Schools and Shooting

[cathschaffstump]

You may as well unfriend me now if you support the ownership of guns in the U.S.

Newtown, CT. is my tipping point, from which there is no return. I can see no reason for there to be a gun in any home. I don't care about the idea that you need to protect yourself, or that only criminals will have guns if we take guns out of the hands of good, law-bidin' people. I don't care if you like guns, but would never shoot children. The ownership of guns and a stubborn resistance against calling people out for owning them, the problem of having these weapons of easy and thoughtless violence in our hands, is the problem.

It's not the crazy people problem. Crazy people kill people with what's at hand, but people have a better chance of survival against a knife rather than a gun. It's not an irresponsible gun owner problem. Most of the guns in the hands of criminals come from regular channels. It's not a lack of training. It's not facism taking away our self-defense. It's not even a chance that the government may try to get you to do what you don't want, and you need to shoot someone. What the fuck ever.

What it is is the sheer availability of guns. So children can shoot each other. So crazy people can shoot children. So disgruntled children can snap and kill Mom and Dad. So angry lovers can passionately kill each other. So malls, homes, churches, movie theaters and schools become places where you don't feel safe because there are crazy people out there with guns. Our response? Should we buy guns to protect ourselves, carry concealed weapons, praise God and pass the ammunition, because a man and a woman need to defend ourselves in these horrible times?

Or would it be wiser to get the hell rid of the guns? Because you know, if you're trying to kill a bunch of people in a mall, and you can't get, say, a gun, or explosives, or weapons, what are you going to do? Be very frustrated, but not become a mass shooter.

Statistics, Schaff-Stump? We don't need no stinkin' statistics, but Tobias Buckell has done that work for you anyhow, and saved me some. Go read. Go read.

What, you may ask has triggered this? If this killing of tiny, innocent babies with automatic weapons that someone's MOM just had around the house isn't enough, I have no idea what it would take to cure this country of this strange mental illness and paranoia. Guys, the government is not going to take away your liberty. You don't need these guns. You strange, paranoid weirdos.

One set of my in-laws, my husband's oldest brother and his wife, who have recently decided they are going full on Tea Party, are going to get guns for themselves in light of this recent tragedy. I am amazed.

And you know, living here in tiny Cedar Rapids, twice as big as Newtown, I have lived every day of my married life knowing that the statistic could be my high school teaching husband. Or even myself, as we had a shooting lock down at my college last year. It just takes one crazy person who gets his or her hands on one of the guns made available for the public to kill with by the paranoid antiquated second amendment.

Shame on you. And shame on us for letting you continue to keep them.

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.