I’ve been on the road and busy to boot. Combined with a Curmudgeonly personality and a history of TV avoidance I can find myself downright disconnected… which is just how I like it.
Unfortunately something evil went down Friday and I couldn’t avoid it. I heard the news when I made the mistake of switching on the radio. (I’d been happily listening to my MP3 player.) I was looking for a weather report and instead found out that some sick bastard shot his mother, a bunch of kids, and some adults. It cast a pall over the formerly cheerful truck cab. Asshole! I’d only reconnected with the news for ten minutes and was faced with this… this… abomination? I flipped the radio back off.
Tragedy. No kid deserves to be shot. Even as I wrapped my mind around it I knew that political gamesmanship would commence soon. (Nothing is too ugly to become a political tool anymore.) As usual, I’d be on the shit end of it. I like my gun rights. Invariably this horror would be used to hammer me and my ilk.
Surely there would first be a period of mourning? Nobody is such a monster that they’d jump on it right away. Also I really needed a weather report. The road conditions were looking dicey. I turned on the radio again. Two minutes had passed since I’d heard the news.
No weather report. Instead some airhead was blathering about the need to eliminate guns. Imagine that! Hours after the incident and two minutes after I’d first heard about it.
Like the tide follows the moon there is always someone who’ll exploit misery. “In light of this horrible tragedy it is obvious that all Americans must submit to precisely what I’ve always wanted.”
I flipped the radio off again. It was too much. Capitalizing on the death of innocents more or less immediately. Who thinks like that?
I never got the weather report. I just kept driving.
The next day, Saturday, got even creepier. Every station on the radio was playing with it like death was a theme park. They even interviewed the coroner and discussed the autopsy. Someone, presumably a grown adult who should know better, asked “What did it feel like?” To get shot to death? Who asks a question like that?
Worse yet, I was driving through Chicago. Chicago is the home planet of gun control and various other forms of political control. Chicago also has terrible traffic. I inched along while a herd of talking heads paraded through my speakers with the unanimous theory that ignorant rednecks and their guns were clearly the cause of all misery. I myself have never shot anybody and I like owning guns. There is no room for me in Chicago. I wished I was home with my family.
By Sunday I’d given up on even the merest hint of the radio. My MP3 player is earning it’s keep.
By Monday I picked up the free newspaper at the hotel room lobby. The headline said “Gun control nearing tipping point”. It took less than 72 hours to go from a tragedy to that headline.
I suppose I’m not surprised but I’m saddened. Not all tragedies are lessons. Not all evil is a chance to start a crusade. There is a time when one might do well to pause and reflect before starting the next political battle. (Both parties should know this.) Our nation is getting pretty darned good at turning on each other; an unwise reaction to sorrow.
The gun haters started their crap less than a hour after the first reports. They just can’t wait to start their blood dance. It’s enough to make a person sick. Since they had the first two funerals today, I expect them to be in double overdrive by morning. I truly believe that gun control is a mental disease.
One hour eh? I wasn’t sure how long it took. (Love my MP3 player!) I knew it was twisted almost immediately and that really bothered me. Were we always so heartless en masse?
I wonder if it’s more than gun control. It appears that virtually any event will be repurposed to serve someone’s agenda, especially if it’s horrific and sudden. Notice how “Hurricane Sandy” could have been merely a storm but it became a political moment? As if we can’t simply have bad weather that is nobody’s fault. That’s just one example.
I wonder if our society has become so wrapped up in itself that anything from horrific death to a bad storm is “useful” to someone?
Or maybe I’m overthinking it. I’m certainly not looking forward to another round of handwringing over gun control. I’ve been through it before and knew it would happen again. It’s tiring.
Strike the “gun” from “gun control” and you’ll be closer to the truth, methinks.
Before the shell casings have even been logged into evidence and the bodies laid to rest, this act of pure evil has opened the flood gates for the uneducated masses to voice their emotional and baseless opinions, led by a few blood dancers who see this event as nothing more than an opportunity.
Violence is a part of nature. No creature on this earth is exempt from it. Violence has shaped human society and the animal kingdom since the dawn of time.
If you are one of the many who are commenting about this awful day – be outraged.
Be outraged that it happened, and that those who could have stopped it were bound by the same laws that were violated to commit it.
Be outraged that you and the people close to you are placed like fish in a barrel with no legal means of protection, and forced to rely wholly on what is always too-little-too-late assistance from someone else.
Be outraged that you were defined as equals to this scum, while the lawmakers and rule makers who defined you that way exempt themselves and permit themselves the means to surround themselves with security.
Be outraged at being herded into so-called ‘safe zones’ where only evil men benefit from the rules.
Be outraged that you know, somewhere in your subconscious, that Evil Exists, that you may someday meet it face to face, and that you know should that day come you will have a choice.
Be outraged that your choice to say NO! to evil has been taken from you, that you are left helpless to bow down and accept the whims of any and all evil doers, and that finally, the people who took this choice from you, took your life from you, and will further take your dignity and dance in your blood when it’s over in order to take even more from other people like you.
I am not surprised by the left’s glee with the CT shootings. I am also not surprised by what I saw Friday evening. I have gotten in the habit of going to the range on Saturday mornings. Friday evening on my way to my second job, go figure, I stopped by my local gun shop to pick up a hundred rounds of 9mm. The place was packed with law abiding types shopping for handguns in preparation for a looming ban.
It’s ironic that an anti-gun president is responsible for skyrocketing gun sales since he took office.
Someone has asserted (I think on Gunwatch.com, but my internet is acting odd and I can’t raise them now) that before the idea of schools being gun-free zones was mooted, there were no mass shootings at American schools. I find this a little hard to swallow in its entirety, but I do note that all the notorious ones I can think of happened while schools were designated gun-free zones, and that MOST of the other mass shootings I can bring to mind also happened in areas supposedly free of firearms.
Naturally, the gun control advocates don’t want to discuss this.
My own position is simple;
All gun control laws are Unconstitutional. The 2nd amendment says “shall not be infringed”. It doesn’t limit this to laws passed by Congress (as the First Amendment does). It doesn’t say “except for schools”. It doesn’t even put much limitation of the “arms” that the citizens have a right to keep and bear, although I think a case could be made that “bear” means that it is limited to weapons that can normally be used by one person (which lets out belt-fed machine guns and the larger sort of bomb).
Until the gun control advocates are prepared to try to amend the Constitution, I have no time for them. The State must be held to be accountable to the Law, for the sake of the general welfare, no matter how inconvenient this may be. A State that is NOT below the Law, but above it is an authentic menace, prone to killing far more people than individual nutters ever could.
Due to certain unavoidable reasons, the TeeWee is tuned to a local station here every morning.
The media still has their teeth in this and won’t let go: It’s still all gun-control, all the time, nearly a week later.
There is no tragedy that cannot be turned into justification for somebody’s pet cause. Likewise, voices of opposition, and especially voices of reason, must be silenced or rendered irrelevant. Facts and logic do not get people’s dander up, it takes emotion to get them to follow blindly.
Which pretty much explains everything I see or hear on network news.
The Bamster has so far decided to appoint a commission, which is Washington-speak for punting.