GUNS, GUNS, GUNS

DECEMBER 1, .2021 – I must confess. When I heard about the latest shootings—at a school, with an assault rifle—I moved quickly to other concerns. After all, this is “’Mrca,” land of the Second Amendment. But more to the point (“gun barrel”?), it’s the land of a ratio of firearms to people of close to 1.00 to 1.00, or even more to the point (“bullets”?), we’re a country awash in ammo. Ultimately, we’re a violent culture and one so hellbent on being “free,” we don’t stop to ask, “Free from what?”

Certainly not free from gun violence.

We reached the tipping point generations ago when people believed they needed a gun to protect themselves against other people with guns, thus assuring out-of-control proliferation of firearms.

The epidemic won’t end absent a fantasyland operation in which members of the gun religion (who, often are also members of religion-religion) move to the South, which then secedes (successfully) under the “Don’t Tread on Me!” flag. Our gun fetish is no more likely to change than will our past, irrespective of our interpretation of it, which, in many quarters, has become the stuff of myth and legend.

Am I unduly pessimistic? I’m merely realistic. Demographic change won’t necessarily lead to cultural change. I have faith in young generations, as well as in immigrants, but I’ve also observed the immense power of the prevailing culture to swallow whole, opposing tendencies.  I recall here my pre-pandemic conversations with Lyft and Über immigrant-drivers, most of whom were on a fast-track to making as much money as possible as quickly as possible—an inherently American trait. Many of my drivers also espoused surprisingly conservative political views. As to the younger generations, they seem to be more enlightened than Boomers and the remnants of older generations, but I note that “Kid” Rittenhouse is just that—a “kid”—as is the monster in Oxford, MI who, to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb, “took his assault rifle to school one day, school one day, school one day.” Ditto other school shootings too numerous to tally.

Don’t get me wrong. “Team America” has a lot going for it. Why else would people from failed states want to come here? We’re big, we’re proud, we’re powerful, and if you’re poor, you get free medical attention at the nearest emergency room—provided you can stay alive during the interminable wait because every bed in the hospital is taken by the onrush of non-vaccinated Covid patients who thought the disease was a hoax or the vaccinations doctored with micro-micro-chips or stuff more harmful than the ingredients of [take your pick of processed foods].

I’ve grown weary of #GunsWithoutControls, along with . . . #MeNow, #NoVaxx, #GovernmentBad, #BlackLivesNeverMattered, and #Jan6CapitolTourists. Have I forgotten anything? Oh yeah, the elephant in the room: #ClimateChangeNotHappeningUSA. And the “F_ _ _ BIDEN” signs across the border in Wisconsin—home of libs Robert LaFollette, Gaylord Nelson, and Russell Feingold, but also the den of Joe McCarthy.

America the beautiful, America the wonderful, America . . . the crazy.

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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson