Sometimes “why” is a four-letter word. An epithet uttered at something so senseless we ought not have to ask… why? I do not suppose I am alone in my behavior of the last three weeks, on seeing a child of a particular age I find myself weeping.
I am now old enough to have had many friends die. I was in high school when JFK was shot, later came RFK, MLK, followed by Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora; somehow Newtown is different. I know we can blame this on weird kids, mentals, the abused, nerds, Goths, ADD, bipolar, autism. To suspect the percentage of those with mental problems hasn’t changed. After all Van Gough was off the chart, so was Meriwether Lewis for that matter, depression is a pretty average problem of personal management, as for adolescent angst, weren’t we all there once? So what explains 20 first-graders killed in 30 seconds?
In this crime there is a smoking gun and the NRA is behind the trigger. This the organization and the mentality that has brought the collective U.S. to this point of 20 beautiful children dead and in the ground at Christmas. Newtown is the seminal crime but one we’ve been shaped and molded to coincide with. There is a hand on the wheel, urging us onward in the phrase of a Vietnam era song, “and the big fool says to push on.” That big dumb fool is the NRA.
If we think the NRA is defending the Second Amendment, they’re not, but they have rewritten it. Every state but Illinois now has concealed carry, why? Do we feel safer in church with a gun? At work? In our car? Has someone made us afraid? The NRA has made Congress afraid and every state legislature to boot. Too gutless to go against what the NRA says is the Second Amendment.
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