And the dead are many
Have you ever experienced the desperation of being injured, trapped in a motor vehicle after being in an accident?
The dread that wraps itself around you and impregnates your mind with terror in war – complicated only by your disagreement with it. Have you stood by the man next to you and watched the mutilation of his body by an AK47?
I cannot confess to it. No, I can’t.
Have you faced the loss of a child in the excruciating pain of birth? The emptiness that lives in the labyrinth of your stomach and is destined to do so for the remainder of your days.
As a man, I cannot.
What of the aftermath of an operation? Have you experienced the throbbing? The awful impact of unwanted pain?
Yes, I can.
What do you know of the loss of love both given and accepted? Its past and its future?
You measure life’s value by what you make of your own.
Love and life are taken from us often in the most unpredictable ways. The pain of two massacres suffocates us with an unconscionable reality that 50 people have been injured but the dead are many.
The shootings experienced by the people of Ohio and El Paso, Texas are the 21st and 22nd mass slaughters of human beings by deranged or sick individuals in the United States this year.
The total for the year thus far is now 125, not including the perpetrators.
Add to the 50 injured there are also 29 dead, and the hearts of many more will carry the memory of it for the length of their lives.
Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, cousins, in-laws and friends will suffer a kind of agony that only comes with pointless loss. Loss that always wants an answer even when one is out of reach.
“Live with it,” is their only comfort.
But the “why” of it remains to torture angry folk who feel distraught by their inability to do anything.
The “why” of it tells me that a long time ago the right to bear arms was given because at the time, lawlessness ran rampart.
It may well have been justified in the early 1800s, however, to justify the need today is to also suggest that law enforcement in the greatest country in the world has made no progress.
The word greatest doesn’t belong here. Nor does vengeance beside it.
My thought for the day
The streets should be full of peaceful protesting people but they are afraid of the powerful evil minds that rule them.
PS: I forgot, such are my tears, for the pain of shattered communities.
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14 comments
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Awashwithcolour -
OPPOSE THE MAJOR PARTIES -
Phil Pryor -
Kathryn -
Michael Taylor -
Michael Taylor -
Michael Taylor -
Keitha Granville -
Ally Morgan -
Anne Byam -
Carol Taylor -
Anne Byam -
John Lord -
wam
Return to home pageThankyou John for expressing the kind of feelings l have about these senseless murders, on a regular basis, of innocent people by white male homegrown terrorism in the USA. I can only imagine how absolutely terrifying it would be to go out to the shopping mall, school, University and anywhere else people congregate and have the possibility of being gunned down by an angry man filled with violence and hate and mental health issues, armed with powerful weapons of mass destruction.
The USA calls itself the greatest country on earth but l disagree on that because they have become in many ways a backward country where there’s no freedom for anyone wherever they happen to be, when there’s a very real possibility that you’ll be murdered. You would never relax in a public environment.
The USA is being run by corruption and collusion and until they get the NRA out of government and actually ban these weapons my opinion won’t change. To be stupid is to vote for what they have now, a man in charge who’s mentally and morally deficient. A man who hates others even though everyone besides the indigenous came from somewhere else. A man who actually incites hatred and encourages the shooters to violence. The USA is no longer a democracy it’s a theocracy and that’s truly backward.
The right to bear arms was installed in the US Const because it enabled resistance against governments not because of general lawlessness. The British colonial rulers, like the Romans, made it illegal for subjugated locals to carry arms which could be used to oppose their tyranny. This made it difficult for local armies to be raised in organised revolt. Washingtons army was initially a citizens militia that had to overcome the obstacle of a lack of armaments before it could be a legitimate force against the British. By inserting the right to bear arms into the Constitution the citizens of the USA could ensure a pool of armed citizen reservists would be available from which an army could be raised if needed. They were needed shortly after the war of Independence in 1812 when the British tried to retake their former US colonies. Search www for the ‘War of 1812’
Someone called oppose the major parties seems to be for resistance, murder, revolution, aggression, terrorism, uprisings, disobedience and permanent calls to violence. The USA constitution, scribbled up by slave owning nobodies who are now well known for being known in the USA, allowed for everything short term useful to perpetuate a new good thing, the total theft of land held by dispossessed indigenous, to be exploited by slaves where useful, with revenues now totally retained by the Caponeites who won the scuffles. It has been a long journey, thieving from the Mexican Spanish, accumulating Hawaii, Philippines, Alaska, etc, coercing and controlling central America, grabbing bases everywhere by any means (Diego Garcia?) pressuring everyone and anyone for corporate gain and military hegemony. So, let us rejoice thet today, any shithead diseased soul can get weapons, believe in a defective fuhrer president and commit murder on an industrial scale. The fascist freaks within love all this, being self inflated and egoswollen. The right to bear stupidity…
On what planet does ANYONE still think that America is the “greatest” country in the world? America is the hellish capital of self-serving neoliberalism; a country where the ONLY thing of value has a big dollar parked in front of it; a country so obsessed with a draconian amendment that it allows its citizens, even little school children, be slaughtered – on a regular basis – by loose cannon nutters with a murderous agenda; a country whose insane ultra-conservative leaders (like Bush and Trump) continually lead their nation (and the right-wing fools in Australia) down the path of a politically-motivated, needless war; a country where a lying, cheating, totally corrupt misogynist and blatant racist rose to become President on a campaign that succeeded in making America HATE again!
