IT WASN’T A MASS SHOOTING - IT WAS A MASSACRE

Nineteen children. 6-8 years old. The age of my youngest grandnephew, Sam.

It hasn’t even been two weeks since I wrote about the last “mass shooting” in Buffalo.

But 19 kids between the ages of 6-8? And three teachers? 22 people?

19 kids between the ages of 6-8!

That’s not a mass shooting.

It’s a massacre.

Who put the weapon of mass murder into this worthless piece of shit’s hand? The answer is:

The public policy of this country armed him and it will fight to the death for his right to be armed with a semi-automatic pistol and rifle that he bought when he was too young to legally buy a beer anywhere in this country.

That the government of the United States is unable to literally do anything about these public massacres is one of their greatest draws. It’s the magnetic heart of their attraction.

Public massacres are fundamentally about losers, rage and the psychic draw of total power.

For a few minutes, a school shooter holds the power of life and death. For some rage-filled loser, some never-was/never-will-be, who’s a legend in his own mind, that power speaks for itself - it’s truly the ultimate aphrodisiac for the ultimate jerkoff, the orgasm of orgasms.

But nothing reinforces the power of the gun like the way a whole goddamn country remains in thrall to the damned things.

The gun — and all the fetishes and cultural baggage surrounding it — is the one totally unassailable, unchallengeable thing in American society.

Does 90 percent of the population want background checks? A way to try and separate out the real menaces from the rest? Tough luck.

We have our godalmighty Second Amendment, written originally to protect slave catching militias, because the southern slave colonies knew that what they were doing with their system of enslavement was morally untenable, they knew that eventually the rest of the country was going to have had enough of them and their evil bullshit, they knew they had to have some way to defend themselves from their “property,” since they woke up at night in terror that they were going to be killed in their beds for being the evil scum they were.

And their descendants have nothing good to be said about them. The South is still full of evil loser descendants of transported pig-fuckers. Only now the pig-fuckers have AR-15s and Glocks. And not just in the South.

Every other democracy makes some considerable effort to keep guns away from dangerous people, and dangerous people away from guns. But not us. We’re special.

Ever since the massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School almost a decade ago it’s been the legal and political goal of half of the political class in the United States to put more and more guns into more and more hands.

There are now 120 guns per 100 people in this country.

The years of the pandemic have been the years of the greatest gun sales in American history:

Almost 20 million guns sold in 2020.

Another 18.5 million sold in 2021.

No surprise, those two years also witnessed a surge in gun violence: the spectacular human butchery of our recurring public massacres; the surge of one-on-one lethal criminality; the unceasing tragic toll of carelessness as dumbass moron gun owners hurt and kill their loved ones and themselves.

It doesn’t matter how many kids get shot or what new turn of perversion is added to the stale choreography of the latest mass school shooting.

Literally nothing will happen. That is power.

When the public massacre virus was first loosed on the country 25 years ago, there were some minor reforms. We banned weapons for mass public massacre and for the years it existed, there weren’t any mass public massacres.

And then that worthless piece of shit, that best argument ever in favor of abolishing inheritance of property, George W. Bush - now the world’s most talentless wielder of paintbrushes - decided the ban on weapons of mass public massacre should be repealed, because we must always support FRREEEEEDUMMMMBBBBB, and after the mass public massacres returned as a result....

We have become very adept at doing the least we possibly can. We send our thoughts and prayers and we go through the motions of discussing possible reforms or restrictions after each new massacre.

In the face of 19 CHILDREN BEING MASSACRED TODAY I don’t think anyone is under any illusion that there are any reforms that are possible, even enough to start the conversation.

The gun rules us.

Former gun-industry executive Ryan Busse wrote a memoir of his career in the gun trade. In it, he writes of the effect of mass shootings on gun sales. Surprise surprise - they are, to put it bluntly, good for business.

People think that perhaps this time the authorities might finally be moved to do something, so they race to the gun stores to buy weapons before the “something” happens.

The gun in the gunman’s hand multiplies - there are now more guns in more hands. Most of those hands do not mean to inflict harm. But the harm follows.

A gun in the home makes everyone in that home 50 times more likely to be killed by THAT GUN than are people who live in homes with no guns likely to be the victims of any gun violence. And they will most likely be killed by a family member.

The rapid and sustained fire from an AR-15 type weapon can kill a lot of people very quickly. It fires as fast as you pull the trigger. If you have a 100-round drum of ammo fitted, those hundred rounds can be fired in a minute.

That reality pales in comparison to the omnipotence of the gun itself in American society. The power of firearms is total. Each new mass shooting plays out the ritual again. That power is so total it’s no surprise that the rest of the angry losers flock to become part of it.

Before the end of June, the six Republican Injustices on the U.S. Supreme Court will deliver their opinion in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen. It’s a decision that probably will strike down concealed-carry bans in even the few states that still have them.

More guns, more places, fewer checks, fewer protections.

In the ten years since Sandy Hook, this country has plunged backward and downward toward barbarism.

Can it be different this time? I doubt it.

Whether any particular killer proves to be a racist, a jihadist, a sexually frustrated incel, or a randomly malignant carrier of sorrow and grief, doesn’t matter.

The only thing “exceptional” about this country is how exceptionally fucked up it is.

It’s terminal.