People Kill People — Knowledge Fight

Surprise, more school shootings, a bombing thrown in the mix, more innocent people dead. We’re all tired. We’re all complicit. As inspiring as they are, the Parkland teens aren’t going to save us, and fuck all of us for creating a world where they have to try. I, personally, think the only thing that is going to save us is nothing and that maybe, just maybe, climate change will fuck everyone up so bad all the people who know how to make guns will die.

It doesn’t even register with me anymore. I just think, “oh, there’s another one,” and then wonder if it’s going to be my turn soon. We’ve all accepted that this is the reality, people are going to die every day because the GOP fucking loves the money that people who fucking love guns give to them.

Before I continue, if you have somehow found this without having any experience with myself or Knowledge Fight, please spare me any sanctimonious bullshit, as this is gonna get your sanctimonious bullshit hackles up.

If this is just reality, if this is just how it is and how it’s going to be because the vast majority of people cannot outweigh the power of the few with massive wealth, how about we do some lemons into lemonades-ing, then. I’ve got an idea.

Now, before I continue again, let me make very clear, I do not want anyone shot. I’m the type of lefty, liberal lunatic that believes we shouldn’t have guns, period. I also don’t think we should have nuclear weapons, missiles, a military ten times the size of the next closest competitor, and, I’m not sure if we do, but we probably do, weaponized diseases (I totally bet we do). Remember, this isn’t on me. This is on them. They’ve created a reality that I exist within and I am trying to do my best within that reality.

Here’s my idea:

Let’s just point the would-be school shooters in a different direction. The laws we have in place and, more importantly, the ones we don’t, ensure that people will be shot. That is an inexorable fact. So if people are going to be shot, and there’s nothing we can do about that, what if we turned this to our advantage? Think about it this way, the people getting shot don’t deserve to be shot, but, some people do deserve to be shot. Since people are going to get shot no matter what we do, what if the right people got shot?

That’s not how we’re supposed to talk, right? We’re supposed to talk about getting gun control passed, we’re supposed to talk about the tragedy, we’re supposed to be angry and motivated to Get. This. Done! But Columbine happened in 1999. Or, as that sentence should be written, COLUMBINE FUCKING HAPPENED IN 19-FUCKING-99! No one has succeeded in getting a single goddamn thing done in that time.

Actually that’s wrong, the GOP has succeeded in doing a lot of shit in that time. They’ve succeeded in blocking every single piece of gun control legislation proposed.

So let’s talk about them for a sec. The slogan that has absolutely fucking dominated America for the past twenty years is “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” There’s a bunch of ways to interpret that. You could say what it means is that the murderous impulse within a small percentage of humanity is not possible to erase. Because murder is inevitable, its tool is immaterial.

That’s obviously stupid. The point has been made that maybe, yes, murder is going to happen no matter what, but a knife can’t kill 15 people at a time. Christ, as we’ve seen recently, even fucking bombs can’t kill 15 people at a time.

A better interpretation of this slogan is on a much more larger scale. In a war, a reasonable point of view is that soldiers are the gun, but those who point that gun and fire are responsible for the carnage that results. The phrase “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” is more emblematic of the reality of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Guns do kill people and they are fired by the rich at the poor. They are fired by the powerful at the weak.

So let’s fire back.

In that spirit, if you or someone you know is thinking about shooting up a school, or bombing a neighborhood, or any of the other mass shootings and atrocities that are going to happen in the future, the Koch brothers live in Wichita, Kansas. Jeff Bezos lives in Medina, Washington. Robert Mercer lives at “Owl’s Nest” mansion in Head of the Harbor, New York. Wayne Lapierre, head of the NRA, lives in the D.C. suburbs.

To be clear, I don’t want anyone shot, but guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and if you’re a person who’s going to kill people, leave kids the fuck alone.