Sunday, December 16, 2012

Gun despair

Yesterday my friend Ronni was taken to task by commenters for failing to devote her blog to the Connecticut school shootings.

I didn't write about the horror either. Why would I? There is no reason to believe that anything is going to change. Crazy people we will always have with us. The Supreme Court has adopted crackpot legal interpretations that protect the right of lunatics to possess weapons. Many states let nuts carry their guns wherever they go. We don't yet ordain that broken, angry people must have firearms, but as a society we've decided we want guns to be so available that if such folks want guns, they'll have no trouble getting them.

For too many of us, this bumper sticker (sighted in Massachusetts) says it all. (You might need to click on it to see a larger image. Then hit the back button of your browser to get back here.)

Then, when nature takes its course, we soothe ourselves with perfunctory wailing, maybe a vigil or two, and move on, just glad it wasn't our town, our school, our friends … this time.

What's to write about? Call me when you've got a strategy to extirpate gun culture. Until then, we can expect nothing but repeats of Newtown.

1 comment:

kathy a. said...

dammit, jan. it is too soon to get up and do it again, but i can't take this any more.

we aren't bought and owned by the NRA, or those insane fools who believe this is god's vengeance for taking prayer out of schools, or whatev.

the NRA has blood on its hands. if it is the group of "responsible" gun owners it pretends to be, it can get its shit together and explain why first graders had to die at the alter of semi-automatic weapons.

(ok, the 6 year olds make more vivid images. the real truth is 30,000 gun deaths and over 65,000 non-fatal woundings every year, plus all the ripples of cost and grief from each one. which ought to horrify us all.)

if the NRA is the defender of constitutional rights that it pretends to be, why doesn't the right to life of bystanders trump the ability of random individuals to buy and/or use extreme firepower? any asshole who thinks the blood of 6 year olds needs to run for the "freedoms" of gun nuts is reprehensible. and stupid.

i do not blame anyone from staying away from this topic. but i can't.