OTMP, with arguably the most powerful military in the world, it makes me wonder why the USA would ever need to gather an armed militia from its citizenry. Those who argue that they have a right to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment don’t really understand its full interpretation.
The USA has a habit of invading other countries, rather than vice versa.
I see that Trump stuffed it up again. In his address to the nation today he said Toledo instead of Al Paso.
It tells us how much he really cares.
Kathryn, agree.
The citizens of the USA make a choice every single day – that this right to bear arms is greater than the right to life.
The stupid part is that they don’t need to be deprived of the right to protect themselves and their families, but the rule should be just one revolver. How is that anyone needs an automatic weapon variable of killing 100s? Only if they are planning to kill 100s I guess.
They are their own enemies and I am sad to say I have zero sympathy any longer. If they really want to stop it, they can.
Thank you, John, for the words I cannot find…
To bear arms does not only relate to guns. When the 2nd amendment was written, the previously new colony makers had been faced with fears of invasion from the north of their new country ( mainly by the British ); from wild life – known as its capabilities, size and aggression had often been encountered, and from natives of the North American continent – some of which were by no means peaceful. These few dangerous Indian tribes were killers and/or scalpers in the “New World” … and settlers needed to be ‘armed’ against these and the other horrors that they encountered or thought they might encounter in those earlier days. Arms would have been muskets, flintlock pistols, cleavers, knives, bow and arrow etc. When John Madison drafted the American Constitution, he would not / could not, have imagined the type of weaponry available today in the form of assault rifles, or any of todays’ military equipment being available to ordinary citizens !!. So he certainly did not have the remotest idea ( needless to say ) of wholesale mass murdering going on in the American future. And neither did any of the 39 signatories to the finally written and accepted Constitution.
The fact that a quite minor percentage of scholars in the U.S. go on to achieve greatness – e.g. in medical science and intervention, space technology, IT etc., leaves a too high % of the rest of the citizens, being under-educated, and un-willing to seek further motivation in learning. Their education levels are appalling, in what is touted the greatest country on earth. Their motivations ( if any ) are all aimed at their own county, some U.S. history to the exclusion of most all else, and their sense of strength under powerful greed groups. Many many of them, know little or nothing of the outside world.
I agree totally with Kathryn that one must live on another planet to agree with the U.S. self-assesssment of “we are the greatest”. There is nothing ‘great’ about that country, whatsoever. There is one thing that is great however, that being the vast expanses of a truly beautiful country, so very diverse in every possible way. Such a shame that it is overseen, as of today – by a total ignoramus and his minions.
From years back, I heard a saying which resonates now very loudly, when it comes to the un-almighty U.S of A. “Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition” … never seemed more apt than when describing the way too many of those people live … and think.
The right to bear arms was always meant to have the proviso, ‘as part of a militia’. This is because during the War of Independence the majority of the revolutionary forces were soldier/citizens. Therefore to legitimise it’s ‘army’ and to legitimise those who might have been considered rebels and therefore not covered by the covenants of war, the US Constitution covered this by giving those ‘in a militia’ the right to bear arms. This has been translated as meaning that ALL citizens have the right to be fully armed and loaded.
Carol – I agree with you – and this is why the 2nd Amendment is so contentious to this day.
It reads ” A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It is not even correct grammar, but therein perhaps lies part of the problem.
The U.S. have wantonly ‘re-organised’ what is written in the Constitution to suit themselves – with all the clout behind them that the NRA has. Not to mention the $ interest the NRA has in all this. And the “we the people” have adopted that single word ‘people’ to cover themselves because their mindset is such that they see it necessary, right and ‘good’ to carry a weapon. There are approx. 400 M guns to 324 M people at this time. hmmm.
If it had been written : A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, assures the right of that Militia to keep and bear Arms, and shall not be infringed.” [ or something along those lines, to denote ‘the Militias essential duty to provide security to the State ]. Now they have ‘militia’ on the streets, in shopping centres – anywhere some mentally ill, or just plain evil person(s) want to ‘go to war’ against innocents, on behalf of or because of, some political, or xenophobic, or religious, or patriotic outrage they feel.
All just a tad too late to be rectified.
It is time that those with the capacity to change laws that might prevent the mass murder of people and refuse to do so were made to account. After all they are as guilty or as mad, whatever the case, as the perpetrator himself.
My thanks for your comments. Much appreciated.
The theory of the 2nd is the right to bear arms should the red coated pommies return but the practical part is the right to KEEP arms.
This quickly became a right to shoot Indians and slaves with impunity.
How many films, lord, were we subjected to men killing Indians who had been portrayed as whooping and cheering as they were killing women and children?
How many films had a grog runner?
How many had a gun runner?
We cannot understand the indoctrination of the American and film watchers like us, lord???, into the belief that America and Americans are right, godly and true. They believe anyone who opposes is wrong. They are taught to be pragmatists to believe the explanation of atrocities committed by their army as either awful but necessary for the good of the world or a reaction of a soldier (s) to a trauma. (A la audience murphy’s heroic episodes, lord?).
Loved the women’s reply to trump’s mental health not guns speech.
ps Kaye notice 10b tonnes of ice melted in Greenland in a day? Still think global warming is not the slogan to shame the deniers about man made greenhouse gases??
pps I am late because I found you in spam, I object to an AI deciding what is spam???
ps who would write
‘Ben Simmons doubles down on racism??