xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#'. The Digibandit: Apr 4, 2009

Saturday, April 04, 2009

America Needs Less Guns or More Bulletproof Vests

Guns Don’t Kill People” says the NRA “People Kill People” – Try Mass Murder With A Rock You Fucking Redneck Morons!

The mass shootings that left 14 people dead in Binghamton, N.Y., on Friday were horrifying, depressing, nationally wrenching. They were also, to some extent, unsurprising in a society where the term "mass shooting" has lost its status as unthinkable aberration and become mere fodder for a fresh news cycle.

"We have to guard against the senseless violence that this tragedy represents," President Barack Obama said in Europe on Saturday. Senseless violence: Two centuries from now, if we're not careful, it could be an epitaph for our era.

People are of course responsible for their actions, but it's hard to avoid wondering what's afoot in the darkest recesses of what we like to call American exceptionalism.

For so long, the national narrative has been so bullish about equality of opportunity, so persuasive in its romance of possibility for all.

Is it so subversive to speculate, then, that when the engine of possibility runs into roadblocks, people can't cope?

(Above is from an AP commentary)