No editor would ever ask a writer for 1200 words on why a drunk driver killing a child is bad…yet how often do writers hold forth on why a madman with a gun killing a child is bad? Both deaths are senseless. Both are tragic. Both shorten a life yet to approach its potential and achieve its promise…and yet we accept the death of a child via a gun far more readily than at the hands of a drunk driver? Have we become that craven, that inured to gun deaths that we accept nothing being done to curb the future possibilities of related acts of senseless violence?
The difference is that drunk drivers don’t have an entire industry, their lobbyists, and irrational zealots demanding that the rights of drivers be held to be sacrosanct, paramount, and inviolable. The madman with the gun does, and even though we might demand that drunk drivers be taken off the streets, we’re not allowed to demand the same be done with guns.
I can only speak for myself, though I suspect my sentiments aren’t unique to me. I’m beyond sick of writing about innocent men, women, and children slaughtered by madmen with guns. How the NRA and the gun industry, each staffed by what I have to assume are human beings, can live with so much blood on their hands is beyond my minimal ability to understand. In America, a drunk driver killing a child is a heinous crime deserving of serious punishment. In most states, someone driving under the influence will face jail time and a significant financial penalty (here in Oregon it can be as much as $10,000). They’ll also likely lose their license for an extended period of time.
Time after time, madmen are allowed access to firepower sufficient to slaughter significant numbers of innocent men, women, and children. These recurring tragedies barely garner a reaction from the NRA, the gun industry, and gun nuts.
It seems that a death at the hands of a drunk driver is a horrific tragedy, while a death at the hands of a madmen bearing an assault rifle is merely the cost of freedom.
Hey, as long as it’s someone else’s kid, right??
