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| inside jacket of Rebecca Traister's book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger |
I'm enraged this morning, waking to the news that a 28 year old ex-Marine with "possible PTSD" opened fire on a group of college kids in a popular bar and grill in Thousand Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles. He killed twelve people, including a sheriff and then himself. Many people are injured, and there's a been a call for blood donations. I don't know what to do with my anger this morning and will use this space to express it.
My rage is not directed toward the obvious target but rather toward those who persist in believing in their right to bear arms, in their right to use violence to protect themselves from the boogeyman lurking in their neighborhoods, in their right to be "good people" with guns, in their right to collect guns and place them in special locked boxes or cases, in their right to use them for "sport," in their clamor for their own "liberty." I believe that justifying owning and using guns like the Glock this man used in this point in time, November of 2018, is outrageous, that those who do are complicit in perpetuating the myth of safety in arms and the myth that owning a gun confers liberty. I believe that these people are complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of people a year in our country. I am enraged enough to believe that these people -- men AND women -- are equally as complicit as the gun men (because, let's face it, it's MEN who do this shit) because they contribute to the myth of violence being the answer to conflict. I believe that every single person who owns guns -- for sport, for pleasure, for safety -- because they can, should acknowledge their complicity and step up and do something about it.
Me, I'm going to donate some of my blood -- boiling at this point.
#fuckguns
Strongly right behind you on all points. Thank you for voicing it.
ReplyDeleteYes yes yes.
ReplyDeleteWell, as you know, my husband does hunt. And as such, he owns weapons for that purpose. But he definitely does NOT belong to the NRA and has said on more than one occasion that if they banned all automatic and semi-automatic weapons from ownership it would suit him fine.
ReplyDeleteThe United States has a gun problem. There is no need for assault weapons or hand guns in a civil society, except to kill people.
ReplyDeleteAgreed! Some publication, and I wish I could remember which one, just did a feature about the evolution of the NRA as reflected in its magazine, the American Rifleman. In the early years (1920s until about 1975) it was all about gun safety and hunting, and the covers showed bucolic scenes of bison and autumnal woods. In the '70s it started getting political, and by the early '90s it was plastered with "THEY'RE COMING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY!" hysteria. The USA is insane when it comes to guns. As we are all too painfully aware.
ReplyDeleteFeelin' it with you, my friend. -Kate
ReplyDeleteI grew up with a grandfather who was a hunter. He fed his family on the deer he shot during the Great Depression. He died in his old age while on a hunting trip, taking a nap in his cabin.
ReplyDeleteThis is completely different from the gun culture in Amerika now. The rape culture and toxic masculinity. It's all part of a whole. I don't know the way out. The NRA has politicians by their balls.
I'm very angry, too, and thank you for donating blood. xo
Amen, sister.
ReplyDeleteI hear the NRA has lost millions. I think maybe Parkland broke the back of it. I hope.
ReplyDelete