Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/03/all-the-thoughts-and-prayers.html
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All it takes to perpetuate gun violence in America is a five or ten thousand dollar NRA donation to republicans. The return on investment is guaranteed voter turnout. These T’s and P’s are more thank you cards to the NRA than actual condolences to gun violence victims.
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Any politician who took even a dollar from this bigoted lobbying organisation for the arms industry can kindly shove their “thoughts and prayers” up their bungholes. And that is a kind suggestion, considering that their “thoughts and prayers” here are far less substantial than the normal kind.
If they want to do the truly bare minimum to make amends, these Congresspeople should donate every cent they’ve ever received from this scumbag organisation to a worthy non-profit that exists to mitigate the effects of gun violence and then spearhead a rolling pledge for all politicians that they will never, ever take money from the NRA (or whatever these slimes rebrand themselves as) again.
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I went and looked up my representative on twitter. Nothing about that tragedy but holy shit, it’s completely packed full of pro-gun tweets https://twitter.com/CollinsNY27
Edit: No wait, he did say something to the Washington Examiner
The silencer measure had been included in a bill dubbed the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, which would expand access to hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting. Proponents of the bill said it was needed to protect the hearing of hunters and recreational shooters.
“I think it is safe to say in our Republican conference, you are not going to see those bills moving forward,” Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., told reporters.
Following the attack, Democrats and pro-gun control advocates immediately flagged the silencer measure as a bill that would make it harder for victims to flee a shooter because the sound would be diminished.
While they appear to be backing off on measures lifting gun control, Republicans are far from advocating new gun control legislation, which they have successfully resisted following the many mass shootings that have occurred in the United States while the House has been under GOP control.
“We all discussed the tragedy,” Collins said, describing the GOP meeting agenda that included the Las Vegas shooting. “Certainly all of our thoughts and prayers go out to them. That was pretty much the total extent of it.”
Damn, he repeated that ‘thoughts and prayers’ mantra
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Send thoughts and prayers, and then fight as hard as you can, as dirty as it takes, to make sure this happens again. And again and again, nearly every day. I guess we’re all going to be more thoughtful and prayerful. That’s a good thing, right?
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Of course. Who wouldn’t want to go to heaven as quickly as possible?
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You’d think they would at least try to change up the wording a bit considering how increasingly hollow “thoughts and prayers” now sounds.
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I once heard Jim Hightower
… say:
“an honest politician is one who stays bought.”
His “The Hightower Lowdown” is a lefty populist daily radio show that, in our times, has no lack of grist for calling BS and naming-shaming on the deserving. He’s got a column in our local AAN paper, 
The Austin Chronicle.
I’ll be wondering what he has to add, and whether he has seen that link to Splinter News. I think I will just email that to him right now. Thanks bOING!
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Interesting opensecrets.org breakdown of NRA 2016 $$$$ to Dems and Repubs:
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PS.
“The annual cost for victims of gun violence is an average of $2.8 billion in emergency-room and inpatient charges alone, the study concluded. If lost wages are factored in, the financial burden rises to $45 billion each year.” (Study based on data from 2006 - 2016)
Thoughts and Prayers
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Gee. Under a million bucks? If the ONLY reason these politicians vote that way is because of NRA donations, I think it would be VERY easy to “sway” their vote. Maybe its more than just the NRA’s money.
They spent $22.6 million on candidates, actually. They also spent another $52.6 million on targeted ads supporting the GOP and against the Democrats.
They have also spent $1.5 million on running ads in 2016 for the 2018 elections:
The second amendment is the largest single issue voting block in the United States even above abortion. Do you think that happened by accident? Do you think that the second amendment should regularly appear in polls as one of the most important issues facing the country? Will you ever even acknowledge that the NRA has not been a grassroots advocacy group in decades?
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Fuck, even a baby-step of repealing the ban on studying gun violence. That would at least be a start.
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But doing so might reveal that guns are dangerous, and that would be biased! 
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0_o your statement isn’t supported by the numbers you listed, nor the numbers I see on opensecrets.org, unless you are referring to some other source OR I totally missed something obvious.
I looked at the wrong thing. They spent $22.6 million with 99% of it in support of the GOP. The full breakdown is here:
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00053553
About $17 million was on political ads, and another $2 million was on mailed out materials. Here’s the beakdown by candidate for that media:
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/indexpend.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00053553
The other associated ad spending for the $52.6 million total is from the other NRA 501c which is the $35 million.
https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/recips.php?cmte=C90013301&cycle=2016
$12.3 million of it was spent against HRC alone.
EDIT
And if you expand to outside the NRA alone, here is (most of) the money the gun lobbying industry donated to candidates in 2016:
And here is the total spent on gun controll:
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