Guns in America — An outline for a story I don’t want to have to write

1. Intro:

• The 2nd Amendment can go fuck itself.
• It is a poorly written, worded and punctuated paragraph the result of which has seen centuries of misinterpretation, court cases, propaganda and preventable deaths.

As it appears in the Constitution

• The fact that there are multiple ways to interpret it, due to various different “original” versions each with different punctuation, or arguments over the 18th century definition of “well regulated” (some feel it means “well trained”) has almost become irrelevant. However one interprets the original intent, it is clearly not working in the best interest of the country or its citizens. It is an amendment to the original document. Therefore, as the United States has done on numerous occasions, this “sacrosanct” bit of business can and should be amended.

2. Context:

• The realities of the late 18th century differ greatly from the realities of today — the “right” to bear arms needs to reflect these realities.
• Weaponry in 1791 was primitive compared to what is available today. While not as primitive as many gun-control activists would like to imagine — technology had advanced beyond the typical ball and musket type weapon many of us imagine, to include rifles that could fire up to 40 rounds before reloading. Still, they were primitive enough that it bares mentioning.
• Transportation was primitive as well — one would have to maintain a murderous rage for a long time as travel was difficult. Individuals were less likely to travel great distances with the express purpose of murdering other people. Military operations not withstanding, of course.
• News was reported very slowly and relatively infrequently — 24-hour news cycles and social media weren’t riling people up enough to want to commit murder.
• Those still loyal to the King of England were living in the same country as those believing in the new democracy. A brutal war between these two factions had just ended. It wasn’t beyond reason to fear that a Loyalist uprising could bring more bloodshed or an attempted overthrow of the US President. Giving citizens who believed in the new Democracy and its new Constitution the right to arm themselves against such a scenario made sense in 1791.
• Americans may disagree on a great many things — but the likelihood that a democratically elected president in the US is going to confiscate all the hundreds of millions of weapons currently in circulation and usher in an era of tyranny is about 0% fucking likely.
• Even if that US President is named Trump, Obama or Clinton. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, your fears that the federal government is going to show up out of the blue to kill you, and all those like you, for no reason is sheer deluded paranoia. Fears being stoked by those with a vested interest in you continuing to purchase their wears.
• Trust, if they do, your AR-15 won’t save you.

3. Democracy vs. NRA

• American style Democracy guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to practice any religion without persecution and freedom to assemble peacefully — from the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

• It also guarantees the right to bear arms:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

• In 2016 these two concepts can not co-exist.
• If all citizens have the right to believe and express extremist views, including views that seek to oppress, invalidate or terminate those that disagree with those views, then having unfettered access to killing machines makes no fucking sense.
• It must be one or the other. Trump is trying to limit the nature of the Democracy while preserving the gun rights as understood in 2016.
• The danger here arises once one single person, government entity or ethnic group gets to decide who is still guaranteed protections under the Bill of Rights.
• If one group is granted legal permission to live freely while others are oppressed and/or restricted, the result is an angry mob with access to guns. That angry mob becomes an armed insurrection. Chaos ensues.
• Early gun control laws prohibited slaves, or any people of color, from legally owning guns for obvious reasons. They didn’t want a large oppressed group to arm itself and mow them down. Even dogs were considered to be a weapon if owned by a person of color who wasn’t granted a license to own one.
• Therefore, it only makes sense to limit everybody’s access to guns (especially those specifically designed to impose maximum harm on others).
• We can never be truly free if hateful, unstable, ignorant people have easy access to guns*.

*Just to be clear, I’m not saying slaves were hateful, unstable or ignorant. Though, having a gut full of white-hot hate was probably an occupational hazard.

4. The NRA

• The NRA has outsized influence over the US Congress and Senate. According to OpenSecrets.org, a non-partisan guide to the influence of money in US politics, in 2014 the NRA contributed $974,152 to political campaigns, leadership PACs, political parties, and outside spending groups. The top five recipients of this money?

