ENDLESS HORROR: Battlefield USA
Another deranged maniac claims innocent lives in a hail of gunfire
One of my most vivid memories, from my very earliest weeks in the United States, is the first gun-store display I encountered, while window shopping, brimming with a cornucopia of firearms and accessories.
Being a “warmonger” since early age, I was fascinated at the mere idea of anyone (save persons with a criminal record and/or mental complaints) being free to walk in a gun shop and buy anything his heart desired, including plenty of ammunition to feed his newly acquired toys.
The centerpiece of that display, fifty (!) years ago, was a M1 Garand military rifle, caliber .30, the rifle that “won World War Two,” on special offer for the bone-crushing price of twenty five (25) US dollars apiece!
I later learned these offers were almost routine back then, with the US Government unloading plentiful surplus WWII military firearms onto the civilian market, and collecting handsomely, to finance modernization programs (PS: if you may be able to find one of these Garand rifles today prepare yourself for prices upward of $1000-1200-plus!).
A darker side of this incredible liberty, however, I later understood, was the widespread phenomenon of mass shootings that is practically absent in European countries.
Theories of what exactly constitutes a “mass shooting” are still debated, but the net results, irrespective of arguments amongst criminologists, are horrifying and unprecedented in terms of loss of life, outside a war zone (you can find a list of US mass shootings, resulting in at least ten deaths, since 1949, here).
And a mass shooting cannot be “properly” executed without the kind of weapons that are (almost) freely available in the US, but prohibited for sale, outside the military and law enforcement, in most advanced countries around the world.
Yesterday, barely ten days after a mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store, Salvador Ramos, 18, armed with state-of-the-art guns, invaded an elementary school in Texas killing at least nineteen children and two adults.
Wrapping one’s mind around this latest horror is as practically impossible
as attempting to find convincing “causal factors” for previous such ghastly atrocities.
The only thing that’s certain is that this latest young coldblooded killer’s horrific action will reignite the unending quarrel between “pro” and “anti” gunners rooted in specific political, ideological, regional, and, yes, racial delimitations.
Mass shooting literature requires its own dedicated warehouse to host the constant outpourings of both professional experts and self-appointed “analysts” inhabiting the online wilderness. Having modestly waded through this sea of “expert opinions,” I’ve given up trying to put together a rational proposal of what might, and what might not, contribute to the limitation, but not the eradication, of such a uniquely American malignancy. One certain conclusion, however, about this endless indiscriminate bloodshed is that its roots are unbreakably installed in the American psyche
for reasons that’ll require a substantial tome addressing historical, political, anthropological, civilizational, and other diverse theories, facts, and figures (as a beginning to attempting to understand the horror you may try these book suggestions).
I am not a “Bidenista” by any measure (and if you follow The Periscope, with some frequency, you know the fact quite well) but I thought Ole Joe’s televised message, about the Texas massacre, was measured and and from the heart.
But, just like similar previous pronouncements, by both high and low, we shouldn’t get our hopes up of something concrete emerging from this latest from the White House.
I honestly believe there’s no satisfactory solution
—unless we somehow implement a science fiction New Age story that’ll transform America into an entirely different, and more benign and caring, country.