It's been two years since the massacre of twenty little children and six educators in Newton, Connecticut. I was really hit hard by the massacre- the children who were killed were as old as the youngest children I coach on Saturdays. Yesterday, we had our annual luncheon before our two-week break, so I was surrounded by kids all day. Over the years, we've lost a couple of the kids I coached... one mischievous-but-lovable teenager succumbed overnight to a sudden outbreak of pericardial inflammation- the last time I saw him alive, I "ripped him a new one" when I caught him smoking in front of his younger cousin, who is now a stunningly gorgeous woman who is helping with the administrative duties necessary to run the program. We lost another participant to lung cancer brought on by the toxic cloud produced by the destruction of the Twin Towers- his daughter, who was a babe-in-arms when her father died, is now an adorable, earnest five year old participant. A former athletic director was unable to attend- he is fighting a terminal brain tumor. When you have history with people, you have loss. You remember the fallen fondly, and lend emotional support to the survivors.
The real tragedy is that, two years after the massacre, there have been ninety-five school shootings, and nothing has been done to institute a national gun policy involving background checks prior to gun purchases. Nothing's going to get done- the fearmongering about confiscation of guns is too effective a political issue.
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4 comments:
You're right, but your wrong. It's not fearmongering or any other political or media driven campaign. It's the stupid, deadly, pointless and incredibly dangerous Constitutional guarantee. That fucking second amendment. Only three other nations have it, and they all have ridiculous levels of gun violence. It's the thing that prevents any kind of logical firearms regulations, the kind of thing that other nations do and take for granted. Our idiots use this stupid constitutional provision to prevent even the most reasonable restrictions on firearms ownership. And it's not going to change, because you can't just open up the Bill of Rights to change without letting the lunatics and the racists have their own take.
We had no idea what we were doing, but we built the biggest, deadliest social experiment in the history of the planet, and now we're soaking in it. You can't fix it - we'll all wear it until it all comes down around our shoulders...
mikey'r\s right, and he is wrong. The blanket coverage of the 2A is used by the NRA and the gun manufacturer's lobo allow them to drive fear-base marketing, but as with all the other amendments, there is nothing that does not allow the modification and regulation through legislation that makes them workable.
None of the other amendments are treated as sacrosanct in the way the Second is, and in fact it was not treated as such in the past. It's a perversions of our current politics created by the fear-based Republican Party and supported by the gun lobby.
Here's the thing about that 2nd Amendment...it's for white guys.
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If that shocking tragedy hasn't made people realise how f*cked up the whole gun policy is, then nothing will.
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