Just A Little Insanity


POST 1131

Spend just one hour at the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL and then tell me if that’s the Great America we should make again. Consider the brutal slow murder of George Floyd or the self-appointed neighborhood guard George Zimmerman who murdered Trayvon Martin and got away with it, as did the murderers in the Tulsa massacre. Explain if that’s the Make America Great Again model we should emulate.

Explain 20 kids and 6 teachers murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School or the dozens shot at that Las Vegas concert. Explain how great America was then, that mythical America to which our red hatted citizens want to return.

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We are steeped in violence and proved it yet again on Monday as a shooter first killed 2, injured 6 and then murdered herself, leaving two of the injured with life-threatening injuries. This happened at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, WI. That event was our 83rd school shooting (one every 4 days) and our 656th mass shooting (almost two every day) this year, with almost 19,000 shot dead and over 38,000 shot and injured. Those aren’t statistics. Those are people.

What’s your bet about what the Founders who wrote the Second Amendment would think about semi-automatic assault weapons being used to kill kids in schools? What’s your bet about whether they considered it a right to own large capacity magazines or telescopic sights or bump stocks?

Read the Second Amendment – all 27 words:

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.

I wrote “all 27 words” because our gun crazies and our Second Amendment lovers commonly ignore the first 13 words.

You can plainly see that the Amendment says that the only reason for the people to be allowed to keep and bear arms is to have a militia. But that job is taken and well done by our National Guard. They are the militias that are well regulated. The weekend, skulking-through-the-woods tough guy wannabes are not well regulated. We have no need for Rambo-at-home, so we have no need for private citizens to have a home arsenal.

I’m betting that the family and friends of the grannies who were shot to death at the Topps Supermarket in Buffalo wish that before that awful day there had been a bunch of infringement of the right to own guns. Same for the survivors and next of kin of Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

It is way past the point when we should have figured out that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” should be infringed.

Read this book – click it

We all understand the slavish obeisance of our elected officials to the firearms industry because of the financial largess bestowed upon these politicians who do the industry’s bidding. That has allowed the distribution of over 20 million very profitable AR-15s into coat closets and car trunks in America and over 150 million hand guns, many carried openly or concealed. It seems that enough of our legislators think that children being murdered in school is a small enough price to pay for the money they get for their campaigns.

Get this: If you have guns and don’t keep them unloaded and locked up, do not tell me how much you love your kids or any other kids because you just wouldn’t be believable.

All of this craziness has several names: Insanity; Immorality; Stupidity; Cruelty; Hypocrisy.

Make America Great Again is a useful campaign slogan, a jaunt in Jingo-land, but we don’t have a model for when America was great when it comes to citizen gun safety. It is insane that we haven’t even a history book memory of a time in America when we weren’t murdering one another. Guns make those murders so very easy. They don’t make America great.

I used to think those calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment were over-reaching, but no longer. I have grand kids in schools who have always had to do active shooter drills. Every kid in your town does, too. They think those drills are normal, but it’s insane that they have to do them.

And it’s insane that we are leaving our children and grandchildren a country awash in citizen blood.

So, one more time:

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From Kirk Bangstat of Minoqua Brewing Company:

Our 2nd taproom in Madison is a mile away from the Abundant Life school shooting that occurred yesterday, and I spent a few hours last night with our customers endlessly going in circles about why it’s impossible for America to end gun violence in this country when most other developed countries have figured it out. [emphasis mine – JA]

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JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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8 Responses to Just A Little Insanity

  1. Jay Becker December 18, 2024 Reply

    The worship of guns in this country shares roots with the white supremacy that fuels so much of Trump’s popularity. Carol Anderson, professor of U.S. History at Emory University, has masterfully dissected those roots in her book, The Second, Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. This too will not be resolved by legislation, like the antagonistic divide fracturing this country.

  2. Jim Altschuler December 18, 2024 Reply

    I have long stipulated that the “great again” campaign slogan is a complete misnomer. It presumes that America WAS great but is no more.

    1. America is and always has been an experiment in governing. It has never been perfected but many if not most of us keep trying.

    2. Bullying is not governance. It’s the few trying to exercise their opinions, no matter how erroneous and misguided, on others. They rarely if ever act (or even attempt to act) in accordance with the established laws of Federal, state or local governments.

    3. American citizens have been brainwashed with an ongoing diatribe of babble repeated endlessly with great emphasis and volume. The technique has been used by multiple combatants in several wars and conflicts.

    4. I suggest that America will NOT be great until and unless ALL RESIDENTS participate and follow the established laws of OUR COUNTRY whether they like them or not. If there are any laws that some of the people think aren’t as they should be, they (The People) can redress such disagreements and/or grievances legally — through ballot measures and the vote of The People. That’s the law as it is currently written.

    Any person or group who want(s) to change the way things are done in the United States of America cannot and should not attempt to do so by buying elections and installing rich “friends” in positions for which they have little to no qualifications or knowledge. Such an effort is a recipe for disaster! For the sake of America and All of it’s residents!

  3. David Lindgren December 18, 2024 Reply

    Send to THREE friends? Ya got to be kidding. Jack is a leader in not “trending” the Abolishment of the Second Amendment but in urging us to step forward. Making that happen would be the finest victory in my lifetime. So here goes to a hundred emails.

  4. Marti Swanson December 18, 2024 Reply

    “If you don’t keep your guns unloaded and locked up, do not tell me how much you love your kids or any other kids.” My father (1900-2000) was a champion target shooter. He kept his rifles in a padlocked trunk in the basement and their firing pins were stored in a locked safe in the attic. There was NO WAY anyone besides Dad could access those rifles for some nefarious purpose.

  5. Dr. Mardy Grothe December 18, 2024 Reply

    Another powerful post, Jack. Thanks for what you do. I especially loved your quote: “It is way past the point when we should have figured out that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,’ should be infringed.”

    Thanks also for providing the link to the Legacy Museum. Those were some of the most emotionally compelling statues of slavery I’ve ever seen. I guess it’s true that art works best when it breaks our hearts.