Dog Bites Man

TMC and I have our philosophical disagreements and this is one. I think the Second Amendment is explicitly about the ability of a populace armed with state of the art military weapons to rise in rebellion against an oppressive government. I sometimes refer to this as my ‘nuke in every pot’ theory and argue that we should subsidize hydrogen bombs for ordinary people. She doesn’t share that view.

Now careful readers will remember and I will remind others that I own no weapon of greater effectiveness than an 8″ Chef’s knife. I do have some ceremonial Masonic swords that look more threatening but are as dull as a baseball bat and much less useful. I have never shot any gun more powerful than a 20 gauge shotgun and a 22 rifle. I’m hardly what you would call an NRA nut though I do like war games (the absolute best if you don’t require first person shooter elements is Larry Bond’s Harpoon designed in the 1980s).

But are they fun? You betcha.

So I get the desire and the ideology and yet… statistics.

In the last 1066 days, that is since January 1st 2013, there have been 1052 mass shootings in the United States, in this case “mass shooting” defined as 4 or more victims in a single incident. That’s 1,347 deaths and 3,817 injuries.

This year they are averaging more than once a day, 354 in 336 days with 462 dead and 1,314 wounded and if you include all gunshot fatalities, not just “mass shootings”, 88 people die every day.

Every day.

Now you know no place in Connecticut is very far from Stars Hollow and I worked in Sandy Hook for years. The General Store (now a restaurant) named a sandwich after me, Pepperoni and Provolone, sliced sweet onion, brown mustard on a Kaiser. I drove past that school twice a day.

My mature self tells me that what we need is a government that is responsive to the people and not corrupt to the core so there is no necessity for armed rebellion. I suspect I will be shot before that happens. It’s not a very pleasant death to bleed out on the street, you get a raging headache and are really, really tired. Then you sleep forever.