When mass shootings become commonplace, you might think bipartisan efforts would be made to stem the violence. If so, you misunderstand how little the pro-life party actually values life. By pumping its adherents full of fear, they use the hand not waving a gun to pocket donations from the NRA. Human life is only valuable to get yourself elected. It’s difficult to remember days when I didn’t awake to hear of someone with more guns than restraint opening fire in a public place. Mental illness, it seems to me, is fairly widespread. It’s no deterrent, however, to purchasing military-grade weapons and using them when the stress levels get too high. Meanwhile lives of those—whether fellow gun owners or not—are lost. And Republicans argue that nothing should change. You’d think the insurrection might’ve changed their view.
How does one go to bed secure knowing the next day they may be reading about another mass shooting? Sure, the perpetrator will be caught, if not already dead, and families will be bereaved but we know our rights! Funny how even the Bill of Rights can be prooftexted by those who do the same with the Good Book. What is so hard to understand about “Thou shalt not kill”? Coveting, however, and adultery, seem alive and negotiable, to gather by their support of 45. Such selective reading generally turns deadly and constituencies become mere statistics. What seems to be missing is a basic sense of social justice. A social justice that applies to all.
The idea of wanting a country only for white men and their subservient wives is a relic that simply refuses to acknowledge that societies change. We’ll never reach perfection, but that’s no excuse to stop trying. Firearm regulation might be a rational place to start. While party politics will get in the way of this the pools of blood will grow only deeper. What seems to be missing is the acknowledgement that these are people we are losing to assuage one party’s ambitions. Wouldn’t prioritizing education and providing mental health services be better? Ah, but it might stop some of the wealthy from pocketing yet more money from those who are lined up against the wall. Of course, you can be in the majority and still be gerrymandered into silence. When the Gun Ownership Party begins saying aloud that it can’t win elections fairly, and makes noises about beginning to cull the herd, we should all be getting a little nervous.
