First of all, an update to yesterday’s blog post. My second official virtual Covid test with the nurse came back negative. Yes, I did test on my own too. Excessive? Probably… but so far, so good.

It always takes me a few days to get back into the groove of the news after a long vacation. There is a lot of it too.

A couple of big stories happening right now. Gas and guns.

It looks like President Biden will call on Congress to suspend the federal gas tax for three months. That’s 18-cents a gallon. Not a ton, but anything will help. The President will also ask states to suspend their own gas taxes as well.

Maybe some progress on gun legislation. The bipartisan group of Senators has taken a major step.

The bill includes provisions that will keep guns out of the hands of people who appear to be a danger to themselves or others. It also includes state funding to implement “red flag” laws and enhanced background checks.

Personally, I have no problem with this. Do you?

The bill has a number of hurdles. If approved though, it’s the first major gun reform legislation in years.

Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn is on the bipartisan committee. He’s taken a lot of flak back home because of his support of the legislation. Cornyn says, “We know there’s no such thing as perfect legislation. We are imperfect human beings.”

What happened in Uvalde, Texas, is part of the reason for this gun legislation. The more we learn about that school shooting, the worse the story becomes.

The Texas Senate heard testimony on the deadly school in Uvalde. Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw calls the Uvalde police response “abject failure.”

Now, we know the wait by police to go into that school cost lives. Said McCraw, “The officers had weapons, the children had none. The officers had body armor, the children had none.”

He went on. “One hour, 14 minutes and eight seconds. That’s how long the children waited and the teachers waited in room 111 to be rescued.”

Abject failure. I looked up the definition. “Utterly wretched or hopeless.” That pretty much sums it up.

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