Tag: NRA

Another mass shooting. F*ck your #ThoughtsAndPrayers

Posted on by SW

“Every time my daughter walks out the front door in the morning, I know she mightn’t come home.”

This mother’s daughter is not a police officer or serving in the military. She is a school kid.

Another one today. Another mass shooting in an American school… Uvalde, Texas. 19 kids and two adults killed, more injured.

Texas. Where last year Republicans passed a law so anyone over 21 can buy a gun without a license, test or background check, but the state has the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States. Priorities.

There was the usual outrage today at the NRA, more #ThoughtsAndPrayers, more politicians up in arms (thankfully not literally) and the President asking “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”

That’s an excellent question. Maybe someone should ask her.

Unfortunately those thoughts and prayers mean f*ck all to the children and adults killed or injured in the 27 school shootings in the United States this year. Not to mention the victims of mass shootings in supermarkets, churches, colleges etc, etc. Also not to mention the psychological scars the survivors will endure.

I’m Australian and it’s unimaginable to me that kids have emergency drills in school in case some nutjob with an AR-15 is pissed off at the universe and goes berserk.

It’s unimaginable to me that you can easily buy a military-style weapon… or two, that were apparently bought by the killer (I refuse to name him) just after after his 18th birthday. As one does.

It’s unimaginable to me that the United States Constitution includes the right to keep and bear arms. This amendment was ratified in 1791, however back then nobody was stalking victims in a school with an AR-15. Why the actual f*ck can’t it be unratified in 2022?

It’s unimaginable to me that terrified kids would have to desperately crawl for their lives through school windows and hide in a nearby funeral home, which will be the new temporary home to many of their dead friends.

It’s unimaginable to me that panicked parents have to run down to a school and wait for hours to hear if their child is alive or dead following another mass shooting. Their anguished screams echoing through the eerie silence of the school car park.

In the United States the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 was supposedly the line in the sand. This is it. Never again. Hasn’t quite worked out.

Australia had its own Sandy Hook… in 1996. That horrific Sunday afternoon in Port Arthur, Tasmania when 35 people were killed and 23 injured. Just 12 days after the Port Arthur massacre, then Prime Minister John Howard announced a sweeping set of gun reforms. As Tim Fischer, Howard’s deputy said, “Port Arthur we acted on. The USA is not prepared to act on their tragedies.”

Gun control is possible. There hasn’t been a mass shooting in Australia since Port Arthur. The same can’t be said for the United States. Thoughts and prayers are standing by…

©Steve Williams 2022

Ghosts of Christmases Future

Posted on by SW

As it is approaching Christmas, and with President-elect Donald Trump about to take office
(I still can’t quite comprehend that), I thought it would be timely to repost my words on the horrific Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 2012…

I was going to write about the unbridled joy of being a kid at Christmas, the simple pleasure of waking up on Christmas morning, running out in your pajamas — after being too excited to sleep the night before — to see that new pile of presents under the tree. Yes! Santa has been!

“Yes! Santa has been!” (The writer, 1970)

The events of Friday morning at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut changed everything. The level of violence is difficult to comprehend, the fear those children would have experienced unthinkable, the stories of sacrifice by the staff unimaginable, the grief of the families immeasurable. It simply needs to stop. The system requires a reboot, this “right to bear arms” rethought. Who needs to have a military assault rifle in their home? Anyone?

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“Better than this” will involve standing up to the lobbyists, the usual suspects who roll out the usual hoary old justifications, pathetic excuses and “helpful” suggestions including “what we need is more guns, not less guns.” I can’t even get my head around that statement. Then there’s the tip-toeing through the minefield of political machinations. Then there’s the NRA. Someone has to take that first step.

No doubt there are countless toy guns sitting under Christmas trees around the planet right now — the paper to be torn off them by excited little hands, so they can play cops and robbers or soldiers. One can only hope that in years to come, it will be much more difficult for these children to get their hands on the real thing and wreak the havoc we saw on Friday.

The time has come for the rhetoric to be followed through. We owe it to Friday’s children — Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeleine, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Avielle, Benjamin and Allison. As well as the adult victims, these names should have appeared on Christmas gift tags — not as statistics of another horrific mass shooting. They have now become ghosts of Christmases future.

©Steve Williams 2012

Yulin Dog Meat “Festival”, Brexit, Trump… #FFS

Posted on by SW

“I turned another year older recently, and in light of recent global events I have been thinking of the poignant Queen song “Is This the World We Created?” A fair question.

In no particular order, these are just a few of the random things seriously disturbing me.

Thankfully not on the Yulin menu

The “Yulin Dog Meat Festival” in China. For once, words almost fail me with this one. The name is sickeningly self-explanatory, however the word “festival” is a total misnomer. An annual event, the mind-fucking barbarity these poor animals are subjected to before the inevitable is forged from the utter bowels of depravity. It takes a hell of a lot to shock me, but the images I have encountered researching this cannot be unseen. These bastards need to be stopped. Ricky Gervais has been a champion in attacking the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, using a five letter word ending in “s” to describe the perpetrators. I couldn’t agree more.

Donald Trump.

The sick bastard in Western Australia who was jailed for a pathetic twenty-two years for raping his daughter over two years starting when she was only 11. If that doesn’t make your skin crawl, he also pimped her out to six other men. There was video and bondage gear involved. How do you even begin to fathom this? As a father, you can’t even start. He told police, “I’m going to be honest, it was fun while it lasted but it went way over the line.” A bullet to the brain would be too good for this monster. Twenty-two years is nothing compared to the life sentence the girl will have to endure. I hope she is getting all the love and support she needs. I hope the father only lasts an extremely painful 3.7 seconds in prison.

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That nut job in Orlando — again a wannabe zealot hijacking religion and using his twisted fucked up beliefs to justify his slaughter. The blood-soaked scene of carnage du jour was a gay nightclub, however as we have tragically seen over the years, the killing grounds have included schools, shopping centres, cinemas, concert venues, even a chocolate branded cafe in Sydney. A flow on subset of problems here. Bleedingly (literally) obvious question… How can anyone walk into a gun shop and buy a military style weapon with no questions asked? Why does anyone NEED to walk into a gun shop and buy a military style weapon? It doesn’t make sense. Those mad fuckers at the NRA bang on about the Second Amendment, but that was ratified in 1791. Back then, massacre-inducing automatic weapons would have been some gunsmith’s wet dream.

Donald Trump.

Brexit. So much anger so little time. The ignorant racism, the xenophobia. The shame-faced lies of politicians and lobbyists. Mostly, the morons who, hours after voting to leave it were Googling “what is the EU?” Google reported that the search “what happens if we leave the EU?” tripled AFTER the vote. This woman needs to get in the sea…”Even though I voted to leave, this morning I woke up and I just — the reality did actually hit me, If I’d had the opportunity to vote again, it would be to stay.” Face palm. The right to vote is one of the greatest things we have, and these people are just pissing it up against a wall. Be careful what you wish for…

<rant ends>

©Steve Williams 2016