The script has been written long ago. The names are different, but that's about all.
The gunfire goes off and innocent people die, die terribly, die quickly and slowly, die with one question on their minds: Why?
Someone has taken cellphone films of the confusion and fear spreading like wildfire. It gets up on television to show, once again, what this awfulness does.
The jolt stuns. Then the ever-repeated ritual begins.
The person, if he's still alive (and it's always a 'he'), is taken into custody. He may say much, he may say nothing.
This bastard shot a cop who leaves seven kids. He once rescued a mother duck and 11 ducklings. He gave up a cloud-based job to help the community. I want to hear the ridiculous excuse for human life explain this. I want to hear the pathetic, disgusting whining he could possibly do to try to justify this.
Mental problems, they're saying now. Possible paranoia. Thought people were chasing him. Just the kind of guy you'd want to give an AR-15.
Less than a week ago, some other young man had a sex addiction (he says) in Atlanta and took the lives of eight people so that he would feel better. I wonder how many superhero movies he's seen. He won't be seeing many more.
Over the holidays, someone blew himself up in his RV in Nashville. He said he didn't want to hurt anybody. Fortunately, he succeeded, though the easier thing would have been to take himself out without the explosion. But he wanted to be remembered, I'll bet. Does anyone remember his name now?
No one will. Partly because we don't want to remember people who want to do bad things. Partly because so much more badness has already been piled upon it. Compared with the past week, looks like small potatoes.
They released his name. Arab. That'll help.
The next day, as per ritual, the authorities line up and say the things they have to say about how terrible this is, how awful the act of telling the families, how hard the law enforcement will work so that the accused is held accountable. Pretty soon, they'll just be able to play a tape of the generic comments.
Someone says, "Enough is enough." And it goes on.
Someone else says, "This cannot be the new normal." But it is.
Joe Biden says it's time to make "common sense" adjustments to our gun laws. He said that after some fool gunned down 20 first graders in 2012. 90 percent of the country thinks so, too. Nothing happened. Call me when something happens now.
Because this is how it's getting to be: Generic. Vanilla. Numbed.
We are all now at risk. Going into a supermarket, walking into a school, being in church, watching a movie in a place designed for that, is now a dice shake. You never know. There is no safety, only good luck. And bad.
The only alternative, the only one that makes sense, is to require all to be in public with sidearms, whether they're loaded or not; just display it to remind someone that their latest temper tantrum might easily be their last, to wear it as a requirement of entering grocery stores and movie houses and baseball stadiums and churches. Hey, we managed masks, didn't we?
The right to bear arms is not balanced, after all, with the responsibility to use it well or appropriately. Like free speech, everyone claims it but nobody wants to be burdened with the judgment required to make it meaningful.
The guy who walked into a supermarket in Boulder knew, absolutely knew, that nobody else would have a weapon on them, even though that state's law allows it, because it's a pathetic minority for whom that's even an issue and an even smaller pathetic minority who would do such a thing. Remember also that one of the two craziest Republicans presently in Congress, someone who entered the chamber with a weapon after January 6, is from that same state.
And people like me write about it and that's just about all we can do, because Antonin Scalia lived in his ivory tower where the misuse of weaponry was not even worth the trouble to mention it, even though several massacres had already happened. So he and four other justices turned the Second Amendment on its head, completely reversing its original meaning, and we're stuck with it now, stuck with this public health problem as bad as the viral epidemic we have a much better chance of beating.
We're also stuck with cleaning up another horrible mess, of feeling empty and angry and helpless, as funerals are being arranged en masse. Days and days of follow-up reports will drag us along, reminding us of the insanity, of lives cut off needlessly, of relatives and friends who remember them.
Thousands more people are gathering at the southern border now, wanting to see if the new president will allow them into the country. I would warn them away, and not because I don't respect their common humanity. It's because I do.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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