Even More Shooting Ramblings

Even More Shooting Ramblings

Here we are almost a week since the event and when I'm sitting down with some radio news on during the commute back home, I have to say that this amount of coverage for the shooting is utterly mind blowing. I almost feel like I want to just vomit. It's just so sickening to see all the contortions and contrivances used by for-profit news to milk as much money as possible out of the deaths of 18 children.

But hey, let's not talk about WHY this happened or HOW to prevent it in the future, that would mean there's a reason for things happening and that won't fucking stand in America's media circus. Let's just keep going on about this senseless tragedy after all. It's literally incoherent and the only reason we know it happened is because we just won't shut the fuck up about it for at least one more day.

Oh, if only they had some sort of guidance in learning how to report on this tragedy.



But nah, who needs set standards and any sort of moral ethics when you're a news journalist? It's really got to be harsh when even you wouldn't put up with that bullshit. I know I couldn't. I was, at one point, looking to join the journalism force. Man, I'm so glad that didn't pan out as I had hoped for. It's all about appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Just look at this twitter exchange and I dare you not to be completely disgusted by how far the media will go to try to get the scoop on the story;



Then again, it's not the news outlet that has me mad a lot more on this issue. And that is those fake well wishers. It's those people who loudly proclaim their sympathies over this tragedy on their facebook pages, twitter accounts and whatever else you'd see it. Mainly because those people who are outraged, saddened and otherwise stumped are the same type who will not bat an eye when its learned that Drone attacks kill far more innocent people than guilty terrorist. Though it's only when those drone attacks hits its magical target every time. So you can't really take into account those Gibberishtan people's safety. As my father put it, "no one's innocent" or some bullshit like that. What it comes down to is that the kids who died at the school were white - the towel heads in the desert are on their own.

On the other hand, maybe it was all part of some divine intervention and we're all just being judged now? It does make you wonder why the big man wasn't present.

 

You see, God is like a vampire and can only enter houses he's personally invited into. I mean, what an awesome God. He doesn't intervene to save kids from being shot to death solely because the teachers didn't force them to recite a prayer. Man, that God dude is a real asshole.

Then again, perhaps I'm digging the whole aspect of "there's no god in our schools, that's why there's school violence" aspect of this that keeps going around. As if it were kindergarteners reenacting Lord of the Flies instead of an adult breaking into an elementary school with a bunch of guns.

I know plenty of people who aspire to be teachers someday and currently are teachers and I can not even begin to fathom what kind of teacher would feel comfortable taking a weapon to school and then considering actually using it in the school instead of doing whatever possible step to keep the students safe. Like, what kind of teacher would go "Hey kids, stay right here and I'll be back. Gotta go cap these mother fuckers." and then Rambos the fuck out the door with bullets flying?

And thus we go on to the subject of gun control. I still believe that we first need to get rid of the stigmatization that mental illness has. Hell, just saying you went to go see your shrink will get people thinking that you're crazy. And that's really the best thing we can do? Universal access to high quality health care including mental health care, with strong enforcement of anti-discrimination regulations are what we need. Along with anti-poverty and offender re-entry programs, it would be a great step towards reducing gun violence. Banning guns, on the other hand, would not be.

I'm pretty sure you're aware of computer piracy. Getting a gun on the black market is a lot like that - it's also very easy, if you didn't know. I had a friend come home from prison and suddenly have the best idea that they would get a pistol. A couple of phone calls later and a few hours pass and sure enough - after a hundred bucks or so, they had a pistol. They later decided to get rid of it as being caught with a pistol on probation would have been an easy 10-year mandatory minimum. And for what, a security blanket. Besides, if we get rid of guns, they'll just start using knives. It's as simple as that. You can replace the tool, you just need to fix the tool user and find out why they're doing this in the first place.

A lot of this has to do with the issue that mental health in the US for people without any means has been turned into a prison system by another name. Shit, the countries biggest mental hospital is literally in the jail building in downtown Los Angeles.


The most common argument I'm seeing made is that the guns carried by teachers will work as a deterrent and never be used in schools. Ah yeah, the deterrent will surly work great on the consistently suicidal premeditated-mass-murdering demographic.

The whole notion of giving teachers guns is beyond silly that I don't even know where to start with it. How about the fact that as a kid, I broke into my teacher's desk all the time for the contra band that she took from us. Now I'll be able to find a gun in that desk? Just think, kids will somehow be breaking into the armory and suddenly they will have access to a lot of weapons. 

It's fairly obvious now that the answer is to arm not only the teachers, but the students as well. But not the custodial staff, though, you understand.

But as much as teachers should be bodyguards first and educators second, students should not feel they are automatically entitled to an education if they can't navigate the mono-filament wire traps and ghost the remorseless sensor pits of the kill-drones to reach the book shelf. Look, if you didn't learn how to field-strip an AR-15 blindfolded before third grade, well I just don't know what to tell you about the shitty education you were given.

In the end all that can be said about this situation is FUCK IT, FUCK IT ALL TO HELL