Apparently the body count matters. Anything less than ten and we don’t pay that much attention. Unless it’s a shopping mall on a Sunday and the media moguls don’t have anything else to cover except a troubled gunman who shot and killed three people. Three? What’s three? Why bother with that?
And doesn’t the NRA love that?
There were, in fact, five other shootings last week. They each merited a mention on the cable news networks. None of them merited any real coverage as they were happening.
And this is what happens in our society. We mourn the victims, of course. From a distance. They’re people who really have nothing to do with us. They’re other people’s fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters. Let them mourn, let them have their privacy. But they were too few to really matter to us, much less to move our gun debate. Because every one of these people…those who lived and those who died…were shot with weapons that had been 100% legally purchased.
We remember Newtown. We remember Aurora. We remember Virginia Tech and Columbine. The body counts there were horrific. Fifteen, twenty, thirty…you lost count after a while. And the last one…well, Newtown was children, twenty children and six teachers trying to protect them. Oh, they touched our hearts. They made us sad and angry at the same time. They made us want to do something.
But not enough. Because we did nothing. The NRA won again. The NRA always wins. Because our elected representatives are cowards, more frightened of them than they are of us.
And why shouldn’t they be? I mean, really, what are we going to do about it? How many Congressmen and Senators have been defeated for re-election by voting for any kind of gun safety legislation? Whose public career was ever derailed by thwarting any attempt to keep weapons out of the hands of these maniacs?
So it goes on. And on. And on. There are shootings in schools and universities. There are shootings in malls. The body count gets higher. And still nothing is done.
What sort of people are we? How can we simply sit by and let this go on. How is it we allow our will…the will of 90% of the American people…to be thwarted by an organization whose main business is to shill for the gun manufacturers? When will we make it clear to our elected representatives that they trade their vote to the gun lobby and they will lose their next election?
It has been said that the blood of all these innocents is on the hands of the NRA. But that isn’t so.
Their blood is on our hands.