How Many More? A Painful Redux

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I don't make a habit of republishing old posts here in the Den. I do so with one exception and that is in honor of September 11th. So it's got to be something pretty momentous to get me to republish a post. I think that 58 people slaughtered by a lone terrorist (because that is EXACTLY what he was), carrying a multitude of automatic weapons worthy of an elite army assault team, seems pretty momentous to me.

I published the post below on 3rd October 2015 in response to yet another school shooting that left ten people dead. What gutted me earlier today when I reread the post is that I couldn't even remember where that shooting occurred. That's how common these shootings are and how desensitized we've become to them. Here we are, nearly two years later to the day, living the horror of the worst mass shooting in the United States, for now. There will be another one, a worse one because we will continue to tolerate this madness.

We can bang on all we want about when is the "right time" to talk about gun control. Once this country decided it was super cool with the slaughter of twenty children, some of whom were only a couple of years older than my grandson is today, then the gun control debate was over.

Our leaders will wring their hands, offer up their prayers, tweets and platitudes, and then do absolutely nothing. And soon enough, I'll republish this post, with more editorial comment in italics, with the occurrence of an event with an even higher body count. And nothing will change.

I'm sad. I'm angry. I'll let my legislators know where I stand on this. I will make my voice heard even though I fear that we are going to continue to choose to let these things happen.

3rd October 2015
Another day, another mass shooting here in the United States. Ten dead, including the perpetrator, in another senseless mass shooting at yet another school.

How many more of these incidents will we tolerate? Apparently our tolerance knows no bounds.

Another shooter who fits an all too familiar refrain. Loner, entrenched in the Internet and all that lurks within its infinite, murky well, fascinated by other similar murderous acts. And yet those that know these shooters all say, "I'm shocked." "Never saw it coming."

How many more of these incidents will we tolerate? See above.

Our elected representatives all follow the same script in the wake of this madness. They take to social media and declare their sympathy for the victims and their willingness to pray for those who have been lost. This is their 'action.' Kudos on your hollow actions. Thanks for taking the time to send a tweet. Call me crazy, but I don't see how a Tweet is an act of absolution for your collective cowardice and unwillingness to address this insanity.

How many more of these incidents will we tolerate? See above.

I guess it's easier to fixate on what a former child star turned epic skank is not going to wear when she hosts "Saturday Night Live" tonight than how we can address this madness. See the pregnancies of the Kardashian trollops.

I guess it's easier to play a parlor game of "What Will The Megalomaniac Donald Say Today" than to address the mental health crisis in our country that is a key driver of these killings. I. Can't. Even.

I guess it's easier to ignore the fact that our children are being taught how to survive a mass shooting from their earliest days in elementary school than it is to question why anyone should be allowed to have a full-on weapons depot in their basement.

How many more of these incidents will we tolerate? This is now a rhetorical question.

Given our track record, there seems to be no limit. When will we tire of it? Apparently never. When will we do something to make it stop? We'll see if the next one finally does it.

"This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America." President Obama

Weapons of War

What's your preferred weapon of war?

Every other Sunday, I have the opportunity to lead the discussion / teach our adult Sunday School class at church. As ours is a lay clergy and we serve on a volunteer (or 'voluntold' depending on your perspective) basis, I've had this Sunday School gig for a few years now and it's one I really enjoy. More often than not, I feel like I've come away as the one who has learned the most. Today was no different.

We focused our study on a group of people who, after their conversion, decided to bury their weapons of war and covenanted to never raise them again. As we discussed this, I asked the following questions:

What are the metaphorical weapons of war are you carrying that you need to bury?

Why is it so difficult to bury them?

I stressed the metaphorical bit because the last thing this needed to turn into was a battle royale over the Second Amendment. I mean that would have been fun, but wrong place, wrong time. Even I know that. Although no one ponied up with their own 'weapons of war,' I was cool with that. It meant as an introspective, thought-provoking question. We did have a solid discussion  about the challenges of letting those weapons go. These are often very personal things can they can, oddly enough, actually bring us comfort. This is especially true when they are used as defense mechanisms.

I started thinking about the weapons of war that we carry. Here's a few of them, and this is by no means an exhaustive list:

• The Grudginator: Deployed for ages and a personal favorite of many, this weapon is timeless and is prized for its nasty efficient simplicity. Known for its ability to store up power and feed itself over long periods of time, it is expert in dividing friends and family. It has some wicked side effects, including an ability to blind the good judgement of those who choose to carry this weapon. It is also amazingly unpredictable as to when it goes off. It does have an uncanny ability to explode during family reunions and at the reading of wills.
• The Judge-o-matic XLS: Like the aforementioned Grudginator, this one has been around for ages. It is a wily one too. Once in the hands of people, it embeds itself and gives them a sense of moral superiority that leads in almost every case to the ostracizing of others for the way they act, look, believe, or even love. One of its most profound side effects is rampant intolerance and divisiveness. 
• The Snark Missile: This is a tricky one. In well-trained hands, it can be a funny little devil, deployed in conversation to point out irony or absurdity. More often than not though, it's an invective laden bomb typically deployed to mask the insecurities and discomforts of its user. 

There are so many more weapons that we carry in our own personal arsenals. Like the countless number of warheads that the US and the former Soviet Union amassed, we've got way more in our arsenals than we'll ever use. I know I'm a real big fan of The Snark Missile. To give it up now, during the greatest gift snark has ever been given - the unholy Trump/Pence alliance and the train wreck that is the Republican presidential campaign - my Twitter feed would never be the same. If watching "The Americans" has taught me anything, it's that the Russians had just a hard a time getting to peace with us (US) as we did with them.

Take a look at what you're carrying. What can you do without? Which ones can you bury?