Tuesday, July 15, 2014

"Normal" violence abroad and at home


Over 30,000 deaths by gun occur in America every year. 

Hardcore gun rights activists will offer spin after spin to try to somehow convince you (and themselves) that this insane reality has nothing to do with guns. It's mostly suicide. It's mostly gang related. It's mostly accidents. Oh. OK then. As long as I know there is someway to tell myself that those over 30,000 lives per year lost to guns in America aren't really part of a gun problem, then I guess there is no problem. (Open) carry on. 

Despite the severe spin of such arguments though, they still start with the reality of conceding that over 30,000 Americans die by gunfire on US soil every year, no matter the motivation behind the bullet. In 2010, there were 2,694 kids (age 0-19) killed by guns in the U.S. (The link is here…)

Whatever spin is applied, these stats are unacceptable.

Yet we accept them. We do not surround Congress and demand that something be done to curb these out of control gun deaths.

On the other hand, what about children refugees at our southern border who flee even far worse deadly danger in their own countries? That's a different story. We won't have it! We WILL protest that tragedy.



The tragedy of course having nothing to do with the guns involved in those murders. The real tragedy is the gall of these disease-ridden illegal children trying to escape that danger by sneaking into our shining city on a hill. Don't you dare call them refugees, despite the unthinkable reality they face at home. Work for a gang or be killed? I don't care. They are not refugees, they are illegals! Send them home!! Over 400 children were killed in Honduras alone since Jan. of last year?1 That's not my problem! The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act that George W. Bush signed requires that they have a hearing to be considered for refugee status? I don't want to hear such lies. I don't care. It's Obama's fault!… and it fills me with so much hate that I will go block the buses of these illegals being taken to process centers, and scream insults at them. I don't care how much it makes me look like an insensitive a-hole. I don't care that such action is ridiculously hypocritical in this nation of immigrants. It pisses me off and I'm gonna' scream loud enough to make sure you hear me, dammit!

I find it sickening to see this psychosis of ideological rigidity play out so blatantly along our border. One hypocrisy after another must be ignored in order to stay rigid to this hate. Immigrants only a few generations old screaming at children crossing the border today to escape virtually lawless horror at home. Screaming at Obama for being lawless while he follows the law signed by Bush that offers these children at the least, a hearing of their case before being sent back. Too often implying a Christian moral high ground, while ignoring Leviticus 19:33, and themselves frightening these children while surrounding the buses like a lawless mob. A willful blindness to all these facts while you scream at children who have already been through Hell. Such willful action can no longer be labeled anything less than hate. No matter how hard you try to spin these actions.

There is another macabrely ironic statistic that is overlooked in the midst of this anti-foreigner shouting match. The number of children refugees at our southern border may be growing since George W. Bush's signed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, but the number of these child refugees still do not match the number of American lives that have been discarded by American gunfire.

For so many people on the Right, 30,000 Americans killed each year by American gunfire is not enough to have them reconsider their firmly held ideologies. I guess I was a fool then to think that the rising deaths of foreign children could have any impact on the "thinking" process of their long-held stances. It's more than a sickening ideological rigidity. it is absolute hate.