15 December 12
Reader Supported News | Perspective
20 Children DEAD - 6 Teachers DEAD. An epidemic of violence.
But today is not the day to talk about ...
The despicable opportunist Bryan Fischer tweeted:
But today is not the day to talk about ...
How many children have died by gun violence in Chicago
and other major cities on a daily and weekly basis since the beginning
of just this year? Children that the media can't be bothered to cover in
any depth because they die one at a time.
Earlier this week there was a mass shooting in an
Oregon shopping mall, and only a few days earlier I read a story about a
man who accidentally shot his son with a gun he didn't know had a round
in the chamber. And prior to that there was a shooting of a young
teenager in Florida by a man who didn't like the loud music coming from
the car. And an NFL player shot his girlfriend. And -
But today is not the day to talk about ...
TV celebrity-reporters calmly explain how their
children have drills at their schools for what to do in case of a
shooting incident, just a fact of life like the old duck-and-cover
drills of yesteryear. Mass shootings and violence are a normal part of
growing up in America.
But today is not the day to talk about...
Little children and parents get microphones shoved in
their faces with the most urgent and important of questions: "How do you
feel? Were you scared? What was it like inside the school? Were there
any heroic teachers?" Because it is so important to show the fear and
tragedy and then reveal the possibility of heroics that might give us
hope or at least keep eyeballs glued to the show with the best angle of
coverage. Which news outlet got the story first and the best details
first and the most sincerely regretful reporter doing the best heartfelt
and soulful coverage of gory details while maintaining the most
telegenic presentation of death?
But today is not the day to talk about ...
On an ABC channel a reporter commented that today, for
some of the families of the Connecticut school shooting, Christmas came
early, in that they found out their children were alive and would be
coming home. See? In the midst of a horrible tragedy of violence and
death - there is a positive to all of this. My God. Really?
The pro-gun voices rise to defend the right to bear
arms, even assault rifles and weapons of extreme capacity. The
gun-control advocates speak up about the need for more stringent gun
control. And folks like Bryan Fischer and others are adamant that if
everyone was armed everywhere at all times, there would be less
violence, or at least less victims. Sure, there might be some collateral
damage of innocent bystanders, but that's the price of a free society.
The corporate profits of fear and paranoia drive the
sale of more and more weapons. The divisiveness of fear of "the other"
threatens our very existence on a daily basis, be they liberal
jackbooted thugs intent on one world government or socialists intent on
the destruction of American essence and freedom, or militias and
defenders of the one true America without the stain of the freeloaders
and lazy poor who are ruining the great American dream, and the
"immigrants," who bring their foreign ways and hate of good American
values to our shores and force us to have to defend our traditions and
freedoms by their very existence.
We impose stop-and-frisk policies that fall mostly on
young Black and Latino men at a rate that exceeds their actual
population of in Brooklyn, but there are no stop-and-frisk policies on
the profiles of mass-shooting perpetrators who fall outside those deeply
rooted criminal biases of brown crime.
But today is not the day to talk about ...
My first memory of a mass school shooting was 1966,
Charles Whitman in Austin, Texas. He killed his mother and wife before
climbing the campus tower and killing another 13 people and wounding 32
others.
And here we are forty-six years later and the
unthinkable has become a normal occurrence for which we have to train
our children and grandchildren how to survive and for which they have
school drills in order to be prepared for possible death.
Schools, movie
theaters, churches, shopping malls and office workplaces are now
"target rich" environments. There is no rest for the wicked, no respite
for the unwary, and no haven for childhood.
We cannot have a sane conversation about this epidemic
of violence. One side yells at the other side and nobody talks. Is gun
control the answer and if not, why not?
Should everyone be armed at all
times and just accept that the world is a violent place and therefore
carrying a gun at all times in all places is the only answer?
I may not be in favor of complete gun control as other
nations have in place, but I am in favor of strong gun regulation and
that includes regulating the easy and ready availability of assault
rifles and militarized weaponry. To me, it seems that common sense is
overwhelmed by shouting paranoia of the invisible slippery slope and the
money interests that profit from stoking anger, paranoia, and
hyper-alarmist suspicion of the people around us. We now live in a world
where weaponry is the answer to all problems, threats real and
imagined, and for our personal security.
Guns and violence are the American way.
To speak of gun regulation brings immediate response
of "that's how the Nazis" took over Germany, that's the first step of
totalitarian big government; but of course it's not Nazis or big
government killing school children and women and church-goers - it's us -
killing each other.
"Guns don't kill people. People kill people." What an insipid shallow sales slogan of death and violence.
Why is it easier to purchase guns in this country than
it is to vote? Why is voter registration and regulation more important
than gun registration and regulation?
Why is access to guns more readily available than access to mental healthcare?
Why are our children less valuable than NRA lobbyists?
Why is Mike Huckabee blaming God for killing school children?
And why would I believe in a God who turned his back
on innocent kindergarten children because there is no prayer in public
schools? Doesn't that make God pretty much a vicious petty angry old-man
dickhead?
But Ssshhh -
Today is not the day to talk about ...
No comments:
Post a Comment