I’m Trying to Piss You Off Here

“Was the shooting in Las Vegas a mass shooting or a massacre?” A student in one of my classes asked me that question this morning. He is originally from Palestine. My limited understanding of the Palestinian conflict immediately told me that he should be a better source for answering that question than I. But he asked me. I’m not writing an article about the answer to that question. I’m writing an article to address the way in which I answered it. I was calm, cool, and collected. My answer was simple and eloquent. I offered no judgment and kept my opinions at bay. I ignored pathos and stuck only to ethos and logos. In short, my answer was cold, unfeeling, pedantic.

Last night, walking across the college campus I teach on, going from my office hours to my next class, for the first time in my teaching career, I felt scared. I was nervous. My Army and police training kicked in and I found myself eyeballing everyone in my vicinity. I scanned tree lines and windows over my head. I scrutinized the cars in the parking lot and the spaces between them. I looked for places to duck and hide. I marked in my mind where a shooter would likely perch or emerge from. I avoiding heavily populated areas. I all but ran to my classroom.

When I got to my classroom those same skills and thoughts reassessed my situation. I began to think of the typical profile of a mass shooter, especially those on college campuses. I ran through the roster of the white males in my class and quickly assessed each one’s threat level as I approached the door to the classroom. After finally entering the room, I reassessed each student and deemed him or her safe. More at ease, I began to teach, keeping a watchful eye on both the door and the window.

To go from scared to instructional in the briefest of moments at a time when reverence and empathy are warranted, I moved through the answer as if I were describing the differences between spaghetti and lasagna. What have I become? What have these incidents made us? This is what I want to say here.

Here we are again. In the wake of yet another mass shooting, we find ourselves having the same conversations, the same debates, the same differences of opinion as we always have. The conversation has not budged. Neither has the debate or our opinions. The only aspect that seems to have experienced any change at all is emotion. How we feel and react to these incidents in the days and weeks that follow them seems to have grown shorter with each occurrence.

I could write another position paper or op-ed on why we should have stricter gun laws or mental health reforms or the evil doings of the National Rifle Association and its flawed argument in support of the antiquated Second Amendment. But what would be the use? Avowing the right to protect oneself is meaningless until you can identify who it is you are protecting yourself from and what weapons they are coming at you with. But who am I to say the Boogie Man doesn’t exist? Likewise, there is no point in adding my voice to the chorus shouting into the abyss that is the Republican party about why it’s a totally shit idea to rollback regulations on fire arm silencers; especially less than two days after the sound of gunfire saved the lives of hundreds more than the unfortunate 59 (and counting) that died during the tragedy.

I could write a piece talking about how the GOP has opted to remove mental health coverage from healthcare packages or that they are more concerned about making sure everyone in the United States has a gun before everyone has health coverage…or a livable wage…or clean drinking water. But why add a couple more redundant pages to the already voluminous dialog?

I could write a heartfelt tribute to the victims and their families of Las Vegas or Orlando or Sandy Hook or Blacksburg or Spokane or Columbine or Roseburg. But why stop with them? Why not include the victims of Hurricanes Maria, Irma, Katrina, or any other natural or unnatural disaster resulting in a large-scale, preventable death toll? There will be plenty of yearbook tributes, town square memorial markers, moments of silence, and vigils from coast-to-coast to remember those folks. My empty words don’t need to be added to the rolls.

There are any number of articles I could write here to encourage peace and love and tolerance and acceptance. I could vomit a couple thousand words down here to let you, the readers, know where I stand. But why? What good would it do? Those that agree with me MIGHT hit the like button and move on. Those that disagree vehemently might make boisterous statements in the comments; those less passionate may just roll your eyes, call me a bleeding heart liberal under your breath and move on. Either way, twenty minutes after you’ve read this, you will likely be somewhere else, occupied with some other article or action. I won’t even be a distant echo or whisper.

I hope each of us reflects on what these events have made us.

Are you a champion, an activist for justice? Have you accepted the responsibility of tackling these issues head on in the spirit of change? Are you giving of your time and energies to prevent further attacks on innocent civilians?

Have you become a teacher, someone who can breakdown the complex concepts for others to understand and make informed decisions?

Have you become a writer or orator, evangelizing and spreading the word in support of your side of the argument?

Have you become a counselor, someone who can listen to those reaching out for help? Have you become someone who wants to be proactive in preventing this kind of carnage?

Have you become a peace officer? Have you trained to investigate and find those people most likely to commit these acts before they get the opportunity?

Maybe you’ve become a chair-borne soldier, voicing your opinions to the television. Do you spend your time arguing with the talking heads that can’t hear you as you sit comfortably in your own home far away from the violence?

