Happy new year, same as the old year
Less than a week after it began, 2017 has seen its first mass shooting, eleven people in the Ft. Lauderdale airport, five dead. The shooter's name was quickly given as Esteban Santiago, an army veteran from New Jersey, at which five million Muslims sighed with relief. The people who determine such things have yet to declare whether this was an act of "terrorism" or not, which begs the question, "What the hell else was it?" Shooting a lot of random strangers is always terrorism, whether you were "radicalized" by ISIS or Alex Jones or Sesame Street. The only way to curb this kind of thing is to forget about the motivation and concentrate on the act, which would scarcely have been possible without a gun.
We always end up back here. For the last eight year every atrocity has been followed by shrieks of
"Obama is coming to take your guns!" which has been followed by the sound of revving engines as the Second Amendment People raced to Annie's Get-Your-Gun* to stock up against the impending confiscation. No one ever came for their guns, of course, but it's like the Rapture -- they just know it's coming, soon. Clearly that particular ploy won't work any more, and I admit I'm curious to see how Wayne LaPierre and the murder lobby plan to keep gun sales prosperous in the age of the short-fingered vulgarian. Already we have the spread of "open carry" laws in states that like to encourage gunplay in churches, malls, restaurants and schools. (And airports. Yes, Florida has such a law. Need you even ask?) An obvious next step would be "compulsory carry" laws requiring folks to be locked and loaded whenever they leave the house, with the possibility of exemptions for Buddhists, Quakers and the blind. Knowing that all African Americans are armed, as opposed to just assuming it, opens up all kinds of law-enforcement opportunities, too.
You think I'm being snarky as usual? Well, I'm not. As Andy Richter wrote, "It's a great time to be alive if you're dumb and mean." Staying alive is going to get a lot trickier.
*An actual store patronized by last year's Santa Barbara mass murderers.
We always end up back here. For the last eight year every atrocity has been followed by shrieks of
"Obama is coming to take your guns!" which has been followed by the sound of revving engines as the Second Amendment People raced to Annie's Get-Your-Gun* to stock up against the impending confiscation. No one ever came for their guns, of course, but it's like the Rapture -- they just know it's coming, soon. Clearly that particular ploy won't work any more, and I admit I'm curious to see how Wayne LaPierre and the murder lobby plan to keep gun sales prosperous in the age of the short-fingered vulgarian. Already we have the spread of "open carry" laws in states that like to encourage gunplay in churches, malls, restaurants and schools. (And airports. Yes, Florida has such a law. Need you even ask?) An obvious next step would be "compulsory carry" laws requiring folks to be locked and loaded whenever they leave the house, with the possibility of exemptions for Buddhists, Quakers and the blind. Knowing that all African Americans are armed, as opposed to just assuming it, opens up all kinds of law-enforcement opportunities, too.
You think I'm being snarky as usual? Well, I'm not. As Andy Richter wrote, "It's a great time to be alive if you're dumb and mean." Staying alive is going to get a lot trickier.
*An actual store patronized by last year's Santa Barbara mass murderers.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 1:04 PM
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