Attribution: Marcin n® ☼, recreated from scratch by Quibik, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper on this 4th of July listening to the echoes of explosives out of Philadelphia as four people die in the 29th mass shooting of the year to bring the total US dead to 2,900 in 556 mass shootings since 2006.
Using a weapon specifically designed for the military to kill as many people as possible in the shortest time, the most recent shooter wore a bulletproof vest and was later taken into custody.
In a world that spends major portions of its resources on developing means of wholesale killing–claiming necessary national defense between periodic horrific wars, shooting random people on a freelance basis is not part of the accepted global kill-or-be-killed mindset.
Official killing/shooting is one thing and is the basis for what today’s bang-bang holiday celebrates.
But saturating the country with military killing machines on the strength of absurd reasoning from horse and buggy days complicates today’s patriotism and calls into question the chances for survival as individuals and as a species.
Happy 4th of July!
