This is such an all-American story. A locked-and-loaded loser went gunning for victims and mowed down eight – seven of them women, six of them Asians. One Georgia cop gave us this scholarly analysis: “Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”
Well, that explains it! Heck, the Second Amendment decrees in plain English that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed if you’re having a really bad day.
We’ll surely debate at length whether or to what extent Robert Aaron Long, our latest lone-wolf white domestic terrorist, was motivated by hatred of Asians and women; and whether or to what extent his sexual impulses warred with his Christian fundamentalism (a high school friend said Long was “super nice, super Christian,” and walked around school with a Bible). But here’s something we already know, definitively so:
Mass murders would be far less likely if only it were harder for people to buy guns on the spur of the moment. And it just so happens that Georgia is the perfect locale for impulse purchases. In fact, the way things are going down there, it’s probably easier to buy a 9mm firearm than it is to cast a ballot. In America, this is what we call Freedom.
On Instagram, Long had written: “Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. That pretty much sums up my life.” Pizza…guns…what’s the difference, they’re both so easy to order up.
A few hours before he racked up his death toll, Long walked into a gun shop in Cherokee County and walked out with a manhood-enhancer. Piece of cake! In Georgia, there’s no waiting period. Nor is a gun buyer required to first obtain a permit. The only requirement (don’t laugh, it’s not funny) is that the firearm must be carried “in the glove compartment, console, or similar compartment of the vehicle,” which was perfect for this particular law-abider because he was on the road anyway.
By the way, just for comparison purposes, a Georgia woman seeking to exercise her constitutional right to an abortion is required to wait 24 hours. In other words, the powers-that-be trust a random male dirtbag more than a pregnant woman who wants to make a personal decision. But I digress.
I know that I’m yelling into the wind and that nothing will be done. On the federal front, the House of Representatives just last week passed two bills designed to strengthen background checks and make it even a wee bit harder to buy a gun, but, as we know, those bills are DOA in the Senate because of the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold for passage. Perhaps even a 24-hour waiting period might’ve cooled Long off, but that’s not how Freedom works. It should go without saying that self-tortured bigoted souls like Long would not be so deadly if guns were not so readily available, but I have no illusions about what kind of country this is. Roughly 14,000 Americans are murdered with guns every year (that’s 38 every day), and others will take Long’s place as his crimes fade from memory.
Oh so predictably, the Republican congressman whose district includes the first targeted massage parlor reacted to the murders by offering the usual thoughts ‘n’ prayers and nothing more. But Raphael Warnock, one of Georgia’s new Democratic senators, actually had something to say: “As you talk to the American people, there is commitment among gun owners and on both sides of the aisle for reasonable gun reform…There’s a disconnect between what’s happening out there and what goes on too often here in the halls of this body.”
True that. Ex-President Obama said on Twitter yesterday, “Even as we’ve battled the pandemic, we’ve continued to neglect the longer-lasting epidemic of gun violence in America” – our most enduring public health crisis. Yet now we’re supposed to be worried about migrants at the border and the GOP’s fear of “terrorists” slipping in. Ask those grieving families in Georgia whether they’re worried about the border. The true threat, as always, is the white loner who’s having “a really bad day.” As always, the call is coming from inside the house.