OK, some twisted bastard in Newtown, Connecticut, just shot and killed 28 people – 20 of them children aged between 5 and 10 years old. It’s upset me so much that I know I won’t be able to write today, so I’m just going to vent a little and hope you’ll forgive me.
I honestly don’t know why it’s upset me so much. It’s the kind of thing that happens all over the world, all the time. Every time some bunch of thugs calling itself an “army” or “freedom fighters” lobs a bomb into a city street, children die. Every time some bunch of government-sanctioned arseholes calling themselves a “corporation” seeks to enhance their “shareholder value” by dumping their shit in the air or the water, children die. Every time some crazy bastard who believes he is “ordained” by a “church” condemns contraception, poverty is further entrenched, AIDS is unchecked, and children die.
Maybe it’s just because it’s close to home. Maybe it’s because I can see those twenty families going home to the Christmas presents they hid in the cupboard with such expectations of happiness. Maybe it’s because I can see those twenty children at their desks. Maybe it’s because I’ve met people like that dickhead with his Sig Sauer semi-automatic, his Glock 9mm handgun and his combat gear, because I see them in the street, because they are just ordinary dickheads – until they pull a stunt like that.
Maybe it’s because I used to live in Switzerland, where they make the Sig Sauer 556. I know lots of Swiss people. I still have Swiss friends. I can imagine the factory. I can imagine the workers. The Sig Sauer 556 is a very lethal weapon. Technically, it is much like that old friend of the armed thug, the Kalshnikov, only much improved by the Swiss. It’s not a hunter’s gun. It’s not a sportsman’s gun. It’s a killer’s gun. It’s the kind of thing that US SWAT teams use to kill people with quickly, efficiently, and effectively. Well, we can all vouch for the effectiveness of this splendid weapon in killing small children after today’s demonstration.
Maybe it’s because it is so obviously stupid to make weapons like this available to anybody who wants one. The killer was a 20-year-old. For all I know, you can’t even drink at 20 in Connecticut. Yet you can own a machine designed to kill people as expediently as the Sig Sauer 556 can. The reason? Because it’s in the constitution. What a fucking stupid excuse that is. Get it out of the constitution. Do it now. Children are dying! 8,800 people a year are dying! Change the damned constitution you morons. Or do you like what’s going on? Or maybe you think that if 20-year-old nutjobs didn’t have Sig Sauer 556es they’d find some other way to murder 28 people in a couple of minutes? (Well, that’s the argument that goes, “It’s people who kill people, not guns.” Which is so fucking stupid I could scream. That’s an argument for giving Iran nuclear weapons, you idiots. No, Iran wouldn’t attack the USA with knives because they couldn’t get their hands on nukes – even though the deeply religious fuckwits in charge would dearly love to. You see? Take away their capacity to do harm, and less harm is done.)
Everything I look at today seems trivial. Everything I do seems pointless. It’s not because the world is any worse today. It isn’t. Far more children died of starvation today than were shot down in their classrooms and governments everywhere nod and smile at it just they way they will nod and smile at this slaughter and not do a thing about it. Why should a government that encourages turning food into “biofuels” and pushes up the price of corn so that America can save money on petrol regardless of the families all over the world this nudges into poverty and starvation, care about 20 schoolkids more-or less? Obama’s crocodile tears did not move me. If he doesn’t like it, he, more than any of us, can change it, speak out against it, put up legislation, get the guns out of people’s homes.
OK, that’s enough ranting. It doesn’t make me feel any better anyway.
Read your comment on Terrible Minds and here I am. Your words are mine, this whole thing sucks. American still think they are cowboys. I mean, Chuck Wendig learned to shoot at 8? He had a hunting licence at 12? Are there even insurances in the US which cover hunting accidents caused by 12 year olds? Very few things can shock me, but this American attitude towards guns does. It’s disgusting, I cannot accept the idea 20 children died because of it. I’m just very angry
Thanks for dropping by, Louisa. It turns out the boy may have been autistic and some are saying sociopathic. Now the debate has turned to how to keep guns away from the mentally ill – much to the relief of the gun lobby, I suppose. Yes, it’s disgusting, frustrating and very, very sad.