Their "Thoughts and Prayers"

Watch closely as a hard rain falls

Here's a tasty little morsel of fact to munch on with your morning coffee: Since the massacre of twenty little girls and boys - and the six women whose job it was to educate and protect them - inside the Sandy Hook Elementary school on December 14, 2012, there have been over sixteen hundred mass shootings in the United States of America. Since that time over three-hundred shootings took place on the campuses of public schools. Ain't that a riot? On the day that the mutilated bodies of twenty little children - all barely out of infancy - became acceptable "collateral damage" to the House of Reprehensibles, the Senate and the National Rifle Association, this doomed country hurled itself - head first and smiling - straight into the pit of hell.

Exactly five years and two months after the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, some murderous little psychopath walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and killed sixteen of his former fellow classmates and the school's football coach. Again, as with Newtown, nothing is going to change. Every Republican reprehensible in Washington (and far-too-many Democratic ones to count) are comfy-cozy in the pockets of the NRA and their Über-Stooge spokesman, Wayne LaPierre. His solution to this latest, totally inevitable tragedy will be, of course, "WE NEED MORE GUNS!!!" The slaughter will continue, unabated, for the remainder of our lives on this troubled planet.  Those rivers of blood will continue to flow; those mountains of broken and bloodied corpses will continue to pile high. This is the way it's going to be from now on. There is no solution to this problem....

Did I say "no solution"? Pardonne moi, Monsieur!

Über Stooge

An epidemic of the random shootings of, say, twenty or thirty Washington politicians (with a handful of NRA reps thrown into the mix - just for shits and giggles, you understand) would do away with America's  insane gun laws - overnight. It makes my head spin to think how fast legislation would fly out of the capital building were something that tragic to occur. Please, I do not advocate the murders of public officials, I'm just pointing out (merely for your reading pleasure, I assure you) the unbounded hypocrisy of most of the politicians that the clueless inmates of Idiot Nation send to represent them in Washington with depressing regularity. I don't advocate murder. I'm just trying to make what I believe to be a dandy point. Chill.

Then again, if I hear one more pro-gun politician say that his or her "thoughts and prayers are with the victims during this trying time", please don't hold me responsible for how I might react....I'm just kidding, I'm fine.

Unfortunately for us, were sane gun legislation passed across the country tomorrow, it would take at least a decade for any tangible results to be noticed. In 2004  George W. Bush stupidly allowed Bill Clinton's assault weapons ban to expire. Since that time, too many of these people-killing-machines have gotten into the hands of too many people who should not have them. Not only should they be banned across the board, the manufacturing of the ammunition that fuels them should be outlawed as well. Wishful thinking, I know. Forgive me.

And while were on the subject of gun violence, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has made me nostalgic for Bush. Somebody shoot me please.

The demented little thug responsible for the carnage in Parkland, Florida this week was taken into custody after trying to blend in with students fleeing for their lives. Had he not decided to make a getaway, the carnage would have been much more horrific than it turned out to be. If this had been a suicide mission (as was the case five years ago in Connecticut) the death toll at Douglas High could easily have been as much as a hundred or more. Thankfully we'll never know for certain what those numbers might have been. But here's something we need to understand: the numbers will be as high as a hundred or more at some point in the future - and I'm not referring to some vague and distant future - I'm talking about the near future, kiddies. Brace yourselves for the coming storm. A hard rain is gonna fall.

If you or anyone you know are still under the delusion that these routine tragedies are "the price we must pay for our freedom", then there is no hope for you. Only when the day finally arrives that gun violence touches your lives (as it has touched mine) will you understand and appreciate your once-great nation's social and political dysfunction. And don't think for a minute that it can't happen to you. For every day that passes, for every automatic weapon that finds its way into private ownership, the chance that it will happen to you - or someone you love dearly - rises proportionately. As I said on this site on the morning after the Newtown Elementary School  murders: "A people who live in dreaded, mortal terror wondering when and where the next massacre of innocents will take place may, indeed, be many things - no argument there. 'Free' they are not. Let's just stop kidding ourselves here and now, okay?"

And while you're at it, get used to living in a nation in ruins.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED VIEWING:

Bowling For Columbine
a film by Michael Moore

This is a documentary which should be seen by everyone with an IQ above room temperature. The rest of you are on your own. Here's a link to pick it up off of amazon.com:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_11?url=search-alias%3Dmovies-tv&field-keywords=bowling+for+columbine+dvd&sprefix=Bowling+For%2Caps%2C3328&crid=3UO18TWQWV8HB

Watch, learn, think.

AFTERTHOUGHT, 8:50 AM:

Back in 2002 when I announced my candidacy for the NY state senate, I received in the mail a message from the National Rifle Association. They informed me that if my campaign was to be blessed enough to get their endorsement, I would first need to fill out this form. So I did.

 

Needless to say, I didn't get their endorsement. Go figure.