’ elected officials took to the mic’/’net to do what they do best: Ensure they say nothing that will jeopardize their chances at winning the next election.
For a publicly elected official, that is the priority.
On Sunday morning in Seattle, Dallas Stars head coach Peter DeBoer met with the media after the standard morning skate. The team was scheduled to play Game 3 of its second round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Seattle Kraken on Sunday night.
“It’s tragic. Frankly, when you hear victims as young as five years old … you get tired of hearing it,” DeBoer said. “When you hear Sandy Hook and Parkland and Nashville, unless it’s in your backyard, you compartmentalize it and put it aside. Then when it happens in your backyard, you realize the horror of it.”
He forgot Uvalde. El Paso. Midland. Dallas. Give it time, and a mass shooting will be on the #PrayForYourCity here list.
What DeBoer said is not Democrat. It’s not Republican.
It’s Humanity.
On Sunday morning, the Dallas Stars announced on their Twitter account, “Out of respect for the victims, families and community of Allen, tonight’s Game 3 Watch Party on #PNCPlazaDallas has been canceled.”
The team routinely holds playoff watching parties at the plaza in front of the American Airlines Center.
DeBoer is a Canadian. He’s from Dunnville, which is a stone’s throw from Lake Erie, about two hours south of Toronto.
Canadians typically lean left. Canadians also typically aren’t opposed to gun ownership.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “Gun ownership is also relatively high in Canada, at about 35 firearms per hundred residents (ranking fifth globally).”
“It’s tough to think about games when you wake up to headlines like that. We shop there (at Allen Outlet Mall),” DeBoer said. “There have to be some answers.”
Have to be?
We have answers. You won’t like them.
Certainly don’t look for any meaningful action.
Just look for more of what our elected officials, be they red or blue, do best: Win elections by spewing finger-pointing rhetoric at their opponent, and creating Bogeymans to motivate a person to actually vote.
Given the staggering rise in gun violence this country has experienced this century, which is complete with sickening audio and video clips to nearly all of them, the rational person would say, “You know, maybe we should try to do something.”
Get your expectations down.
After the shooting, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took to Twitter to write, “Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas. We pray also for the broader Collin County community that’s in shock from this tragedy.
“My team is in contact with local officials, and I have offered whatever support is needed to do justice and help those in need. Thank you to the incredible law enforcement who put a stop to the monster who committed this act of evil.”
That’s not even a well-written empty Ziploc bag of a word salad. It’s just sad that Texas’ most powerful representative in Washington D.C. offers this stale, tepid response.
He’s done it so much we’re numb to it.
The local leadership who addressed the massacre in Allen would not take questions from the media. They essentially issued statements, and asked for prayers.
They knew what questions were coming; rather than address them in a hard conversation they hid.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott took the friendly confines of Fox News to discuss the issue, where he said, “People want a quick solution; the long-term solution here is to address the mental health issue.”
OK. Let’s address it. There are lot of “crazies” out there who have easy access to firearms that are designed to do one thing: Kill not a deer, a duck or a dove but a human being.
Human beings like Christian LaCour. He is one of those who was murdered on Saturday. He grew up in Farmersville, and he worked at the mall as a security guard. He was 20.
“Mental health” is so vague and, in this case, casually demonized to make this a culprit without it offering a single specific. “Mental health” is marketable to voters who then easily parrot it without knowing a thing.
That’s how you win an election.
In their attempt not to alienate voters, and donors, who prioritize gun ownership neither of our most powerful leaders could go so far as to say what DeBoer did.
Men such as Cruz and Abbott and a long line of others are in their respective positions of power because they know how to play ball with people who give them a lot of money to help keep them in the desired position of power.
Don’t worry. Democrats do this, too, on a host of other issues.
DeBoer said nothing polarizing.
He’s a Canadian who expressed what every Texan, and American, should feel.
