Here we go again. Another mass shooting. TWO mass shootings, only thirteen hours apart. Human carnage litters our streets, shopping malls, schools, and coffee shops just to name a few. And yet our government leaders, the president, and particularly Evangelicals, can’t get past “mental illness.” Mental illness is worldwide. Every country on earth has mentally ill citizens. Canada has them. Australia has them. New Zealand has them. But America is home of the mass shooting. And the ammo-sexuals are out en masse trying to defend guns, vilify Liberals, deny that white supremacists are a danger to American citizens, and defend Fox “news,” the racist-for-pay channel.
This is the price for freedom? Our children are murdered doing everyday activities because…“FREEDOM”?
After Sandy Hook, I stopped talking about guns. I came to realize, “if we’re not going to do anything about the mass murder of children, then we’re not going to do anything at all.” And that is true. We’re not going to do anything. But my silence means that I’ve given up. And to be honest, I feel like giving up, but I can’t help but hope that as a country, we’ll finally deal with this issue… maybe? I can’t sit this one out. Though I don’t know what else to do… so I write.
As with every mass shooting before this one, my Facebook page fills with memes such as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” While this is insulting enough, it’s the comments that follow that are even more egregious. Somebody actually said this to me, and it kind of pissed me off: “Guns don’t kill people: People kill people: You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game…”
And this same guy started out his comment with, "You're an idiot."
First, just because I’m an idiot doesn’t change the fact that guns kill people. And even in my idiocy, or because of it, I'm no longer "empathetic" to the gun nuts and their logic and their vision of a Second Amendment-America where the innocent must die to protect a “right” that has never been defined. So, here's what I have to say:
Guns are manufactured for one reason only—to kill: To make killing easier; To able to kill from further away; To kill more people at the same time; To be able to kill at night; To kill silently; To kill through walls; To kill while on the go; To kill through bullet-proof vests.
A baseball bat was created to hit baseballs so that a pitcher could throw a ball, and the batter could stand at the plate and hit the ball, and then try and run as many bases as he can. The baseball bat was created so that men and women, boys and girls, could all get together and eat hotdogs and drink beer (hopefully not the boys and girls) and all shout in unison, "We need a pitcher not a belly itcher."
Cars were designed and built to get us from one side of town to the other as quickly as possible, with bucket seats, air-conditioning, power windows, power steering, tinted glass, kick-ass stereo systems, digital music players, a sun roof, tushie warmers, and as much ease and comfort as the buyer can afford.
Now that that's out of the way, here's the real issue; this guy was comparing apples, oranges, and pears. This is called a logical fallacy. They're comparing an object created to kill with an object that created for a game and an object created for transportation. They have little to do with each other—except that the car is a great way to transport both. And it does make the drive-by shooting much easier.
Guns kill people. That’s what they were designed to do. The entire purpose of the gun is to kill… You cannot be “pro-life” and pro-gun” since one is not compatible with the other. And you cannot call yourself a Christian and defend the gun… Jesus would have hated guns, and we have his own words to prove it.
The fact that every time these memes show up after a mass shooting suggest something profoundly disturbing about those who make these posts—they know there’s a problem, and they’re desperately attempting to shift the blame from what they know to be the real problem. The most obvious way that they’re doing this is the word “but…” The minute you insert the word “but” into an equation, you’re negating what you’re saying, and changing the meaning of but... to butt.
“I’m not a racist, but…”
Yes, you are a racist butt. And nobody has a more racist butt than our Racist-in-Chief who has spurred more violence than video games, death metal, and rogue squirrels combined. Blah blah blah, “defend the Second Amendment,” blah blah blah. These shootings are tragic, BUT... In other words, the carnage created by guns is "bad," BUT … we must defend those deaths because it was brought about using a gun, and guns are freedom.
And then comes the "Blame the Victims." This happened outside of a "Gun free zone" which it didn't. BUT... for whatever reason, it was the victim's fault, not the gun's. This happened because our children aren’t allowed to pray in school. They are, but Evangelicals have a lot of money invested in gun manufacture stocks.
It’s frustrating watching “Second Amendment” defenders (who claim to believe in Jesus) bend themselves into pretzels in an effort to defend what in El Paso can only be described as attempted genocide. The deaths of these people hardly matter because all ammo-sexuals can think about is protecting the gun. All that matters to them is the gun. And they must defend it whatever the cost. Even if they must defend the murderer over the murdered.
They’re not at all interested in the real problem. What matters to them is that they never acknowledge that guns are turning lives into recyclables... worm food... which would not be as easy without guns. But so long as they worship at the idol of the weapon, we live with the reality that every day someone new gets to experience their Second Amendment Freedom by dying from a gun.
It's the GUN, stupid. This is a message that may never get through, but my silence is complaisance, and I can’t do it anymore. Unlike the Pro-Lifers, human life does matter to me. Even after the fetus becomes human.
To be clear, this isn’t an “anti-gun” screed. We have a right to own guns as defined by the Supreme Court. But let’s stop pretending that they aren’t a problem in our country. Not as much in other countries, but definitely in our country.