It's been a while since I'd written about a mass shooting, even though there's been over 500 mass shootings in America this year - and the year's not even finished.
The media hasn't fully paid attention to the gun violence unless the body count is in double digits anymore. Goddamn us, but that's where we're at this week as another angry gun with a military-grade assault rifle attacked multiple places in a small Maine city (via David Sharp, Robert Bumsted, Holly Ramer, and Michael Balsamo at AP News):
Authorities searched forests, waterways and small towns Thursday for a U.S. Army reservist who they say killed 18 people and wounded 13 in a mass shooting at a bowling alley and a bar that sent panicked patrons scrambling under tables and behind bowling pins and gripped the entire state of Maine in fear.
Schools, doctor’s offices and grocery stores closed and people stayed behind locked doors in cities as far away as 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the scenes of Wednesday night’s shootings in Lewiston...
The gunman apparently planned out an elaborate escape route that involved fleeing by boat using nearby rivers, which expanded the range of the search and the need to lock down nearby communities out of fear he was still well-armed and willing to kill again.
We don't know exactly what triggered the angry guy, but he had been placed under medical observation months earlier by reservist officers who noticed troubling behavior out of him and ordered him to a mental treatment facility.
That he was still able to gain access to an assault rifle with his mental issues speaks more to a nation dominated by fringe gun-worshipping sociopaths who scream "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" as a mantra. The United States is being held hostage by a National Rifle Body Count Association that profits from every massacre and propagates an ad campaign of fear and rage, convincing their fellow gun worshippers that the Second Amendment isn't about regulating militias it's a license to shoot anybody they want.
The gun nuts "right" to own firearms that most militaries think are too dangerous has overwhelmed our First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. We can't go to schools anymore without gun violence. We can't go to movie theaters or music concerts without gun violence. We can't go to grocery stores or churches anymore without gun violence. We can't go to our own homes without fearing gun violence by our own relatives or by some angry ex-husband unwilling to let a bad relationship go.
There's blood on the streets everywhere. I've been yelling and screaming and crying over that for the last 25 years.
GODDAMMIT, WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TELL THE GUN NUTS THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO KILL US, AND DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS ONGOING CYCLE OF VIOLENCE.
1 comment:
I have been a gun owner since I was nine years old, and in my opinion, gun laws are not nearly strict enough. California has some of the strictest gun laws around, and anyone with the cash can get pretty much any gun they want here. When I lived in Richmond, my housemate bought a 1911 handgun online, and it was delivered and left on our porch for hours before he got home from work.
I haven't seen any of my guns in decades, having left them at my father's house when I moved to Oakland, and if I never see them again, that is fine with me. I lived through the crack epidemic while staying in some of the poorest and most violent neighborhoods in Oakland, and all I can say to the gun rights guys is that living in a constant low-level gunfight is no way to live.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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