Okay, I spent an hour composing a nice thoughtful post with a much more polite title and fucking TypePad ate it and it’s nowhere to be found, so that’s an hour of my day gone and I’m now inclined to be crabby and brief. Here goes:
1 – TypePad sucks.
2- Fuck the NRA. Let’s just stop pretending they’re anything other than a political lobbying arm of the Republican Party operating on behalf of gun manufacturers. Whatever they started out as, they are no longer that. They do not represent gun owners or sportsmen. They are not a grassroots organization.Their leadership is almost entirely Republican Party political figures and gun manufacturers, with a few militia extremists thrown in for extra nutty flavor. If you have paid dues to the NRA you are the chump paying for Larry “wide stance” Craig, Ken Blackwell, Grover Norquist, Oliver North and John Bolton to swill Scotch and play a few rounds at some fancy golf resort. I do not think there is any equivalent in the Democratic Party.
3- Fox News executives evidently instructed their producersto not discuss gun control on the network. I highly doubt this was an independent decision. We have a “Guns Industrial Complex” operating in this country and it’s time we expose this fraud for what it is. The last thing the GOP and gun manufacturers want is a discussion of gun violence and gun control, and while they’ve been enormously successful in shutting down debate in the past, it’s not working this time. I imagine GOP leaders, Roger Ailes and the top gun guys are regrouping on messaging as I write this. Expect to see Fox News come out full-bore on the “more guns could have stopped this” front. Also, who’s gonna be the first nutter to blame Obama for this tragedy — you know, so he could take everyone’s guns —just as they always knew he would?! My money’s on Jim “Dim” Hoft.
4- I swear to God if another liberal clutches their pearls and wonders “where’s the outrage” for all the dead children in the Middle East I’m gonna kick a puppy (not really. I couldn’t do that.) Yes, it’s horrible that we care more about our kids than those in other nations. It’s horrible that we’ve killed thousands and thousands of innocents with our warmongering. I get that. But fuckitall, what war hasn’t killed innocents? What war isn’t awful? Isn’t that the fucking point?
We care about what happened in Connecticut because these are our kids. And we failed them. Let’s deal with our failure as Americans to protect our children from violence in their own classrooms before we start attempting to deal with humanity’s collective failure to end war for all time. If we can’t turn our swords into plowshares at home we sure as hell won’t be doing it anywhere else.
5- Nashville is set to host the NRA’s 2015 annual convention.There is a petition asking Mayor Karl Dean to stop it. Success if doubtful, but I pass the link on anyway.
6- Consider asking your local police deparment to schedule a “gun amnesty day.” These are days when illegal/unwanted guns and ammo can be dropped off anonymously at local police precincts. Most communities have them. The guns are usually destroyed, though I’m told some PD’s resell them, so maybe check into that too. It’s important to get guns off the streets.
7- Did I mention TypePad sucks? It really does.