With Gun As Our God

It is more likely that the students that were killed at Douglas High School will be posthumously issued fines for running in the hallway as the bullets flew than it is that we as a country will put an end to the violence.   

We grieve, light candles, sing songs, make shrines out of flowers and photographs, and we bury the dead, but we don’t put an end to the violence. 

We cannot.

Because if after Columbine we allowed Sandy Hook and Douglas, as well as several other massacres, then there can be but one truth:

We are no better than the pagans who made human sacrifices to pacify their gods, and entertain the masses. 

And Gun is our god.

It’s not that we’re not nice people.  Honestly, nine times out of ten we’ll hold the door for you.  But you have to understand Gun is an angry, demanding god. 

There’s no way around it, every now and again there has to be a sacrifice. 

We know that to do it properly we should have built a stone altar, but there were Union problems with the stone masons, so we’ve put a modern spin on the ancient rite, and the sacrifices happen at our schools, or concerts, or movie theatres, which actually works well.

 Gun loves randomness and irony.

With a firearm as your deity, you accept that there will be another slaughter. 

Gun requires it.

It’s a stark reality, but I don’t think it hasn’t turned us into a bloodthirsty people.  We still love seeing who gets the final rose or the mirror-ball trophy. 

But, and I hate to admit this, it’s also true that our phone screens have become our Colosseum. 

We’re glued to the harried footage of children, who were worried about their next quiz, ducking for cover, and we scroll the names of the dead, reading with wide-eyed curiosity about who they were, and what they were set to accomplish. 

Our hearts tug as we consider the songs left unsung, the graduation tassels that will not be moved to the left, the empty chairs at Christmas dinner, and we light a few more candles, and even shout into microphones that the violence must end.

But we know, in time, there will be another slaughter.

What’s that? 

You want to know if this could be the last sacrifice to Gun that we as a country make?  That we do whatever it takes never let this happen again? 

You want to know if the list of the sacrificed could end with:

Scott Beigel,

Alyssa Alhadeff,

Martin Duque Anguiano,

Nicholas Dworet,

Aaron Feis,

Jamie Guttenberg,

Christopher Hixon,

Luke Hoyer,

Cara Loughran,

Gina Montalto,

Joaquin Oliver,

Alaina Petty,

Meadow Pollack,

Helena Ramsey,

Alex Schachter,

Carmen Schentrap,

Peter Wang

Not another name? 

Never another name?

I mean, it’s a beautiful sentiment, really it is, but…

We’re going to need a copy of that list.  Most of the dead were students, and we have it on good authority that they were seen running in the hallways.  And, you know, rules are rules.

And Gun is our god. 

Or maybe I’m wrong. 

Prove me wrong, America.