“Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.” – Stephen King, It
A quick thought experiment. Instead of talking about the routine slaughter of innocent children and our fellow citizens in schools, banks, nightclubs, and grocery stores. Movie theaters, fitness centers, bowling alleys. Parades. Imagine we were talking about Islamic terrorist attacks. Hezbollah. Hamas.
Imagine there had been 565 attacks by members of the Sinaloa Cartel or Al-Qaida. Imagine dozens of airplanes hijacked and hundreds of passengers killed.
Would Rick Scott merely offer thoughts and prayers? Would Ted Cruz suggest we need more locked doors? Armored backpacks? More armed guards? More bans on drag queen story hours? (MAGA Mike Johnson says it's the rot in American hearts.)
Would law makers simply shrug and say it was a shame, but there was nothing — nothing at all — we could do to confront the horror?
Or would the nation be shocked out of its torpor and mobilize to confront the threat? We have gone to war for less.
We have gone to war for less. The Lewiston Massacre was the 565th mass shooting in the USA, so far this year. And it is not even Halloween. Good luck trick-or-treating. Last year, 647 mass shootings in our country. Staggering. Staggering we are not staggered by this. When children at school are torn apart made unrecognizable by AR-15s, the conscience of the nation should be set on fire. And we were horrified by Uvalde, and Nashville, Newtown, Parkland, Santa Fe, and Roseburg, Oregon. Horrified. For a few days. You didn't even hear about that latest school shooting, did you? We are at the point where coverage of one slaughter is interrupted by breaking news of yet another. And our doom loop of thoughts, prayers, debate, and inertia becomes numbingly familiar. Law makers across the country have rushed - RUSHED - to protect children from being exposed to books like “My Two Mommies,” and the story of Anne Frank, but not from being blown apart by killers with weapons of war and high-capacity magazines. Almost four hundred school shootings since the massacre at Columbine. Last year, there were 46 school shootings — more than any year since 1999. Two hundred dead, and another 425 injured. Hundreds of thousands have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine. Children know the sound of gunfire in the classroom. Imagine your kid was one of them. Imagine your kid gets shot next time.
After the mass shooting in Maine, Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Johnson said it was “not the time” to talk about more gun restrictions.
“The problem is the human heart. It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons,” he said. “At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment, and that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”
At the beginning of the day, we have to protect our citizens’ lives, period. You can’t be pro-life and pro-guns.