Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Nothing to Be Done

Yet another school shooting. Nothing to be done, says the only country in the world where this sort of thing regularly happens.

I was stuck with the Fox News bike at the gym yesterday, which is how I learned about the shooting. The Fox News response was to assure us (ten times in the 40 minutes I was on the bike) that very few shootings actually happen in private Christian schools. It's those ungodly public schools that usually experience shootings. 

We have clearly signaled, as a nation, that we are far more willing to protect the rights of gun-loving Americans (less than 30% of Americans own a gun, and more than half of all guns are held by the 3% of Americans who stockpile thirty or forty weapons each) than to protect the right to life of our school children. Fetuses have a right to life. Kids in school? Fuck'em, says America. Jim Bob needs his 30 rifles, handgun, and AR-15s.

I personally own one gun, a Remington 900 home defender shotgun, which I haven't shot in probably 30 years, and which I would happily surrender if it made the lives of kids in school safer. Because, frankly, the odds of me using it in home defense approach zero, and it would be absolutely no use if the tyrannical government strips away the rights of my kid to control his own body (as increasing state governments seem intent on doing). 

But our government isn't touching this third rail. No one is going to take anyone's guns away, because the feelings of white adult conservative males -- that group whose rights are more important and more secure than anyone else's -- trump any right of anyone else in this country.

No way to prevent this.



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