Aftermath
Where do I even begin? Another school shooting, with multiple dead and wounded, this time in Florida. Another probable school shooting averted in Washington state by a grandmother who turned in her homicidal grandson. A gun show that goes on as planned just about 3 miles from where 17 teenagers and teachers were assassinated at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by a 19-year-old young man.
Do you know that an 18-year-old can buy a semi-automatic weapon like those used by Nikolas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, Omar Mateen, and Adam Lanza, but that this same 18-year-old who can purchase a semi-automatic rifle can't buy a handgun until he is 21 years old? Is there any kind of logic here? It's OK for a teenager to buy a semi-automatic weapon of mass destruction, but he can't legally buy a handgun that can kill or injure, at the most, 6 people before reloading?
To paraphrase a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student interviewed after the massacre who was talking to our government leaders: they don't care about anonymous students and teachers who are gunned down; only when it happens to someone they know and care about will they do something proactive about restricting the sale of semi-automatic weapons. I mean, who really needs a semi-automatic weapon? What is its purpose in everyday life? To protect yourself against a horde of zombies? an alien invasion? a herd of grazing deer? a bunch of kindergartners in Halloween costumes demanding candy? the repo man? your mother-in-law? a nosy neighbor? Jehovah's Witnesses? weeds in your garden? What do you need a semi-automatic weapon for, other than to kill a large number of people or animals? A semi-automatic rifle is a killing machine, nothing else.
So where do we go from here? These mass murders are becoming so commonplace, as several newcasters and reporters pointed out, that it's just another thing that happens in life like car crashes, fires, and badass traffic jams. According to news sources, this is the 18th school shooting since the beginning of this year. This year. We're not even 2 months into 2018 yet. Talk about keeping gun-related weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill is useless. Several of the mass-murdering gunmen in this country were receiving, or had received, mental health counseling, but they could still buy guns, and they did, and they killed. Just because someone is "weird" doesn't mean they're going to mass murder humans. And, really, how do you know that someone is homicidally mentally ill? I work in an urban library; there are people who come in all the time who appear to have mental health issues, but does that mean they're going to pull an AR-15 rifle out of their bulky coats and start firing?
I once worked for a company that helps college students with their essays before they hand them in to their professors. I'll never forget the one young man who described the thrill (that was his word) he experienced while he watched the spark of life slowly fade from the eyes of the deer he had shot. The aforementioned young man in Washington state described in his journal the thrill he felt witnessing the terror in a young woman's face as he pointed his semi-automatic rifle at her during a convenience store robbery. Is this part of the reason why these men slaughter a throng of people they don't know? Do they get a thrill out of the horror and chaos they create? Does it make them feel alive, superior, in control, dominant, god-like? Does it lessen the demons inside them that claw at and bloody their own humanness?
I sometimes wonder what kind of world my grand-nieces and nephews are going to live in when they are adults. Will they hate us because we didn't stop the destruction of the earth and the mass murders in this country and around the planet? Or maybe it will be a better world than we live in now because an aggregation of people stood up and said loud and clear, "I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE." [Network, 1976]
Do you know that an 18-year-old can buy a semi-automatic weapon like those used by Nikolas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, Omar Mateen, and Adam Lanza, but that this same 18-year-old who can purchase a semi-automatic rifle can't buy a handgun until he is 21 years old? Is there any kind of logic here? It's OK for a teenager to buy a semi-automatic weapon of mass destruction, but he can't legally buy a handgun that can kill or injure, at the most, 6 people before reloading?
To paraphrase a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student interviewed after the massacre who was talking to our government leaders: they don't care about anonymous students and teachers who are gunned down; only when it happens to someone they know and care about will they do something proactive about restricting the sale of semi-automatic weapons. I mean, who really needs a semi-automatic weapon? What is its purpose in everyday life? To protect yourself against a horde of zombies? an alien invasion? a herd of grazing deer? a bunch of kindergartners in Halloween costumes demanding candy? the repo man? your mother-in-law? a nosy neighbor? Jehovah's Witnesses? weeds in your garden? What do you need a semi-automatic weapon for, other than to kill a large number of people or animals? A semi-automatic rifle is a killing machine, nothing else.
So where do we go from here? These mass murders are becoming so commonplace, as several newcasters and reporters pointed out, that it's just another thing that happens in life like car crashes, fires, and badass traffic jams. According to news sources, this is the 18th school shooting since the beginning of this year. This year. We're not even 2 months into 2018 yet. Talk about keeping gun-related weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill is useless. Several of the mass-murdering gunmen in this country were receiving, or had received, mental health counseling, but they could still buy guns, and they did, and they killed. Just because someone is "weird" doesn't mean they're going to mass murder humans. And, really, how do you know that someone is homicidally mentally ill? I work in an urban library; there are people who come in all the time who appear to have mental health issues, but does that mean they're going to pull an AR-15 rifle out of their bulky coats and start firing?
I once worked for a company that helps college students with their essays before they hand them in to their professors. I'll never forget the one young man who described the thrill (that was his word) he experienced while he watched the spark of life slowly fade from the eyes of the deer he had shot. The aforementioned young man in Washington state described in his journal the thrill he felt witnessing the terror in a young woman's face as he pointed his semi-automatic rifle at her during a convenience store robbery. Is this part of the reason why these men slaughter a throng of people they don't know? Do they get a thrill out of the horror and chaos they create? Does it make them feel alive, superior, in control, dominant, god-like? Does it lessen the demons inside them that claw at and bloody their own humanness?
I sometimes wonder what kind of world my grand-nieces and nephews are going to live in when they are adults. Will they hate us because we didn't stop the destruction of the earth and the mass murders in this country and around the planet? Or maybe it will be a better world than we live in now because an aggregation of people stood up and said loud and clear, "I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE." [Network, 1976]
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