Not a moment’s peace

February 15, 2018

On a day dedicated to love, we were once again left shaking in impotent rage, witnessing the entirely preventable slaughter of innocent children.  There is no escaping the conclusion that we are a nation of immoral savages, unable or unwilling to take the simplest actions to prevent carnage on a mass scale.

In an affluent Florida suburb yesterday, a 19 year old former student burst into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, armed with an AR 15 and countless magazines of ammunition.  By the time he was finally apprehended, 17 people had been killed and 14 more had been injured.  Hundreds more teenagers who should not face a crisis more consequential than picking a prom date will be battling PTSD like veterans of Fallujah.

The politicians with the power to pass laws to keep weapons of war out of the hands of civilians, once again revealed themselves to be unthinkingly callous. Florida  Attorney General Pam Bondi (who abandoned pursuit of claims against Trump University after receiving contributions from Trump), seemed intent on demonstrating how her office had streamlined processing the victims of mass slaughter, using the news conference to explain that her office would handle all funeral costs for families of the victims (Source: Parkland News Conference, The Rachel Maddow Show, 2/14/18).

Reptilian Governor Rick Scott was even worse.  He admitted that his first thought on hearing the news was hoping that something like that never happened to his own family!  The best Scott could muster was to describe the murderer as “pure evil” as if some mystical Satanic force pulled the trigger (Source: Parkland New Conference, TRMS, 2/14/18).

It’s all bullshit.  Here is what we know.  Even by the most conservative measure, there has been one school shooting per week in 2018 (Source:  “18 Years of Gun Violence in U.S. Schools Mapped,” by Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 2/14/18).  Since 2000, there have been shootings in “43 of 50 states” at a rate of one per month (ibid).  We all know that we will play out the same Kabuki ritual, with spineless politicians sending their “thoughts and prayers,” and the NRA observing a decorous period of silence before propagandizing against any form of control.   Fox News pundits will excoriate anyone who mentions gun control for “politicizing the tragedy,” and nothing will change. It is frankly disgusting.

Our inaction is indicative of the moral rot at the heart of American society.  We have accepted mass murder at the most anodyne public places, like schools, movie theaters and country music concerts, as the price of some ill -considered misinterpretation of our Second Amendment “freedom.”  We accept reasonable limitations on the exercise of our First Amendment right of free expression.  Some of us enthusiastically support limitations on the voting rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendment. God forbid, though, that we limit the rounds of ammunition people can buy, the weapons of war that a gun “enthusiast” can purchase or the character of the people with unfettered access to a gun, from domestic abusers to terror suspects on the “No Fly” list.  Clearly, our politicians venerate violent toxic masculinity so much that they are willing to sacrifice our young on its altar.  Their depraved indifference has robbed our children of their God given, Constitutionally guaranteed right to life.  We should dedicate ourselves to making sure that they never have a moment of peace.