The right to bear arms

 

High time to erect some guardrails around the so-called "right to bear arms."  

Wash. Post, Louisiana gunman who killed 8 children had sought mental health treatment, relatives say

Police said the National Guard veteran used a pistol that operated like “an assault-style
weapon,” while the shooter’s family said he recently spent more than a week in a VA hospital.

OK, NRA, so now where was that "good guy with a gun," standing by, ready to take down this deadly shooter? 

Time to ditch the outdated "right to bear arms" in favor of the Swiss system, which allows pulling the trigger only at carefully monitored shooting ranges. So many American lives would then be saved.

A father apparently killed all his children (seen with him below) in retaliation against his wife who had planned a separation or divorce due to his increasingly erratic behavior. Now the children and their father are all dead and the mother is being treated in a hospital after her husband had tried to kill her. If and when she regains consciousness, she will wake up to a really dreadful nightmare.

The "right to bear arms" has seen many other victims recently.

Wash. Post, D.C. sees seven homicides in five days, the deadliest stretch of 2026

Wash. Post, 

Two teens killed after planned fight near North Carolina school ends in shooting

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In other news:

Wash. Post, In red states, anti-immigrant bills are failing as businesses push back

Deporting so many is proving to actually be bad for business. Businesses cannot find all the workers they need and also have fewer customers.  

Wash. Post, Trump steps up a campaign against teaching English to immigrant kids

The administration plans to dissolve the office that supports English instruction. The justification for doing this is unclear, except that Trump just doesn't like immigrants now, after members of his own family have made it safely to this country. His mother and his wife were both immigrants.

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Wash. Post,  Trump’s statements on Iran increasingly contradict each other

Recent remarks highlighted a continuing challenge for the administration: The president’s oscillating claims have led to confusion and required cleanup by his staff.

Wash. Post, Israel struck five neighborhoods in Beirut without warning

The war has now spread to Lebanon. The Vatican has been delivering aid to south Lebanon.

Daily Beast, Trump Hit by Humiliating Poll in His Unholy War with the Pope

A new Reuters/Ipsos survey shows Trump with a 36 percent approval rating....Pope Leo's favorability stands at 60 percent. 

POLL PAIN

Donald Trump lashed out at Pope Leo in a 344-word Truth Social post. Maybe doing that made him feel better after learning that the Pope is so much more popular than he is, even among American citizens.

Trump sees approval dip the most among young voters in poll

Donald Trump no longer enjoys high approval among any demographic, but may not really care as he probably isn't planning to run for office again. In any case, he dismisses all news he doesn't like simply as "fake." 

Though it was never part of the Confederacy, Confederate flags are often seen being displayed here in West Virginia. 

• Donald Trump: In a recent The New York Times opinion piece,
•  Political scientist Michael Bailey from Georgetown University explicitly ranks Donald Trump as "easily the worst president in U.S. history," citing corruption and long-term damage to U.S. institutions. Other contemporary sources like Washington Monthly have echoed this sentiment, predicting that future historians will maintain this view due to his handling of the Constitution and personal corruption.

Donald Trump, soon celebrating his 80th birthday, has both senile dementia and senior attention deficit disorder, making for a very difficult combination.

What can be done now, with almost 3 more years to go? 

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NY Times, Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.

Yes, measles can be deadly. (This is Barbara talking now,) I can well remember when I was a child, being quarantined with measles, with a big warning sign plastered on our front window. My siblings and I survived, but only after becoming quite ill. Better to be vaccinated since measles vaccines are now readily available. RFK Jr., you simply are wrong!  

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A baby elephant at DC's National Zoo, rejected by her mother, has started thriving after bonding with a female elephant foster mother. 

                            It's never too late to be out having fun. 

                        And never too early to start having fun. 

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Azaleas are blooming.

 

         Azaleas of all colors are blooming here in Berkeley Springs right now.

The weather has been quite mild lately with wild flowers blossoming and the trees all leafing out. Spring is such a wonderful season, a season of hope, new growth, 

and nature's bounty.

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The Hippocratic Oath is a foundational ancient Greek ethical code for physicians, whose basic principle is "do no harm.".

A surgeon who has kept on killing his patients, as mentioned in the last post, needs to be arrested and prevented from ever practicing medicine again. 

