A man is trimming the trees on his father’s property when a 78-year-old Floridian approaches him to ask him to stop. Several angry words later, the old Floridian shot the 42-year-old man dead in front of his 8-year-old son. What is wrong with this habitual American picture? Not only have we become a country where 78-years-old angry old white men kill people so easily, but it looks to us that extreme anger and guns are no longer compatible to safeguard our way of life. We are talking about the unhinged anger that brought us Donald Trump, and the one that attacked the Capitol on January 6. Their combination have become a very dangerous mix.
The angrier the American people, the more dangerous they are becoming. To others and to themselves.
Besides the old man murdering in cold blood, the worst part in this story is how desensitized we have become to anomalous murders. The media is reporting it as just another story, and no one seems to see the danger of our societal direction. No one seems to think it is totally abnormal for a man to kill another just for trimming his trees. Life goes on while we wait for more crimes to become more illogical and more threatening to everyday citizens.
In the meantime, gun companies and our legislators want you to know that buying a gun is a right. Even if that right tramples on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
No one seems to think it is totally abnormal for a man to kill another just for trimming his trees.
WHEN AMERICANS KILL AMERICANS
Isn’t the U.S. government supposed to protect its citizens from harm? Isn’t that one of its essential covenants? If a foreign nation invades the United States, the government would stand up to defend the people, right? But why is it incapable to spring the same safety net when Americans kill Americans?
Most of us know the answer to that question, enshrined in misinterpreting the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Here at Punditry, we wonder whether John Rutledge (South Carolina), Edmund Randolph (Virginia), Nathaniel Gorham (Massachusetts), Oliver Ellsworth (Connecticut), and James Wilson (Pennsylvania) regret not clarifying the Second Amendment when they helped the Founding Fathers draft the Constitution.
Or, maybe George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin would have vetoed the ubiquitous more detailed language in favor of vagueness.
As long as we have Republicans unwilling to see reason, a powerful and uncontrollable gun lobby, and southerners who believe the second phase of the civil war is inevitable, we will have more guns than cars in this country. Some of them land in the hands of unfit-to-own-guns people who kill fathers in front of their 8-year-old sons.
America is entering its nitroglycerin shake phase when we mix angry men with their guns.