1. The RNC
2. The Nat’l Republican Congressional Committee
3. The National Republican Senatorial Committee
4. The Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania
5. The Republican Party of Kentucky

• It spent $3,360,000 lobbying Congress (half of the 35 NRA lobbyists in 2014 previously held US government jobs) — top issues:

1. Firearms, Guns & Ammunition
2. Fed Budget & Appropriations
3. Civil Rights & Civil Liberties
4. Natural Resources
5. Taxes

• It spent $25,860,481 on outside spending:

1. For Democrats: $24,262
2. Against Democrats: $15,200,018
3. For Republicans: $10,823,998
4. Against Republicans: $92,034
5. Communication Costs: $1,164,137

• That one well-funded organization with a perverted ideology regarding gun rights and manufacturing can lobby the US government without impunity is a sad legal reality. The more disturbing reality is how easily these politicians are swayed by NRA largess. Most of these elected officials are passing objectively dubious legislation (which many of their constituents disagree with) for fear that the NRA will block their attempts for reelection and take campaign donations in exchange for compliance.
• So you must ask yourself, “does my representative value his/her love of power and guns more than my right to safety?” “Would this person rather vote down any reasonable attempt to regulate gun rights more than he/she would fight to protect children in schools, worshipers at church, workers at an office party, viewers in a movie theater, LGBT people celebrating Pride at a night club?” Because if the answer to any of those questions is “yes”, then that motherfucker should not be allowed to govern. You should threaten their reelection chances by not voting for them again.
• Fifty US Senators, all of them Republican, voted to block a bill that would have prevented people on a terrorist watch-list from buying a gun. Where is the sense in this? How does the right to bear arms trump the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? People who have made clear their intentions to murder US citizens based on ideology alone should not have a guaranteed right to bear arms. They are not defending themselves against tyranny. They are committing heinous acts of violence.
• It should also be noted that NRA Headquarters flaunts a plaque quoting the 2nd Amendment, conveniently leaving out the opening few words about the “well regulated militia”. Thus their version of the 2nd Amendment is worded, “…The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

5. The #Filibuster

• How fucking ridiculously outrageous is it that Senate Democrats had to lecture their Republican counterparts for fifteen hours about the dangers of allowing people on terror watch lists to purchase assault weapons? Is this the best we can do? Send meaningless thoughts and prayers and lecture each other for fifteen hours about concepts a child could comprehend?
• Thinking and praying is not an effective form of leadership. It is not an acceptable stand-in for governing. You were not elected to think and pray.
• Banning those on terror watch-lists is a good start. But it does nothing to prevent domestic abusers, the mentally ill, white supremacists, violence-prone people, or, potential terrorists not yet known to law-enforcement from buying assault rifles. How about we just ban assault rifles outright?

6. What’s with the Assault Rifles?

• Why does anybody need an assault rifle? Where in the 2nd Amendment does it give any civilian the right to “assault” any other civilian? The right to bear arms is not the right to assault 100+ people in a night club.
• If the AR-15 is “America’s Gun”, then mass shootings are “America’s fucking cross to bear”. And government silence on this issue is “America’s hands covered in the blood of all those innocent people that have been murdered and maimed by America’s dumb fucking gun”™
• Do you really need an assault rifle to hunt deer? Explain to me how an unarmed animal needs to be shot with the same weapon the military uses in combat?

7. Closing:

• Nobody wants to read these stories. But many of us feel powerless and therefore compelled to let people know that we are angry.
• Nobody wants to hear about about large groups of people being murdered for no good reason.
• Nobody wants to keep being told that their government could take steps to reduce these incidents but that said government has been hijacked by a vast, deep pocketed lobbying architecture.
• Nobody wants to read gutless tweets from spineless politicians offering meaningless thoughts and prayers to families who have lost loved ones due to their inability to enact sensible gun control.
• I don’t even want to write this story. That’s why it’s just an outline. Sure, I could flesh it out, make it a 3,000 word think-piece that nobody will read. It could have more nuance. But the deaths of all these people is not nuanced. Angry, violent, often mentally ill, men, with legal access to deadly firearms are shooting people without nuance. They’re not interviewing their victims, rooting out the ones they hate the least. These men are making sweeping judgements about all of their victims. They are pinning their own fears, doubts and beliefs onto perfect strangers and forcing them and their families to reckon with the consequences of those actions. In almost all cases, the shooter dies at the scene. Often from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
• Sadly, this latest mass shooting, and all the stories that have been written in its wake, will be forgotten as soon as the next one takes its place.

Thoughts & Prayers: The Game

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