The lieutenant governor of Nevada said yesterday was a great day for America. It was a great day for us because we all came together. Strangers helped strangers. Blood drives are over capacity. Go-Fund-Me’s are raising millions of dollars. The president slowly read through a prepared script and momentarily didn’t sound like an insane douche bag. We are giving each other thoughts and prayers. What a great day. What a crock of horse shit.
How about we stop having these great days when we all have to come together and give thoughts and prayers? Why can’t we have horrible days, like they do in Japan, Sweden, England, Canada, Australia, and everywhere else on the planet where they don’t have to constantly be coming together to give each other thoughts and prayers because this shit doesn’t happen anywhere else at the rate it happens in America.
And the thing is, Las Vegas isn’t anymore dangerous than any other place in the nation. That means, it can be dangerous at any given moment. How about it stop being potentially life-threatening to go to an outdoor concert, or a movie theater, or a university, or a gay nightclub, or an elementary school, or a church, etc?
We don’t know the shooter’s motives yet because he’s not brown with a beard. We don’t know what restrictions to place on us other than ignoring our gun laws. Did the guy suffer from a health crisis? Was he mentally unstable? Did he have gambling debts? Did his girlfriend just dump him? Did he really hate that Big Green Tractor song? Do we ban bad health, gambling, girlfriends, and crappy, corny, gag-inducing country songs or just all songs about tractors? Because we’re not going to touch our gun laws.
Our Second Amendment is really important. If you listen to conservatives, it means we should have access to anything that has been built to kill people. Did the founding fathers want us to have nuclear weapons or mustard gas, or does it stop at semi-automatic weapons with magazines capable of holding up to 30 bullets?
I stayed out of the online debates today, but I read a few. One of my conservative f—tard friend’s first priorities was to defend guns. He said they weren’t built to kill, they were built for sportsmen and defending your family. That’s some more bullshit. When was the last time you read about a guy needing an Uzi to defend his family from a burglary or to stop a holdup at a Starbucks? Why is it a violation of your freedom to restrict the amount of ammunition one has, or the number of semi-automatic rifles one owns. Would it violate your freedom if we stop selling semi-automatic rifles that can easily be made into automatic weapons with a $50 converting kit and a YouTube video? Why do innocent people have to do die because you have to compensate for your tiny penis?
We don’t change our gun laws. We even made it easier for mentally unstable people and sketchy people on the no-fly list to buy guns. And, we have thoughts and prayers. Each time this happens we give thoughts and prayers. And when it happens again, we give more thoughts and prayers, and we do it the next time and the next time. I’m starting to think thoughts and prayers aren’t enough.
I’ve already seen a few cartoons on this. The conservative cartoonists (and there are several) didn’t touch the gun subject. They had Uncle Sam hugging, or Hell was waiting for the bad guy. Bad guys don’t go to Hell. Bad guys rent corner suites on the 32nd floor overlooking an outdoor concert and bring Hell to everyone else. The bad guy has over 23 semi-automatic weapons in his hotel suite because they’re easy to purchase in America, and he had 19 more at home. When the rare shooting does occur in another nation, you don’t hear of the bad guy owning 42 fucking guns.
Am I the only one this sounds ridiculous to? Forty-two guns. Our freedom mandates someone can own 42 guns? I don’t think I own 42 of anything. Hell, I only have five guitars, six if you count the one sitting busted in a guitar case.
Do we even mark this as an act of terrorism? If the guy was brown you can bet your ass Donald Trump would have tweeted out it was definitely terrorism. But in this case, the guy was old, rich, white, angry and born in the good ole U.S. of A. In fact, he sounds like he fits Donald Trump’s demographic. Maybe we should deport old, fat, rich, angry, American-born white guys.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s spokesgoon, said, “now is not the time to discuss gun control.” Right about the point that we can talk about gun control there comes another incident making it the time not to talk about gun control. But, we can thoughts and prayers the shit out of it.
I gave up on this nation ever doing anything about the mass distribution of guns when we decided we can live with 20 children being gunned down in an elementary school. It’s easier to live with dead babies than with restrictions on our guns, or worse yet…gun lobbies not handing checks to Republicans. But, we can give those children thoughts and prayers. If you’re accepting money from the NRA or defending the rampant mass distribution and easy access to weapons only designed to kill human beings, there is no amount of thoughts and prayers that will wipe the blood from your hands.
Personally, I’d rather be forced to listen to that Big Green Tractor song than hear one more person say “thoughts and prayers.”
Clay Jones can be reached at [email protected]