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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNothing will change
And the reason is because property is more valuable than life in American culture. We watched small children murdered in Sandyhook, and despite great effort by the Obama administration, the most modest legislation failed.
Voters across the political spectrum give politicians a pass for standing with the gun lobby over American lives. They defend immunity for gun corporations and in the process place profit and property over human life. We see liberals and conservatives alike insisting that their right to own, stockpile, and even use guns against other human beings is sacrosanct. We see the proliferation of genocidal stand your ground laws. We see efforts by the NRA to ensure that no locality is allowed to keep their population safe and that paranoid white men should be able to carry guns on their person and use then against people of color when ever they feel frightened. We see the gun lobby working to ensure domestic batterers have access to guns to kill women. What all of these immoral positions have in common is that they are based on the underlying value that property matters more than life. They also reflect the racism that is at the very foundation of American society and structures which life and which speech is deemed valuable.
A speech in the wake of Sandyhook applauded by Second Amendment activists proclaimed: "My rights Trump your dead." It gets at the core of the value system underling US gun policy.
The right being championed over the deaths of tiny children is property, deadly property that is explicitly championed as mattering more than life, even of the most innocent and fragile.
Mass shootings continue and grow ever more deadly for the same reasons Puerto Ricans are dying. This IS America. This is the culture Americans choose when they vote for politicians who oppose gun control, when they make excuses for those politicians, and when they place their own accumulation of property over the lives of citizens. We are the shooters. We pull the trigger every time we make excuses, every time we vote without prioritizing gun control. And no one accepts responsibility because because life simply doesn't matter enough.
SoCalMusicLover
(3,194 posts)I didn't even need to read your post to know that I agree with you.
Loge23
(3,922 posts)But we are witnessing the slow motion deterioration of our country. It's really coming apart now and I don't see how we're going to stop this trend.
The revolution will not be a singular event- it is a political manipulation event.
None of it would be possible without the complicity of voters.
brer cat
(24,656 posts)If we didn't change after Sandy Hook, we will never change.
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)While the killing of 58+ of our fellow citizens is beyond reprehensible the fact that we responded with a big "so what" after elementary schoolchildren were slaughtered one after another in front of their teachers tells me all I need to know about what to expect from the American populace re sensible gun control. Bupkis!
BainsBane
(53,135 posts)brer cat
(24,656 posts)1. Most of our elected officials are bought and paid for by NRA and gun manufacturers.
2. Most of our fellow citizens think their right to own guns is more important than the lives of children. Since they elected problem #1, nothing will change.
beaglelover
(3,504 posts)The gun lobby is way to strong in the USA. Nothing will ever change regarding guns except for loosening of current gun controls.
Vinca
(50,329 posts)I've hardly heard a peep about guns all day with the exception of law enforcement people who are upset over the bill in Congress to legalize silencers. Imagine the number of people who would have died if they hadn't heard the shooting.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)The response to these incidences are always, "xx deaths are simply a price we pay for freedom" in thirty-seven different variations of petulance (variations four and fifteen stress nomenclature as a way to trivialize opponents).
Columbine illustrated to me that we (collectively) do not care about deaths enough to make any change, and any change discussed is immediately labeled as unworkable and "wouldn't have prevented the last mass shooting" by the hacks and drudges.
BainsBane
(53,135 posts)The responses aware always the same and show an inability to care about the lives of others. Their guns, like the rest of their property, will always matter more than any and all lives. No carnage ever results in a human, compassionate respons. And the real crime is we let them them get away with it.