Blood sacrifices.
There is a boy my son’s age in surgery tonight suffering from four bullet wounds and I do not know if he will survive and I do not know if he survives what complications, physical and psychological, he will endure for the rest of his life.
There is a boy my son’s age in surgery tonight suffering from four bullet wounds because a man who once served a year in military detention for assaulting his wife and child was legally allowed to purchase a high-powered rifle without a background check.
There is a boy my son’s age in surgery tonight suffering from four bullet wounds because 40 years ago an extremist faction of firearms obsessives co-opted the NRA, changing it from an organization devoted to responsible ownership into a profit-driven cult of death and mayhem.
There is a boy my son’s age in surgery tonight suffering from four bullet wounds because the influence of that organization’s lobbying apparatus and its substantial hoard of earmarked funds nurtured the careers of dozens of politicians who could then be relied upon to do nothing in response to a growing epidemic of violence.
There is a boy my son’s age in surgery tonight suffering from four bullet wounds because these politicians then banded together to confirm judges to the nation’s highest court who would interpret the text of a 200 year-old document in the manner that was most lucrative to the firearms industry.
There is a boy my son’s age in surgery tonight suffering from four bullet wounds because every obstacle that would have kept his attacker from purchasing his rifle was either dismantled or dismissed, while barking media pundits and opinion columnists crafted paranoid fantasies and logical fallacies that framed the very idea of curtailing murder as an assault on cherished freedoms.
There is a boy my son’s age in surgery tonight suffering from four bullet wounds because we have made the capacity to kill a more prominent aspect of the American identity than the capacity to live in peace and with reasonable expectations of security.
There is a boy.
My son’s age.
In surgery tonight.
Suffering.
From four bullet wounds.
For no fucking reason at all.
Creative Control 