A slippery slope

This editorial cartoon has been around a while and it is as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 2010.

That’s both a testament to the power of editorial cartoons and to the general state of our society. Nothing has changed since 2010. Indeed, it’s only gotten worse.

I posted this cartoon to my Facebook page shortly after the most recent massacre — the one outside a shopping mall in Allen, Texas, in case another one comes along before you read this, which isn’t unlikely — and appended the comment, “Let’s go to the scoreboard, shall we?”

The post didn’t get a great deal of traction, not that I expected it to. It was simply an expression of my frustration. But it did elicit a comment from a FB friend, someone I know IRL.

“I’d personally like to see some safeguards put in place but it’s a slippery slope and therein lies the difficulty.”

Huh. A slippery slope.

Right now, as far as I’m concerned, that slope is slippery because it’s coated with blood.

Please. Please. Doing nothing — which is what this phrase translates to — doesn’t help. We need solutions, not a phrase slightly less offensive than “thoughts and prayers.” Thoughts and prayers aren’t working, either.

Those working to reduce gun violence have offered some solutions, and a majority of Americans support those proposals. Background checks. Waiting periods. Red flag laws. Most Americans even support curbs on the weapons and accessories most likely to be used in a massacre.

But we are unlikely to see any of this until we begin to see daylight between 2A advocates and 2A absolutists. Right now, that particular venn diagram appears to be a full circle.

The harsh truth is that any set of solutions to this problem — you know, massacres at schools and shopping malls, getting shot because you got in the wrong car or rang the wrong doorbell or, heaven forefend, played hide-and-seek too close to your neighbor’s yard — will not come from people actively working to reduce gun violence. These solutions will come only when 2nd Amendment advocates finally become sick of seeing children slaughtered outside a shopping mall or in a classroom.

Only then will they separate from the absolutists. 2A advocates need to get serious about this because the absolutists are not serious people.

The thing about that particular editorial cartoon is that it was published not long after Sandy Hook. That was a watershed moment for this country. It’s when 2A advocates and absolutists locked arms and decided that the slaughter of 2nd-graders was a small price to pay for ” … our God given right to own guns.”

A couple of final points:

Some of you are going to point to the mental health of the murderers and say we need to address that. Fair point. The people who do this on a mass scale are certainly sick. So are those who use lethal force against imagined slights on the retail level.

However, treating the mental health of these people doesn’t seem to be a priority of our leaders. Last I checked, Texas is tail-end Charlie when it comes to the resources we devote to mental health care —51st in the nation (yeah, including the District of Columbia), never mind the practical issues with providing this sort of care to people who don’t want it.

So, until we are ready to invest adequate resources in mental health care, just miss me with that argument. It’s weak.

The other point some of y’all will raise is the chestnut about the futility of enacting laws that no one will follow, or something like that. With that attitude, why bother passing laws against drunk driving or drag shows or abortion?

A Twitter-journalist-friend expressed it very well earlier this week. You can find her thoughts on this here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1655709500936945668.html

I’ve felt the way @txnewsprincess does for quite some time. You can miss me with this argument, too. I don’t really want to hear your rebuttal.

Related: Our new normal: When tragedy becomes commonplace