The real MAGA movement: Make America Gun-safe Again!
This is going to be short because the voices on this subject are already exhausted. It’s happened again. Just outside Atlanta. A school shooting. Just a part of life now and we just accept it. Marjorie Taylor Green has already offered up her prayers for the dead, while blocking actions that would do nothing to protect all of us. A father reacted “Shame on anyone that is praying today instead of reacting… “Trump reacted “ Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA. These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.” Does he know this fourteen year old boy? Does he think this sort of crime is isolated and has no societal cause? There were plenty of mentally ill, sometimes deranged, people when I was in school. We had no active shooter drills.
Vice President Kamala Harris responded:
“This is just a senseless tragedy, on top of so many senseless tragedies. And it’s just outrageous, that every day in our country in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive. It’s senseless. We’ve got to stop it and we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.”
As I write this there are four dead, nine injured. We don’t know yet how injured and whether some of the injured will join the list of the dead.
What is our first reaction? Well, that’s a pretty low body count for a school shooting actually. Does it even meet the standard of a “mass shooting”? At least it was not little kids this time, these were teenagers at least that got mowed down by bullets. Probably mental illness, couldn’t be driven by a society invested in hate and gun fascination. Well, at least we got the shooter alive this time. We can pick his brain and see why he did it, maybe prevent the next one. This is not the reactions we should have.
Habituation, America is suffering a bad case of habituation. Merriam Webster describes this as a “decrease in responsiveness upon repeated exposure to a stimulus.” We are habituated by school shooting after school shooting after school shooting after… We pay attention for a day, say our tsk, tsk, poor parents under our breath, then go about our business again. NO! We cannot just accept this. And enough of the hand wringing and saying to ourselves “enough is enough”, then five minutes later just worry about whether our toast is burning in the toaster. Act!
I call for a real MAGA movement; Make America Gun-safe Again! America is already a great country in many ways but we have an overwhelming and deadly gun issue that needs fixing. I lived in an era where we did not worry about being shot at school, at the mall, at a concert venue… We can do this. It will take major action on many fronts but we can force these jerks who block gun reform to take responsibility for all these dead bodies of children, often shot by children and not psychos. Do not accept this any longer. Politicians are masters of deflection. Don’t let them deflect any longer by saying it is not the time while we grieve the recent loss. We must turn that grief into anger for all those lost.
Marching to create awareness? Every dead child’s body riddled with bullets is the awareness, not yet another march. Take action. Do not let them bully you with “now is not the time” or “thoughts and prayers”. The time to talk is now, the time to scream and shout at the elected officials blocking real gun reform is now. Thoughts and prayers for the dead? That’s just more deflection from fixing the actual issue. Sensible gun laws is the only answer. Vote for those who will fix our gun crisis.
