Nurse the Hate: Another Boring School Shooting

I will admit it.  This latest school shooting barely caught my interest.  I am completely desensitized to gun violence at this point.  Unless it is something spectacular, like when the Vegas shooter blew off more automatic rounds than the Normandy Invasion, I won't even glance at it.  As predicted, we did absolutely nothing as a nation for further prevention after any of these recent shootings.  When you get right down to it, we didn't even try.  The same thing will happen here.

Yesterday was intensive media coverage of the same video of kids being led out of a school with their hands up and the shooter being led to jail.  The key is to show the same video over and over while the announcer tries to pretend that the situation is still in flux.  It isn't.  There are 17 dead kids and some assault weapons being wrapped up by police in plastic evidence bags.  It's tough to make good TV out of something which is over.  The next couple of days will focus on the hand wringing and squeezing emotion out of parents willing to go on camera and cry.  News producers love a good crying mom.  It's terrific for the ratings.  Lawmakers will step up to microphones this afternoon to try and milk some PR out of the situation, and without any shred of a moral compass say things like "our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims".  That will show them to be compassionate which they hope you remember come November.  By Friday the discussion will go to the slim possibility of crafting a plan to prevent any dipshit in the country from outfitting themselves with weapons at retail stores better than most soldiers deployed for combat.  By late next week it will have all simmered down.  The Olympics will keep everyone distracted.  Then the gun companies can pay off Congress and get back to making money.  We have been doing it for years.  We all know the blueprint by now.

It seems to me that there are two options.  Option number one is to just admit we don't care.  Let's stop pretending that this is anything else but normal.  Parents should have the realistic expectation that a slight chance exists that their kid will get mowed down by automatic gunfire in science lab.  It's not a huge chance, but just a slim one.  We all need to stop pretending that this is an unexpected event.  It isn't.  In fact, you can almost set your watch to it.  This time next month there will be at least one more spectacular mass shooting.  The bottom line is that enough people think the slight risk of being blown away with a gun is less than the effort of having to do something about it.  Let's stop crying about a bunch of dead kids.  We don't really care.  Not enough to change anything.

Option number two is change.  One thing that has become evident to me over the years is that the same repeated actions will produce the same basic results.  If we don't make radical changes in our gun policy, the same thing will happen over and over again.  This has been proven as we have gone from Columbine to the Colorado Movie shooting to the Texas Church to yesterday.  Insert whichever of your favorite insane shootings if you don't like the ones I have chosen.  There are plenty to choose from.  It's the same thing over and over.  After these events the same people try to get the same lawmakers to do the same thing over and over.  They won't.  They get paid too much money to do what they are currently doing, protecting the gun companies.  I can sort of see it from their angle.  The choice they have made is that some stranger that kills a bunch of other strangers far away from them is exchanged for the life of a Washington DC Congressman.  It's an easy trade for them to make.  Doing the right thing is conceptual.  Doing the wrong thing gives you a fabulous lifestyle.

What if we made that choice more tangible for the people that can effect change?  Most of these Congress people have kids and grand kids.  You've seen them trotted out at the end of campaign ads with the family golden retriever as they smile in family unity.  How about if terrifying looking, though completely law abiding, teams of goons outfitted to the teeth with guns just started following their kids around?  Every time Billy the Congressman's son goes to soccer, seven Hell's Angels looking guys carrying AR-15s showed up and just hung around.  Senator So-and-so's grand kid goes to the movies and is completely surrounded by tatted up guys named "Spider" resting shotguns on their legs.  They never threaten the kids.  They just hang around with their legal weapons and permits in pocket.  That way Senator So-And-So can explain to his hysterical daughter why he voted down sensible gun measures and "Spider" can go see "Jumanji 2".  "Honey!  Stop crying!  Of course I love Kendall!  Well, you need to understand that this Spider fella has a right to carry that machine gun to Kendall's birthday party at Kalahari Water Park..."

Is this a bit extreme?  Sure.  However, what is happening now isn't working for anyone.  This idea could "open a dialogue" as they say.  I feel bad for these lawmakers.  It can't be easy for these Congress members to have to come up with a new spin on the "pray for the families in this time of mourning" speech.  Having to say the same things repeatedly has to be challenging.  Even the clean cut NRA spokesman that will slither out of the marsh today will have a challenge to spin this into "an unfortunate cost for our freedoms" or some such horseshit.  Yet, this is the path we have chosen.  Oh well...  It's not the right time to talk about gun policy change, or so I have heard.  Let's get back to the Olympics and look forward to the next school shooting together.  USA!  USA!  USA!