Instead of shouting at the screens perhaps you have become a social media warrior, frantically changing your profile avatar to the “cause image of the day” or furiously commenting on the posts and tweets of friends, family, and other faceless warriors staring into screens, growing irate at the current state of political ignorance and rejection of common sense?

Has your left-leaning position been solidified? Are you now even more convinced of your political righteousness? Have your liberal beliefs strengthened your unrealistic utopian desires of Bernie Sanders becoming mayor of your Xanax laced Gum Drop town where everyone participates in the community garden and everyone is equal and all cultural identities are shared as one identity drowning out individuality and difference? If you have no differences, there will be no need for debate, right? No debate, no discourse, no need for change. One mind is all you need.

Those of you with no testicles — or little to no melanin for that matter — who are obsessed with the sizes of your trucks, your guns, and your cocks are, to put it simply, cowards. That statement is directed, in case you couldn’t tell, to white males. Granted, I believe that there are plenty of females and people of color who fall into this column of cowardice but not enough to make them a menace to society.

Muslims don’t scare me. Neither do the Crips, the Bloods, MS-13, the Italian or Russian Mafias, or even Juggalos. You know who scare me? Straight, white-male Christians. Especially those who wrap themselves in the American Flag, surround themselves with guns, and declare a God-given right to protect themselves from anyone who doesn’t look, sound, think, or worship like they do.

I find them frightening, deplorable, repugnant, uneducated, unable to think for themselves, ignorant, asinine, childish, gullible, narrow-minded, racist, hateful, and just plain old stupid. They possess no self-awareness, but have self-centeredness in spades.

I go back and forth on who is worse: those in that category who were members of the Armed Forces or those who were not. As a white-male Army veteran, my current leaning is that veterans who hold those hateful nationalistic beliefs are worse. How could you have served in the military and not learned the lessons of war? I do not mean the rules of combat; I mean the LESSONS of war.

Guns and bombs, no matter their size, are weapons designed with the intention of killing from a distance. Plain and simple. Take them away from the soldier and the soldier must rely on his physical strength and hand-to-hand tools to kill his “opponent”. The tools of war in the hands of anyone ease their ability to kill. These distance-eliminating tools eliminate culpability. They make someone who might otherwise not be, a killer.

Politicians and military leaders are not the ones who pay the price of war. Those on the front lines, given a tool of destruction and death pay the price. A soldier turned politician may have the experience and understanding of a battlefield situation, but they are no longer responsible for picking up the tab. If any veteran turned politician is willing to send young men and women into battle after having experienced the horrors of war, they should be ready to go as well.

Look, I could sit here for hours and hours and spew out thousands of words debating the ins-and-outs of the gun control argument. But my point is simple: open your fucking mind.

That message goes to both sides of the aisle.

To add any new insight into the definition and interpretation of the Second Amendment would be folly. As an educated person holding a master’s degree in Rhetoric, I can only take the letter of the law, as it is written and attempt to derive some meaning based solely on the definitions of the words contained therein. I can review the details of the context in which it was written and I can give you an educated estimation of what I believe was meant in 1787 when the Constitution was penned and ratified. But I am not a judge or a Constitutional lawyer. I am a scholar with an opinion. My understanding carries no weight.

Liberals, get your heads out of your organic gardens and home brews longer than it takes to tweet your 140-character tirade and take some real action. What has calling your senator or marching actually accomplished so far? If you truly believe that those calls and emails have stopped your representatives from voting in a way you don’t like in Congress, then you are more gullible and stupid than the Republicans who think they can “Make America Great Again” by taking us back to the Segregationist 1950’s.

Republicans, stop freaking the fuck out that someone is going to storm your castle and steal your guns. It’s not going to fucking happen. People of color, homosexuals, pro-choicers, and atheists have enough of their own shit to do to worry about your dumb ass. Put down your gun and mind your own business. And when you do start to mind your own business, OWN IT!

Yes, own your shit. Don’t pass off your attitudes or actions as direction from God or the Bible. If you don’t want people of color in your neighborhood, then say it. If you want to own an M-16 or an AR-15 because you like the erection it gives you, then fucking own it. If you want to drive a massive truck and go coal rolling down the highway, blowing thick black smoke in the faces of bicyclists, just say so. You are so wrapped up in the Second Amendment, you have skipped right over and even forgotten about your First Amendment.

I truly hope that this piece pisses people off. It is meant to make you mad. It is meant to poke and jab at everyone who reads it. My intention is that this makes you so mad that you rant and rave and prove to everyone around you how much of a lunatic with your head shoved up your ass you really are. I hope everyone who reads this, at some point takes even a cursory look at themselves and wonders where they fall on the spectrum and how other people view them.

If you don’t like what you see, then change it.