I don’t usually write stuff like this but I felt compelled.
[it's around midnight, and i think i drank coffee a little too late in the evening]
Let me start off by saying that, to me, as someone who sees the impossibility of my single voice instilling any kind of change in the matter, and that being my justification of calling myself an impartial observer of a fucked country on the metaphorical plane of all those stupid cunts that see the check engine light on and feel the transmission chugging, never having gone in for an oil change in their lives and all of a sudden cursing the dealership and the shady salesmen and the automakers and the hot weather and the cold weather and the heavens above aloud and for everyone to hear without once finding fault in themselves, I say the gun laws in this country are atrocious. The second amendment is an old disease-stuffed whore. It's a relic from a time that does not exist now. It's purpose was to give the colonials the ability to rise up against taxation without representation. To take their single-shot, front-loaded muskets, band together and fight oppression and declare freedom in true American hypocrisy while an entire race slaved away under whip and chain, and women were simply subservient baby-making, need-pointing porcelain dolls.
Firstly, if you think you and your band of redneck friends and your small arsenal of obnoxious automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines would even hold a candle to the American military arm, would be much more than cockroaches to a boot, then you're a fucking idiot. There is absolutely no logical reason why anyone should need or be allowed to purchase or legally own assault rifles or assault shotguns. Automatic, semi-automatic. To the lot of them, I shake my head in a mixture of disbelief and national embarrassment. We're the global idiots. We’ve got first world digs, with third-world killing lust.
The only thing, in my head, that I see as justifiable is one's want to hunt his or her own food to eat. Ironically, hunting rifles are the only weapons that even remotely resemble the arms of our forefathers. Hunting for sustenance is respectable. You can protect your home with a hunting rifle. Hell, you can protect your home with a baseball bat and a kitchen knife if you're a man worth the weight of your balls.
That being said, I don't think gun control is the real problem. I write. Sometimes maddeningly so. Why? Am I an employed writer? No. Am I paid for these efforts? Sadly no. And yet I soldier on. I write a book. Then I write another book, and whatever else in between. I make a sub-par living working for a small family owned retail business in what I guess can be called a labor of love because it's definitely not a labor of financial prosperity. And I'm okay with that because I know, as is the case with all of us, that I'm going to die. Perhaps not tomorrow and maybe not for a dozen, two dozen, three dozen years, but certainly I will die. The fact of the matter is that it could very well be tomorrow, and if it's not absolutely a surprise and instantaneous, then in that flash that I assume always happens in those precious moments before we stop being, I'll see happiness flash before me. In all the things I did, all the places I had the privilege traveling to, all the wonder I'd witnessed, and I'll smile at the thought of leaving behind this however big body of work of mine that I've tinkered at over my lifetime, and in my head I'll tell myself I'm the next F. Scott Fitzgerald because he died a nothing big, and became a legend, living on past his death. There's power in that. It's a driving force, the thought that my name might live forever.
And that's why I must respectfully disagree with the notion that it's the ease with which these psychopaths can get a hold of weapons that is driving them. If a crazy fuck wants to get his hands on a firearm, he'll probably be able to do it, laws on the books or no laws on the books. It’s not guns that drive them to kill, although they do make it much easier.
It's our media coverage. After the killings in Santa Barbara, I can't think of any reason why I'd ever need to know that fuck's name. And what's more, that's exactly what he wanted. I haven't watched the video that he supposedly made minutes before his rampage, but I know thousands, most likely millions have. Why? Was it a must-see? Did it bring any kind of satisfaction?
Why do you think he made the video? His rambling ten-minute manifesto. You can see it in his eyes, even in that fuck's screenshot that's plastered across newspaper front pages and nightly news programs. He's either looking at the camera or squinting tight-jawed into the low sun shining on his face through the windshield of his BMW like he's fucking James Dean and no one understands him. In reality he was just a lazy little shit with the mind of enough to be accepted to UCSB (unless he was going to SBCC, I don't care enough to check) which isn't easy, which is to say he wasn't completely stupid. Sure, he was a little fucked in the head, probably real fucked in the head, but then again we're all a little fucked in the head. None of us are clean slates, we all do things irrationally. His was just to a certain violent extreme. He was self-centered, probably an asshole, a privileged white boy who expected girls to just magically fall into his lap in college because well, hell, it’s college. That’s what happens in college right? And when that didn't happen, it couldn't be his fault. I mean how could it?
He was friendless I'm guessing, probably watched a lot of television. I'd bet my life-saving's that he'd played Grand Theft Auto more than once. He was loner. He was a loser. He didn't care about others. What does someone like that want? To be noticed, of course. To be talked about. Because that's cool, and girls fuck you if you're cool. And somehow in his fucked up head he valued that over his own life. I bet he didn't even see it like that actually, one over the other. All he saw was a grand scheme to get famous, a way to live forever at the petty cost of a few innocent lives including his own.
And so what do we do? We make him famous. What kind of message does that send to kids just like him? And how many more are there?
Just think. Wouldn’t it be great if his was the last name printed? His was the last video shown, the last selfie shown, the last scribbling dithering diary read. I'm sure if he were alive (which he isn't), he would love it of course, but then so too would I, and I'm still breathing.
And the next time this happens, which if history is any indication will be either very soon or within the next year or two, all the headlines will read:
SOME ASSHOLE KILLED A BUNCH OF PEOPLE SO WE PUT ALL HIS PICTURES AND VIDEOS AND SHIT AND HIS MOST PRIZED POSSESSIONS IN AN INCINERATOR. HIS NAME WAS NO ONE CARES. HERE'S A LIST OF THE VICTIMS THAT DIED AND THEIR DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS IN DETAIL.
Then maybe the troubled ones will finally get their heroes in order.
