With great Pomp & Circumstance, the United Kingdom celebrated Queen Elizabeth's 70 years on the throne by throwing a four-day party attended by tens of thousands from every walk of life.
It was a magnificent production; everybody had a great time and not a single gunshot was fired. No mass shootings. Stunning by our standards. I am sure among the thousands of revelers there were a few with mental health issues but you know what? They can't get a gun. What a concept. It should be illegal. During those same four days our country went through a whole series of mass shootings.
In the movie “The Promised Land,” set in rural Pennsylvania, there is a convenience store named Rob's Guns, Groceries, Guitars and Gas. The only thing missing to fully encompass the American culture is God.
It is not surprising that the flavor of the month’s legislation, gun control, will go nowhere fast. Republicans love guns, and Democrats like guns. And the NRA controls them both. Until this country comes up with an enraged grass-roots movement "a la" MADD we will continue to go our merry ways to the "sporting goods" store next door and stock up on baseball caps and AK47s or AR15s.
Nineteen children slaughtered in a small-town school will be quickly forgotten as collateral damage. They had a right to life. Who is protecting them?
Gun owners often say, “People shouldn’t have to explain why we need guns other than owning them is a God-given right protected in the Constitution.” The absurdity of the statement is beyond the pale.
God never owned a gun, and neither did Jesus, in fact I seem to remember Catholic nuns teaching me the Ten Commandments and one of them is "Thou Shall Not Kill.” And of course this gun-toting lunatic fringe is predictably anti-abortion (again the bipolar dichotomy), homophobic see Orlando), racist (see Buffalo), and right-wingers who most likely do not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution either.
The majority of people in the U.S. is in favor of mandatory background checks and support reform of our gun laws. The most discouraging and pathetic part of the charade is seeing how lawmakers are removed from the pulse of the Nation. In the end it remains a political game, there is nothing bipartisan about it at all, only an embarrassing spectacle. They fight hard and manage to change laws that raise the smoking age, that curb alcohol consumption, etc. but they still love guns more than our kids. But they are playing with fire. Not until some of their own kids are shot dead in a school will they find the guts to stop the madness. Or until a crackpot like Marjorie Taylor Greene walks into the Capitol with an AR15 and mows them all down. Don't think it won’t happen.
I would love to be a fly on the wall in the Capitol and listen to the chatter from congressmen and senators but I have a very good idea of what they are saying behind closed doors.
Here are some of the tweets:
@senatorsmithwesson: We have the balls to stand up to the overwhelming wishes of the American people. They are such crybabies.
@congressman AK47: They think they can scare us into voting to protect millions of innocent people from harm. We have to draw a line in the sand.
@senatorRuger: The polls say that 90% of the American people want us to vote a certain way, we agree that we can not cave into another special-interest group, enough already.
@senatorColt: We have to set an example. If we vote the way the American people want us to, it would make us nothing more than their elected representatives.
@congressman 38: When we want we can reach across the aisle to defy the interests of all.
@senatorBeretta: Who do they think they are? Yes, they elected us into office but we are not puppets they can't tell us how to vote.
@congressman Glock: It was a good week so far; we did nothing to prevent future shootings.
@senator45: They are crazy if they think we are obliged to listen to their input. Our duty is to do as we please.
@GOP: No need for gun control, just make sure everyone has a weapon.
@NRA: Thank you Senators for another job well done. Your checks are in the mail. Happiness is a warm gun.
@NRA_Marketing: And we even have something for the fags, go to www.pinkgun.com
Pier Angelo was born in Italy, moved to England at the age of 17 and learned English at the Nelson School of English. He attended college and graduate school in Manhattan. In 2009 he founded SFGN with Norm Kent. Now he’s retired with his husband Tom and his Affenpinscher Cabbage. He still enjoys writing his column Off The Wall for SFGN.
