Off Topic: America and its Guns

America is an armed camp. It brims with guns. It is proud of its guns. It lauds its military above all other institutions, and it lauds its weaponry. America is a violent nation.

America loves guns. It loves guns a whole lot more than most anything else. Much more than it loves peace. Indeed many Americans equate the possession of guns with the possibility of peace. It is as if Americans cannot quite grasp that peacefulness can be attained without violent enforcement.

So we ought not be surprised by another killing spree. We ought accept it as being part of America. Land of opportunity it might be any longer, but is assuredly still the land of violence. Escalating violence.

The second amendment is an absurdity in this era of automatic weaponry. It is a shameful and stupid component of Americana. It belongs to history and not contemporary society. Yet here it is spreading death amongst us.

Guns have one purpose: to kill. So we ought not be surprised when someone uses them in order to do just that. The moment you buy a gun you are announcing that you are a potential killer. That logic is unavoidable.

Some people use guns to hunt wild animals. I have never understood why killing a defenseless animal is called a sport. It isn’t. It is a primal bloodlust. It is indicative of a cultural flaw. We ought be better, but are not. Hunting is morally abominable, unless it has some purpose other than so-called sport. Send-defense: yes. Culling a too large herd: maybe. Food: perhaps. Sport: not at all.

Some other people buy guns to defend themselves. From whom? Other people who have guns. From intruders. Guns are useless in those cases. The number of successful uses of guns as a self-defense is minuscule. Particularly when compared with the number of deaths from accidents.

Thirty-six people die a day in the US from gun wounds. Self-inflicted and otherwise. There have been one hundred and forty-two mass shootings in schools and colleges in the US since the 2012 Sandy Hook killings. This is not tragedy. It is beyond that. It is farce. Yes farce.

It is farcical when anyone offers up prayers rather than anti-gun action in response to another mass killing. It is a hollow and meaningless gesture.

I laugh when politicians offer prayers as if it was any form of a solution. It isn’t. It cannot be. It never will be. Payers are the cheapest form of political balm. They cover the weakness, the pathetic weakness, of the politicians who find themselves unable to deal with American violence.

Worse yet: this latest gun-enabled mass killing spree comes in a district where the police chief is an outspoken opponent of gun control. So outspoken that he wrote to the White House objecting to Obama’s ridiculously weak response to the rising tide of gun violence. That police chief is an enabler of mass killing. So is anyone who cannot understand that gun control is not  a violation of the ridiculous second amendment. It is simply a curtailment of it with respect to our modern technology.

America’s inability to understand that the second amendment can be worked with and around in order to reduce the flood of deaths that guns enable is an astonishing insight into its limited capacity to improve its own governance. America remains crippled by its fear of its own constitutional shadow.

I realize I am in a very small minority in the blood stained society. I do not expect our politicians to provide leadership. And I am sickened by the hypocrisy of the response.

Prayers don’t cut it. Gun control action does.

So we ought quit writing stories about how bereaved communities are ‘searching for answers’ or how this latest mass gun-enabled killing is a ‘tragedy’.

The answer is clear. And our inability to act is a farce.