Twenty-one murdered in Uvalde, ten in Buffalo, and depending on definitions, there may have been as many as 200 mass shootings in the US so far in 2022.
Nothing is going to change because a political majority of the American population have factored in all those deaths as acceptable in terms of this equation: If I get to keep my guns and buy more of just about any type whenever and wherever I want, I’ll agree to put up with x thousands of deaths per year of innocent men and women and … oh well … little children too.
Mathematically, it might look like this:
“I” to the x power X (y/multiples of guns) X (infinite availability) = “I” to the x power + I agree to y/murder of innocents.
That political majority keeps electing politicians who keep adhering to this equation because that is what their constituents want. Of course, the NRA and the weapons manufacturers lobby to keep it this way, but it is the individual man or woman in the voting booth who makes this decision (or not, if pro-gun control individuals are too lazy or apathetic to vote).
This kind of cost/benefit factoring is not unique to the gun issue or to the US. The educated British elite were not disturbed by the death of 1 million Irish men, women and children in the Great Famine. They even sent His Majesty’s gunboats to Irish ports to guard grain ships from the starving while Irish wheat and corn were loaded for export.
There are evil people who rise up like plague blisters when these shootings happen. Witness Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar who tweeted that the shooter was a “transsexual leftist illegal alien,” and who is working so hard in those few words to be as much of a lying pig as possible, but most politicians who respond to these atrocities by saying they’ll protect the sacred Second Amendment are creeps and cynics out for more power (Ted Cruz) or just nonentities.
These kinds of cost/benefit agreements are, of course, morally insane, but then what does that make those decent people who keep putting them in office?
The gun as consecrated object and the role of a cancerous, narcissistic, atomizing individuality factors in here somewhere too and then perhaps, just perhaps, we Americans are a uniquely murderous bunch, a new breed: interfectorem Americae, “killer Americans”.
Many military historians figure that a 15% loss rate in battle (KIA, wounded, missing) will wreck that army’s fighting effectiveness. So maybe a 15% loss of the US population to gun violence would finally produce sanity. Right now we have roughly 334 million human beings living in the US. If 15% were made casualties in a short period of time – a year let’s say, that is about 51 million dead or wounded.
Before we get to those catastrophic figures however, a group of brave men and women may come forward to save us by, let’s say, offering their own children as blood sacrifices to our national idol. Let the Gun Nation bestow their ‘thoughts and prayers’ by the millions in a running tally board chyroned at the bottom of the screen. We could televise their deaths by firing squad, shower their families with riches and honors (custom, engraved AR-15’s especially). No taxes necessary. Let Donald Trump be Master of Ceremonies. Let these brave children be immortalized as icons in Rambo/Trump like poses on neon flags. Pay per view will fill the coffers of the National Treasury and maybe, just maybe, their offering will sooth the blood fury of all the American beasts and our children will be safe.
