15 February—Some sickos shot up a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory celebration yesterday, killing one and injuring 22, despite the conspicuous but evidently (predictably?) useless presence of 800 Kansas City cops, and Joe Biden was rudely interrupted on a tour with his wife of a particularly mawkish display of valentines on the White House lawn to comment on it.

Joe’s comments, of course, are no surprise. Of course. And of course. The surprise is that he remembered what to say, but we won’t go there. Or maybe he didn’t. Because this is the official statement from the White House Briefing Room [with Monitor editorial comments in italicized brackets, where necessary]:

The Super Bowl is the most unifying event in America. Nothing brings more of us together. And the celebration of a Super Bowl win is a moment that brings a joy that can’t be matched to the winning team and their supporters. For this joy to be turned to tragedy today in Kansas City cuts deep in the American soul. [Jesus save us! Who writes this pompous crap?]

Today’s events should move us, shock us, shame us into acting. [Shame us? Why? And that’s certainly not Biden’s rhetorical style.] What are we waiting for? [A constitutional amendment, perhaps?] What else do we need to see? How many more families need to be torn apart?

It is time to act. That’s where I stand. [Can you stand?] And I ask the country to stand with me. [Now to the point we’ve been waiting for:] To make your voice heard in Congress so we finally act to ban assault weapons, to limit high-capacity magazines, strengthen background checks, keep guns out of the hands of those who have no business owning them or handling them. [Arbitrary criteria. And what if our voice says something you’d rather not hear?]

We know what we have to do, we just need the courage to do it. [Courage is standing up for constitutional rights in the face of knee-jerk panic reactions and concerted efforts to infringe those rights—and not just Second Amendment rights.]

Today, on a day that marks six years since the Parkland shooting, we learned that three police officers were shot in the line of duty in Washington, DC and another school shooting took place at Benjamin Mays High School in Atlanta. Yesterday marked one year since the shooting at Michigan State University. We’ve now had more mass shootings in 2024 than there have been days in the year. [Unfortunately, that’s all true. Shit happens. Even on Valentine’s Day. And Ash Wednesday.]

The epidemic of gun violence [among other things] is ripping apart families and communities every day. Some make the news. Much of it doesn’t. [Grammatical goof—figure it out.] But all of it is unacceptable. We have to decide who we are as a country. For me, we’re a country where people should have the right to go to school, to go to church, to walk the street—and to attend a Super Bowl celebration—without fear of losing your life to gun violence. [Another solecism that only a pedantic prick would notice. But they had to get the Super Bowl bit in for situational relevance. And gun violence certainly is unacceptable, as is all violence. So why single out the sort committed with guns? Easy. Because eliminating gun violence is actually a euphemism for eliminating the private ownership of guns, a giant step toward dictatorship.]

Jill and I pray for those killed and injured today in Kansas City [what about those injured in DC and Atlanta?], and for our country to find the resolve to end this senseless epidemic of gun violence tearing us at the seams. [Consider a gusset to mitigate the tears at the seams, not the abrogation of a carefully considered, entirely necessary constitutional right.]

[People commit violence, guns are merely tools . . .]