Once again, we are faced with the reality that we worship a false god: the gun. Its scripture, the second amendment. Its sacrifice, the innocent.
We’ve seen this time and time again. Why can’t we do something? Why are we still stuck in this cycle?
From “Our Moloch” by Gary Willis (published in 2012, and yet so relevant tonight):
The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?
Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.
I think about my children leaving for school every morning, wondering if I’ll see them again. I pray we break out of this violent trance.