Screw the Children
We’d Rather Have Our Guns (or, the Valentine’s Day Massacre Redefined)
We start our family dinner with the same round-robin question every night, but I knew it was a mistake last night the second I asked it: “How was your day today?” And my husband the teacher, my two high-school children, all piped up immediately: “At least I didn’t get shot.”
Yes, Parkland happened yesterday, but the specifics hardly matter. It is, after all, the 18th use of guns at US schools this year. Guns have been found more than once at both my husband’s middle school and my daughters’ high school; I’d wager that it’s a relatively common occurrence at every school. This is the world we live in now. We no longer fear the if, we worry about the when. We ponder how we will survive the call. And we know in our heart of hearts that there Is No surviving the call. People who have lost a child will tell you: there’s no pain like it; life is never the same again. The sun will never shine as bright, you will never again experience true, unadulterated happiness, you will never view people the same way. Everything will remind you of them, and of what should have been. You are a hollow, walking shell, biding time till your own demise.
And what kind of ongoing psychic damage is being done to the millions of us on the sidelines? Why should my children’s predominant thought on an average day in America — the thought of children for more than a generation now — have to be, At least I didn’t get shot? How do we reconcile falling in love for the first time, finding the prom dress that will make us feel like a princess, wondering whether we’ll get into a good college, with whether we’ll survive a day of school? While I enjoy a close relationship with my girls, including multiple texts a day, I feel queasy receiving Every. Single. Notification. There’s a part of my nervous system that doesn’t rest easy till they walk through the door. And for the record, I’m not a nervous person. Probably doesn’t help that my niece was at Virginia Tech during that shooting oh so many deaths ago.
There is a long standing trend among conservatives — Republicans, Evangelicals, alt-right, gun advocates — to create negative, emotionally charged definitions for their opponents. To bully, badger, belittle, and deflect, rather than engage in reasonable debate. Frequently, when I write or speak about gun control, I am called, or denigrated as, some version of a bleeding heart liberal (and to be clear, I’m not even against gun ownership; I just advocate reasonable controls, much like responsible gun owners do). I understand that you’re hurting, is what I’m often told. As if I’m too distraught to think logically; as if my heart is overpowering my mind; as if I am some kind of weak woman (because, yes — women are clearly inferior to these people — even to their women).
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to grasp that with more than 1800 US deaths by gun just a month and a half into the year, a huge chunk of those could have been saved by reasonable gun controls.
To these people, I say: Fuck you. Being distraught about the murder of children does not make me less capable of understanding the statistics. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to grasp that with more than 1800 US deaths by gun just a month and a half into the year, a huge chunk of those could have been saved by reasonable gun controls (compared to, say, the six shooting deaths in Japan in a recent year). That the 30 mass shootings so far — just a day and a half apart, on average —would undoubtedly have been less severe if we weren’t so cavalier about semi-automatics. That with more than 400 children injured or killed by guns to-date, we are failing our youth miserably. And yeah, several more kids have been shot since Parkland just yesterday, but we won’t ever hear their names because those crimes weren’t heinous enough; they weren’t part of a mass slaughter.
To these people, who say they’re “praying,” who blather about “mental illness funding” (to quote the FL governor today with the A+ NRA rating), who highlight black-on-black crime, I say: Fuck you. The mentally ill are not statistically more likely to commit these crimes than anybody else, and you don’t support funding healthcare for the mentally ill anyway. Further, these mass shootings are more often than not perpetrated by young, disenfranchised white males, a la Dylann Roof. Timothy McVeigh. Adam Lanza. Devin Kelly. James Holmes. Need I go on? They are you. And as for your prayers? Empty verbiage if you’re not willing to change a thing. The only God you’re praying to is the NRA and its never-ending coffers (more than $200M in the past 20 years, according to Politifact).
Talking about the Second Amendment is a deflection. You have no valid reason or right to avoid all forms of gun control.
Your prayers aren’t saving these children. Your god gave humans the ability to reason, so why don’t you use that? Where are your counter arguments? Why can’t you respond intelligently to gun control discussions? I live in the South, I have friends and family members who own guns, so the topic comes up frequently. But when I ask a lot of gun owners pointed questions like “Why do you need to own an AR-15 or AK-47” or “Why can’t you even talk about gun control when children are dying?” or “What is wrong with training or registration?” I typically receive responses like the one I got this morning: “Sure it’s horrible, but so is abortion; so are child molesters.” Huh??? This is a deflection. Talking about mental illness is a deflection. Talking about black-on-black crime is a deflection. Talking about Muslims is a deflection. Talking about the Second Amendment is a deflection. You have no valid reason or right to avoid all forms of gun control.
To these people, who say bleeding heart liberal with a sneer, as if it’s a bad thing: Fuck you. When did it become passe to care about our fellow human beings? When did Evangelicals, so-called Christians, decide that the ten commandments were mere guidelines? When did we decide that our toys were more important than our children? I am proud to be a bleeding heart liberal, if it means that the lives of people matter to me! If you laid dying on the sidewalk and I disagreed with everything you ever said, I would still be the first person there trying to save you — because that’s what I was taught to do, as an American and as a human and as a child of God. Sunday school 101, for virtually every religion. Contrast this to the woman who countered my gun control comment last night with, “Go shoot yourself,” and later, “a bullet will take care of all of your issues.” If she put this kind of energy into saving the children, where might we be now?
Here’s an exercise. Take your beloved guns, and set them on the table. You probably don’t even lock them up anyway, since you don’t believe in any controls. Call your children into the room — heck, they’re undoubtedly anti-gun control, too. And then explain to them that their lives matter less than your right to have those guns. That you will protect your guns far more fiercely than you will protect them. That you made your choice, and the kids lost. And maybe you could hand them one or five, so they can protect themselves. Because that is where we’re at.
