Content Warning: Strong language
Another day, another mass shooting, and another day of no one really caring. That seems to be the general atmosphere of the United States at the moment. Every person of note has said it, every newscaster has said it, every politician has said it: this isn’t normal. But it is, isn’t it? If we hear about a mass shooting and all we can muster is a sigh, or “Not again…”, it is the new normal. We all know it shouldn’t be, but “Oh well,” am I right?
“Thoughts and prayers” has become a meme phrase, something to mock, something to deride, and yet, it is still something to be bandied around as political currency. As if the best we can give to the people in our everyday lives are thoughts and prayers. Or if it isn’t thoughts and prayers, it’s blaming everything else but the actual cause. Blaming mental health, blaming “violent” video games, blaming drugs.
If you’ve been hiding under a rock lately (and I wouldn’t blame you for fear of the mass shootings), there’s been two within 13 hours of each other, killing over 30 people, perpetrated by white supremacists, and instigated by none other than our own president. And the talk from the right wing has been to blame–what else?–mental health and video games. Fucking excuse me? When did we go back to the nineties blaming Grand Theft Auto for bad children’s behaviors? There have been studies time and again about how video games don’t inculcate violent behavior because people generally have a grasp on reality and non-reality.
And mental health is a rather favorite scapegoat of mine because it turns the perpetrator into the victim. There are millions of people all over the world who are stressed, depressed, scared, anxious. I am one of them. My girlfriend is one of them. My friends are they. But I have yet to see any one of them purchase a gun in fear of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Skinheads. By blaming mental health, you shift the burden of blame from the shooter to society: “we just didn’t understand them and they lashed out, they’re the victims here!”
No. They’re not. They’re simply not. Because they are also the ones who picked up a weapon and decided to murder other innocents. It’s easy to blame mental health problems, because who is against funding for more mental health research? These shooters, who had passed background checks, who had passed mental health exams, had premeditated these murders and are acting based on an ideology that they themselves had formed. Ideologies based on the people they surround themselves with, on what they watch, what they read, what they listen to. Getting help wouldn’t have saved them, because they had been radicalized. There is no sympathy for them, or those like them.
You know who we should have sympathy for? The people they hurt. The countless lives that they stole from us. The innocent victims whom they have irreparably damaged because “the dem’crats comin’ ter get er guns”. But we don’t. Not really. Sure, we speak platitudes, we make calls to action, hell, we may even propose a bill or two. But their lives, their livelihood, simply aren’t worth more than our guns, is it.
No, we have to have our guns. It’s protected in the Constitution. We have to have our guns to fight off the big bad “gub’ment” who has nuclear weapons and can wipe out an entire city with the push of a button. Sure. We have to have our guns to make us feel good. Fuck those other people, they died because they didn’t have guns, they didn’t try to protect themselves.
They didn’t die guns blazing like we wanted them to.
They died shielding babies.
They died trying to run away.
They died crying.
They died calling loved ones.
So fuck you. Fuck your guns. Fuck your goddamn gun lobby.
Children died at Sandy Hook. Children died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Children died at Wal-Mart.
You’re not pro-life. You’re pro-gun.
And you’re incomprehensible monsters.
Answers in Philosophy 