A Death Sentence for Our Children
Boy George has a great song named War that goes like this, “…war is stupid, and people are stupid, and love means nothing in some strange quarters…” He’s right. Wars kill people and they’re “stupid,” but when our society allows stupid people to carry and use weapons of mass destruction, then just who are we?
Back on December 8, 2021, after a school shooting in Michigan, I wrote a screed against gun violence that was published as a letter to the editor in my local newspaper. Here is what I said:
“A mass school shooting aided by the parents, what? We appear to be an incompetent nation without the ingenuity to solve a problem that kills our kids. First, how did a fifteen-year-old kid in Michigan get an automatic weapon? And then, how did the shooter get the gun into the building? The parents and the school knew something might happen but did nothing to protect others. What about metal detectors? Should schools have metal detectors at every entry? Experts say they don’t work. Okay, but we use them at many events. The real challenge for educators is that every door would need a detector and armed guards to administer the devices. Educators think they would make students feel like they are in prison. So, I guess being in prison is safer than going to school? Most large events kids go to deploy full body searches and/or metal detectors to keep the high-priced talent performing safe. It’s baffling we cannot protect our children. Here’s an idea, let’s put a mega-tax on every weapon and box of ammunition that goes directly into federal funding for security at schools. Even the NRA claims they are for gun safety, time to prove it.”
What’s most ironic about this last shooting are the mere words “last shooting.” They’re oxymoronic and ridiculous. It’s not the last shooting but just the latest school bloodbath. Let the New York Times paint the picture for you, “Gunman Kills 19 Students in Texas Elementary School. It was the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn.”
How many parents must bury their kids before Congress, or the educators who have sworn to protect our kids, step up with concrete laws, or at least some ideas, about ways to stop these insane attacks on our children? While many folks in our government are wasting millions of dollars fighting to save a fetus, even if it’s a by-product of rape or incest, they are doing nothing to stop crazy people from entering our schools and gunning down our living, breathing offspring. Where’s the logic?
Governor Greg Abbott chided his state citizens when a report came out that California sold more guns than Texas. Maybe that was just a frivolous tweet sent out by the man who is paralyzed from the waist down who wants to see his state brethren better armed for…what? I mention his physical state because it’s a fitting metaphor for all the Republicans caught up in the rapture of the NRA and their draconian policies.

The NRA will meet this weekend in Houston, Texas, and they have lined up some big-name politicians to speak at their fund-raising event including Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz and ex-president Donald Trump. I suspect there will be no mention of the latest school carnage, which the Times reports, “…took place just before noon at Robb Elementary School, where second through fourth graders in Uvalde, a small city west of San Antonio, were preparing to start summer break this week.” Jesus Christ, “slayings,” the handiwork of a crazed student who legally gifted himself a couple of guns on his eighteenth birthday. Happy birthday, Dear Salvador.
Here’s an idea. Why not have a national database of young men who buy substantial amounts of ammo, automatic weapons and body armor in a short amount of time? That would be a reasonable way to matrix data points and perhaps catch a crazy. It’s how we track down terrorists, and are these school killers not domestic terrorists?
When does the outrage kick in, people? When will we exert some effort to fully understand the meaning of our founders when they wrote: 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.
Let’s examine the first part, “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state…” The kid who killed twenty-one people in a small peaceful town in Texas was not securing a free state, he was disrupting a free state. Had he been the member of a “militia,” it would be guilty of conspiracy to commit mass murder, which is against the law in every state. If the words “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms…” are sacred, then we must equally enforce the meaning of “well-regulated.” Unless we accept the totality of the statement we are doing our founders a deep disservice.

We all realize nothing is going to happen. The “strange quarters” that most red-blooded Republicans inhabit is a place where the sin and pain of mass killings don’t move them as much as the NRA money filling their re-election coffers. According to the website The Trace, the NRA spent $4.2 million in support of Donald Trump and also $12.2 million fighting against Joe Biden’s Presidential campaign. Just like Vladimir Putin preferred Donald Trump, the National Rifle Association also wanted Trump. They knew he would do nothing about gun control.
The NRA fears activists who may get things done and pass common sense gun regulations. But would such laws really stop an 18-year-old asshole kid in Texas from buying expensive guns to shoot up the school? The answer is NO.
While Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy begged for gun violence legislation in his impassioned speech, meeting rooms were being set up in Houston so the NRA can circle its wagons and reload. We won’t ever know the deep-seated pain a teenager is going through, or whether he was bullied to the breaking point, but we do know when and where he bought the guns. Yet we continuously drive along, blindfolded, silent and blasting music in our comfy cocoons while not doing a goddamn thing.
Guns are stupid and kid killers are stupid and, when the smoke clears, we send our thoughts and prayers, patch up the walls, wipe up the blood and gore and move on. Ted Cruz paid for a TV ad showing him cooking bacon on the barrel of an automatic weapon to prove exactly how much the NRA is more important to him than children. It’s funny how QAnon claims Democrats are eating babies in a bizarre pedophile ring, when they are fully behind Constitutional Carry, which simply means a state cannot prohibit a citizen “who can legally possess a firearm” from carrying handguns, rifles or automatic weaponry. It’s ZERO REGULATION, or as I say, a death sentence for the people and children of America. Hey, it’s your country. What do you say? What will you do?
As for me, well I am radical. I say we change the Second Amendment with a clear definition of who may own a gun. Maybe only one long rifle for each family? Oh, you don’t like that? Well, I don’t like you. Now, where do we go from here?
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