Senseless.
Every goddamned day. Sun rises, sun sets, the lives of 30 people senselessly end to the sound of gunfire.
Honestly, I get tired of the word "senseless" being such a fucking PERFECT descriptor.
Senseless. Sans sense.
It's the year 2014, and with a little bit of work just about any person can legally walk around with the technology to shoot dozens of people in a matter of seconds. That's fucking senseless.
The United States has the most lax gun laws of any civilized nation, and has by far the most gun violence. But the simple logic that seems to dictate a solution to that problem is met by shrieking about "government tyranny". That's fucking senseless.
The vast majority of Americans support more stringent background checks, but because of the aforementioned shrieking, and truckloads and truckloads of hard currency, a very small minority holds despotic sway over our legislative process with respect to anything having to do with guns. That's fucking senseless.
It's the front-line of the crazy, and so, of course, that's where to send the berserker shock troops. And watch any sane counter-attacks get pushed back by slobbering paranoia and hate.
Recently I came face-to-face with it, after a fashion, and that was the impetus behind this little rant. Honestly I'm not sure how to deal with the situation. New guy on my crew. Older, loud-mouth, know-it-all-but-not-really type. So far he's not as angry as some, but he's very far from even-tempered. And he keeps at least one gun in his pick-up, and is loudmouth enough to have told me, his boss, that it's there the first day he worked with me. The jobsite is on a secluded back road on a lake. In an area with very little violent crime.
I don't know what kind of gun it is, or anything about it, and I don't want to ask.
He also showed me his arrow signed by Ted Nugent, and rants incoherently about Obama/Democrats taking his guns and his freedom. He told me a charming story about how he made sure to show his "old lady" a bullet with her name written on it right before they got married. And he said casually yesterday that between the two of them they put away a fifth of whiskey a night, and immediately afterwards (no shit) said that it would the most horrible thing ever if Michigan legalized marijuana.
The dude is both armed AND completely around the bend.
And I/we have to somehow work with this guy/these people? We have to somehow get things done?
Fuckin great