This morning, we saw again the destructive and devastating consequences
of gun violence in the United States. A disgruntled
former employee of a television station in Virginia, with malice aforethought
and premeditative intent, strapped a camera on himself and assassinated two of
this former colleagues and wounded a woman being interviewed on live
television. Later in the morning, he “tweeted”
and “facebooked” the video of the assassination and other messages of his
contempt. He faxed an extensive document
to ABC news sharing his grievances and rationale. Then, he shot himself.
And now will come all the solicitudes and pious platitudes that always come whenever we, as a nation, are forced to face up to the fact that our national predisposition to violence has reared its ominous head. We will beat our chests and shed our tears and say how awful it all is. We will point fingers at those we hold culpable for the situation. We will rant and rave and scream at the moon.
And then, it will pass, and we will get back to business as usual.
That is because we really don’t care. We don’t care enough about dead children and dead movie goers and dead televisions reporters to do a damn thing about it. We consider it the price you pay for a “free society” in which none of us is free from the violence of a gun. We will allow the NRA and other gun lobbies to write their checks to our “representatives” and buy their way through another murderous episode. We simply don’t care. We will hold our loved ones close and give thank that it wasn’t our family to whom Violent Death came calling.
There will be the prerequisite speeches and declarations. There will be promises of investigations and probes. And that will be enough to slake our cries for change and improvement.
Until the next shooting.
And now will come all the solicitudes and pious platitudes that always come whenever we, as a nation, are forced to face up to the fact that our national predisposition to violence has reared its ominous head. We will beat our chests and shed our tears and say how awful it all is. We will point fingers at those we hold culpable for the situation. We will rant and rave and scream at the moon.
And then, it will pass, and we will get back to business as usual.
That is because we really don’t care. We don’t care enough about dead children and dead movie goers and dead televisions reporters to do a damn thing about it. We consider it the price you pay for a “free society” in which none of us is free from the violence of a gun. We will allow the NRA and other gun lobbies to write their checks to our “representatives” and buy their way through another murderous episode. We simply don’t care. We will hold our loved ones close and give thank that it wasn’t our family to whom Violent Death came calling.
There will be the prerequisite speeches and declarations. There will be promises of investigations and probes. And that will be enough to slake our cries for change and improvement.
Until the next shooting.