Guns
As smarter men than me have suggested, easy access to guns is the difference between a killing and a killing spree. If that guy only had a knife--or even a hunting rifle--it seems unlikely he'd have been able to take 30 other people out along with the one he actively hated. And if you're down to advocating armed kindergarten teachers as the thin line between order and chaos, then you might want to step back and reconsider your notions of "freedom."
Gun controls? I don't know if that fixes very much, really. Even if they seem to be effective elsewhere, we've got our own brand of advocacy here in America, and we have different local stresses, and neither of those will ever be what's addressed. If there's a solution to this, I am pretty sure that all of the hero fantasies I keep reading in response, all those revenge fantasies, all those delusions of steely competence, those things are closer to the problem.
[Appended: I keep going back and forth about posting my feelings to my "friends" on the various social media that I am reacting to. Part of my growing disgust is all that unsolicited sanctimony, and unfortunately, what I have to say can only be included in that category. At least anyone reading my shitty blog is here because they want to read what dumb things that are on my mind.]
4 comments:
Yeah. I don't think I harbor any animosity towards guns. It's their owners I try to avoid.
One angle that doesn't seem to get much mention is where all the guns come from, why they are so ubiquitous. I mean, the manufacturers I'm sure would rather have *legal* markets, but it's clearly not the end-all.
it's such an American thing that we have it sold as a fundamental right to purchase and own some consumer product. (to other groups that buy our guns, let's observe, they cultivate the markets differently.) A lobbying and advocacy effort isn't the same thing as a massive ad buy, but it's to the same purpose. "Second amendment freedoms" are about as relevant to people who want to shoot stuff as the Swedish bikini team is to people who want to go get sauced on shitty beer.
As if I needed another level of anger and disgust...
I know. It couldn't be as simple as a response to the laws of supply and demand ("law"?), could it? Because manufacturers and advertisers, after all, are only the helpless purveyors of what it is we (Americans here) need, and, occasionally, want, right? Gun salesmen are just slaves to the market, innocent bystanders shaking there heads at the scenes of mass murders.
Since you're obviously not disgusted enough yet, let me add a tangential thread that leaves me furious. By way of example: I was listening to music on the computer but had NBC on the TV. The Voice opened its show with contestants and judges alike holding up signs with the names of the victims while singing something. Don't know what they were singing (volume down); doesn't matter. "Look how bad we feel about this! Look! Look at how compassionate we are that we would take valuable time away from our advertisers in order to draw attention away from them (for 1.4 minutes) in order to show how bad we feel!" Then, after the first commercial break? Back to business as usual, like it never happened.
Yeah, it's just like in the bible, when Jesus said, "Get out of the closet, and go ye pray where everyone can see you play it up. That's the shit that really gets the Big Guy going." (He was a real mensch according to Matthew.)
Plenty of pious eyes on the social media too. There I believe that folks are really shaken though, and it's pretty close to home for all the CT folks I grew up with.
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