As a
concerned citizen and nonprofessional writer of what seems to be troubling our
nation—but mostly me—from week to week, I have to say that the current concern
over mass shootings has captured this nation’s attention more thoroughly than
anything else except the fact Donald Trump is President, which is the
background music for all decisions, actions, protests, hatred, burnings,
lootings, parades, murders of cops, issues and actions by the left.
And
I think it’s a good and obvious thing that we’ve become obsessed with finding a
solution to school and other mass shootings. Regardless of whether you include
a blessing or a death-wish for President Trump in your newsreel to God, or
whatever you might believe in at night I think we are all mortified by the
specter of some horrific, emotionally-damaged, two-legged animal walking
through our schools slaughtering defenseless children in any quantity, be it
three or 17. Oh, and with an AR-15, of course, even though other weapons were
used more often, but the current narrative is the current narrative, right
Anderson?
The
image is so horrible and the instinct to protect our young so overwhelming that
we are even willing to overlook the fact that mass shootings, in particular
mass school shootings, are not statistically significant in terms of the number
of annual homicides by gunfire in this country alone—and we only rank 112th
globally in gun-related deaths annually (sorry to use a fact on my liberal
friends).
For
those of you who didn’t just race to the nearest park to hold hands and howl at
the sky because you are out of big-people words, let me just say that I am no
different. These slayings of innocent children trouble me a lot more than most
of the other homicides committed every year.
On
any given weekend in Chicago as many as 50 young black men will murder 50 other
young black men with guns and for some reason that doesn’t interest the
lamestream media or capture the nation’s attention at all. Not in the context
of the comparatively small number of black men shot by police, mostly
justifiably, but not all; and certainly not in the context of a case of a
heavily armed, twisted soul “wading through bodies” (a little dramatic but it’s
a term I read in some op-ed this week) murdering unarmed and innocent students
and their teachers in schools.
It
shouldn’t be any surprise to me that the media and their sheeple want to hold
President Trump responsible because any chance to hate President Trump for the
left is, well, a chance to hate President Trump. Blind hatred is a weird thing.
It seems completely incomprehensible to me that no journalist has been able to
do a little simple math and point out that in fact, more mass shooting deaths
by the current definition (that is, not counting war casualties) occurred on
Barack Obama’s watch than all other president’s in history combined.
Yup.
Three hundred and eleven souls massacred during his presidency in what we call
mass shootings (still a small number out of the roughly 64,000 homicides that
occurred in the same time frame, but we’ve already established the horror of
wantonly slain innocents). And I do not blame Obama for it anymore
than the left should blame Trump for the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School, which they will continue to do whether it makes sense or not.
At
least I could make a case that Obama’s race-baiting made a significant
contribution to the overall number of homicides during his Reich, but I will
save that for a discussion of the fun we live with that IS the Obama Legacy.
And the
left still wants to blame the NRA. Ok, it’s a free country (in no small part
because of the NRA, but let’s set that aside for a moment). “No one needs an
assault rifle.” “You don’t hunt deer with an AR-15.” “Donald Trump is owned by
the NRA.” (What? Because with $4 billion in the bank he has to listen to anyone
else’s money? Sure.)
I do
not belong to the NRA anymore than I belong to the LGBT&Q but I support the
right of both of them to exist, just as I support the right of people
frustrated by the murder of children in schools to lash out at the NRA because
they have to be mad at someone.
Do
large lobbying organizations who make huge campaign contributions either
directly or through their memberships have too much power and control in
Washington? You bet. Is the NRA one of those? You bet. So is The American
Federation of Teachers, The ACLU, the oil and gas lobby, the insurance lobby,
the transportation lobby and the good old boys from the Silicon Valley. (And Uranium One?)
It’s
a system that is out of control but has been generations in its evolution and even
Donald Trump may not be able to overcome the billions upon billions of dollars
at stake in the corrupt cesspool that is our government though I will give him
credit for being one of the only presidents who has tried. (Oh yes he has, you rage-blind
haters.)
For
the sake of argument—which costs no one anything—let’s let the left have their
gun ban hypothetically. In our imaginations let’s let them send their
Hitler-like storm troopers out (they hate that analogy because the truth hurts
and they would rather believe the right are the Nazi’s even though we’ve made
it pretty clear we reject socialism) to collect all of our guns the way Hitler,
Mao, Lenin, and Pol-pot did before they slaughtered millions in the name of “progressive
thought.”
So
there we would be in our gun free society with a unicorn in every yard and
rainbows on every corner and none of the law-abiding citizens who voluntary
complied with the New World Order and gave up their firearms would have any
guns with which to kill anybody.
Which
is where I see the first problem. Because the non-law-abiding citizens who hadn’t
given their guns up would now have an entire nation as a “gun-free zone” and be
free to murder and pillage as the mood struck them and “wading through bodies”
might not be just an overly dramatic metaphor anymore. Not to mention the threat
of our ability to form a citizen militia to keep our government in check in the
likely scenario that at some point we might put another power-hungry racist
like Obama back in the White House and have no way to defend ourselves.
But
I keep coming back to the same conclusion I come to every time I think or write
about this issue because it’s the only one that makes sense to me. We are
welcome to try but I don’t think we can pass enough laws to abolish evil.
Allow
me to alienate my friends on the right as well, but I don’t care one way or the
other if we do outlaw AR-15’s. Go ahead. There are still plenty of other
weapons available (plus the AR-15’s that would still be in black market
circulation) to allow evil people to kill innocent people. And the only way I
know of to assuredly stop evil when it shows up for work is to put a bullet in
its head.
This
week in a “Special” to the Washington Post, Helaine Olen, who blames the NRA for
mentally ill shooters apparently, claimed that “the U.S. has more gun violence
than any other First World country.”
A statement that can only be true if the writer has the license to define for
their own purposes which nations shall constitute The First World. Convenient for making a point that isn’t true but
I am pretty sure Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands would resent giving up their
First World status and becoming mere shitholes
on Olen’s custom made globe.
Even
if the U.S. were to lead in all the awful statistics the left wished we led in,
I think it would have more to do with a lot of other issues that go way beyond
gun ownership and have more to do with the loss of a national moral compass, crippled
nuclear families, digital depression, identity politics, the new definition of
diversity, and so many other issues from which I fear we will never recover.
This
much I believe with all my heart: Blame the NRA ‘til the sixth Tuesday in July
but the blood of the next batch of innocents at a school shooting is on the
hands of the left if we do not take down the “gun free zone” targets and arm
through a paid or voluntary system a few competent individuals who can protect
our children and our grandchildren when evil kicks down the door.
The
End.
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