The mass murder in Aurora last week. The inexplicable unfathomable enormity of what happened has drawn the typical reaction. Explain it away. Affix blame. Then claim to have the solution to prevent it. If we had tighter gun control. Hell ban em all together. If there were no guns this never would have happened. It's all the violence on TV, movies, video games, music. Gun rights advocates are to blame. Hollywood is to blame. Bad parenting. Liberal teachers. Maybe we can blame this one on Bush. Blame it on Obama. We have to blame it on someone. He couldn't have killed all those people if not for his AR 15 or his Glock. Some try to explain it and fix it in order to assuage their own fear. Like whistling past the graveyard. Impotent and ineffectual. Others claim to have the answers, the solution to stop such a horror from ever taking place again. An onion of a lie beneath a thin skin of truth. Peel back a few layers and find the hidden agenda.
Chicago enacted a handgun freeze. In 1992, led by Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Chicago City Council voted
to ban assault weapons. Contests over gun control continued
in 1998, when the city and Cook County filed a lawsuit
against gun manufacturers. Chicago is currently the murder capital of the Country. Most of the murders in Chicago are committed with guns. Illegal guns. Bans don't work because criminals don't play by the same set of rules.
The mental health people are claiming we need to focus on getting folks better access to mental health care. Presumably the insane and sociopaths will clamber to get treatment if we just advocate it and throw money at it. But you can't legislate crazy. You can't get the potential mass murderer to take his meds if you come up with catchy ads or offer free Ipods.
The truth.
There have always been and there will continue to be, those among us who march to some crazy music that plays on a continuous loop in their twisted minds. They will take up box cutters in the name of their God and fly planes into skyscrapers. They will load a van with fertilizer and diesel, then blow up a federal building. They will snap when that Goddamn baby cries one time too many. They will decide that it is perfectly reasonable to murder their families in their sleep. One by one, starting with the wife, then the eldest child to the youngest. We are humans. The best of us are capable of wondrous things. Some of us are just as capable of the very worst.
The truth.
You can catch some before they snap. But it's only by accident. A soon to be serial killer is stopped before he draws his first taste of blood after he goes to prison for burglary. May be he commits suicide or gets killed inside, or dies of a stroke. But it's all chance and it's always an unknown. That guy you bump into boarding the bus. That lady you pass in the produce section. In a day, a week, 10 years, may well be the next perpetrator of some hideous act that nobody saw coming.
The truth
The Blue Whale is the largest living creature on earth. It has a throat the size of a small plate, just inches in diameter. It spends its entire life feeding. If it stops it dies.
Know why?
Because that's just the way it is, and there is nothing anyone can do to change it.
People with bad intentions and warped psyche will always find a means to reach their end.
That's just the way IT IS. Nothing anyone can do to change it.
We need to have a serious talk about guns, among other issues. But we won't. We will serve up platitudes and stand our ground. Facts and reality be damned!
ReplyDeleteI lived next door to Sylvia Seegrist. She had mental problems and her family tried to get her help. But the Commonwealth said there was nothing they could do as she was an adult.
If I hear one more person say, well it is easy to make a semi-auto into an automatic. And I will answer, if you can do that machine work, you can build an automatic weapon out of raw materials too.
We will access blame and treat the symptoms of what caused this, never facing the truth.
Nothing can prevent a maniac0 from their mission.
So people's "solution" is merely to accept the insanity and the slaughters and killings and shootings that the rest of the world won't.
ReplyDeleteNope. Not me. I'm going to try--and keep trying, anyway, in an effort to get to a better place, as a country, as a nation and as people.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/bill-moyers-essay-living-under-the-gun/
Welome back, MM. Had a feeling this would draw you out. I'm conflicted on the death penalty, given all the false convictions. You have a criminal past. Did the potential death penalty ever stop you, or anyone you know, from committing a capital crime?
ReplyDeleteNo. But fraud isnt a capital offense unless you are in Iran. Now had it been a capital offense Id have got a job.
ReplyDeleteDead on the money Mark.
ReplyDeleteI carry a gun everyday, every time I leave my house. I wouldn't have done me a damn bit of good if I was at that movie.
ReplyDeleteGun control wouldn't have stopped this guy. With as much planning and preping he did. If he couldn't have used guns, he would have used something else. Like the tylenol poisonings in 82. That soup sandwich wanted people dead.
Yes people die from guns.
A lot more people die from cars.
Even more people die at the hands of doctors.
Glad you are back, dude. I missed you. We are gun owners, and there is nobody I would trust more with his AK47 than my beloved hubby.
ReplyDeleteHe would have done everything he could to protect innocent people from this guy, but I am glad we were not in this theater. He would have died.
I dont know the answers, but I dont think anybody else does either,especially when we are talking about a young man who just recently went off the rails.
"Bans don't work because criminals don't play by the same set of rules."
ReplyDeleteEgg Zachary!
Murder is already illegal, and that didnt seem to stop him.
I believe in peace through superior firepower, so as long as the bad guys in the hood have 30 round mags, and might drive down my street busting caps, dont deny the law abiding citizen access to the same level of firepower.
As I said above, I say again, especially given your comments, Mark, and those of your commenters:
ReplyDeleteSo people's "solution" is merely to accept the insanity and the slaughters and killings and shootings that the rest of the world won't.
Nice.
God help us.
The fact of the matter is with rare exception, I don't "trust" any politician to have my best interests at heart. Therefore, even tho I see no good reason to own an AK-47, I don't trust any proposed changes to the gun control laws because of late it seems there is always a hidden agenda or purpose that is not disclosed to the "unwashed masses". Often it's not even disclosed to half the elected representatives themselves in this fraudulent era of "transparency."
ReplyDeleteIn my humble opinion with this particular case, the underlying problem is some kind of seriously dangerous mental illness and I believe that somebody, if not several people, knew this guy was mentally unstable and dangerous, yet he was allowed to function unchecked in normal society. Eventually it will all come to light and then we'll be asking why didn't somebody do something before this all happened.
Ah those evil guns.
ReplyDeleteJust think, if ol' boy had used a gallon of gas (same explosive potential as five sticks of dynamite) and a book of matches, it would have been a lot more dead.
And then we'd here about "gas control".
Good to see you're back.
Dan / Chicago
Been off the internet for awhile and I'm so sorry I missed this when it was fresh.
ReplyDeleteAmen, Mark. You fucking nailed it to the wall.