President Obama visited Roseburg, OR, last Friday to meet with families of the victims of the recent massacre at Umpqua Community College. If you’d listened to some residents of the Roseburg area (150 showed up to protest), though, you’d think the President only came to Roseburg to trade in tragedy and push his anti-gun agenda. Personally, I’m sick to death of hearing sound bites from Roseburg residents in which they voice variations of: “The President’s not welcome here; all he’s doing in pushing his radical anti-gun agenda.” It would be difficult to imagine anything more monstrous, callous, self-absorbed and thoroughly hypocritical than Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © accusing the President of the very thing they’re guilty of: politicizng gun violence.
These Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © honestly believe that the President ONLY cares about this tragedy only insofar as it can be used it to facilitate taking their guns? Surely they can’t be that arrogant, monstrous, and self-absorbed? They’re convinced the President is politicizing a tragic massacre in order to pursue his own narrow, unconstitutional agenda? I’d submit THEY are the ones guilty of the very thing they frequently and volubly accuse the President of. There was at least one protester proudly flying a Confederate flag; any chance the protesters were driven by racism as much as misplaced righteous outrage?
For the Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © who attended the protest, this was less about honoring those who were murdered than it was about dishonoring and disrespecting the President in pursuit of their own narrow agenda. Hmm…I wonder what well-regulated militias the protesters belonged to? It’s interesting that they’d so bllithely ignore the first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment and yet cling to the last 14 as if their life and liberty depended on it? Is it REALLY about liberty and freedom? Or is it in truth about a selfish, callous, and inhuman devotion to the elelevation of Guns uber Alles ©?
As if the answer to that question isn’t already self-evident.
The Roseburg community suffered a horrific, almost unimaginable, and yet all too familiar tragedy…and the primary concern of Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © is their precious guns? Is their hatred for The Black Guy in the White House © so complete and arrogantly all-consuming that they’d believe his every thought, word, and deed to be part of a nefarious plot to pry their guns from their cold, dead fingers? Have Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © been so addled by racism, hatred, and NRA propaganda that they can’t see past their own unwarranted fear and absurd prejudice? Are they really so far gone that they’re unable to be there for members of their own community in the wake of a tragic, unspeakable loss? Or is the loss of innocent life, even so close to home, merely the price of freedom? (It’s easy to feel that way when you’re not burying a loved one, isn’t it?)
If this sounds angry, it’s because I mean it to. I’m sick to death of people so devoted to their guns that they’re willing to set aside whatever shreds of compassion and humanity they may once have possessed. It distresses me that here in Oregon there are those who’ve swallowed so much of the NRA’s Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foe © KoolAid that they can’t see past their narrow prejudice and self-interest. They’re so addicted to their guns and their self-absorbed arrogance and rage that they can’t be bothered to support those in their own community who’ve lost so much.
In Right-wing America, The Black Guy in the White House isn’t allowed to visit the site of a tragedy in order to pay his respects to families of the victims…because any sympathy he shows merely confirms his “anti-gun” agenda. No, better to let people suffer and grieve alone than to risk “politicizing” gun violence. Displays of compassion will only embolden the gun-grabbing Liberals who use such tragedies to push their narrow agenda.
If anyone had been harboring any lingering suspicion that maybe, just maybe a shred of humanity could be found somewhere deep within Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes ©, what happened in Roseburg made it clear that faith has been misplaced. Their conduct has made them the best argument yet for taking their guns, because they clearly can’t understand that rights come with responsibilities and that their “rights” don’t trump any and all other considerations.
…and the horse you rode in on.
