Three young men and football players at the University of Virginia lost their lives in a mass shooting that wounded two others returning from a class excursion. The three young men, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry, “These were incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright futures,” said Virginia football head coach Tony Elliott. One likes to think of institutions in America as an open forum for clubs and organizations for commerce, governance, and recreation. Boys and girls clubs, our federal government, and sports teams, especially football, are institutions. Recently with the rise in anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and the racial instigation of hate—by none other than the former President, America’s institutions are, again, under scrutiny.
Does America embrace mass shootings without fear or favor? The unending and abhorrent shootings that come as regularly as the seasons’ change are redundantly met with thoughts, prayers, and eventual apathy. The public’s righteous anger in the form of over a billion-dollar judgment rendered against podcaster Alex Jones who used the deaths of 26 people, including 20 children, took too long. Jones repeatedly taunted the survivors and victims of the 2012 shooting to hawk his line of merchandise, like diet supplements. Jones blithely said, “It took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake.” Decent people got a fleeting bit of satisfaction when the families finally got him in court; his deplorable fans tuned him in the next day to find out what sham supplement he was selling next.
Like his idol Donald Trump, Jones is a symptom of what is becoming acceptable in America. Mass shootings are equal-opportunity abominations. It kills the young and old. It kills Jews, Muslims, Christians, whites, and blacks. We have seen a President cry at the horrid outcomes of children blown to bits. Joe Biden and the First Lady stood in stunned repose at the sight of the flowers and makeshift memorials to the children of Uvalde, Texas. Yet our outrage gives way to the price of a gallon of gas or the latest absurdity from Kyrie Irving. Republicans tell us they want to ensure the financial future of our children but even banning eighteen-year-olds from owning a weapon of war to preserve their safety is a step too far.
The time warp Republicans are stuck in is to the country’s detriment. It is not 1950 when Pa would give a .22 to his ten-year-old to shoot pesky varmints behind the outhouse. The crank on the old jalopy is useless, and women wear shoes in the kitchen now. Sure, I liked Leaving it all to Beaver, and I Loved Lucy as much as the next guy, but a shootout with Matt Dillon (the marshal) is just as passé. Institutions serve a purpose, but when one’s rights no longer stop at the tip of their nose but at the end of a gun barrel, instead of redundant apathy, necessary anger is the answer. When our kids tell us they are going to March for Our Lives, shouldn’t we join them?
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