I’m wide awake at 3 a.m. listening to the wind howl outside my window, raging at the all- consuming fury and angst from the most recent atrocity of gun violence perpetrated by yet another all-too-predictable act of domestic terrorism.
I had a different blog post ready for today regarding gun fetishists and their myopic self-serving and altogether selfish take on the Second Amendment, but it was too snarky for the stark reality of mass shootings a week apart in Georgia and Colorado. So it can wait another week, for another time, despite psychopaths not having to wait a hot ten minutes before they can obtain a loaded gun.
That is, if there is a week or a time where my words won’t seem insensitive, or tone deaf like certain members of Congress and their not-so-patriotic pals, to the never-ending plague of raging males wreaking havoc on a population already reeling from another deadly pandemic.
Because that’s what this is. A plague. A black hole of bury-your-head-in-the-sand insanity known as coddling gun mongers. Cretins who think the Constitution begins and ends with the Second Amendment (it doesn’t). Idiots so vile they value cold, hard gunmetal over the sanctity of human life, glorying in their gun-obsessed gore.
How do we stop this? First, we have to take our heads out of our collective asses and actually address the problem for what it is. And I know one thing for sure. We can’t expect anyone to do it for us, and there is no miracle vaccine coming from big pharma for this deadly pandemic of homegrown terror.
I write about gun worshippers and their toxic, hateful ignorance in my Other Worldly novels, but in real life there are no superpowered aliens at the ready to protect us from our own folly. And if there were, why should they?
We’ve put a personally perceived right of disgruntled males to mow down others with weapons designed for warfare above any concerns for human decency or safety. In the grocery store, in parking lots, in schools and churches, at concerts and festivals, in night clubs and spas. Did I leave any out? Because they certainly haven’t. And they won’t.
Until we stop this “boys will be boys” madness that some dude is having a bad day. While the rest of us have to live in fear because Gomer has a right to arm himself and strut around like he’s GI Joe, oh-so-easily triggered because a woman told him no, the government said wear a mask, or he detests the very idea of anyone whose race or beliefs does not match his.
Any pathological, petty excuse for a mass shooting will do, as long as it’s a punk threatened by every perceived slight, everything that wasn’t handed him on a silver platter, without having to earn or compete for it. Their crimes perpetrated on a populace that can get their hands on a semi-automatic weapon easier and faster than a pack of Sudafed, or a voting ballot.
While we haplessly search for reasons when reason has nothing to do with it. As if motive matters when the murders are all committed by maniacal homogeneous hatemongering bigots.
It’s 2021. Not 1791. People are dying. Not for the common defense of our nation. But because the general welfare of we the people has not been provided for, to protect against gun-wielding domestic terrorists.
Over 30,000 gun deaths a year occur in the US. About 60 percent are suicides. This fact alone is reason enough to require mental health assessments of everyone that goes to purchase a gun. The clinically depressed, most on dangerouly unpredictable chemical cocktails, are responsible for most of the gun violence. The real problem is, at the last moments, they lash out and take someone with them. Usually their wives, girlfiends, or family. And my implied choice of gender assignment in this epithany is not a mistake. The overwhelming percentage of suicide by gun is male.
Excellent point. One of myriad reasons why having a gun in the home doesn’t necessarily make you, or keep you, safe. Quite the opposite.