NY Times 2023 photographs -- iv

 

And so it happened again just yesterday, in a place nobody thought it would--just as it always does. 

This time in rural Iowa, right here, half a state away. Feels as if it could have happened at the high school MOCFV will be playing tonight--it's Friday, isn't it?

Could have been anywhere. In fact, it will be next week, and I'm no prophet. Gun violence is this country a horror that shows no signs of lessening because gun advocates are hellishly sure that those evil libs are coming after everything--BB guns to bazookas--and, doggone it, the constitution says--didn't you ever read it for shit sake?--that we get our guns because, dang it, it's America here, land of the free, and besides you never know what might happen when this country's weirdos take over, which could happen next election, after all, if you don't vote for Trump. It's the land of the free here. Don't like it?--then fricken' leave.

You know how it goes.

One result is daily deaths from gun violence, and weekly deaths in mass shootings, the latest yesterday in Perry, Iowa, where a 17-year-old messed-up kid named Dylan Butler, got up early, marched off to school armed with a shotgun and a pistol, and proceeded to shoot up a cafeteria for some insane reason, killing a sixth-grader, wounding several others, and then, courageously (!) offing himself. 

It does not require an MSW to say Dylan Butler was horribly messed up. All of them are. They're hopped up on something, often nothing more than a lifetime of waking up to loveless mornings. 

Somehow they get a gun or two or three, so one day--who knows what happens?--something inside Dylan Butler's brain misfires and he does what he did yesterday. 

There's no good reason for him to have done that, of course, and there's no good reason for American citizens to have 433 million. . . let me write that out: in America today, there are 433,000,000 guns in a population of approximately 350,000,000 people. You do the math. 

That many of those guns are stored under lock and key is certainly true. That a chunk of that number are used for hunting, often a family tradition, goes without saying. That some people like to shoot at clay pigeons is undoubtedly true. But if you add up all of those guns, I'm guessing the number would get nowhere close to--let me say that again--433,000,000. 

What's more woeful is that what happened at Perry, Iowa, yesterday, quiet little town in the middle of the Iowa prairies, will happen again, if not this week, the next.

And once more, nothing will happen to thwart the carnage.

The NY Times photograph at the top of the page features a little girl being taken away from Covenant Christian School, Nashville, where a similarly messed-up shooter who, Lord knows, shouldn't have been anywhere near a gun, did what Dylan Butler did yesterday, although the tally was worse: three children and three adults. 

To someone who has Christian education in his blood and soul, this shooting--at a PCA school--was especially shocking, not because I'd simply assumed that the Lord of Hosts would never allow such horror at a Christian school, not because the name spelled out a theology I know very, very well, but because the suffering kids and supporters of Covenant Christian could very easily have been my relatives. 

Perry too. Iowa. Cornfields and weekend ball games, big crowds, active PTAs, community spirit, strong churches, prayers groups meeting all over town, dozens of Bible studies. Even Perry. Even Covenant Christian.

Don't expect change. We'll always have misfits, and it appears that, lacking the resolve to do anything about that massive pile of firearms, we'll always have an inexcusable number of guns. Nothing will happen. Nothing will change.

Who knows, this week it may be the school my grandson attends? 

Why not?

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Note: Letitia James, New York's AG, who has yet another five-star crook in her sights, is trying to strip Wayne LaPierre, the chief cook and bottle-washer of the NRA, of his job. He's been a fraud, she claims, and no one doubts it. No single man or woman has been more bullheaded on gun control than the head of the National Rifle Association. He goes down and maybe, just maybe, things in this country will change. Stay tuned.