This Sucks Donkey Balls- Another Episode Of Senseless Bloodshed
The good news is that we're not doomed to be powerless; we can fight back and reclaim America from those who value guns and death over the lives of Americans.
So here we are again. Another mass shooting at an elementary school. More dead children, and more dead staff members. If you listen closely, you can hear those saying it’s too soon to discuss common sense gun control.
“Why must you Libs always politicize these tragedies? It’s not about the guns!”
Yeah, it’s about the guns. It’s ALWAYS about the guns. No ones commits mass murder with a plastic fork, knowhutimean?
Considering that the shooter had two AR-style weapons, it seems that part of the conversation should be about the guns. Perhaps if the shooter hadn’t been carrying weapons of war, this mass shooting might have turned out very differently.
I don’t want to hear Right-wing politicians offering their “thoughts and prayers.” I don’t want to listen to them discoursing about what a horrific tragedy this is. The only thing I want to hear from them is what they plan to do to keep more preventable, gut-wrenching, traumatic catastrophes from happening.
They need to stop offering meaningless “thoughts and prayers” and DO SOMETHING.
I don’t expect an ironclad guarantee that mass shootings will never happen again (though if that were possible, I’d take it). I expect Republican politicians to tell the National Rifle Association (NRA) to sit down, shut up, and let Congress do the right thing for once.
At the moment, though, Congress is riddled with too many jackasses like Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), who thinks it just isn’t Christmas if his family Christmas card doesn’t feature the Ogle clan armed as if the Zombie Apocalypse was nigh.
“Shame” evidently isn’t in the Ogle family’s vocabulary.
Ultimately, it will take Americans re-asserting their authority and voting out those who are owned lock, stock, and testicles by the NRA. We need people in Washington willing to do the right things for the right reasons, and we need people willing to vote those people into office. We, the American People, have the ultimate authority, after all. We need to do the right thing and put people in Congress who will do the right thing.
So, instead of complaining about how Congress won’t do anything because too many Congresscritters are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the NRA, how ‘bout we create a whole new Congress? It’s not as far-fetched as you might think.
The cry after Sandy Hook in 2012 was “never again,” and yet look where we are in 2023. “Never again” has become the cry of the Traveling Random Road Show of Mass Murder. We never know where it will turn up, but it’s always awful whenever and wherever it pitches a tent.
And it never ends.
The problem is that we’ve developed all sorts of plans for responding to mass shootings…but we’ve yet to agree on anything that might stand a chance of stopping them. And so the Traveling Random Road Show of Mass Murder continues bouncing around the country like a tragic pinball game because the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots small children.
When Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) can say with no sense of irony that Congress isn’t going to fix it because “there’s nothing Congress can do”…. we’ve reached peak moral bankruptcy. And there are too many moral inkblots like Burchett on Capitol Hill.
Republicans have decided that they’re not willing to protect children or adults in a place that should be scarosanct- schools. A place of education has now become another target, and parents can no longer assume that when they send their children off to school in the morning, they’ll return alive in the afternoon.
Think about that for a moment. What kind of monster refuses to create safeguards for innocent children? It’s one thing if you refuse to make things safer for adults, but what kind of monster insists that they’re “not going to fix it” because “there’s nothing Congress can do?”
Americans- as reflected by those they elect to Congress- are no longer concerned with the public good. In the aggregate, they no longer care about what’s best for the country. What Americans are most concerned with is their own individual self- interest.
Yes, individualism has always been a current running through the American ethos, but never have we been so unconcerned with the well-being of our fellow citizens, at least in a conceptual sense.
America is a broken country. It’s a place where guns have more rights than citizens, and those who scream the loudest about the 2nd Amendment get their way. The problem with that is that those who scream the loudest about the 2nd Amendment are the ones who understand it the least.
Of course, they don’t care that they don’t understand what the 2nd Amendment TRULY says. All they care about is what they WANT it to say, which expands and changes as they need it to.
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The above bolded paragraph is the entire text of the 2nd Amendment. That’s it- all 27 words, the most willfully and openly misinterpreted 27 words in the English language.
Proudly Closed-Minded Gun Control Foes knowingly, openly, and dishonestly twist those 27 words to fit whatever their agenda happens to be. Most of the time, they cling to the final 14 words as if their life depended on them…and completely ignore the first 13 words.
But the 2nd Amendment doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t exist to be cherry-picked by those who’d use it to justify owning whatever weaponry they may desire. The second clause doesn’t exist independently of the first. They’re dependent…and yet we never hear anyone talk about a “well-regulated Militia.” Ever.
(Senator, you could start by introducing legislation to restore the assault weapons ban. Oh, but that would require political courage. Never mind.)
