Saturday, October 10, 2015

What Has Happened To Us

by
Mazel tov, America. Today you beat your own grotesque record: Two school shootings, not the routine tepid one, in a day, in Arizona and Texas! And two barely-thwarted shootings, in Montana and Colorado! Also this week, nine dead in Oregon, followed by protests by gun-toting nutjobs when Obama went to pay his respects. And wait: Don't forget the  Home Depot vigilante shooting, the 8-year-old girl shot dead by an 11-year-old boy, and today, sorrowfully, what would have been John Lennon's 75th birthday. A couple of years ago, protesting the gun violence that had killed him and so many others, Yoko Ono posted his blood-spattered glasses and described the still-raw "hollowing experience" that was losing him.

God knows she's not the only one to offer up a howl of protest against our national madness. We have published research: "Mass Shooters Have a Gender and A Race." We have argued eloquently against the NRA's good-guy-bad-guy-with-guns folly, with combat vets destroying their "Heroic Gunslinger Fantasy." The editors of People Magazine, of all places, have posted the contact information for all 535 members of the House and Senate to "make (our) voices heard" on preventing further gun violence. There are some truly disquieting videos being made to shake us out of our complacency: See "Every Gun Has A History. Let's Not Repeat It." There are some heart-breaking campaigns being waged to keep guns out of the wrong hands and remember those who died when we didn't: See"Unforgotten." And Elizabeth Warren - and hopefully others - has had enough of the crazy:See her livid speech before Congress asking, "Do you represent (America) or the N.R.A.? It's time to make a choice." Way bloody past, actually.

Please go here for the original article: http://www.commondreams.org/further/2015/10/09/what-has-happened-us

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