I wrote a draft of this essay around 10 days ago, during the last spate of unnecessary shootings and mass killings. It took another mass shooting, this time in a Texas shopping mall, to get me to post it. Because people need to ask themselves whether they want the destiny of their society and government to be determined by a machine, or by people?
Because today, in America, that machine is a gun. It should be the machine recording our election ballots, but increasingly it seems to be the machine of the Gun, and the political Extremism that fetishes it into a veritable culture.
That Machine is the industry that manufactures that gun, and it's the Machine that drives the lobbying to protect that industry from even the most reasonable expectations of product safety and accountability. It's the Machine that exploits loopholes in electoral law in order to subvert Democracy, and it's a Machine that finances elections for political office.
It's a Machine that grossly abuses the meaning of 'freedom', when it protects itself with a Fear that cause so many to lose not only their freedom, but their lives.
And that Machine is killing upwards of 40,000 Americans a year, in a myriad of ways. From suicide, because it's easy and convenient, to children in schools, people in supermarkets, or teenagers pulling into the wrong driveway. And it's a Machine that isn't stopping, as state after state continues to con the American public into believing that gun safety is the same thing as gun confiscation.
It's a machine that has completely twisted the purpose and meaning of the 2A to suit those who fetishize the machine we know as a gun. As such, it's a machine that can be sold without a license, and its a machine that can be found in the possession of children. And it's the only machine in existence that carries no insurance liabilities. Insurance claims cannot be brought against gun manufacturers!
The politics of the Republican party isn't driven by people, it's driven by a Machine. And it's a killing machine. It's a political party that, in mass shooting after mass shooting, puts the Machine ahead of People.
One of the stupidest slogans mouthed by NRA supporters well into the 21st century, is "Guns don't kill people, people do!" As if the weapon is immaterial to carnage that results from it’s use.
But it is far, far, harder to kill a person without a gun than it is with one!
So why, Republicans, are you organizing your politics, your constitutional interpretations of the 2A, and the moral framework required to justify something approaching 40,000 unnecessary gun deaths per year, for the sake of a Machine? What kind of citizen, much less what kind of Christian, would countenance such preventable carnage, at home, and in the absence of war, in the name of 'freedom'?
And don't come to me with arguments about the 'carnage of the unborn'! Speaking for the voiceless - that is also formless, in most cases of abortion - is just another con. Mother Nature herself (or 'God', if you must) terminates pregnancies by orders of magnitude beyond anything done by a woman's choosing.
Nor can you legitimately argue that the Gun protects you from a hostile Government, not when that Government consists of your neighbors, and is predicated, and dedicated, to providing you the right to change that Government by referendum and plebiscite. Unless, of course, you feel Government by referendum and plebiscite is inherently illegitimate? If so, then you betray your right to live in peace, because you willfully refuse the hard work of citizenship to favor the seduction of violent retribution.
Because you're certainly not thinking of People, which include your own constituents, when you refuse to legislate even the most reasonable gun safety measures, that vast majorities of American voters — regardless of partisanship — want. No, you are all beholden to a killing Machine. Your political existence is dependent on a killing Machine. And worst of all, Republicans, is that you collectively appear to be proud of that dependence!