Guilty
If I seem a bit... let's say "focused" on gun issues in America the last few days, it's because I feel guilty.
I feel guilty for not speaking up about the subject for many years, despite having been a strong proponent of gun control all of my adult life. I guess I'd succumbed to the idea that there was nothing practical that could be done about it - another success of the NRA.
I feel guilty because I've not always acted or advised others consistent with my core belief that we've got too damn many guns around. I've become way too casual about it, which in the end is really the biggest problem with the proliferation of guns in America - we're ALL way to casual about having killing machines lying around and in every handbag and every nightstand.
Mostly I feel guilty because it takes the killing of 20 little kids and their teachers in a Connecticut suburb to spur me to action, when hundreds of equally innocent, equally beautiful, equally deserving of a future little kids are killed every year in individual incidents, but because they happen one at a time, we don't react the same way. And when thousands upon thousands of equally deserving of a future teenagers and adults are killed every year in accidents, in murders, in suicides we seem to accept it, or at least ignore it (and isn't that the same thing)?
Fuck it. No more.
There is no one in America that needs an assault rifle for non-official use. And if you start arguing with me over the minutiae over whether an AR-15 is by definition an assault weapon or not, you might find yourself arguing with my fist. There is no one in America that needs 30+ round magazines or canisters for non-official use. Your 47 guns are not going to help you stand off a government you find oppressive - reference Ruby Ridge and Waco if you're not sure. It should not be harder to adopt a dog than it is to buy a gun. There should not be more regulations around automobiles than there are around firearms. We've made tobacco companies liable (at least to some extent) for the damage and death that their products cause - why can't we do the same thing with firearms?
30,000+ gun deaths in America every year, year in, year out. That is not acceptable.
No more.
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