Bobservation: We Don't Care

It’s happened again … and again … and again, who cares?

In the past week we’ve seen a lunatic open fire in a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood, murdering people; then we saw another lunatic shoot up a Taiwanese church in California; and now, more schoolchildren dead, and families destroyed, again, in Texas.

We don‘t care though. We don’t care. There are so many other things to grab our attention … Kim Kardastrophe wore Marilyn’s dress to the Met Gala; Amber Heard and  Johnny Depp, two self-entitled, self-involved celebrities are battling again in court; because there’s something new to stream on Netflix or a new iPhone to stand in line to buy.

We don’t care. We stopped caring ten years ago after Sandy Hook.

Oh, sure, we get pissed and we stomp our feet and we yell, but what else do we do? Do we demand, DEMAND, that out elected officials do something about the ease with which nearly anyone can get a gun? Do we require that gun owners be licensed and trained in the use of firearms? Do we say No to anyone who wants a gun without a background check? Do we even ask the question about requiring gun owners to carry insurance?

You need to be trained and tested and licensed and insured to buy  and operate a car in this country, but all you need to get a gun and carry it wherever you want is a credit card and a trigger finger.

And we still don’t care. We whine and cry and stomp our feet and then turn back to our devices. When will we learn?

Well, learn this: Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, who doesn’t think gun control, gun licensing, gun registration, a full ban on assault weapons will stop these mass shootings was paid $442,000.00 from the NRA; that’s a lot of money to keep getting you reelected while children are gunned down.

Louisiana GOP Congressman Steve Scalise has $396,000.00 reasons to not vote for stricter gun laws, thanks to the NRA.

Senator GOP John Cornyn of Texas earned some $340,000.00 while kids in his state are murdered. GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, pocketed  $284,000.00 from the NRA to look the other way, while GOP Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky took in $247,000.00 in blood money. GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, GOP Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California, GOP Congress man Pete Sessions of Texas, and GOP Senator Steve Daines of Montana, also padded their election coffers with nearly a quarter of a million dollars each from the NRA.

Notice that the politicians raking in the most money from the NRA, and the ones most adamant about having no need for gun control, sensible, responsible gun control, are all Republicans.

Money talks, children die; we don’t care.

And those in the GOP who don’t work in politics and don’t cash NRA checks offer up their own solutions … Maureen O’Connell, a former FBI agent, says schools should invest in “ballistic blankets” and in obscuring windows, to keep shooter at bay. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton thinks teachers should be armed. Not a single word about stopping the flood of guns  into murderers’ hands, just ways to sell more guns.

Don’t stop the shooter; don’t stop the lunatic with the gun.

The hypocrisy of Texas’ GOP Governor Greg Abbott waging a war against face masks in schools during a pandemic, but who cares nothing about keeping guns out of the hands of madmen who shoot schoolchildren isn’t lost on me.

The hypocrisy of GOP and their war against abortion this week, talking about fetal heartbeats, when they don’t care at all about the dead 19 school children, each of whom had … had … a heartbeat isn’t lost on me.

The hypocrisy of the GOP who have traded out their ridiculous “thoughts and prayers” responses of for a new message about “lifting up in prayer” the survivors and the families of those whose children and loved ones were murdered isn’t lost on me.

How about lifting up your fucking voices and demanding this madness stop? How about lifting up your fucking hand and voting Yes to responsible, sane, gun control?

The hypocrisy of the GOP offering condolences to the families of murdered school children at the same time they are saying there’s nothing that can be done isn’t lost on me.

The hypocrisy of the GOP banning books about slavery, books about trans kids, books about racism, books about LGBTQ+ Americans, while allowing anyone to own a gun and carry it wherever they choose and open fire at will isn’t lost on me.

Books are killing students, but by god keep them out of our schools.

The hypocrisy of the GOP saying deaths of schoolchildren, of People of Color, of church goers, movie goers, shoppers should be used to justify the Second Amendment isn’t lost on me.

But again, we don’t care because those on the right think gun control means the government is coming for your guns. Remember they screamed that, while Obama was president, he was coming to take their guns away. And how many guns did Obama confiscate? I’ll wait until you count to “zero.”

I know people who have guns; I know a guy here in Camden who operates a gun club and operates gun shoots about once a month; those men, and women, aren’t shooting up schools and churches and such. Those are the ones who understand the power of guns, how to handle them.

They aren’t fighting background checks and licenses and registrations. Those are the gun nuts, who have twisted the Second Amendment from having a “well-regulated militia” to fight against an attack on this country by a foreign nation, to mean that y’all can have guns and carry them into the Piggly Wiggly, and throw ‘em over your shoulders in Starbucks, and buy as many as you want at guns shows, and purchase as many assault weapons—a gun with just one use: to kill—as they want.

Those  people shouldn’t have guns, and the people collecting money from the NRA to protect their terror group, the ones like Cruz and Rubio and Graham and McCarthy and McConnell, who have the blood of schoolchildren on their hands, should not be allowed in public office again.

Each and everyone in the GOP who stands with and for the NRA is complicit in the murders of schoolchildren and teachers and rabbis and pastors and concertgoers and worshippers.

But we don’t care. And I say that because in the ten years since Sandy Hook we’ve seen thousands of Americans killed by guns and we’ve done nothing.

I say we don’t care because something shiny will come along to catch our eye, or a new TikTok will need a million views, and so we’ll stop and look.

I say that because we get complacent and look the other way and don’t demand that our elected officials stop the killing.

I still say we don’t care. Prove me wrong.