The United States of Gun – The Endless Tragedy

During the past few weeks there have been two separate shooting incidents in American schools. There have been several deaths and multiple injuries. Interestingly enough the shooters were apprehended alive. While it might seem beside the point, it is interesting in that these young, white, active shooters were somehow apprehended alive while multiple young, black, non-active shooters are routinely killed for possession of a cell phone or a hoodie (and Skittles) or a toy gun.

It is hard to say which is more horrific – the killing of schoolchildren by schoolchildren, or the moribund lassitude of governmental leaders when it comes to gun control. We know that the perfect world envisioned by the gun industry and the National Rifle Association would include a firearm in the hand of every man and woman in America. And while there are 330 million people in America and close to 400 million guns already.

But the fact that even the most infantile of baby steps in the direction of gun control never take that first step makes one wonder if the NRA has a damaging dossier (with accompanying videos) on every elected official in this country. At least that theory would lend some kind of logic to this horrific scenario.

Consider that 26 days after the horrific mosque shooting in New Zealand, the New Zealand national government enacted serious and stringent legislation regarding the ownership and sale of firearms in that country. Consider that over fifty years after the University of Texas Tower shootings (the first mass shooting in America in the modern era) virtually no major national legislation regarding controls pertaining to the ownership and sale of firearms have been enacted with the exception of a short-lived restriction on the sale of assault weapons.

There are now more than 300 million people living in America. There are now more guns than people in America. America has more guns per capita than any country on Earth. Over 100 Americans die from gun violence every day. Since 1970 more Americans have died from guns (1.45 million) than all of the deaths in all of the wars in the history of this country.

Yet, even the hell of babies being slaughtered by an automatic weapon in Sandy Hook or a concert crowd being massacred by sniper fire in Las Vegas is not enough to dislodge the sclerotic Congress to do something, anything to lessen the death by weaponry which the most telling and bloody characteristic of the United States of Gun.

The NRA and the purveyors of death, aka gun manufacturers, have promoted the money making myth that guns are part of the American DNA dating back to the days of an American frontier and, one might add, the three century genocide war waged against the indigenous people of this continent. But there were frontiers (and genocide) in Australia and New Zealand and Canada but guns are not considered to be a part of the DNA of those countries.

The NRA and gun manufacturers have sold too many Americans on the lie that the second Amendment to the Constitution gives every American the right to own a gun. A sober and quiet reading of the Constitution will reveal that the second Amendment simply does not say that. But the NRA interpretation supports the unlimited sale of guns and rifles.

And now we have learned that there is something even more tragic than a parent losing a child to gunfire, and that would be a parent losing a child to gunfire trying to protect other children. Congress won’t or can’t act to control the sale and use of guns. Trump cannot even comprehend any reason to act to control the sale and use of guns. And too many Americans continue to elect too many men and women who will not choose to change the purported gun DNA of America.

And so we are left with the sad and tragic scenario where the only heroes are the children who get killed trying to save other children from guns.