LITTLE ANGELS

At what point does one rationally decide that it’s acceptable to murder a child?

What drives a person to do this?

On Saturday morning, whilst I was heading down to The Nong, the news broke, and the world caught it’s breath as they came to terms with a twenty year old had shot dead 27 people (as well as himself), and that twenty of those victims were children.

What. The. Fuck?

Twenty children.  Primary school aged children.  Elementary school, as they say in America.

Twenty babies that will never see Christmas.  Twenty babies that will never graduate from high school, college, university, start a job, meet the love of their life, get married, have babies and start a family of their own.

Twenty children that were robbed of life.

Twenty families that have lost their babies.

Forty parents, eighty grandparents, countless siblings, cousins, friends, aunts, uncles and fuck knows who else.

Twenty families destroyed because one man decided that it was okay to shoot them all.

I’ve had a busy few days since this tragedy, and haven’t really paid a great deal of attention to the continually unfolding news reports about this horror.  All I know is that this kid shot his mother, and proceeded to the school where she worked, and claimed another twenty-six lives. 

For what, I don’t know.  You may, but I still don’t.  No doubt they’ll comb his house, his computer, his history, his life and dig up just about everything they can to explain why the fuck he did this.

Whatever they find will be cold comfort to the victims families, though.  It won’t get their babies back. 

You know what I wonder?  How many of the victims were only children?  How many of those parents lost their only child?  Not that it makes a difference, but you know what I mean. 

How many of those victims were IVF babies, or adopted or hard to conceive?  Again, not that it makes a difference; a life is a life, but you can imagine the impact on a couple that has struggled to have a baby, and only has one, and now it’s been ripped away from them so horrendously.

How would a parent ever recover?  Would they ever recover?

I wish the shooter had survived.  I wish they’d taken him into custody, then accidentally threw him to the mob of waiting parents.  He would have been ripped apart, and that still wouldn’t have been good enough.  Fucken dog.

Two six year old babies were laid to rest yesterday; the funeral procession begins.  Only eighteen more to go.  Dear God…

I cried when I heard the news.  I cried when I stood in front of my bffls big screen telly on Saturday afternoon, watching a news report.  I watched as my bffl’s two year old niece played quietly at my feet, and wondered what kind of mind it takes to hurt something as innocent as that. 

I can believe they filed the surviving children out past the bodies; telling them to keep heir eyes closed.  Did you see the images?  Poor babies were hysterical.

I don’t care what you say; those babies will be fucked up for the rest of their lives.  Nothing will heal this horror.  Time may dim it a little bit, but it will never be forgotten.

You know what pisses me off the most, though?  The fucken coward took his own life in the end.  Fucking coward.  Brave enough to kill innocent children, but not brave enough to face society’s wrath afterward, you fucken lunatic.

At least you saved the American tax payers millions of dollars by not rotting in prison or a padded cell, you dog.

And so opens the debate about America’s red-neck mentality, and their self-righteous need to ‘bare arms’.

Since Martin Bryant opened fire on the innocent people of Port Arthur all those years ago, and the government at the time (Liberal I think it was), introduced a gun amnesty and massive changes to the constitution relating to gun ownership in this country, we’ve seen nothing like it since.

Sure, it hasn’t eliminated gun-related crimes, but it’s certainly eliminated the fuckwit-nutters unloading on the unsuspecting public.

It’s clearly a safer country, post legislative changes.  However, we don’t have the relationship to weaponry that the American populous has, do we?

Have you seen the documentary (if you’d call it that) Bowling for Columbine?  If you haven’t, do yourself a favour.  It’s…. enlightening.  Gives great insight into the American gun-culture.  Pack of gun crazy lunatics.

Two things from this movie stand out in my mind.  Firstly, when you opened a bank account at a certain bank, you got a free gun.

A free-fucken-gun.  For the love of God!  ‘Here… open a bank account, and take this gun and rob us with it.  We won’t mind!’ 

Seriously.  What the fuck are you thinking?  Why?  Why would you give a completely random person that you know nothing about, a gun?  Why?

Secondly, on one side of a river (I can’t remember what it was called) is Detroit.  On the other side, is Canada.  Detroit has one of the highest gun-related crime rates in America (apparently).  You’ve heard all the shit about Detroit from movies and television and stuff.  The place is a violent shithole.

Across the pond is Canada, where Mike Moore (the producer of the documentary), randomly walked up to the front door of many houses, only to find them unlocked.  When he walked in, he was welcomed by the inhabitants.

Wouldn’t see that in Detroit.  Fucken place is locked up like Fort Knox, but still doesn’t stop the crime and violence.

One extreme to another, and there are only three things that separate these patches of earth.  A river, constitutional legislation, and their mindset.

In Canada, gun-related crimes are nearly non-existent, when in America, thousands of acts of violence are committed with guns on daily basis. 

In Canada, you can safely leave your house unlocked, and know that people won’t come and rob it.  In America, if you leave your house unlocked, you’d be lucky if the fucken building was still there when you got back.

In Canada, things are peacefully and simply resolved.  In America, aggression and violence rule the day.  Two completely different approaches to life.

A patch of water, laws and a completely different mindset separate these countries, yet you can actually see the shore of one if you’re standing on the other.

Fucken ridiculous.

No one on the planet should be surprised that this horrible crime occurred, simply because of America’s attitude toward gun ownership.

I have visions of Charlton Heston (is he still alive?) being wheeled out to a podium, waving a rifle around, and screaming ‘It’s our constitutional right!’ before a big banner emblazoned with the AGA (American Gun Association – or something like that. *rolls eyes*

Gun ownership is justified in America, because their fucken constitution says they can do it.  Forget out putting weapons into the hands of idiots and the mentally unstable.  Forget out the thousands of lives that are wasted each year because people don’t respect the weaponry, or more importantly; the value of another person’s life.

It’s their right.  So typically, selfishly, aggressively and arrogantly, they exercise their rights.  God forbid they miss out.

It’s just too easy.

Too easy to own a gun, and too easy to use it.

Clearly, the judicial system in America is not scary enough to dissuade these idiots from carrying and using these weapons.  Overloaded prisons, constant re-offences… their rehabilitation and incarceration systems clearly don’t work.  The majority of people that leave prison (if they actually get sent there), re-offend.

So from gun ownership to crime and punishment; nothing deters the public from exercising their God-given, constitutional rights.

There have been many tragedies in America like this.  The massacre at Columbine University is a perfect example of it.  A couple of kids took the lives of so many; all in the name of their own form of social justice.

Today, an eleven year old child was arrested in America for taking a gun to school.  He said he took it to protect himself.  Eleven.  Apparently, a family member had given the gun to the family.  What the fuck are they teaching their children?

High schools in America have metal detectors at their entrances in an attempt to stop any weaponry entering the school.  WTF?

How do you change the mindset of a nation that has the mentality that ‘violence is the solution’ ingrained into their DNA?  How?

In years gone by, as things like Columbine have hit the headlines, the call for changes to gun legislation has fallen of deaf ears.

I wonder now, considering that twenty babies have been murdered, will they finally see the light?  Will the government have the balls to do something that the families of victims have been crying out for?

Will they finally do something to change the nation’s mindset? 

Many countries around the world have strict legislation in place surrounding the use and ownership of weaponry.  Their crime statistics are nothing compared to that of America’s.  It’s clear that things need to change.

Will these twenty babies deaths be enough to force this change? 

Or will it all be for nothing. 

Again.

May those poor little angels rest in peace, may their families eventually find some comfort, and may their deaths not be in vain.

Peace out.