OK, Hear Me Out
It is like Maximum Overdrive but instead of sentient pop machines and trucks….guns are sentient.
A weird phrase that has been adopted by the media and popular culture is “gun violence”. When someone shoots someone else, that person that was shot is labeled a “victim of gun violence” (assume scare quotes going forward). Gun violence becomes an evil, malevolent force.
It is a rather clever tactic as using that term takes the attention off of the people who are shooting other folk and instead focuses on the method used. See, guns are the problem, not people willing to use violence to settle disputes. It is great for suburban White moms who don’t know anything about guns and just think they are scary and especially for the group that is responsible for most gun violence in America, blacks. Something I have noticed about blacks (one of many things I have Noticed), is that they are very superstitious and easy to spook. A lot of blacks, even ones that would be classified as “educated”, are afraid of evil spirits and the boogeyman. Gun violence works perfectly as it is more like an evil spirit causing otherwise good boys who wouldn’t do nuffin to suddenly start shooting each other.
For example, tip of the hat to Big Country….
The story is pretty standard stuff but what caught Big Country’s eye and mine was this line from Hizzoner da May-yor.
In the aftermath of the mass shooting, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas spoke to members of the media. ‘I mean, that’s what happens with guns,’ he said bluntly.
No Quinton, that is not “what happens with guns”. It isn’t a secret that I have more than one firearm. I would conservatively estimate that within a couple mile radius of my house, sparsely populated though it may be, that there are several hundred guns around. Yet no one gets shot. Why is that?
First of all, because guns don’t just shoot people on their own. Someone has to load the gun, point it and pull the trigger. People around here generally aren’t likely to do that just because they have a beef with someone else.
Second, although we have hundreds of guns in a couple miles radius of where I am sitting, we don’t have something that places like Kansas City, Baltimore, Chicago, Memphis, etc. have in spades (pun intended): black folk.
I’ve said it before, and I will certainly say it again:
If guns were the problem, in a nation with half a billion firearms in private hands, we would all be dead already.
Guns aren’t the issue, people who choose to start shooting at the slightest provocation are the problem. The media won’t talk about this because the people who invariably are the ones shooting each other are black but blacks know the score, like this resident of Orange Mound in Memphis in the aftermath of the mass shooting over the weekend: