16 February 2008

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Nothing is more aggravating that writing for an hour and then forgetting that if you put something in a search engine without opening a new window, you're going to lose whatever you failed to post.

So I'll sum up: two weeks ago five women were massacred at a Lane Bryant store outside Chicago.  Two days ago five students were massacred at a university just outside Chicago.  In response to the school shooting, President Bush today said that "all anyone can do is pretty much pray."  Yeah, that'll stop everything.  Of course, Bush is a Republican, and this is an election year (even though, thank God, he won't ever run for anything again) so he can't say anything that will piss off the NRA.

Look, I'm realistic.  The 2nd Amendment isn't going away.  Some people need a gun to feel safe.  Some folks like to hunt.  I respect that.  I'm not a gun owner and I will never be one, but that's a personal choice.

But for God's sake, it seems like people are being slaughtered every week now.  There have been five multiple shootings in the country in the last ten days.  When is it enough?  When the hell is someone somewhere going to say something?  Where is Hillary Clinton?  John McCain?  At least Barack Obama said something today, though he had to express support for the 2nd Amendment before anything else.

If you go to the NRA homepage (google it, I'm not linking to them, ever) you'll see no mention of the Northern Illinois shooting.  It's like it never happened.  How many people are they willing to let be sacrificed before they acknowledge a problem? 

I've reached the point where I am fully convinced that it is just a matter of time before my life is affected by someone with a gun who has no business having one. 

I can't imagine going to the store or going to class and have it be the very last thing I do on this Earth.  It's numbing to think about.  Worse yet is the idea of it happening to someone I love.

Remember, guns don't kill people.  People kill people.  But as Eddie Izzard says "I think the gun has something to do with it.  Go up to someone and yell BANG! and see if that kills them."

Turns out, it's good that what I originally wrote got chomped.  It was much more snarky, and pretty unintelligent.

I'm really, really sick of hearing about people getting shot who have done nothing wrong, who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When?  When is enough enough?  How many more people have to die?  We've spent an enormous amount of money fighting terrorism since 9/11, when 3000 people died.  Not to marginalize their deaths, but no one has died in America from terrorism since that day.  It's estimated that close to 200,000 people have been shot to death since 9/11.  And we haven't done a goddamn thing about it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When Jim Hoge was running the Sun Times, back in the eighties, he devoted an entire paper to handgun deaths during the previous week.  THE WHOLE PAPER. There wasn't a story about anything else.  I should have saved it.

Mrs. L