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Target company made perfect modern American Valentine's Day gift....
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My
Facebook news feed predictably erupted on Tuesday with the news of yet
another grizzly mass school
shooting. This one was at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
in Parkland, Florida, home state of lax gun laws and Republican politicos on the NRA
payroll.
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Post gun massacre flow chart.
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We
have been through this kind of thing so often the responses were almost entirely
predictable—horror and anguish followed by sputtering outrage and the lingering sense of hopelessness that when the
last funerals and memorials are over the moment will pass, nothing will change, and
we will slide back into numbness.
By
this time all most all of my gun
worshiping friends and kin have long
ago picked up their marbles and stormed off my wall, banning me in
return. So, I get mostly the echo chamber of the liberals, left, and folks who have a prejudice against having their children slaughtered. All the Usual Suspects. But I still
have friends of friends and one or
two stubborn holdouts, so I get a taste of the equally predictable other side
many of whom seem to believe that they are the real victims in all of this.
And there we are—America
polarized again, glaring over self-constructed
parapets at our enemies.
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Bobby Ravenswood's post-Parkland Valentine's Day meme inspired me.
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One
post caught my eye—a meme created by Robby Ravenswood, a California
ukulele player, piano pounder, singer, busker, and comic. It said plaintively
“So now America has two Valentine’s Day Massacres—AWFUL.” That struck
a cord because it was also the 10th anniversary of a tragedy close to home—a shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb that left six dead including the shooter. That where my youngest daughter Maureen had gone to school for a while
a few years earlier and where many kids I know from McHenry County go. But the number
of the dead was insufficient to make
the shooting memorable outside our
area. And that says legions about the pervasiveness
of gun violence in America.
Anyway,
I was moved to write.
Three
Holes in the Valentine Heart
Chicago 1929
Toddlin’ Town
rat-a-tat-tat,
just Jazz Age juice and justice,
Tommy guns talkin’
fedoras flying,
mugs massacred,
wanna-be eye doc,
grease monkey
garage gore gone.
“Only Capone
kills like that.”
Cool beans!
Gangsters!
Northern
Illinois University 2008
Gunman on campus!
Good-guy grad student
gone goofy
lecture hall lesson
in shot gun blasts
and Glock gotchas.
Campus cops
closing in,
one last round
under the chin,
oblivion.
Twenty-three
down,
sixteen shot,
five dead and,
oh yeah, the perp.
Is that all?
Piker! Ain’t no Virginia Tech!
hardly worth the weeping and wailing
all those vigils and candlelight!
And the NRA says
all those pussy students
who didn’t pack their own heat
should have OK Corralled it.
Nothing to see
here,
move along.
Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School 2018
Crazy Cruz kid
had issues,
gas mask, smoke grenades,
and a handy AK-47
extra magazines just in case.
Shoot, pull fire
alarm.
spray death, kick in doors,
spray death, repeat.
Efficient.
Thoughts and
prayers
out the wazoo today.
Blame tomorrow.
Not me, not us.
Unpreventable.
Look….a squirrel
or Stormy Danniel’s cleavage,
any damn thing…
—Patrick
Murfin
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