Culture Corner: USA - The Sky Is Blue

I’m pissed off, really. What the &#$! is happening to America?!?!? I turn on my computer today to find yet another person has gone on a shooting spree. Are we stone faced with indifference?  Or, as crazy as it sounds, do we want to change the situation for the better?

As our military fights abroad for reasons we’re uncertain about, we too fight in our own land - and it’s so easy!! Supplied by the world’s largest private gun manufacturing sector, acquiring the ability to erase life is as easy as buying groceries.  Not just grandpa’s blunderbuss to chase Bambi, at our disposal are weapons capable of taking down the entire herd in moments. Why? Why are guns like these so readily available to a general public who has proved itself incapable of self control?  Even scarier, no longer does Jim Bob want to kill Billy Ray for banging his girlfriend, he now becomes Riley Smith, local respected youth who meander into local universities to kill dozens – dozens! - of people, all of whom he has no personal grudge against, the randomness of it all seeming to provide the joy.

On a web page announcing the recent school shooting, directly below the headline was the following link: “Upload your school shooting video here”. What the #$&$%#*%?!?!? Is nothing sacred?  Is it all just a game?  Even better, is the media to blame for this frantic attempt for ratings, or, are they only catering to a disillusioned society who wants to see the blood and gore (not to mention gain financially from their “good luck” of having been at the right place at the right time to capture such “valuable” footage). Below this was another ten or so links with articles assigning blame six ways from Sunday.  The school should have done this, the police should have done that, the crazy youth today, the lackof religion, blah blah blah.  Not one made mention of the extreme accessibility of weapons as the fault to blame!!  Not one made mention of society rebelling against these results!  Not one made mention of radical changes to our system to prevent such a thing from happening to you!  It was just a load of squabbling and henpecking, one more “tragedy” on a list growing longer by the month.

As long as Americans continue to live in a cave, thinking the 2nd Amendment and the gun industry are assets, the disparity between a realistic perspective and public opinion will continue to reveal itself in things such as shootings, no matter how many die.  The idea that millions of guns are available to anyone who wants is too obvious for everyone to be ignorant of. But yet the overwhelming majority are, seemingly unable to put two and two together.  This angers me, greatly. The sky is obviously blue. You have a choice: discontinue mass private gun manufacturing and severely change laws, or face consequences like mass murder. You can’t have both millions of guns floating freely and a safe populace.  Human nature simply doesn’t work that way.  Is the gun industry’s contribution to the economy so vital that it outweighs the value of lives? Come back to reality, America.

In my head, I have the image of a man opening a door, and every time he does, he receives a punch to the face.  Rather than leaving the door closed, he continues to open it, asking to be hit. “Maybe this time I won’t get hit?” Bam. “Maybe this time I won’t get hit?” Bam. And on and on… Such is the greed and stupidity of the American populace and its representatives in government: absorbed in the moment, unable to detach themselves and think rationally about the real reasons for these occurrences, the obvious solution is denounced and they open the door, again. Bam. Bam. Bam, like a gun going off in a school.