On Gun Violence in America - #guncontrol NOW
Hi. It's been awhile (a couple years in fact) since I last posted to this blog. The latest mass shooting in the U.S. made me want to speak out.
If you look at the U.S. defense budget for 2017, it shows a figure of over $500 billion. Do you feel safe? How does all that money protect American citizens, when they can be mowed down by a lone gunman at a country music gig? Maybe it's not really the citizens that money is meant to protect. Maybe it's the system.
It's quick and easy to find articles such as this and this, following such an event, about how Democrats' efforts to enact common sense gun control laws are thwarted by the NRA and the Republicans who are beholden to them.
But that is symptomatic of a more general problem - things are the way they are, we're told, and this is the way it's always going to be. And we, the average citizens, can't do much about it, because after all, we're just average citizens. We're busy. We've got day jobs. We're horrified by what's happened, and wish somebody could do something about it, but after our expressions of horror have passed, and we've internalized yet another horrific act of violence of someone whose insanity is facilitated by insanely permissive gun laws, we have to move on with our lives.
It's the insanity of the system that's the real issue, and those who prop it up, because of their collective insanity. The country of my birth, America, the good ol' U.S. of A., is an insane country, populated by insane people, who elect insane people to represent them, and then they run amok in a world of other insane countries run by other insane people. But America is particularly insane. And the problem is, the patient can't fix itself.
Speaking of day jobs, I've got to go to mine. But here are a few general points:
- The U.S. spends more on defense than any other country, and it's one of the least safe.
- The NRA and its minions, the Republicans, have used the 2nd Amendment as a way to sell more product. The U.S. is enslaved to corporate interests, and the government is not "for the people"; it's for the corporations.
- Only a sustained, concerted resistance which manifests itself as political organizing which ultimately defeats that incredibly powerful gun lobby can change this situation. This is unlikely because a) we're too apathetic, b) we're too busy, and c) we're too well-entertained. Reading about death and carnage is a bummer man. Show me more cat videos etc.
- The dude running the country right now says things like "we must unite", when he's spent the last couple of years dividing us. And he describes the shooting as an "act of pure evil", when the real evil is the people who sell the weapons, and the politicians who prop up that gun lobby. That entire crew has blood on their hands.
If you look at the U.S. defense budget for 2017, it shows a figure of over $500 billion. Do you feel safe? How does all that money protect American citizens, when they can be mowed down by a lone gunman at a country music gig? Maybe it's not really the citizens that money is meant to protect. Maybe it's the system.
It's quick and easy to find articles such as this and this, following such an event, about how Democrats' efforts to enact common sense gun control laws are thwarted by the NRA and the Republicans who are beholden to them.
But that is symptomatic of a more general problem - things are the way they are, we're told, and this is the way it's always going to be. And we, the average citizens, can't do much about it, because after all, we're just average citizens. We're busy. We've got day jobs. We're horrified by what's happened, and wish somebody could do something about it, but after our expressions of horror have passed, and we've internalized yet another horrific act of violence of someone whose insanity is facilitated by insanely permissive gun laws, we have to move on with our lives.
It's the insanity of the system that's the real issue, and those who prop it up, because of their collective insanity. The country of my birth, America, the good ol' U.S. of A., is an insane country, populated by insane people, who elect insane people to represent them, and then they run amok in a world of other insane countries run by other insane people. But America is particularly insane. And the problem is, the patient can't fix itself.
Speaking of day jobs, I've got to go to mine. But here are a few general points:
- The U.S. spends more on defense than any other country, and it's one of the least safe.
- The NRA and its minions, the Republicans, have used the 2nd Amendment as a way to sell more product. The U.S. is enslaved to corporate interests, and the government is not "for the people"; it's for the corporations.
- Only a sustained, concerted resistance which manifests itself as political organizing which ultimately defeats that incredibly powerful gun lobby can change this situation. This is unlikely because a) we're too apathetic, b) we're too busy, and c) we're too well-entertained. Reading about death and carnage is a bummer man. Show me more cat videos etc.
- The dude running the country right now says things like "we must unite", when he's spent the last couple of years dividing us. And he describes the shooting as an "act of pure evil", when the real evil is the people who sell the weapons, and the politicians who prop up that gun lobby. That entire crew has blood on their hands.
Comments
Post a Comment