MACHINE GUN BACON

Yet Another School Shooting...

I wrote this five years ago or so. The numbers have only risen since.

Machine Gun Bacon

Twelve fourteen, twenty-twelve. 20 and 6.

20 kids and 6 adults were shot and killed on twelve-fourteen, twenty-twelve.

Sandy Hook, CT.

20 and 6.

My oldest son came home from school one day, about a year or so ago, very upset. He doesn’t get upset that easily, nor does he cry a whole lot. He’s a pretty tough kid for ten (his age at the time). But he was near tears. I asked him what happened. I was worried he was being bullied.

He doesn’t get bullied, ordinarily, though small for his age, he knows judo, Brazilian jiujitsu, and how to box. Bullies usually avoid him.

I asked him what was wrong, did he get into trouble, did something happen to him?

He said no.

He said he’s worried he’s going to be shot at school.

He’s in the fifth grade. The fifth grade.

December 14th, 2012, in Sandy Hook, CT, twenty elementary school children were shot and killed, along with six adults. Kindergarten and first grade. 
 
 That happened, and what did we, as a nation, do about it?
 
 Nothing.

My oldest was in kindergarten at the time of that tragedy. The town buried its lost, mourned, and asked the nation to do something to prevent this from happening to other communities. For that simple request, they were attacked. Accused of making it all up, of being crisis actors, ridiculed, and threatened.

Parents who lost their kids were sent death threats.

Sent… death threats… by NRA members.

Oh, and now they do lockdown drills at school.

For kids, that’s what they do. Like fire drills, but less safe and less helpful. For those not in the know, a lockdown drill means they act as if there’s an active shooter in the building, the teachers lock the doors, turn out the lights, and everyone has to be quiet. Because if they make noise, the bad guy with the gun might hear them and come get them.

Lockdown drill.

My son was upset because some kids CAN’T be quiet. They can’t. They’re either too scared to be quiet or don’t take it seriously enough to be quiet. He said if a shooter comes, he’ll hear them, and all of us will get shot because of them. It’ll be their fault.

I didn’t know what to say, except that it wouldn’t be their fault.

I didn’t tell him whose fault it is, but we all know. 
 
It’s the NRA’s fault.

I said I’d do what I could to change things.

And I will. And we all have to do. By speaking out.

By standing against the NRA, standing against that terrorist organization whose members send death threats to bereaved parents, whose celebrity members brag about shooting down liberals like coyotes.

Stand against the NRA. Fight against the NRA.

There was a fatal mass shooting two days ago.

And then one right after that. I’d tell you when and where, but the reality is, by the time you read this, there will be another. I’d list how many school shootings there have been (and I know what it is) since Sandy Hook, but that number KEEPS CHANGING and growing larger.

Writers of public events cannot even keep up with the carnage.

33 thousand people die every year from gun violence. 33,000. 73,000 are injured. Every year. That’s 100 thousand people whose lives are affected by gun violence. Since 2008, that means over a million people were shot and injured, or killed, in the past ten years.

And we do nothing. Nothing.

We just sit like meat, waiting to be cooked.

Our children die.

The NRA doesn’t care.

Our kids are nothing but machine gun bacon to them.

As we argue for safety, as we argue to save lives, they dicker with us over semantics, they argue what makes an assault weapon, they howl that we don’t know what we speak of because we don’t know the individual caliber of a weapon, and so on.

They’ll talk to us about Chicago and make sure to mention that the city’s strict gun laws don’t do anything to stop the shootings there. They’ll neglect to mention that Chicago is bordered by three states with weak gun laws and that Indiana is close by, too… Indiana, with very lax gun laws, and the firearms are purchased there and driven twenty minutes into Chicago for use. 
 
 They won’t mention that because it’s inconvenient for them.

They’ll talk about how we have so many gun laws as it is, but what they won’t mention is that they’re not uniform, that they vary from state to state, and that states with lax gun laws have more shootings and more problems, and guns are often trafficked from there to states with tight gun laws. They won’t mention that. 
 
They’ll sniff and say it’s terrible and tragic, these shootings, they feel for the families because life is sacred, they believe, but there’s nothing to be done because to pass gun safety laws is, for them, a slippery slope that leads to a fascist state with zero freedoms. 
 
 They won’t mention the other democracies that manage to do both, have laws and freedom, without devolving into a fascist dictatorship. Because that doesn’t fit their narrative. They won’t mention that gun manufacturers make more money after every shooting because sales go up as people live in fear. 
 
 They won’t admit that gun manufacturers, the NRA, and their purchased politicians profit off of the blood of our dead children. 
 
 They don’t or won’t admit that. 
 
 But we know it.

We do know that the second amendment doesn’t trump the first, nor is it without regulation. We do know that none of the amendments trump an individual’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We do know that our children deserve life and that far, far too many of them are losing it because the NRA prioritizes profit over safety, and shareholders over a child’s life.

They see us as profit, they see us as a commodity.

They see us as machine gun bacon.

They’re selling us meat made of our loved ones.

Lockdown isn’t working.

The NRA wants us locked down, they want us afraid and quiet in the dark. Not just our kids, but all of us, the parents, those who have lost loved ones, they want us to shut up and hide. That’s why they send death threats. That’s why they call us crisis actors.

They’re afraid of us. That’s why they threaten us.

We can’t stay quiet in the dark any longer.

It’s time to fight back with words, policy, advocation, and boycotts, if need be. It’s a war of ideas, a war that pits neighbor against neighbor, relative against relative.

A war fought not with guns but with money, votes, and ideas. As MLK did, we have to stand, march, and advocate for others. For our kids, we must fight the NRA. Our children deserve a future. A future free of lockdown drills.

A future free of the mass slaughter of the innocent.

A future free of the NRA.

We can either be citizens free of the tyranny of the NRA and their annual bill of mass slaughter, or we can all be machine gun bacon.

We can’t be both.

20 and 6. Twelve-fourteen, twenty-twelve. 20 and 6.

Sandy Hook was 11 years ago. Things have only escalated since.

We must stop this madness.