At War with Ourselves

Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.
~Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire 
 
And in the case of yesterday’s massacre, the 45th of this year alone and the 142nd (or so) since Sandy Hook, these massacres will not end until we all care for the mentally ill in our communities and stop enabling the death merchants. Yes, the people who commit such horrors are mentally ill. Of course they are! How's about we make it so the violently, batshit insane aren't able to legally gain access to guns. That's a start, right? Hmmmm?

Saint Reagan, on taking office, ixnayed the Mental Health Systems Act before it could even get out the door.

President Reagan never understood mental illness. Like Richard Nixon, he was a product of the Southern California culture that associated psychiatry with Communism. Two months after taking office, Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, a young man with untreated schizophrenia.  

Maybe we could try to get help for the troubled before they shoot up an elementary school, a college cafeteria OR a president? Doesn't that sound like a good idea?

Denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.
~Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families  

What can we do besides not buy guns or just be entirely responsible gun owners (yes, I know they exist)? I know that, here in very liberal Massachusetts, I feel a bit helpless. My senators are both loud and proud with reality, with what needs to be done BUT in April of 2013, the senate rejected a measure that would have tightened background checks for gun purchases.

The bipartisan push to tighten rules on gun purchases has failed in the face of fierce NRA opposition. Howard Kurtz on why the post-Newtown legislation fell short.

Check at this link to see how your reps voted. Don't like how they went? Work to vote the NRA 'tutes OUT!

After a mass shooter murdered 35 people in Australia in 1996, the nation enacted strict gun control laws — and as of 2013, they hadn’t had a mass shooting since, Will Oremus wrote at Slate.

If they can do this, why can't we?

And that good-guy-with-a-gun-will-stop-the-bad-guy with-a-gun ethos? Believeing that fallacious stew of rotted maggot feces is a solid tell that you’ve watched too many Hollywood fantasies. NO, real life just doesn’t work that way as the folks in Houston just very clearly witnessed. 

From Obama:
We are the only advanced country on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every month.
~~snip~~
There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country,” he says, and they understand we need to change our gun laws. “There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you with a straight face make the argument that more guns will make us safer?”
~~snip~~
We have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun violence. How can that be? This is a political choice that we make. To allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who love their loved ones because of our inaction. 

Do your reps oppose sensible gun control? Who are their big campaign contributers? Who's their sugar daddy? Find out and vote those fuckers out.