Attribution: Photo by Jay Rembert on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in appreciating the fact that they were among those who made it through Valentine’s Day without being shot. Some 100 or more people did not, that being the average number of daily gunshot deaths in the US: 54% suicide, 43% murder, remainder accidents.
But Valentine’s Day 2024, was above average with the mass shooting of Super Bowl celebrants in KC, so the daily record will show a blip that will get brief notification in the gun record book until it is overshadowed by the next shopping mall—church—school mass shooting, which will once more call for laboriously hauling out the very effective response of “thoughts and prayers.”
Of all the absurdities foisted on the US populace by insufferable narcissistic, greed-motivated, jerks–and there are many—absurdities and jerks, the gun-in-every-cradle, closet and back-pack—maybe an AR-15, is up there with arrogant men groping to control women’s reproductive lives.
While the keeper and Phyllis did not venture out into the gun saturated American Valentine’s Day scene yesterday, they need to go shopping at a mall today and they just hope nobody shows up there with an AR-15, 200 rounds of armor piercing bullets and an attitude.
How’s that for a now-common daily concern in the greatest country on the planet!
Photo by Bill Stokes