Just another day in America

Note: I initially wrote this a couple years back, after some insane geek shot up some high school somewhere. I think it was in Kentucky. I can’t remember, since there have been so many of these incidents. Anyway, thankfully it isn’t plagiarism if you re-post your own work.

Ho hum. Another day, another slaughter in America. Come on, can this really still be a surprise?

Look, I am not making a joke of the fact that 31 kids died and a dozen or so more were wounded at Virginia Tech when yet another unbalanced geek with vengeance on his mind opened fire at school, but at this point I am just not surprised anymore. In fact, if a couple of months go by without a report of a disgruntled teen, or disgruntled worker, or disgruntled citizen trying to mow down others -- THEN I am surprised.

So, on April 16 an awkward kid showed up to school with two pistols and began shooting into a crowd of students during class – after first killing his girlfriend and her lover. Just another misfit finally snapping and exacting his revenge on others. We’ll probably learn that this kid was a loner, likely shy and an outcast, possibly even picked on and insulted by his peers, etc etc etc. The same litany of 20-20 hindsight with which we now could recognize him as a maniac while he was still a baby in the cradle. Nothing more to see here. Move along. Just another Monday in America.

Of course, the NRA, the political right, and other gun fetishists and apologists began their spin about this before the last victim gasped their last breath. They trot out the same old stale line that guns are not responsible for this tragedy, and began to dole out the blame to the kid, his parents, his friends, and of course, popular culture, while effectively absolving gun owners, lovers, manufacturers, and users of all guilt. And the gun lobby was quick to shrug their shoulder and wag their fingers in a paternalistic "I told you so." After all, guns don't kill people, people kill people. Not only that, but they’ll patronizingly tell us that the only sure way to avoid this sort of thing from ever happening again is if everyone carried a weapon. Because we know that the safest society is one in which everyone packs heat.

But the gun lover's rhetoric begs a very interesting question. How can we, as a society, point the finger at music, movies, books, and games for the slaughter in schools while the instruments of the slaughter remain beyond blame? Isn't that sort of logic flawed from the start? I mean, the violent aspect of pop culture that the far right continues to blame for these incidents tends to always revere guns as almost holy objects. There is a sick symbiosis at work here. The basic fact of gun existence breeds the sort of elements of pop culture that gun fetishists then claim is the cause of death. Surely, if a video game in which the player gets to use a variety of guns to get rid of virtual enemies is partly responsible, then the weapons that the player uses in the game must also be held to that standard?

Yet we continue to hear that guns are not the problem, sick people are. After all, gun fetishists always remind us how responsible they are with their weapons, and besides (all together now) if guns were outlawed only outlaws will have guns. Yeah, right. Here's a newsflash to gun fetishists: Most tragedies (including the shooting yesterday at Virgnina Tech) are not committed with illegal guns. Most of the workers who snap and go a-shootin' at the old office own their guns legally. The fact that gun fanatics use those tired old excuses day after day is a testament to their myopia.

But the biggest flaw in the old "Guns don't kill, people do" argument is simple. This kid could not have done what he did if he didn't have a gun. The two wild bastards in Columbine could not have done what they did with knives. The kids who shot up Paducah, KY, Conyers, GA, Bethel, AK, San Diego, CA, and others could not have done it without guns. None of the recent massacres could have occurred if the killers could not get their hands on guns. It WAS the guns, Sparky. Guns provide the freedom to kill with only the squeeze of a trigger, and from distance where the target is defenseless. Without guns, this angry boy who went on a killing spree wouldn't have been able to let his rage out and the 31 dead students would likely still be attending classes. This kid wasn't a criminal before he got the gun. He is a criminal BECAUSE he USED a gun.

But nothing will change. Gun fetishists will continue to bombard us with propaganda telling us how guns are not the problem while hypocritically placing culture on trial. There will be more cries for personal responsibility from the NRA, while they side-step the issue of responsibility for promoting a tool whose only purpose is to kill. We'll have another wave of laws and restrictions on the virtual renditions of violence in movies, music, games, and books while the objects that make real violence and shed real blood will continue to be marketed, sold, and loved.

Long live the gun.

Ook ook

PS: The punchline to all this is, of course, the reaction of our idiot boy-king. Not 24 hours after this event he is there attending a memorial service, wearing his concerned face. Yet, it was nearly four days after New Orleans was drowned before this douche flew over the city, and almost another week before he stopped by to have some pictures taken.