How Many More Martyrs Do We Need
How many more innocent people have to die before this country takes its gun addiction seriously?
How many more little kids in elementary school need to be slaughtered before we ban sales of guns to deranged teenagers?
How many more black supermarket shoppers need to be assassinated by yet another well-armed deranged teenager?
How many more innocent Americans – of any age race, in blue or red state – have to die before we ban sales of body armor? Before we have a federal law forbidding sales of firearms to people under 21 years of age? How many more innocent Americans have to have their insides cut into pieces by military ammunition by an over-armed, armored teenager, martyred to benefit the gun manufacturers’ lobby?
You can blame video games if you want. Every industrialized country has video games; none of them have this mass shooting epidemic.
You can blame mental health, but we are the only industrialized country to not guarantee health care to every citizen, nor do we hold some sort of global monopoly on mental health issues. No other similarly situated country has this mass shooting epidemic.
You can blame the fact that the Texas shooter has a Hispanic name but that doesn’t explain Mr. Conklin, New York.
You can point to whatever you want, but the simple fact remains that this country has too many people with too many guns, and too many innocent people are being shot (not to mention suicides) as a result. Here is the truth:
The U.S. has the highest firearm per capita ratio.
— Ally Sammarco (@Ally_Sammarco) May 25, 2022
If guns made us safer, we would be the safest country on earth.
How many times have I had to come onto this dumb, 20 year-old blog and write something about a mass shooting? Too many. Here’s some:
The US Senate Decides that Guns are More Important than People (2013)
That’s just a few. I don’t have the heart or the patience to go through them all. There are too many. One was too many. Every other country like ours – even the ones with a cowboy/wild west/gun culture like Australia – have figured this out.
One thing is for certain – there needs to be federal action. No loopholes. No state opt-outs. The Ku Conklin Klan should be unable to cross state lines to bypass New York restrictions. Enough.
But when people like Chris “Milquetoast Trump” Jacobs offer up their cheap, meaningless thoughts & prayers, remember that he cares more about his NRA rating than about the lives of supermarket shoppers in the next district over who were gunned down while shopping for groceries.
And that’s really the issue, free from bullshit or dilution:
What do freedom and liberty mean – what do they really mean – if black folks in Masten are not free to go to the grocery store in peace? If children cannot go to elementary school in peace? If we need to turn average places of public accommodation into fortresses, what the hell kind of “freedom” is that?
I read of some analysis of sympathy for the cops who hesitated sacrificing their lives on the Altar of Gun Adoration.
Maybe two new sources of rage, the children and the Police, can swing the pendulum of gun control back to a sane rage.
A new assault rifle ban is one good start.