Son of 2nd patient who died after Florida surgeon operated on her describes family’s heartbreak: ‘It’s just not right’

On the previous posting, I wrote that a Florida surgeon named Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky

had tried to persuade his colleagues in the operating room that the liver he had just removed from a 70-year-old patient was actually a spleen. A liver and a spleen are of different sizes and don't look at all the same. That patient died and he was not the only one dying after surgery was performed by Dr. Shaknovsky. There was a second fatality and there may have been even more. Shaknovsky has been charged with these patients' deaths and must no longer be allowed to practice medicine. He now belongs in prison after actually killing his patients rather than improving their health and wellbeing. 

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8 children killed in mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, police say

SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — Police say the Louisiana gunman who shot up two houses early Sunday had killed seven of his own children and wounded their mother, as well as killing another child. Shreveport Police Department spokesperson Chris Bordelon said Sunday evening that the suspect, Shamar Elkins, shot the mother first and then killed eight children, seven of whom were his own. The victims ranged in age from 1 to about 12 years old. The mother and another woman are in critical condition. Elkins died after a police pursuit.

On the subject of mass killings, as per my own research, mass killings in the US and Canada have always been carried out by individuals born male, although sometimes by those born male who later "transitioned" to present themselves as female. I have never found a case of mass murder committed by someone born female.

 Can anyone actually change their birth gender? Can a zebra change its stripes, can a leopard change its spots? After hormone treatment and surgery, the brain remains in the birth gender. 

As for the "right to bear arms," that so-called "right" urgently needs to be modified for the modern age, with all remaining gun sales outlets, such as those right here in Berkeley Springs, given a subsidy to completely shut down the business. Guns are becoming more dangerous in an increasingly mobile and crowded world. Guns are not even needed any more for hunting, because hunting is no longer required to provide our food. Let the shrinking number of wild animals still occupying our forests remain living there, as there really is no need to kill them. If gun enthusiasts just like to fire weapons, they can always do so at a shooting gallery, as in Switzerland. 

Nor are guns needed for self-defense in the home, since most end up killing the occupants instead. It's actually much safer not to have any weapons at all at home. Most thieves now attack online, not by invading private homes. The man in Shreveport who killed 7 of his children and another child and wounded his own wife, could not have harmed so many without a gun. His gun did not protect his family at all; in fact it actually killed them. Without a gun, he might have become angry with his wife, perhaps hurting her or one of the children, but he would not have killed anyone. 

The National Rifle Association is woefully out-of-date in opposing any and all gun control.

According to Google: 

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is considered conservative and is deeply aligned with the Republican Party. Since the late 1970s, it has focused on promoting gun rights, heavily supporting conservative politicians and opposing gun control legislation, with about 77% of its members identifying as Republican.

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  Now on to Africa with Pope Leo.

While traveling in Africa right now, Pope Leo has continued speaking out, saying his time on the continent offers a message of peace that the world needs to hear. During a peace meeting in Bamenda, Cameroon, Leo declared:  “The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters." On hearing those words, Donald Trump has taken great offense. Why would Donald Trump simply assume that Pope Leo was talking about him?  

Pope Leo says remarks about world being 'ravaged by a ​handful of tyrants' were not aimed at Trump: report

Meanwhile, thin-skinned President Trump has continued to believe that Pope Leo actually was talking about him, despite Leo's vehement denials. So Trump has now taken funding away from Miami Catholic Charities in retaliation. Catholic convert VP JD Vance has been put in an awkward position in this feud of Trump's own making, but Vance needs to step forward now as a peacemaker. Trump must remove the funding block that he has placed on Catholic Charities, taking away $11 million in funding in his anger over Leo's remarks, as too many children and refugees are now suffering as a result. 

          Meanwhile, thousands have haled the Pope in Cameroon.

When I was traveling in Africa, I noted considerable enthusiasm for Catholicism there.  

Google says: Catholicism in Africa is experiencing rapid growth, with the continent holding over 20% of the world's Catholics (approx. 288 million by 2026). It is the fastest-growing region for the Church, driven by high fertility rates and young populations, particularly in nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. The Church is highly vibrant, often integrating local culture, and is a significant provider of education and healthcare.

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Before color photography and film allowed realistic depictions of everyday life, painters through the ages bore witness to how people actually lived.

These intimate paintings by American artist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) are now on display at the National Gallery in Washington, DC.