Alas, gun violence has become so commonplace in the United States that reacting to it has now descended into gallows humor.
Only this explains Reddit compiling a list of every mass shooting this year, which now stands at 355, under the subreddit heading “Guns Are Cool.” (A mass shooting is defined as any shooting that results in four or more people being killed or wounded.)
Only this explains the Huffington Post reporting on the latest shooting yesterday in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14 and wounded 18, with this sobering headline:
There Have Been More Mass Shootings This Year Than There Have Been Days: 355 mass shootings in 336 days … and counting.
And only this explains President Obama reacting with this feckless and resigned lament:
[W]e have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in world.
(CBS News, December 2, 2015)
But nothing puts the crazy nature of gun violence in the United States into perspective quite like this “politifact,” courtesy of the August 27, 2015, edition of the New York Times:
More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history…
There have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths since 1968, compared to 1,396,733 cumulative war deaths since the American Revolution.
Think about that folks. Then ask yourself why the NRA is not considered a far greater threat to this country than ISIS.
The NRA propagates a constitutional justification for the rabid proliferation of guns, which are specifically designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. But this is even more specious than the religious justification ISIS propagates for the rabid proliferation of terrorism.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has perpetrated a brazen and unconscionable fraud on the American people by pretending to be arch defenders of their right to keep and bear arms. Because the NRA is just the lobbying arm of gun manufacturers, and its sole mission is to ensure that those manufactures have the right to sell as many guns of every type to as many people as possible. Period!
(“The Second Amendment and Gun Control,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 19, 2012)
Incidentally, I applaud the New York Daily News for calling out Republican politicians for continually rushing to offer prayers for the victims of gun violence, while continuing to legislate what the NRA propagates. Here is the pithy, provocative headline it emblazoned over its entire front page today:
God isn’t fixing this.
Now if only the media would neutralize their anti-Muslim headlines about radical Islamic terrorism. They can do this by screaming headlines about radical Christian terrorism every time a Christian goes on a rampage, especially given that Christians commit over 95 percent of the mass shootings that terrorize this country.
More to the point, unless advocates for gun control can raise more money to defeat these venal politicians than the NRA raises to elect them, Congress isn’t fixing this either. After all, Republicans are now so committed to championing NRA propaganda, they argue — with a straight face — that even legislation that merely prevents certifiably insane Americans from buying assault weapons would violate the fundamental liberty of all Americans.
Even more reprehensible, though, is the way gun merchants salivate after every shooting tragedy:
‘The gun business was very much accelerated based on what happened after the election and then the tragedy that happened at Sandy Hook,’ said Ed Stack, the chief executive of Dick’s Sporting Goods, a leading gun and ammunition retailer…
‘You can see after a tragedy, there’s also a lot of buying,’ said Jeff Buchanan, the chief financial officer of Smith & Wesson.
(Daily News, December 3, 2015)
I have waxed indignant about gun violence in too many commentaries over the years to comment on this latest fusillade much further. Indeed, how can outrage be anything but contrived now that gun violence has become as American as Apple pie?
Accordingly, I shall end with these few points:
- Just as Jihadi Muslims terrorize fellow Muslims more than anybody else, gun-loving Americans terrorize fellow Americans more than anybody else. So, who’s calling who fanatics?
- Political quibbling over labeling gun violence a mass shooting or terrorism amounts to a perverse distinction without a difference.
- The venality of politicians is surpassed only by that of journalists, who provide obsessive media coverage of mass shootings more to generate ratings (by preying on fears) than to inform.
I don’t know why the media always reward these psychotic people by giving them the fame they covet; that is, by plastering their pathetic mugs all over television and on the front page of every major newspaper … worldwide, and reporting pop psychology about why and how they did their dastardly deeds. Isn’t it clear to see, especially in this age of instant celebrity, why some loser kid would find this route to infamy irresistible?
You’d think – given the record of these psychotic and vainglorious episodes since Columbine – that we would have figured out by now that the best way to discourage them is by focusing our attention on the victims and limiting what we say about the shooter to: May God have mercy on your soul as you burn in hell!
(“Massacre in Omaha,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 7, 2007)
Until the next shooting then; but, to be true to myself, I shall refrain henceforth from commenting.
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