Uncivil War
The mother sent her child off to school with misgivings. There had been gunfire in the night. The sound told her it was not in their neighborhood, patrolled with diligence, but across the river, where it was dangerous to go. The school was also patrolled, but no one knew when someone might take the battle out of its usual zone. No one was safe these days.
This is not a scene from Syria. It can easily be a scene from any American city. Yesterday it was a scene from one of the country's safest towns. There is a sickness in the country, an illness that is become terminal, gnawing at the insides. A country once proud of being resilient and tolerant, is becoming a paradise for dealers of death. Where better to mow down people than in a school, where the sitting students are become sitting ducks? It's a shooter's wet dream.
Psychologically, all of the eighteen school shootings that have happened this just-begun year, can be explained. Eight of those shootings have resulted in deaths or injuries. But, though they can be explained, they needn't have happened.
After the massacre of small children at Sandy Hook, Congress did nothing to control the lucrative business of gun sales and manufacture. This past year, they have even made it easier to buy and sell weapons of all kinds. With each new school shooting, instead of limiting what weapons Americans can have in their homes, as was done in Australia and Great Britain, Congress has pushed for increased spending on arming and bulletproofing schools. As if it is something natural to expect a person to wander into a school building, automatic rifle in hand, and shoot at every moving life. Instead of looking out for the interests of the citizens they represent, and their security, they are looking out for the bottom line of countless companies that deal in death.
While I was growing up in Boston, I was in a store where an armed robbery was taking place. My mother had a gun shown in her face on the subway. There were drive-by shootings on an almost daily basis in some neighborhoods. Yet schools were still sacrosanct. The possibility of a gun showing up in school was incidental to the involvement in criminal activity of some of its students. It was not a safe place nor a safe time, yet it seems that freedom from possible death by shooting is even less now than it was then.
The United States is fast devolving into a state of armed insurgency, with an undeclared war afoot that has no front lines, no battle zones. A war which can show up at any time, in any place. A war in which the soldiers can be a neighbor or a relative, and in which everyone is the enemy. The wagers of this war are the gun manufacturers and their helpers. They are the ones reaping the benefits, translated into billions of dollars. It's the ultimate civil war; the propagation of guns where the ultimate goal is the enrichment of those that fuel it. There is no ideology except money. It's very difficult to break out of this, but the way to knock down the castle is to have a Congress that will pass the necessary laws to make it illegal to own or have in one's possession any kind of automatic rifle or gun. But that means having a Congress that is not benefiting from this civil war. And we all know how loud money can shout.
I cry for the country I once knew.
This is not a scene from Syria. It can easily be a scene from any American city. Yesterday it was a scene from one of the country's safest towns. There is a sickness in the country, an illness that is become terminal, gnawing at the insides. A country once proud of being resilient and tolerant, is becoming a paradise for dealers of death. Where better to mow down people than in a school, where the sitting students are become sitting ducks? It's a shooter's wet dream.
Psychologically, all of the eighteen school shootings that have happened this just-begun year, can be explained. Eight of those shootings have resulted in deaths or injuries. But, though they can be explained, they needn't have happened.
After the massacre of small children at Sandy Hook, Congress did nothing to control the lucrative business of gun sales and manufacture. This past year, they have even made it easier to buy and sell weapons of all kinds. With each new school shooting, instead of limiting what weapons Americans can have in their homes, as was done in Australia and Great Britain, Congress has pushed for increased spending on arming and bulletproofing schools. As if it is something natural to expect a person to wander into a school building, automatic rifle in hand, and shoot at every moving life. Instead of looking out for the interests of the citizens they represent, and their security, they are looking out for the bottom line of countless companies that deal in death.
While I was growing up in Boston, I was in a store where an armed robbery was taking place. My mother had a gun shown in her face on the subway. There were drive-by shootings on an almost daily basis in some neighborhoods. Yet schools were still sacrosanct. The possibility of a gun showing up in school was incidental to the involvement in criminal activity of some of its students. It was not a safe place nor a safe time, yet it seems that freedom from possible death by shooting is even less now than it was then.
The United States is fast devolving into a state of armed insurgency, with an undeclared war afoot that has no front lines, no battle zones. A war which can show up at any time, in any place. A war in which the soldiers can be a neighbor or a relative, and in which everyone is the enemy. The wagers of this war are the gun manufacturers and their helpers. They are the ones reaping the benefits, translated into billions of dollars. It's the ultimate civil war; the propagation of guns where the ultimate goal is the enrichment of those that fuel it. There is no ideology except money. It's very difficult to break out of this, but the way to knock down the castle is to have a Congress that will pass the necessary laws to make it illegal to own or have in one's possession any kind of automatic rifle or gun. But that means having a Congress that is not benefiting from this civil war. And we all know how loud money can shout.
I cry for the country I once knew.
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