(Note: I wrote this a little while ago for Facebook, then put it on my own site. It seems to have gone over well, and I thought I'd put it here.)
Warning: long, profane rant ahead.
So, we’re now finding out about a school shooting in Connecticut. Dozens dead, including a bunch of children. This is right on the heels of the shooting the other day at a shopping mall in Oregon. And earlier this year was the notorious theater shooting in Colorado. On top of who knows how many smaller incidents.
I’ll get right to the point: I am sick and fucking tired of our refusal in this country to have a rational conversation about guns. This shit needs to stop.
And don’t you even THINK about waving the Second Amendment in my face. The Second Amendment–or, rather, the fanatical insistence by some people that it means we can never, ever, even discuss anything that might keep the deadliest of weapons out of the hands of lunatics–is the greatest mistake the Founders ever made, however well-intentioned it might have been. It needs to go, at least in its current wording, and replaced with something that makes absolutely fucking clear that, in fact, every maniac is NOT entitled to collect as many assault weapons as they can afford just by dint of their American residency.
NO, I am not interested in hearing any arguments to the contrary. The bloody holy Second Amendment, and the radical, bloodthirsty interpretation of it embraced by the extremely conservative Roberts Court, are NOT the beginning and end of the argument. If we just had a little political fucking will, we could change it.
And, as a proud, native-born, liberal American citizen, I am saying right now that we need to fucking do it.
If you disagree, I’m sorry, but fuck you.
Fuck you, in the name of the children who died today in Connecticut.
Fuck you, in the name of the shoppers who died the other day in Oregon.
Fuck you, in the name of the moviegoers in Colorado. And the victims of Columbine. And Gabby Giffords. And all the others, far too many to count.
And fuck you in the name of the thousands of poor people who die every day on the streets of this extraordinary but horribly flawed country.
Every other civilized nation in the world has taken action to prevent this kind of bullshit. And, contrary to the fearful, rage-filled fantasies of the NRA, they haven’t, in fact, suffered a devastating collapse at their refusal to allow dedicated tools of homicide in the hands of their most unstable citizens. In fact, they’re doing just fine, and they look at us and wonder when the hell we’re going to come to our senses.
Unfortunately for 18 schoolkids in Connecticut, we haven’t yet.
And it’s about damn time we did.
YES, I want to take away your guns. Your freedom to be a paranoid asshole does not outweigh a child’s freedom to go to school without worrying about getting shot. Period.
And if you disagree, if you insist that gun owners and the gun lobby are completely innocent in all this, if you’re okay with more kids going to their deaths so that you can go on stroking your gun… FUCK YOU.
That is all.