Take Away the Oceans and the Stars

Guadalupe Valley, Mexico
Bruma Winery

But let’s keep our sympathies where they belong — with the powerful and the armed. With those who feel threatened in the face of the most toothless efforts to hold back the bloodshed and those who believe scary monster stories about their guns being taken away. Let’s face it, it would be easier to take away the ocean or the stars.

from Please Don't Get Murdered at School Today, by Kimberly Harrington 

Yesterday, I engaged in a long and sometimes over-wrought yet reasonable discussion with a gun enthusiast that went to high school with me in the last century. He gave me the usual arguments -- the Second Amendment, his rights, his love of hunting, his responsible gun use, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Love of nature, the eradication of deer pests. He put words in my mouth (my tiny little mother mind mouth™), insisted that I didn't understand hunting because I was a coastal elite.  I thought hmmm in my coastal elite way and stayed polite with an edge of defensiveness. He ranted a bit about sanctuary cities, said he knew a family who had lost a relative to a murderous illegal immigrant. He digressed, as did I. He was sick to death of his rights being threatened. I pointed out that he was "winning," essentially -- that he had the backing of federal law, however loosely interpreted, as well as the efforts of the most powerful lobby the country has ever known. I asked him how many guns he'd need to hunt deer for food, keep deer contained (this being an example of the responsible use of guns) and to protect his family.

He answered, 11, for a family of five. Shotguns were in there, as were rifles, I think, and a couple of pistols. I questioned his fear. He said he feared very little and neither should you.

I felt sick to death the rest of the evening and deleted the conversation.






Today, when I expressed my horror at what happened in Florida, when I gave in and said, Fuck guns, melt them all down, get rid of them, I was told to go get sterilized by another person, someone whom I don't know. I clicked on his Facebook page and saw that he was an older white man, somewhat puffy, surrounded by children. God was mentioned several times on his public page, as were fostering children, and sobriety was a common theme. He frequently used the word pussy in a derogatory way.

Sigh.

Aside from the growing piles of dead children, what breaks my heart is my own children's cynicism regarding these school shootings. Perhaps it's a way to defuse their own emotions, to dissociate from their own terror and confusion that this is where we are as a country. Both of my sons state that it'll never change, that there's no point to any of it, that there will always be guns and always be shootings and death and blood and people who justify guns and shootings and death and blood as part of being free.

Today at a Florida high school