A video of this post is inlne below.
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Our national mania for freedom (“You can’t tell me what to do!“) and our desire for retribution for both real and imagined wrongs, combined with our obsession over firearms (click for the truth about “Second Amendment remedies“) is a potent combination that is doing exactly what it’s designed to do: it’s killing people.
15 were killed and 24 injured at Columbine High School
9 were killed at Mother Emanuel AME Church
17 were killed at Marjorie Douglas Stoneman High School
11 were killed and 6 wounded at Tree of Life Synagogue
58 people were killed at the Las Vegas music festival
49 people were killed and 53 were injured at the Pulse Nightclub
20 little kids and 6 teachers were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School
8 people were killed in Atlanta spas
10 people were killed in a Boulder, CO supermarket
You know that this list could go on and on and you’d recognize the names, like Poway and San Bernardino and El Paso and Aurora and Sutherland Springs, Virginia Tech and Ft. Hood. We’ve already had 25 mass shootings in March alone, over one per day, and here’s the key point: most or all were done with legally purchased and carried weapons. Some of the killings were done by mentally ill people. Some were done by delusional angry people. Doesn’t matter much. The victims are still dead.
President Obama stood before the nation after the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre of those little 5 and 6 year old kids, wiping away tears as he spoke. He prayed that we would come to our senses and enact gun safety legislation that would begin to put an end to the murdering of so many of our innocents, but that still hasn’t happened. We still don’t have universal background checks. We don’t prohibit concealed and open carry. We don’t prohibit ownership of assault weapons. We don’t limit the size of ammunition magazines or the number of firearms and the amount of ammunition anyone is allowed to own. We do nothing – literally nothing – to stop the bleeding and dying.
A lot of our politicians have had a backbone-ectomy and have refused to do a thing about preventing our national carnage, even as 90% of us want universal background checks and more.
Exactly who do you think is doing all that shooting: lefties? Get real. In fact, get so real that you’ll read the unclassified version of the Intelligence Community assessment of domestic violent extremism. You can download a copy here.
No time to read? Okay, I’ll make this quick. Things are terrible and they are rapidly becoming even worse.*
Here’s a lovely set of statistics. There are enough firearms in private hands in this country to equip every man, woman and child with a gun and still have millions of firearms left over. That’s the first statistic.
Here’s the second: 50% of all those firearms are in the hands of just 3% of the population and a lot of those people are very angry. Worse, they think they’re the true patriots and the proper arbiters of justice and that violence is a fine solution.
We live in the lunacy of unrestricted firearms in the hands of angry people who think a stop sign is an abridgement of their freedom. Or they think that somebody else is the cause of their problems and unhappiness and that all the somebody else’s should be made to pay. Better hope you’re not a somebody else. Meanwhile, sleep well and have a nice day.
Which is hard to do right now if you live in Boulder, CO or Atlanta, GA or even Newtown, CT. And who knows? Maybe your town will make the news just like theirs, so that the name of your elementary school or your high school or your favorite supermarket or spa will be known across the nation.
You know the words of the mass murder song, so sing it with me: Thoughts and Prayers.
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ADDENDA
From Giovanni Russonello in the New York Times – On Politics newsletter of March 24, 2021, wherein he directs a fictional stage play.
“Senators, assemble, stage left and stage right, and face the audience. Now, express your outrage and frustration. Demand change. Or, if you’re standing on the right, direct your outrage at those across from you, ridiculing them for suggesting that changing the laws might even address the problem.” This is, in fact, a constantly recurring drama that played out yet again the day after the Boulder, CO massacre. This is why things never get better. ——————————– Click through the graphic below to the Mother Jones “A Guide to Mass Shootings in America.”
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The Fine Print:
- Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings, so don’t bug me about it.
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JA
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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One Response to Sing It With Me
Jim Altschuler March 24, 2021
My thoughts:
1. You’re absolutely, albeit sadly, right, Jack!
2. The “inalienable rights” spoken about in the Constitution, et al, include:
being able to safely breath the air;
being able to safely drink the water;
being able to safely ply your trade;
being able to safely follow (or not) the religion of your choice;
being able to safely be ANY color without fear of adverse reactions by others.
3. The Constitution does NOT give Anyone:
the right to abridge the rights of others;
the right to take the life of another person or MANY other people;
the right to denigrate others for their personal preferences, for their sex, for their color or national origin.
4. The Constitution also does Not give any of its citizens the right to hassle or denigrate others whose opinions, actions and/or statements disagree with their own … no matter how infuriating they may be to others.