Two shootings this week. Two! I’m past angry, I’m
despondent, and that is unusual for me. I typically fall into the category of
annoying optimist. The National Rifle Association (NRA) won; they own America
and we’re all going to die from a bullet one way or another.
It could be a toddler that grabs a legally purchased gun and
points it at us, because he’s seen it done on TV or watched Daddy do it. The
gun isn’t supposed to be loaded of course, with children so close in proximity,
but it is. Bang. As
of this October, young’uns were gunning themselves and the grownups down at a
rate of about one a week. Why? Because they have easy access to a loaded
gun.
It could be the angry kid that shoots us in school – any
school – any age – with a gun they legally purchased or their parents did. I’ve
called Blacksburg, Virginia home since 1984, even now, though I live in the
next town over. I wince whenever Virginia Tech comes up as the number still to
beat as far as mass shootings go. It makes me want to take 32 flowers to the
memorial on the drillfield, place one by each stone, and weep again for the
potential forces for positive change that the world lost that horrible day.
We could be walking home munching a bag of skittles when a
racist gun nut, with a legally purchased gun, decides we are scary and shoots us.
We could be attempting to evade a store security guard who caught us
shoplifting when the self-righteous gun nut with a legally concealed, legally
purchased weapon decides to be judge, jury, and executioner for what is not, in
any jurisdiction, a capital crime. Worse, we could be innocently caught in the
gun nut’s fire. (Luckily for shoppers at this particular store, this
crazy bitch was a bad shot.)
We could be at a medical facility, or a church, a synagogue,
a mosque, a rally for our Senator, or a movie theater, and someone with their
own political or religious agenda, or their own personal beef, could show up
and open fire on us and everyone around us and kill or injure many of us in
seconds. Why? Because some dumbass in the NRA thought it would be cool to give Americans
easy access to military style, high powered, high capacity, semi-automatic
weapons that can spray dozens of bullets in only a few seconds.
As a powerful shill for gun and munitions manufacturers, the
NRA has systematically blocked every reasonable policy and political candidate
that might suggest restricting the types and numbers of fire arms that
Americans can buy. Every card-carrying member of the NRA has blood on their
hands. They fund this tyranny. They help give the NRA the money it needs to buy
politicians and keep the sale of all types of guns and bullets flowing
unimpeded in America. I hope they are pleased with themselves, all the men and
women who have financed the greatest engine for violence and bloodshed the
world has ever seen.
The ridiculously easy access to guns and bullets ensured and
protected by the NRA has led to a saturation of armament in our society. It is
all too easy to settle even the littlest of life’s frustrations by pulling out
a gun, legally purchased, and shooting whoever annoyed us. The gun
nut who murdered a kid for playing music at a volume he disagreed with just got
convicted. One less gun nut on the streets, but nothing will bring back the
dead seventeen-year-old. The flood of legally purchased guns has also
well-armed the gangs and felons that contribute to the narrative of gun
violence in America, and all because the NRA has backed the gun makers rather
than the citizens of this country. It’s about profit. It’s about greed. It’s
about control. It’s not about keeping Americans safe and it never was. Even the
majority of NRA members agree that gun control is an important issue, but the
organization continues to push against it; why are these members still paying
dues? Surely they give enough support to the gun makers by purchasing guns and
ammunition.
I know someone whose co-worker, an NRA member, brags that he
buys a new gun and another 1,000 rounds after every mass shooting because he thinks the president (whom he refers to by the n-word)
will have a chance to stop gun sales in America. He has no tolerance for gays,
either, and he has amassed an arsenal greater than most police forces. All
anyone can do is hope he doesn’t choose to act on his intolerance or snap,
because it is all completely legal. Of course even if he snaps, he gets to keep
buying guns. Thanks to NRA efforts, folks who know they are mentally ill do not
have to disclose their mental illness to gun dealers because of privacy issues.
I knew someone who was murdered by a gun. I knew someone who
used easy access to his gun to end his own life. If you come to visit me in my
beautiful mountain home, expect me to take you to see 32 white stones in a
semicircle of grief. Gun violence is personal to me. It’s personal to every
person gun violence has touched. Yesterday, it got personal to the families of thirty-one
innocent people who were either killed or wounded while celebrating the
holidays with their co-workers, one of whom got angry and got a gun—a legally
purchased gun.
Thank the NRA and all of its card-carrying members who help fund the madness. Many more will die.
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