The Emptiness Of Every Tomorrow
There's a terrible darkness that's taken hold of a majority of our nation's leaders. It's a void where ineptitude, ignorance, and greed run wild, and where evil masquerades as moral and just.
This void is uniquely American, and its deadly consequences were visited upon a cheerfully decorated American classroom where children were blanketed with bullets, leaving carnage behind. Again.
The teenager who calmly walked into Silver Rail Elementary School with his long gun and started shooting was himself a child just 5 years ago. What made him think this was okay? What drove him into madness? What failed to stop his worst impulses?
We may never know. But that's beside the point.
The Republican Party has beaten its drum long and hard over the need to protect our children from the “scourge” of transgenders, waving the red, white, and blue, and winning elections by projecting an imagined “superior morality”. And yet, it refuses to raise its voice against the common practice of putting guns into the hands of teenagers whose brains are not yet fully formed, whose values are not fully shaped, whose temperament is not yet managed, and who can so easily commit mass murder.
We can no longer call this a stable or functioning society when our leaders care more about gender designation than gun registration—or who care more about the unborn than those who were born and are now seated in classrooms.
Any one of us may lose a child we dearly love to gun violence these days. Because this is who we've allowed ourselves to become. It's a given, but only because we tolerate it as a given.
We don't have to accept this madness any longer, because we know killing children is not the norm in other societies. It is uniquely American.
Should nothing change, should we continue to put guns into the eager hands of little boys or big boys, then we will have to bear the burden of losing someone we adore. We will have to accept the emptiness of every tomorrow when our loved one is shot in the face, or head, or multiple times, depending on how much evil is visited upon their classroom on that calamitous day.
Slipstream
Gun enthusiasts were quick to say it would have been worse if there hadn't been someone there with a gun who shot and killed the 16-year-old perpetrator. Although that's true, it's also true if the teen didn't have a gun in the first place, there wouldn't have been an incident that required someone else with a gun to be on the scene.
Evangel
And we can also say that guns don't protect people, people do. So why do we need guns? Oh, because if we didn't have them, we couldn't protect ourselves against all the bad guys that have guns. This lame excuse is evidence that legislators are not interested in fulfilling their duty to protect the citizens. Why should they if they believe that people with guns will do the job for them? And, if you can't protect someone because you weren't wise enough to get a gun, then that's your bad.
Honestly, I'm sick of all the insincere, fake concern, and bogus excuses.
Wilsons Grave
Uniquely American. That's tragic and true.
Evangel
Red, white, and blue all the way.
Well Street
It was in 2012, shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting that left 20 children and 6 staff members dead, that the head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, stated,"...the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun." The good guy in Oregon certainly prevented further carnage, but to echo Slipstream, it's the easy accessibility of firearms that is the core of these tragedies.
Anti-gun control advocates claim that it isn't an accessibility issue, but a mental health problem that needs to be addressed. That argument is absent of logic, as if the US has the market cornered on mental health disorders.
The gun lobby and its influence would be effectively neutered if all politicians and parties refused their donations. That, however, is wishful thinking. The lure of millions of dollars seemingly holds more sway than active shooter drills made necessary at synagogues, churches, and schools, and repeated mass shootings that have become synonymous with our country.
Evangel
If it can all be boiled down to a mental health problem, no one in a leadership positioned has pinpointed what a shooter's mental health issue is or what's going to fix it. No one has.