Memorial Day is over, but every day is still gray

Every time I read about a new act of violence (gun violence in particular) I feel like I've been hit with a baseball bat. The collective head of the United States has been beaten into a coma by the metaphorical bat of gun violence.

My two cents (which won't buy anything anymore): The two noblest aims of a free, democratic society are 1) to ensure that freedom of speech/expression allows every voice to say what it wills and 2) to ensure that the majority will of the people [regulated by an agreed upon (although inherently imperfect/evolving) moral code enforced by checks and balances] is enacted.

Mix capitalism into those principles and you're left with two two-word slogans that can basically explain your nation's entire history: "Sex sells" and "Money talks".

I've seen these people, ordinary citizens, in the news lately who walk around heavily populated areas (downtown, fast food restaurants, etc.) with their rifles and their shotguns strapped around them, in plain view. Their proclamation is that they are out supporting the 2nd amendment and trying to raise people's awareness that guns are not the problem. When people call the police on them because they are scared, they maintain civility while defending their freedoms (and videotape everything to post on the God-forsaken wasteland known as the internet, where intelligent, informed discourse came to die). To me, this is misleading. Essentially what these people are doing is patrolling areas with weapons stating that they're deterring crime and that they're the good guys.

But I keep thinking this: the reason we have police, the reason we have a military, is so that the vast majority of us who don't sacrifice ourselves in the line of duty can live a life free from fear. It is an horrific shame that we live in a nation where we can walk a downtown street, enter a movie theater, or simply go to school, and be afraid. Un-uniformed men patrolling our streets proclaiming to be our best option against gun violence is a sad state of affairs, and that's the point they're missing, I think.

Could I say I wouldn't have paid all the riches in the world for one of them to be present when the massacre at Sandy Hook took place? No, I couldn't. A right-minded person armed with a rifle could've helped. Could I say that I'd rather they, the responsible majority, have no access to guns so long as it ensured better gun violence prevention? Absolutely. The beauty is, neither extreme is required. America is supposed to be a rational place that takes the black and white issues of the world and turn them gray, prizing individuality and nuance. I suppose it's inevitable that that experiment failed. 

Imagine a guy walks around an elementary school with a loaded rifle, then walks in.

Now imagine a guy who walks around with a rifle strapped around himself in traditionally non-violent neighborhoods in order to display that he has a free right to carry a deadly weapon and to proclaim to the media that he is the only true source of protection (statistically speaking, have these stand-your-ground gun-toting people made any kind of significant impact on violent crime?).

That's the third world to me. But America has long been on this road of whip-'em-out to see whose is bigger. And like the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it shows that all spirals generated by uninformed, uneducated, disassociated participants is downward.

Every time I read about gun violence I think about two people that used to be in my life. And I think about how many million times over I would wish to suffer and die before any type of violent crime or even any provocative, potentially frightening situation should befall them. A little girl should not have to walk down the street and wonder why normal people are carrying rifles, as though we lived in a war zone. She shouldn't have to hear the explanation, "We're the only thing standing between you and certain (unpredictable) slaughter" but, more than that, she should not have to live a society where that is a valid explanation.

"Hashtag" fuck guns and fuck violent people. Words rule.