The NRA and its allies have twisted the meaning of the Second Amendment beyond recognition, writes Dahlia Lithwick. “The current interpretation of the Second Amendment—the one held onto by practically the entire Republican Party—is a hoax,” Lithwick charges. “Outside of the GOP, this is widely understood. But what we fail to comprehend, as we bury more of our dead in the name of freedom, is that it is a triple-decker hoax: A lie wrapped in a fabrication, lacquered over with a falsehood.”
Speaking of lies, Fred Kaplan counts the fibs in Donald Trump’s Monday afternoon speech on terrorism, and finds many. Such a speech is dangerous, Kaplan writes: “People who believe his premises—and these include a broader swath of people than his intense followers—may find his critiques, conclusions, and proposals quite compelling. The key thing is, his premises were almost all wrong.”
Why can’t President Obama do anything about guns? It’s not his fault, Jamelle Bouie writes. People who want gun control need to get organized: “The answer is to replicate the efforts of the gun-rights movement, from fully aligning the Democratic Party on the side of gun control, to leveraging grassroots action, to pressuring lawmakers, to punishing politicians—left and right—who don’t show the same commitment to restricting gun access.”
Advocates for gun control might do well to look at the history of the movement to abolish slavery, I found in an interview with historian Manisha Sinha, who has recently written a book about abolitionism. “This hand-wringing that we have about gun violence is exactly the way many well-meaning people talked about slavery,” Sinha told me. “They would say, ‘Well, of course, we deplore it, but we don’t want to do anything about it.’”
When should you pick your kid up and give her comfort after she stubs a toe, and when should you leave her to yell it out? Melinda Wenner Moyer interviewed child psychologists and found the answer to be … complicated. “[My interviewees] all agreed that, as much as it’s a bad idea to constantly hover over your kids, it may also be dangerous to act too aloof,” Moyer writes. “Parenting is not something that should be polarized.”
Some small amount of joy: Christina Cauterucci rounds up a few ways communities have used togetherness to heal after Orlando.
A carnation on your windshield,
Rebecca
