“Arm, arm and out! ... Ring the alarum bell, blow wind! Come wrack!”
But alas, thanks to this tragic decision by SCOTUS to strike down New York’s gun law, many us will die without harness on our backs. We should weep for our country, where states like Republican controlled Pennsylvania bury any legislation that might curtail some of the gun madness, but will push relentlessly for legislation that will marginalize gay and trans youth.
There should be some comfort to these legislators that these disgruntled, ostracized and marginalized citizens will still be able to get a gun, no questions asked. Cities are drowning in gun deaths, yet our Supreme Court majority turns a blind eye and a deaf ear.
Our Pennsylvania Republican legislators are just as bad, ignoring pleas from urban areas like Philadelphia for some kind of sane gun restrictions, indulging in the cop-out argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This adamant refusal to see reason, to at least entertain a discussion about how to address the problem of gun violence, doesn’t make us any safer.
It will lead to a landscape of state-sanctioned armed escalation, where all citizens, no matter how unfit or ill-trained, angry or afraid, will get their guns and with which they will kill other citizens, many likely innocent, simply vulnerable, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Cry ‘havoc!’ and release the gods of war!” There is nothing more tragic than justices and legislators who, in their misguided belief that guns make us safer, will simply unleash more death and destruction of innocent lives.
Deborah DiMicco, Newtown
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