An American Issue: After the second mass shooting in a week, President Biden  called for a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

  “This is not and should not be a partisan issue — it is an American issue,” Biden said in brief remarks. “We have to act.” The President said I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future.”

  Many have tried, none have succeeded. By some estimates there are 15 million or more assault rifles already in private hands in the US.

  Having already ordered the flag to half-mast following the killing of eight in the Atlanta area, Biden ordered it to remain at half.

  The victims  at the King Soopers market ranged in age from 20 to 65, including a 51-year-old police officer. Three were employees of the store, one ran a clothing and art store with her sister,  and another was an actress.

  Boulder Police Off. Eric Talley, 51, had quit a comfortable job in information technology when he was about 40 to become a cop. He had seven children ages 7 to 20.

  The man who killed those them has been identified as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa,  21, from nearby Arvada, Colorado.  He bought his assault rifle on March 16^th, according to the police affidavit. Wounded in his right leg, Alissa surrendered. 

  Alissa was born in Syria. The NY Times reports that  in high school he was convicted of misdemeanor assault against another student and told police at the time that it was retaliation for insults and ethnic taunts. He is described as being prone to rage.

  The Boulder police reported that after his arrest Alissa didn’t say anything other than ask to speak to his mother. 

Bullet Points: According to the Gun Violence Archive, the US has already had 107 mass shootings this year, sprees in which four or more people were killed or wounded.  We’ve had six mass murders with the number of dead at 10, 8, 4, 6, 5, and 6.

  These things are happening all the time and barely get noticed.

  The same day as the Boulder shooting, two bystanders were killed in a shootout at a Cleveland restaurant as the two shooters wounded each other. 

  On the same day as the Atlanta area killings of eight people, four people died in a Phoenix domestic shooting in which a man gunned down members of his own family and in turn was shot dead by one of his own.

  On February 2^nd in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a man murdered four children and another man.  On January 9^th a man killed five people at random in Evanston, Illinois and was himself killed by the police.

The Spin Rack: In what’s believed to be a first, the city council in the Chicago suburb of Evanston allocated $400,000 in reparations to black residents who can prove ties to the city between 1919 and 1969. It’s an effort to make up for discrimination and historical wrongs done to the city’s black residents. — New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio ordered 80,000 city employees working remotely during the pandemic to get back to the office by May 3^rd. It’s a move meant to demonstrate that New York is re-opening.  —  The jury has been selected in the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the infamous death of George Floyd.

Wildly Unbelievable: The defense in the libel lawsuit against former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell is that her claims about Dominion Voting Systems and election fraud were totally unbelievable. “No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,” Powell’s lawyers said in a court filing defending her against a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by Dominion.

  Powell had claimed without proof  that votes were illegally switched on Dominion voting machines. 

  Powell had claimed that the late  Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez was involved with designing rigged election machines, even though he died in 2013. Despite admitting that Powell’s claims were not credible, the lawyers said, “She believed the allegations then and she believes them now.” 

   The problem is that having an opinion is not a defense for libel. Truth is a defense, and falsehood is libel.

The Obit Page: George Segal, the actor with a charming smile and comedic sense who made his fame in the grueling 1966 drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, has died at age 86 after heart bypass surgery.

  Handsome and disarming, Segal was somewhere between a leading man and a character actor. He had a long and busy career.

  Early in his career Segal played an American corporal in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in “King Rat,” and an idealist painter in the mix of class conflicts in “Ship of Fools.” He was Willy Loman’s son Biff in the television production of “Death of a Salesman. He did more television series than we could name.

  Director Mike Nichols said, “What you get with George is masculinity and sensitivity, plus a brain. His conflicting quality — half rough and half gentle and the mind to control it — gives an element of surprise to whatever he does.”

Art News: A 1982 painting called “Warrior” by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold yesterday for $41.9 million, with fees, at Christie’s auction house in Hong Kong. The painting is said to symbolize the struggles of Black men in a white-dominated world. It’s an interesting piece.

  The price sounds high, but a Basquiat painting had already sold for $110 million in 2017 so you could say he’s slipping.

  On the other hand, a  work by the highly overrated artist Banksy honoring Britain’s health workers during the pandemic has sold for a record $23 million. The work called Game Changer features a little boy playing with a superhero nurse doll. It looks like an illustration of out of  The Little Golden Books for children, but the proceeds will be given to health organizations and charities in the Britain, so, OK.  

-30-