When will They Ever Learn?

“American Square” by Soymonk1.
Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.**

The latest rampage, as of this writing (I expect there will have been more by the time this is posted), was the work of a semi-automatic pistol in the hands of a “drifter” who should not have had a gun. This latest by-product of a money-and-unbridled-liberty-at-all-costs club took the lives of two people and injured 8 more in a Louisiana movie theater Thursday night. You can be sure that the corporate media are in a frenzy, looking for some “terrorism” connection. If they can’t find that revered link, I imagine they will settle for cloaking the accused, 59-year-old John Russell Houser from Phenix, Ala, in the label “mental illness.”

I think the time has come to bestow the term “psychologically deranged,” along with “morally corrupt” on the arms industry and particularly its vicious handmaiden, the NRA. How many times do we have to hear about the murdering of innocent adults and children in their schools, their local theaters, their homes, before enough ordinary people commit themselves to doing something about it, nonviolently.

In sports, setting and breaking records may be great, but do we want to maintain records like the following:

The U.S. firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population.

American children are sixteen times more likely to be killed in unintentional shootings than their peers in other high-income countries.

Already, in 2015, at least 146 children have been shot.

There are some very fine organizations working to reduce and/or end this insanity.

Learn more about and from them, including information on the ways you can be involved:

Americans for Responsible Solutions

The Brady Campaign

Moms Demand Action

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

**The artist was motivated to paint “American Square” when he learned that sales of guns, particularly of semi-automatic rifles, have sky-rocketed and saw the maniacal manner of NRA’s president suggesting having a gunman posted in every school in the country. The incident struck the artist as a phenomenon totally opposite to what he anticipated after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Dec. 14, 2012. America seems to face not only a racial division, but also a ‘pro-gun vs. anti-gun’ division, just as deep an issue. Needless to say, the artist stands clearly as an anti-gun proponent. Why? The artist spent many years and raised his family in Morton Grove, IL, north suburb of Chicago, which became the first city in the U.S. to legally prohibit possessing handguns. Owing the unprecedented outcome to a resolved resident of the town, the ordinance was put in effect in 1981. For the artist, the enforcement of the ordinance was a natural cause by the residents who only wish for the safety of their families in their daily lives. Now as a resident of Manhattan, NY, he has succumbed to the fact that the idea of handgun control is facing headwinds everyday and everywhere. In movies and dramas, guns play major roles and are too often used as the final solution. The viewers are desensitized to the actual impact these weapons could have. The real danger, that the artist feels, however, is that the fear of guns drives people to purchase guns. The more they purchase, the more they need.
Where does it all end or will it ever?