Over the years, Conservative Constitutional literalists (smell the hypocrisy, willya?) have demanded the expansion of the 2nd Amendment to include meanings far beyond those written into the original 27 words. That’s how we’ve arrived at our present reality, where one can legally walk into Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta with an AR-15 slung over your shoulder.
(Note: Practically speaking, this only applies to White men. Doing this while Black or Muslim will almost certainly result in your getting perforated by every police weapon within a half-mile radius. You can thank me later.)
That’s right; it’s legal in Georgia to do what Jim Cooley- the dickhead shown below- did. Why did he do it? Because he could (and probably because he wanted his 15 minutes of fame)
How did we get here? How have we become a society that’s accepted random, senseless bloodshed as our new normal?
Well, from where I sit, there’s a short answer to those questions and a much longer one. The short answer is that the assholes are winning. Those of us who give a damn have ceded the moral high ground to those who no longer care about anything or anyone.
That’s the short version, and while that’s correct, there are much deeper reasons that explain why the assholes reign supreme these days.
I think it comes down to three basic reasons, and I’ve borrowed the inspiration for my argument from Prof. Eddie Glaude, Jr. Glaude, who’s James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, argues that it comes down to greed, selfishness, and indifference.
I happen to agree wholeheartedly, and I think this argument nails exactly what’s wrong with America today and why we’re such a deeply broken society.
GREED-
There are many- mostly, but certainly not exclusively- Republican Congresspeople who owe the size of their campaign coffers to the National Rifle Association (NRA). To say that much of Congress is own lock, stock, and short hairs by the NRA wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
America’s largest gun lobbying group has long been the 800-lb. gorilla in Washington- what the NRA wants, the NRA invariably gets. Whether or not it’s good for America or Americans is something else altogether with which the NRA is wholly unconcerned.
Because of the amount of money that the NRA funnels to Congresspeople, candidates for office, and issues-related groups, they enjoy a tremendous amount of influence on Capitol Hill. Little happens without the NRA’s approval, and since the NRA exists to grease the skids for the gun industry, gun manufacturers have never had it better.
It’s extremely difficult to bring, much less win, a liability suit against a gun manufacturer because of the way Congress has written liability laws to favor the gun industry.
You might call it corruption. The NRA calls it taking care of business.
SELFISHNESS-
Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes don’t care about what others think or want. They want what they want and they will scream and shout until they get their way. And they’re certainly not about to tolerate anyone messing with their precious “gun rights.”
Of course, the only ones who get to define gun rights are Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes themselves. THEY have decided what gun rights will be and if others don’t like them…well, f**k ‘em- they can go pound sand.
So, if Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes want to carry an AR-15 into a coffee shop because they believe they have a God-given right to protect themselves (what, someone’s going to steal their latte?), so be it. They don’t care that it might scare families with children. They don’t care that if might scare employees.
They. Don’t. Care.
In fact, the ONLY thing they care about is exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, which they believe to be superior to any and all other rights (including the right to not be killed or wounded by an accidental discharge).
You might call them assholes. They see themselves as patriots.
INDIFFERENCE-
Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes and Congresscritters who are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the NRA don’t much care about the carnage of mass shootings. Not even when they happen in schools. To them, that bloodshed is the cost of freedom.
Yep, the Tree of Liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of patriots young children. It’s a sad but necessary sacrifice for the betterment of America’s gun industry.
The problem here is that deaths from mass shooting are abstract concepts to Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes and Congresscritters who are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the NRA. They feel nothing because
they have no soul,
the have no conscience, and
the amount of money the NRA sends their way papers over a lot of guilt.
So…yeah, this all sucks donkey balls, right? What do we do now? How do fix this mess?
Well, short of an uprising in the streets (you’ll, of course, note that I refrained from using “armed” to describe that), Americans who give a damn do have an avenue available to them, but it’s not going to be simple or easy.
The bottom line is that we must elect people committed to common sense gun reform. We have to be able to raise money for these candidates from sources- people, PACs, businesses- who believe that it’s important to kneecap the NRA and remove their corrupt influence from Congress.
I’m not a political consultant, so I’m not qualified or equipped to go into the details of how to go about doing this. I do know that with the proper strategy, organization, and- most importantly- funding, we can right this wrong. Those of us who give a damn can prevail and claw America back from those who value guns and death over the lives of our fellow Americans.
We don’t have to be a nation known primarily for greed, selfishness, an indifference. We can find our way back to compassion, kindness, and giving a damn.
Most of all, we can make sure that no more nine-year-olds leave for school in the morning, only to be zipped into a body bag by lunch.
We have to be better than this.
