Nefarious Landslides

Us: Today at DRNORMALVISION we welcome Mr. Willard Bunckhorne, of the NRA.

WB: Thank you.

Us: Your exact title is Assistant Executive Director of Media Relations and you are based in Louisville, Kentucky; is that right?

WB: Correct.

Us: What brings you to the New York area?

WB: The NRA decided to hold an emergency meeting to address the events at the Covenant School in Nashville.

Us: The shootings.

WB: Er, correct.

Us: Is it usual for the NRA to hold an emergency meeting after mass shootings? Did the NRA hold one in 2015 after the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church murders?

WB: No. Them’s Blacks.

Us: How about in 2018 after the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh?

WB: No. Them’s Jews.

Us: The Pulse nightclub in Orlando?

WB: Them’s gays.

Us: The Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas?

WB: Them’s Latins.

Us: The Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, California?

WB: Them’s Chinese.

Us: So, if you didn’t feel the need to hold a special meeting over any of those previous shootings, why now? What is the difference?

WB: The Covenant School—them’s Christians. Something had to be done.

Us: So what did the meeting do?

WB: We reiterated our belief that guns don’t kill people. And we will mobilize to inform the country of what really is to blame for people getting killed.

Us: Like what?

WB: Doors—school side doors. That was pointed out by former FBI agent Nicole Parker on Fox News. “That seems to be a common pattern in many of these shootings, a side door,” she said. 

Us: Anything else?

WB: Yes. Solar panels.

Us: Solar panels are to blame for mass murders?

WB: In a way, yes. Sen. Mike Rounds said that money allocated to installing solar panels in schools could be diverted for security. So, security is compromised by using the money for solar panels.

Us: But still, guns kill people.

WB: Listen. On the same day that six people were killed at the Covenant School, a landslide in Ecuador killed at least 14 people with 67 still missing. That’s 81 people—13 and 1/2 times the number killed in Nashville. At our emergency meeting we drew up model legislation (which we are hoping that Marjorie Taylor Greene will introduce in Congress) that would ban landslides in the United States. Landslides kill people!

Us: And that’s your last word?

WB: No. Looking at my cell phone, I just came across this headline:

Nikki Haley wants to ban TikTok, not guns

That’s my last word.

Us: Before you leave, what do the initials NRA stand for?

WB: “No Reality Assessment.”

Boxed In

It’s always a warning sign (unfortunately usually ignored) when someone explains himself by resorting to clichés. For example, my successor as chairman of the English Department claimed that he believed that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

He then went ahead and stared breaking things. 

Last week the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, responded to the shooting at the high school in Santa Fe by claiming, “We have to get creative,” to think “outside the box” to find a way to stop shootings.* His creative beyond-the-crate solution: reduce the number of school entrances and exits. Fewer doors, he reasoned, would offer fewer opportunities for gunmen to penetrate school buildings. I wrote “reasoned” because his was a totally logical argument. Unfortunately, the Lt. Gov. didn’t allow his reasoning to continue to its obvious conclusion: build schools with NO doors, thereby preventing gunmen from entering the buildings at all.

*

One picture in the news reports about the Santa Fe shootings was of this schmuck, who showed up at the scene with a flag and a gun: 

I’m not sure what his flag was supposed to do—perhaps supply a force field to shield him in a gun battle—and I’m even less sure to what avail his weapon would be in the circumstances. I will guess, though, that he thought of  himself as that “Good Man With A Gun,” who would stand up heroically against one of those “Bad Men With Guns,” who allegedly are running amok in this country. He has what I suppose ought to be called the “High Noon Complex.”

*

I have an abiding interest in the history of Soviet spying in America and Great Britain before, during, and after WWII. You know, Philby, Burgess, and Maclean over there and the Rosenbergs, et al. over here. I am at present reading a biography of Harry Gold, the nebbishy chemist who served as a courier between the scientist Klaus Fuchs and Russian agents. What struck me was the fact that at the time the United States was at its greatest peril during the Cold War, facing a nuclear power enemy—whose atomic bomb program was advanced by the secrets Fuchs supplied—the undercover agents of the Soviet spy agencies and the clandestine American traitors did not have stockpiles of weapons. The United States government was not going to be overthrown by domestic force and violence. And a ragtag bunch of NRA whackos was not going to be needed to defend our institutions. 

*

In almost every case of recent mass murders—whether at schools, churches, or public gatherings—the murder weapons were legally purchased. For example, the Las Vegas gunman bought his own, while the Santa Fe shooter used his father’s legally obtained arms. In most jurisdictions, government authorities have sprinkled fairy dust over gun owners, granting licenses to them (after background checks of one sort or another) for potentially being “Good Men With Guns.”

The reality is, however, that that same legal weaponry is just waiting to be turned into killing machines. 

  

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* https://bluestatedaily.com/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-suggests-banning-doors-instead-of-guns-after-school-shooting/