Malcolm picked up the newspaper and started reading the headlines. As usual, all that jumped out at him was bad. War overseas, Gun violence at home, severe weather due to climate change, homelessness, income disparity, racial unrest.
Malcolm’s eyes welled up. What was happening to his country, to his world? Suddenly the newspaper burst into flames. “Hey, I didn’t start the fire,” Malcolm said, as he dropped the burning paper to the ground.
Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: The Ian @ Unsplash.
Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.
By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.
It happened again. Yesterday, another mass shooting in the United States occurred just ten days after ten people were shot and killed in a supermarket in Buffalo. As of when I’m writing this, 18 students and a teacher were killed in a mass shooting at a school in the small Texas city of Uvalde. An 18-year-old Uvalde resident entered the school with a handgun and a rifle. Inside the school, according to Texas’ pro-gun governor, Greg Abbott, the teenage gunman “shot and killed — horrifically, incomprehensibly” more than 18 children and a teacher.
The gunman, who legally bought the weapons used in the attack shortly after his 18th birthday on May 16, was shot and killed by officers responding to the scene. Abbott added, “It is being reported that the subject shot his grandmother right before he went into the school.”
This massacre was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States so far this year. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization, counted at least 215 such shootings, defined as one in which four or more people were killed or injured, through mid-May. Today is the 145th day of the year, meaning that there has been an average of almost 1.5 mass shootings a day in America this year! Ponder that for a moment.
I am so pissed that I can hardly contain my anger and frustration. State governments all across the nation are passing laws making it easier for people to get guns, allowing both open carry and concealed carry. They are liberalizing or eliminating background checks. Gun sales in the United States are at an all-time high. Gun deaths are soaring. And our elected officials — particularly the Republicans — are sitting around with their thumbs up their asses offering their thoughts and prayer.
President Biden spoke about this heinous mass shooting in Texas, saying…
“As a nation we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? How many scores of little children, who witnessed what happened, must see their friends die as if they’re in a battlefield?
I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage. For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.”
My provocative question this week is similar to what I asked last week after the Buffalo mass killings. I am looking for your reactions and thoughts about this kind of gun violence that is endemic in the United States.
Do you feel that President Biden’s plea to take action and to do something to stem the rising tide of gun violence in America have any impact? Or will lawmakers at both the federal and state levels do nothing more than offer their useless “thoughts and prayers,” which is all they ever do?
If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.
I don’t often do this, but I’m posting the Editor’s Column for the latest issue of The Week magazine. It resonated with me and I think it’s an important message about the state of gun violence in America today. It was written by William Falk, editor-in-chief of the magazine.
A motorcyclist was roaring in and out of highway lanes on I-35 in Fort Worth when he decided that an SUV changed lanes to block him. The enraged biker, 19, raced past other vehicles, stopped the bike to block all lanes of traffic, and approached the SUV with a drawn handgun. The SUV driver jumped out and said he had kids in his vehicle. But when the motorcyclist didn’t lower his gun, he raised his own and fired multiple shots, leaving the biker dying on the road.
This was just one of hundreds of gun deaths last week, as our nation continues to devolve into a heavily armed Wild West. In 2020, with the pandemic, protests, and a divisive election further weakening frayed social bonds, Americans purchased more than 23 million guns—a 66 percent increase over 2019. Up to 40 percent of new gun sales, the firearm industry estimates, went to first-time buyers—with sales jumping 50 percent among Black customers and 47 percent among Hispanics.
Jabril Battle, 28, an African-American account representative in Los Angeles, was one of the first-time buyers. He told The Washington Post he’d always hated “gun nuts” but was deeply unsettled by the pandemic’s apocalyptic, “Mad Max” feeling of anarchy. “I was like, Do I want to be a person who has a gun or doesn’t have a gun?” He bought two.
The fear of being outgunned feeds on itself: Americans now own an estimated 390 million guns—a per capita rate more than double that of any other country. Deadly weapons may make people feel safer, but they also serve as impulse amplifiers, transforming arguments into homicides, gang turf battles into firefights, disaffected young men into mass killers, depression into easy suicide, and police stops into tragic deaths.
As we celebrated our nation’s birth on the Fourth of July weekend, more than 230 Americans died by gun violence and 618 were wounded.
The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.
I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.
This week’s Who Won the Week winner is, unfortunately, gun violence in America. So far this year, in just five months, there have been at least 232 mass shootings. And that includes 15 mass murders, which is defined as four or more people killed.Meanwhile, two gun reform bills that have been passed by the House of Representatives are pending in the senate. These bills would require expanded background checks for gun purchasers and would give authorities ten business days for federal background checks to be completed before a gun sale can be permitted.
But these bills are unlikely to get passed in the Senate even though the majority of Americans, including Republicans, support more effective gun laws. But most Senate Republicans will vote against gun reform legislation. And even with the Democrats holding a 51-50 majority in the Senate (with VP Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote giving the Dems the majority), the Republicans will block gun reform legislation due to the filibuster.
The filibuster is a Senate procedural rule that requires a vote by 60 of the 100 senators to cut off debate and advance a bill. With the Senate divided 50-50, Democrats would need the support of 10 Republicans to move most bills.
And so gun violence in America is the winner of the week, with no end in sight.
What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?
The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.
Meanwhile, two gun reform bills that have been passed by the House of Representatives are pending in the senate. These bills would require expanded background checks for gun purchasers and would give authorities ten business days for federal background checks to be completed before a gun sale can be permitted.
This, That, and the Other 