Senate Acts on Guns!! – Naaah!!!

Ready for the zombie apocalypse

The deadliest mass shooting in modern U. S, history  and surging support for stricter gun laws weren’t enough to force the Senate to take action Monday.

Just over a week after Orlando, the Senate failed to advance a pair of modest and popular gun violence reform measures

One would have barred gun sales to anyone who has been on a terrorist watch list in the previous five years or who is “reasonably” suspected of posing a terrorist threat. Another would have tightened the background check system to cover the so-called gun show loophole and all internet gun sales. About 90 percent  of the public favors such steps.

But neither of the proposals could get the 60 votes needed to advance.

The background checks amendment failed, 44 to 56.  Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.) was the only Republican who supported it.  Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.) were the only Democrats who opposed it.

The terrorist watch list amendment failed, 47 to 53.  Kirk and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) were the only Republicans who voted for it.  Heitkamp was the only Democrat who opposed it.

And now, as always, the media is into their hot  tragedy cycle interviewing the crying teens, local police, neighbors and of course the “expert” profilers.  It’s what we do.

We will see the funerals, kids marching with candles, make shift memorials, therapists with tables set up in for those needing “someone to talk to” and help “getting through this”
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Then will come the  talk of “healing” and “moving on”. As is usually the case, the vast majority of those professing to need help and support will know no one who was hurt, lost no one; but they will need help anyway.  Perhaps they just have trouble handling the fact that this could happen in “their town” – the happiest in America town where they live in nice houses with nice lawns. Maybe it’s kind of like guys who wear military combat decorations they never earned.

Perhaps it’s a way to connect to something without really being connected – to belong.

The media will search for “reasons”. There has to be a reason.

There are lots of them I guess and in some finite place in space and time they all come together in a college town, a movie theater, an elementary or high school or a gay sanctuary.

The availability of guns – especially assault weapons which no one uses for deer hunting, is the weapon of choice for the seriously deranged.  But hey!  Guns don’t kill people.  The NRA says so.  It is apparently a god- given right for any deranged person on a terrorist watch list to buy an assault rifle.  Or to  buy it at a gun show or on the internet without even a cursory background check.

“Violence in the media” will scream others; when a movie is violent the theater is packed, especially when the movie is comic-book exceptionalist bullshit violence.   Our kids are exposed to it from a very early age – in movies, TV, video games, porn, bullies in school.

No one will say how desensitizing constant images of violence are to the humanity of others.  No one.  After all , there is money to be made.

Hollywood pulled back temporarily after Aurora on the all out marketing of several movies not wanting to appear “insensitive”. All they were worried about was the money. There was a movie coming out where a bunch of gangsters with tommy guns, 1930s style, take to the stage of a movie theater and blast the audience. We never saw that trailer.  Now it’s back to business as usual.

Sure, tens of millions of kids play video war games – the winner is the one who kills the most and accomplishes “the mission”.  Our Isla Vista killer was addicted to World of Warcraft.  Tens of millions however wouldn’t even consider joining the military; that is for “other people”  Less “cool” people.  It’s so much easier to play the game.  Besides, the vast majority of games are highly eroticized – plenty of bare naked babes to blast.  Hot fantasy.

As for porn, all the women are “hot”, pliant, submissive, shaved and available.  Every kid loves porn, especially when she does exactly as she’s told.   Here again, our Isla Vista killer watched plenty of porn by his own admission.  He wanted a hot blond babe – and felt entitled to one – like she was a hot car or cool clothes.

Were some of the killers mentally ill?  Finding our killers  mentally ill neatly solves all of our problems. We don’t have to address the sense of entitlement, gun violence, media, video games, bullying, the eroticization of violence, loneliness and isolation.

He must be mentally ill otherwise he would be just like us.  It didn’t keep our killers from acquiring their guns.  It’s a God-given NRA right.

We can’t seem to admit to ourselves that he is us.  He is our son, the native son of a 21st century America where we don’t care about anybody but us; where we learn from an early age that real American men have no humanity and no empathy.  Our current killer, born in America,  showed a complete lack of empathy, a feeling of entitlement, of  exceptionalism, like the others before him at Isla Vista, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Newtown, Charleston and Lafayette. .  It is a symptom of our societal illness.

This is the “exceptional” society in which we live. We hear the cries of no one. We see the loneliness of no one. Most of us do not know nor care to know our neighbors living three houses away. It’s our dog eat dog, every man for himself country. We judge our communities by the quality of the lawns.

We don’t give a rat’s ass if people are hungry, children die of malnutrition, veterans are living in our streets, most of the homeless are schizophrenic, that people die because of a lack of health care, or that we have spent a decade waging unjustified war against a couple of third world nations.

As usual our “representatives” did nothing but wring their hands while taking NRA money.  I’ll bet we’d hear more from them if our killer had gunned down 49 Congressmen in the House of Representatives.  But hey, the dead are someone else’s kids.  The CDC estimates some 32,000 people die by guns each year in America.  A month before Isla Vista the GOP opposed further funding for CDC research into gun violence claiming “it only funds propaganda”.

And yesterday our illustrious Governor and his cronies did NRA bidding as Florida defeated legislation banning the sale of assault weapons in the Sunshine State.  So much for empathy and bullshit speeches.

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