OLD RADIOS AND PLAYGROUNDS

We went a through a period of time, when I was a kid, that we had no television.  It sat, as a piece of furniture, because my parents couldn't afford to fix or replace it.  In those times, we got our news mostly from the newspaper, radio or second hand.  The telephone in our dining room rang fifty years ago tonight.  My dad answered and sat down.  I don't remember who he said had called, my sister or my brother in law.  It was a quick call and Dad looked serious.  He put the phone down and looked up at Mom and me. "Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis.  He's dead.  Black folks, all over the South, are coming out of their homes and spilling into the streets."

Well, that was half right.  They were also spilling out into the streets in places like Newark, Detroit and Chicago.  My reaction to the news was somber.  King was a good guy on my black and white TV.  True, I'd recently sensed some negativity after he'd denounced the Viet Nam War, but I knew that his side was right.  Just as the Kent State killings would later turn me against the military and police, the sight of dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham, and horses and whips at Selma, would forever make civil rights a righteous cause in my eyes.  

He'd been shot!  Just like President Kennedy.  It was hard to fathom.  I was only in sixth grade.  I don't remember much else, but one incident stuck with me.  The next day, April 5, I was out on the playground.  A classmate, who I'd known since I was 5 or 6, came up to me.  He said, "Well, I say, 'It's just another dead n----r.'"  I was dumbstruck.   I remember that to this day.  I remember what shirt I was wearing.  I remember that it was cloudy.  And, this afternoon, I remembered that three days ago, on Easter Sunday, I parked my car on the exact same spot, on the old playground, that ----- ------- and I had that conversation, 50 years ago.  

I used to believe Dr. King, that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.  Tonight as the bodies of unarmed black men shot by police pile higher, here at home, and the bodies of Palestinians and Yemenis pile higher abroad, I guess the emphasis must be that the arc is long, if it bends the right way at all.  The three evils King warned of are ascendant again:  racism, militarism and materialism.  And that's the problem.  Too many, tonight, look at the victims of police killings, of Israeli snipers and of Saudi bombers as 'just another dead n----r'. 

THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, not Groundhogs Day, but it sure felt like the movie.  How many times do we have to see the same things popping up in our news feeds, the same footage on TV, the same vapid tweets from politicians?  Guns aren't an issue I normally get hot about.  I'd leave this one to others, but, beyond the horror of what happened to the victims and their families, I hate having my intelligence insulted.  So, let's set up the arguments we are starting to hear and knock them down, one by one.
 

• Guns don't kill people; people kill people.  If guns were banned, they could still kill with their fist, a knife or a ball bat. 
• Yeah?  Well, here's the thing.  In these mass shootings, they use guns.  That's why they're called shootings!  Yes, there is the occasional mass killing involving knives or cars, but the overwhelming majority, the constant, is massacre by shooting.  The Las Vegas shooting dispels so many myths.  This is one.  Those victims were 11 floors below.  The killer didn't kill with a bat, or a knife or his fist.  He couldn't reach them without a gun!
• Any restriction on guns is unconstitutional.
• No.  The type of militias, that existed when the 2nd Amendment was ratified, do not exist.  In any event, those worried that they will lose their guns do not belong to a well regulated militia.  Even so, is the absolutist argument that one may keep any arms?  What about nuclear weapons?  Chemical and biological bombs?  If not, why not?  If they are exceptions, that implies a line.  Where is it drawn?  If we can keep such war weapons out of citizens' hands, why not military style rifles?
• The solution is more guns in schools, churches and concealed carry on every American
• This is a call for circular firing squads.  The teachers at Strongman were too busy shielding students with their bodies to have fired a gun, if they'd had one.  What happens when the police arrive at the theater, church, school or mall?  How do they distinguish the villain from the heroes when everyone has a gun?
• We need guns such as AR-15s to defend ourselves from the government.
• The theory here is that an armed citizenry will defend themselves from Big Government.  That means they will be shooting police and soldiers.  This is what the NRA and the Right are promoting?  That literally makes them domestic enemies.  Do we really believe that a band of private gun owners are going to over throw the U.S. government? 
• The NRA and other absolutists are protecting the Bill of Rights.
• The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Amendments have been under assault for 20 years.  The Fourth Amendment is barely existent anymore.  Where has this band of patriots been?  Even if we believe they seek to protect the Second Amendment, it is no more sacrosanct than the others.  What this is really about is the NRA and politicians propagandizing the population to buy more guns.  The goal isn't patriotism or protection.  It's to amass profit for the weapons industry. 
• "They" want to take our guns.
• No gun has ever been confiscated.  No politician has ever advocated gun confiscation. No such law has ever been passed nationally or at the state level. 
• It's too soon, after the horror, to talk about guns.
• OK.  While this is maddeningly hypocritical, for the sake argument, let's give them the most recent incident at Stoneman Douglas.  Why can't we discuss gun control in the context of the Las Vegas shooting?  It's been five fucking years since the 1st graders at Sandy Hook Elementary, at Newtown, were slaughtered.  Too soon? 

Too soon?  The bodies aren't to the morgue, before the pious politicians start sending "thoughts and prayers".  We might pray that a merciful god will save us from ourselves.  But, my devout mother taught me that God helps those who help themselves.