We are at war.
But not a war for which, on this Memorial Day, we honor the 1.3 million women and men in uniform who, in the course of American history, have died overseas in service to us.
No, this is a war we’re fighting here at home. A war over guns. Guns that can only be defined as weapons of war, guns that our Founding Fathers, who knew of no more than muskets, never could have foreseen when they framed the Second Amendment.
Weapons of war from which nineteen little kids and their two heroic teachers in Texas this past week were casualties. Weapons of war from which ten harmless shoppers in Buffalo the week before were casualties.
Weapons of war from which the victims for too many decades have been innocent Americans from sea to shining sea. From a Christmas Party in San Bernardino, California to an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. From a Walmart in El Paso to a movie theater in Colorado. From the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando to Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, from a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas to a black church in Charleston, from a supermarket in Boulder to the campus at Virginia Tech, from the army base at Fort Hood to a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip.
Every casualty was a victim of this war. Every casualty was murdered by a maniac with a weapon of war. Yet despite decades of campaigns for moderate gun reform, there’s still next to nothing to stop them. The last meaningful measures passed in Washington were almost 30 years ago. One was full of loopholes. The other was left to expire.
Which leaves us where? This year alone in the United States of America, there have been 213 mass shootings. So far. We’re not even at the halfway point. We know there will be more.
Because despite popular support for change, politicians beholden to guns rights groups won’t lift a finger to make it harder for these madmen to get their guns.
Remember, these aren’t guns in the hands of homeowners. They’re not guns in the hands of hunters. Nor target-shooters or collectors. Those are just straw men in the rhetoric of the radicals. No, they are guns in the hands of madmen. Guns the madmen found deplorably easy to get.
This is a war with the gun rights groups, first and foremost the NRA, and with the pig-headed politicians whose elections they support, who in turn dependably support them. They support them by finding all kinds of scapegoats for the madness— this week it’s insecure schools and mental health. They support them by parroting their perfidious mantra, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” conveniently leaving the other half out: that people kill people with guns.
It’s a war we are losing. How else to say it when so many people purchased weapons of war in just the last two weeks that the value of stock in the companies that make them shot up as much as 15%? How else to say it when we already have more guns in this country than people, and yet our countrymen bought almost twenty million more last year? By way of a contemptible comparison, the nation with the world’s next highest ratio of guns to people is Yemen.
People of like mind ask me, how do we fight this war? How do we wage war against the people who profit from it? My only answer is, support the politicians who fight on our side. Support them with your voice, support them with your money.
Otherwise, on Memorial Day a year from now, we’ll have more war victims to honor, more casualties who died in schools and supermarkets, not in uniform.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Amen! Thank you for linking it to Memorial Day so succinctly.
Thank you Greg. Yea, this is the only way back to sanity.