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I wonder how many Americans were aware of a mass shooting in Collierville, Tennessee, last Thursday, September 23? I suspect a few might have heard about the incident, but it certainly didn’t garner much attention from the national news media. And why should it?
After all, according to the Gun Violence Archive, since September 18, we’ve had 29 people killed, and 104 wounded across the country due to shootings. In other words, just your standard nine-day period at any given time in this country. It’s as normal as grabbing a cup of coffee in the morning or taking a shower after work. It’s what we’ve come to expect; thus, we move on about our business.
Incidentally, the mass shooting in Tennessee occurred at a Kroger supermarket. The perpetrator was a disgruntled employee who shot 10 of his co-workers and four customers (and then himself) who happened to be there at the wrong time. You know, the ones who were grabbing supplies or whatever they needed for dinner later that evening. Yeah, it could have been you — or me.
Yet, we’re told by the gun crazies that an incident like that one is simply the price we must pay for our 2nd Amendment God-given rights. That’s right, the nerve of those people simply trying to live their lives the best way they possibly can, only to be interrupted by a mentally ill man hell-bent on revenge and taking his own life.
If I were a betting man, I think I could place a pretty large wager that many of those same people who believe they should be able to have whatever gun they see fit are many of the same who yell and complain they have to wear a mask in public to protect themselves and others from a deadly pandemic. I could be wrong on that. But I doubt it.
Because in today’s America, death isn’t much of a thing to some folks. It’s about principle, they say. How dare the government tell them what to do? Not only should they be able to refuse to wear a mask, but they should also be able to carry a loaded semi-automatic rifle for all to see. Because, damn it, they’re the real Americans. The rest of us are a bunch of mealy-mouthed snowflakes.
Even as intensive care units were filling up over the past month, mostly in rural red unvaccinated America, protests erupted at school board meetings and health care facilities over mask and vaccination mandates for public school kids and workers. Deaths from COVID, in the meantime, rose by the thousands. Again, that’s simply the price we must pay for the crazies to have their freedom.
It recently came out that Alabama, for the first time on record, had more people die in 2020 than were born. “This past year, 2020, is going to be the first year that we know of in the history of our state where we actually had more deaths than births,” said Alabama Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris. “Our state literally shrunk,” he said.
According to the Mayo Clinic, Alabama is one of the worst states regarding vaccination rates. Currently, only 52.4% of the population has had at least one shot. Apparently, the people of that state haven’t gotten the memo that vaccinations work and keep people alive. Or, perhaps even worse, maybe they don’t care? Once again, “Freedom!”
To be fair, this isn’t to pick on one particular state because some of their neighbors are not much better, and some, like Mississippi, are even worse. The Governor of that state, Tate Reeves, twisted himself into a pretzel during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper last week, trying to explain why his state would rank 2nd in the world for deaths per 100,000 if it were a country. No worries, said Reeves, what about Biden? Or something of that nature.
I’m left with only one conclusion: We’re dealing with a sizable portion of this country who belong to a death cult. I don’t know what else to call it, quite frankly. Although, I might add that many of these same folks do care about unborn fetuses. They say they’re the real pro-life folks. Once you’re out of the womb, though, it’s all in God’s hands, they say.
Pretty soon, we’ll be over 700,000 deaths due to COVID. It’s been a rotten nearly two years by any stretch of the imagination. In the meantime, thousands more were shot and killed or took their own lives by firearms during that same period. We’re surrounded by death, it seems, and the cult, as I call them, shrug it off as a plot by the deep state, Dr. Fauci, the libs, or Bill Gates.
The thing is, many of these deaths could have been prevented. In the case of COVID, through vaccination, which is widely available now, and if we had had a president who took the pandemic seriously from the start. At one point, that president’s administration contemplated sending five masks to every American household until they found out, of course, that it was only killing “those” people in blue states.
As for guns? When I say common-sense gun safety regulations, the crazies blow a gasket. You want to confiscate all of our weapons, they say. Maybe deep down, I’d kind of like to do that. But I’m not naïve. It’s never going to happen, but we can and must do better, though. America continues to be the poster child for violence across the globe, at least in developed countries.
Getting people out of cults; deprogramming them through therapy and other means isn’t an easy endeavor. How do we, at least those who believe in keeping people safe, healthy, and alive, solve such a problem when that cult membership totals well into the millions?
It’s a question far above my pay grade. All I know is that I plan on going to the grocery store later. I’ll have my mask on, even though I’m fully vaccinated. I also will not be carrying an AR-15 anywhere on my body. I hope I make it home safely. Hopefully, I won’t run into a disgruntled employee who’s “having a bad day,” as we were told one of them was having in a mass shooting months ago.
Hopefully, I won’t get a breakthrough COVID infection either. The odds are that I won’t. But you never know because who knows what kind of variants lurk out there due to the death cult allowing them to fester? All it takes is a jab in the arm and a piece of cloth on the face. It’s simply too much for them, I guess.
I’d simply ask that these folks start to value life instead of tolerating so much death. I have just as much right not to be infected or shot as they do to parade around with protest signs and AR-15’s.
Why is that so hard to understand?
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