August 5, 2012, Sick Schmuck Kills Six Sikhs
Another day, another psychotic bastard opens fire on innocent people in America, today, in Wisconsin, where six Sikh worshipers were killed at a temple near Milwaukee, the gunman later killed by a police officer who was wounded in the shootout.
Gun control, bla bla bla. We are so far past the point where gun control will do any good [outside the few pockets of sanity that already have it] that I'm almost disgusted to have to utter those two words. Of course, life as we know it in New York City would actually be impossible without our city's quite strict gun control-- that many millions of people simply cannot live in close quarters with any moron being able to legally get their hands on a gun.
See here's the thing: as a society, of course, we are scared shitless of Black males having a gun, for for that matter, walking the streets at all (hence, here in New York, we have our unbelievably unconstitutional-- as if that matters-- "stop and frisk" policy)... but by and large (at least, as I understand it), the crimes committed by Black males tend to involve the drug trade, or gang violence, or other crimes committed against members of minority communities, often with illegally obtained weapons... the sort of horror shows just witnessed in Wisconsin (or recently in Aurora, Colorado) invariably involve White males who got their hands on guns legally... and not just "guns"-- but high powered military style weapons capable of quickly killing large numbers of people.
And the ultimate irony is that the stated fantasy reason for the inviolate nature of the Second Amendment is that "having guns in individual [read "White male"] hands is a bulwark against tyranny." The reality is that massive gun ownership simply adds "individual psychotics" to the list of things that threaten us, along with actual tyranny, be it of, for example, the government itself, or by its corporate owners and overlords in concert with government (see, e.g., "the Monsanto is above the law" proviso in the recent farm bill, pretty much deregulating genetically modified "food").
Things is bad out there. People, at a visceral level, know that until, oh, Jon Corzine, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein and so many others of the current "above-the-law" financial class are held to account for their crimes (and make no mistake, crimes they are), and our nation-state itself stops committing mass murder itself in foreign locales... bad shit will keep happening. Indeed, in such craziness, it starts to seem normal to consider running amok with military assault weapons against one's fellow hapless schmucks.
Another day, another horror story. Like the crazy weather, the frequency of this sort of thing seems to be accelerating... don't get me wrong, it could well be closely related to the crazy weather (people do go crazy in prolonged heat). But this sort of thing-- in the present case, an apparent hate crime at that (Sikhs, after all, look different from the typical White male likely to commit a crime like this)... still has some shock value, but perilously, somehow seems more "normal" [here's an "interactive guide" to America's recent mass killings] in its own right.
America. Fuck yeah.