In Chicago this weekend, as reported by ABC7 Chicago News, over 40 people were shot, including 3 fatalities. In El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH, two mass shootings in less than 24 hours have left the nation with the looming questions of when will it end and how long will we pray with no action.
Chicago violence is often a highlight of President Trump, a sure jab at former President Barack Obama. Nonetheless, his previous statements stand. Yet, with national violence regarding white male shooters he pretty much remains pointless to link his rhetoric and racism to any of these shooters that do things in the name of Trump. Even some African-Americans find it necessary to state that these white male shooters are not in any way reflective of the President, his administration and/or his policies. While this may not be true of the gang violence and rivalries in Chicago, it is surely the case of young, white, aggressive, terrorist.
At the heart of this is a gun problem. Even after Rep Scalise was shot by a domestic terrorist, we have made no major advances and are still below the surface on gun reform. We have not learned how to resolve or interpret the “right to bear arms” 2nd amendment in the US Constitution. Yet, it holds no bearing on Chicago. It’s a city where you can’t even purchase a firearm. Surrounding states and suburbs are more than happy to sell the firearms illegally or legally to Chicagoans. Laws, no laws, we have a gun problem. People who get guns legally are terrorizing people and people who get them illegally are terrorizing people.
We have inner-city cowards, who threaten the lives of the innocent. We have white terrorist cowards who threaten the lives of the most vulnerable and defenseless citizens. We’ve seen mass shootings on a military base, in schools, offices, industrial buildings, night clubs, and our government allows lobbyist to continue pushing our politicians to keep the NRA agenda on going. Maybe the real cowards are not only the ones that murder the innocent but the suits that keep them protected. Is a right to bear arms a civil rights issues? I don’t know. Burying children, sons, and daughters is a civil rights issue when terrorist within is greater threat than terrorist without. Perhaps Al Qaeda is streaming the news and saying, “Ha, let America become her own undoing”.
Fear is the greatest threat of gun violence. We do not check on our children, we do not follow their social media feeds, and we pay for devices that we do not monitor. The influence outside of the home is becoming far greater than the influence in the home. We hold their drugs and guns in our homes and say nothing to change their trajectory. Police officers, the good ones, who are trying their best, get met with hostility because a lot of bad apples came in the bunch of the lot of police officers who should not be in the profession. Think about this!! Ohio police officers responded within minutes. In minutes 9 people lost their lives, approximately 25+ injured. That’s how much damage can be inflicted with military grade weapons at the disposal of domestic terrorists.
We are a nation at crisis and a people at war. Our nation and our inner-city has several issues to tackle. I’m no expert. I wish I had solutions. I wish I could snap my finger and “Thanos” all guns away. Our hatchlings are cracking open daily because we have not treated all mankind equally. We have segregated ourselves down to the zip code, down to race, down to status, down to the haves and the have-nots.
The local shootings are a community issue. The mass shootings are another story. They are white, they are male, they are supremacist, they are racist, they are young and they, for whatever reason, and I quote a dear friend, “Believing that something that they were PROMISED has been taken from them”, are waking up a generation that will start a revolution, arm up, and begin to take the fight to the enemy and holders of hatred. That will be the undoing of a nation in crisis and plunge us into an already growing civil war!
Keep your prayers if they follow no action; keep your right to bear arms if it harbors no remorse. It took the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Arcern, a few weeks to invoke legislation that would center in on gun control, banning some semi-automatic weapons, and increasing gun registry reforms. We can do something, we simply have made the choice to do nothing!
Sources:
https://abc7chicago.com/dayton-ohio-mass-shooting-leaves-9-dead-28-injured/5441813/
https://www.vox.com/a/mass-shootings-america-sandy-hook-gun-violence
Featured Image Credit Dorian Hurst
This was a scorching post, your passion and frustration over the lack of political and social will to tackle what appears to be a very fixable problem in America was evident throughout and I share you burden and cry for transformative change in this country we care about.
However, I take a different perspective in that I don’t think that America’s most threatening problems are White Nationalism, or bast firearms proliferation, or President Trump for that matter—America’s clearest and most present danger is the rapid erosion of whatever little moral fiber that is left. Therefore, America lacks the spiritual and moral will to do anything and furthermore has no spiritual resources from which to enact the solutions needed.
You and I are Christians, and we both know that a series of rejections of light only consign a Nation to ever-increasing darkness. Well, America is DEEP in the darkness, and not to downplay these recent mass-shootings as if they are not gross acts of evil and cowardice, they are still but symptoms of a sin-cancer that gnaws away at the very Spirit of this nation.
Sadly, these shootings, and other heinous acts like these will only continue. While I am not saying that we should just huddle in our churches and “just” pray, we ought not be surprised. Scripture says that the nation that forgets God “shall be turned into hell”. So we don’t have a gun problem, we have a Divine judgment on sin problem.
Keeps these posts coming, my brother! You are an outstanding writer and superb articulator of emotions!
Gratitude bro. We shall stay on the wall but I feel as these things manifest in the natural that we will be as Ezra, rebuilding with our own arms to defend ourselves.