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.
- The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Parkland. Yes, Lord, it happened again!?! Except that it happens all of the time now in our country: 18 school shootings in the first month and a half of this year and 45 mass shootings in all during this time. We have a problem ... to which we offer lip service in the form of "Thoughts and Prayers" and then express surprise and outrage when it happens yet again ... and again ... and again and....
I truly do pray for those parents of the unnecessarily lost souls in this tragedy, but I realize that it's not enough ... 'cause I'm still prayin' for the parents of Sandy Hook (and Columbine, for that matter). Excuse my French, but f@#k our thoughts and prayers and especially those of our craven and cowardly elected representatives who offer truly empty words every time a dishearteningly predictable tragedy like this occurs. No more prayers: God isn't going to save us; only we can save us. Oh, God'll be involved alright, but it's the God inside each of us that has to rise up, assert itself and demand that we treat each other better, which includes curtailing our fascination with, access to and protection of the proliferation of guns in our society and the death that they inevitably deal. When we evidence the God in us by holding ourselves accountable to protecting each others' lives, then we'll have change. (And this also extends to providing the mental healthcare that so many of our fellow Children of God clearly need....)
Today's post is going to be my shortest ever ... because there's little more that I can add that hasn't been said before ... and that's the point. F@#k thoughts and prayers, it's time for policies and change (as one Facebook meme making the rounds puts it incisively). It's time for action and love, writ large: to evidencing sense and sensibility in limiting our clear inability to manage access to lethal force individually in prudent and thoughtful ways.
Let's start with (extensive) background checks. And then limit access to automatic weapons. (Seriously, who can claim anymore that these are for hunting, unless you're hunting fellow human beings?!?) And require gun safety training. (If I have to learn how to drive a car, which can be a lethal weapon, why shouldn't I have to learn how to own and use a firearm safely, whose purpose is even clearer [i.e., to bring mortal injury when used]?) And a handful of other reasonable measures that have worked in every other truly civilized nation on this planet except for ours.
And if this doesn't work, then we'll go full Australia and have to try, effectively, banning guns entirely. But let's see if we can keep more of us alive by making some meaningful changes first. It they work, great. If they don't, then we'll have to take more drastic and sweeping action. So be it.
(And lest you still claim the individual right to bear arms, look at the Second Amendment again and explain to me how you belong to a citizen militia in our modern military-industrial and police state?!? And have things changed in almost 2-1/2 centuries? Should we have a different approach to guns now that they fire many rounds per second not once or twice a minute as in revolutionary days?!?)
What matters is that we DO SOMETHING NOW! No more thoughts and prayers, unless the former is to be smart about how to address this problem and the latter represents faith in action in the form of making our world safer for all of God's children. We need courage, action and discipline now. For if we truly aspire to be great (again?), then surely one of the important ways of doing so is to encourage life in this country, not to allow senseless and unnecessary death.
I won't be a single-issue voter in the fall, but this opportunity for massive change will be in my top 3. Right alongside making this country more equitable and caring (again?). Life-protective and -affirming seems to go hand in hand with that.
I truly do pray for the grieving of this latest tragedy. But even more than this, I will act - and enjoin others to do so - so that these types of prayers won't be necessary anymore. This is the true mark of a great country and a God-loving people....
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those
who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
