Anti-Gun Rally in Washington D.C.

There was a rally in Washington D.C. today…an anti-gun rally. The Associated Press reported that “thousands” attended. Hmm, not “tens of thousands?” Just thousands? Not a very good turnout. Perhaps they should have waited for warmer weather.

As usual, the rhetoric was out in force, as well as some truly bizarre logic. About repealing the Second Amendment, one attendee from Maryland stated that repealing it was the only way to stop mass killings. The AP quoted him as saying, “You can repeal it. We repealed Prohibition.”

Say what? This genius wants to replace one prohibition that did not work with another? Just what kind of brain-damaged people live in the northeast, anyway?

It gets better! One of the speakers at the rally was Colin Goddard, who was shot four times during the infamous “Virginia Tech” shooting of 2007. According to the Associated Press reporter who wrote the story, Brett Zongker, “Goddard…is motivated to keep fighting for gun control because what happened to him keeps happening — and nothing's been done to stop it.”

Along those same lines was a woman named Kara Baekey in the crowd who’d come down to the rally from Connecticut. Why did she come to the rally? Listen to this bit of truly misguided and misinformed drivel from Ms. Baekey: “I wanted to make sure this never happens at my kids' school or any other school. It just can't happen again."

Look, I hate to break this to you all, but here’s the thing about shootings like those in Newtown, Connecticut and at Virgina Tech. Listen closely now…THEY WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. And there is NOTHING “the government” can do to prevent them. Hey, Mr. Goddard? The government cannot protect you from every conceivable harm. And umm, Ms. Baekey? NONE of these proposed new laws will do a damn thing toward preventing someone from waltzing into the school your kids attend and shooting up the place. Nothing. Sorry to have to tell you both that. I hope you’re not too distressed about living in a free country that is not a police state. (Not yet, anyway.)

I'm truly astonished at the lack of critical thinking expressed by Mr. Goddard and Ms. Baekey. Astonished! Banning “assault weapons” will not stop these shootings. Limiting the size of gun magazines will not do it. As long as there are guns in this country, more shootings will happen.

In the Associated Press article (which appeared in my Yahoo News feed), there was a picture of a woman holding a sign that read: “A gun should be very hard to buy.” Presumably, she means “by law-abiding citizens.” Which makes absolutely NO sense. Zero sense. “Law-abiding citizens” are not the ones going around shooting up colleges, movie theatre crowds and elementary schools.

Guns are already “very hard to buy” for criminals. And yet …somehow…inexplicably…they manage to obtain them! They do it in the same way that people obtain illegal drugs; they sure don’t go skipping down to your local CVS pharmacy and buy a kilo of weed or an ounce of coke.

People really need to wake up and get to work on the real cause of these shootings. We need to try to bring our culture back from the place we’re at now, which is an environment which glorifies war and violence. And yes, we glorify war, just admit it. Every soldier is a “hero” now. We lionize the noble “warfighter” as someone to be admired and extolled. Since the end of WWII the U.S. has turned war into an Olympic sport at which we particularly excel if not dominate.  We love war.  It reinforces our smug, superior attitude that people in other countries seem to hate.

Oh, and you think we don't glorify and condone violence? By playing video games like “Call Of Duty,” young boys can vicariously experience what it “must be like” to be on a commando squad in a hostile land. The effects are quite realistic, at least visually. I've played it once - not my cup of tea. Call me a faggot but I get no thrill from pretending to kill people, not even "bad guys." But I'll tell you, it is quite disturbing to watch a person playing this game and seeing the palpable joy of killing they are feeling. It is, apparently, addicting.

And then we wonder why one of them goes crazy…some disaffected lunatic with an axe to grind grabs a real gun and goes out to exact his revenge on society and die in an awesome, romantic blaze of glory?

And then we blame the gun?


HERE is the article referenced above