Okey dokey. We're all tired of guns and I'm tired of making art about guns, and nothing ever seems to make a difference, so hey, enough for now. Thanks for playing, campers.
In Which I Plant Tulips in the Head of the Founder of the Open Carry Movement In Order to Pacify His Second Amendment Brain, 2015
Whatever the approach, the situation is summed up nicely in a tweet from a teacher named Bill Ferriter (@plugusin), at 3:59 AM, on 25 May 2022:
During every school shooter drill for the past 20 years, I've promised my students that I would do whatever it takes to try and keep them safe if we were ever in that horrible position together.
It is America's greatest shame that those words ever need to come out of my mouth.
Thanks for your service, Bill.
There are only THREE countries in the world that believe their people have some kind of inherent right to own firearms -- Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States of America (Max Fisher and Josh Keller, writing in the NYT). You want a gun, you get a gun. It doesn't matter if you are a good man, a bad man, a crazy man, a misogynist, a racist, a fascist, a right-wing conspiracy nut, an abuser, someone who hears voices telling him to kill, someone who's irate that his girlfriend wants a divorce, someone who just got fired, someone who wants to end their crushing depression, someone who likes to get high on meth...etc. etc. etc. As long as that is how we do it, then nobody in this country is safe.
"For any American who is worried about this country, who feels our core values are slipping away, who believes something has to be done to change the direction of our nation before all is lost -- the NRA is your refuge It is your place to stand and fight with Americans just like you, for all that is good and right." Wayne La Pierre, NRA CEO.
For some of us, Wayne, the NRA is really not the symbol of all that is good and right in America.
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Schmid Tool and WEE1 Tactical, manufacturers that specialize in the AR-15 assault style rifle, so popular in American mass shootings, are now offering the JR-15, a "youth training rifle" designed to look, feel and operate just like Mom and Dad's gun.
Gun violence became the leading cause of death for young children and teenagers in the US in 2020, "outscoring" car accidents for the first time. I don't think the JR-15 is gonna help the situation.
God's Country, 2023
Cut & paste paper collage (vintage women's magazines, newspaper). 10x10"
Every month, approximately 70 women in the US are shot and killed by an intimate partner (Everytownresearch.org). And every day, guns are used to threaten, coerce, control, wound, and kill American women: a woman is five times more likely to be murdered if her abuser has access to a gun (Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions).
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"To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun," says NRA's Wayne LaPierre, one week after the Newtown, CT school murders.
I dunno, Wayne, didn't really work like that in Uvalde, TX, where pretty much the entire police force just stood outside holding their guns for a LONG TIME, and saved no one.
"The problem isn't guns, it's EVIL" roared Senator Ted Cruz as he comforted the NRA (and his gun-owning donors) at their annual meeting not long after the 2022 Uvalde school shooting in which 19 children and 2 teachers were shot dead. Well, yeah, sure, I guess so.
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Here we are again, America. Another school massacre. And once again the only "civilized" country in which this regularly happens throws up its hands in despair and offers hopes and prayers to the little victims and their grieving families. Enough with the hopes and prayers, America, enough with the public hand-wringing, could we finally do something?
Go ask Mitch McConnell why he cares more about preserving the filibuster rules and catering to the gun lobby than the lives of school kids.
Go ask Texas Governor Greg Abbott why he cares more about enacting "the strongest Second Amendment legislation in Texas history" than the lives of 19 fourth graders.
Go ask Republican lawmakers why they are more worried about catering to pro-gun interests than passing common-sense measures like background check requirements, assault weapon bans, and restrictions on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Go ask responsible gun owners why they put up with this crap.
Go ask the US Supreme Court why they are poised to strike down a New York law that limits the carrying of guns outside the home.
Go ask America why this epidemic of gun violence doesn't happen in any other country on earth, why since the tragic Sandy Hook massacre almost ten years ago American has MORE guns and FEWER protections, and why, despite all these dead children, we don't seem to care enough to do something about it.
