I’m not ready yet to write a fully thought-out (“blog post,” my gosh, “blog post” seems so unserious, when much more deep thinking and research and activism about this crazy sick violent aspect of the United States already exists and yet it just gets worse). The empirical data is there.
These effing politicians and those who pay them. Some are making a gob smack of money from the gun lobby. And the gunsellers. Money. There you go.
Just in the last week, regular people at the neighborhood market. Fourth graders. Their schoolfriends. Their teachers. Before that, worshippers at churches and temples and mosques. All innocents. The New York Times this morning did a much longer summary of the senseless violence that any human with a conscience can not ignore.
Some blood on some hands.
When I was young, my Father once went deer hunting in Colorado with his friends. My younger brother came into the basement as our Father was skinning the deer and asked “why.” Our Father never went hunting again.
I never could watch the film Bambi because “why” kill?
For a brief time, I lived in a house with someone who had bought a hunting rifle, shipped to Texas specifically to shoot doves (which he actually did and even more gross, cooked and ate). (And this was an obviously well-fed man, really close to a whole gob of food markets, who did not need to hunt to survive. There’s like, dude, produce and tofu and like, like, actual food, within blocks.) What the what? Who the heck would go through that much effort and expense to shoot (and then what the what cook and eat them…what the what) of all creatures, doves? Something not right there.
I did get out of that house. I’ve volunteered with women’s violence shelters and know for sure that angry dude with a hunting rifle was simply scary and I needed to be safe.
So yeah, President Biden’s address was on spot. What in God’s name?
More guns do not make people more safe, rather, suggests the data (not the misinformation), exactly the opposite.
(That Second Amendment bull, just bull. And gun “rights”? Give me a break. Voting rights, reproductive rights, racial equity rights, rights to education, rights to a sustainable world for future generations actually count for something.) Stomping around about guns has nothing to do with a rational society.
Guns offer some humans an icky thrill, some a skillless expression of imagined grievance, some an expectation of financial gain. That’s it. Guns just kill. Whether it’s innocent grandmothers shopping for groceries, innocent worshippers together communing, the so very, very innocent children and teachers in schoolrooms, the innocent birds which have for centuries and across cultures have represented peace .
“Why?”
Dayna Finet 