American Roulette

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” —Anton Chekhov

I fell asleep reading last night, and like most of America, woke up to learn that 58 people (now 59) were killed in Las Vegas by a single man with a room full of guns.

Logging onto social media, all the reliable responses were there.

Outrage. Prayers. Blame. Despair. Pictures. Live feeds. Quotes. Pledges. Lines drawn. Instant solutions. Rebuttals to those solutions.

A cacophony of posturing and locust promises.

We cast ourselves as shocked and dismayed, but we do so to keep up appearances. Stop lying.

We’ve lived through this before and will have to again. Take your pick: Orlando, Aurora, San Bernadino, Virginia Tech? Gun dealer’s choice.

It’s happened so many times now, we even have begun to forget. I have begun to forget.

I had to Google “worst mass shootings in U.S. history” to remember Sandy Hook. And then Google Sandy Hook to see if it was “the one where all the kids died.”

It was. All 20 of them. And 6 adults.

I am numb to this violence and you are, too. I am barely affected and you are, too.

I don’t say this to shame anyone for their reaction, or lack thereof, to what happened last night. United we stand complicit.

Here’s what I did in response to the news.

Got off my phone. Ate breakfast. Rode my bike to work. Lived my regular goddamn life, thousands of miles away from the banshee keen of Las Vegas. Felt guilty. Wrote the following paragraph.

Mass shootings and gun violence now exist in the same category as car accidents and cancer. Things that are bound to happen, probably not to you, but to someone. Assumed risks. Chances you take when you choose to go out in the world.

Statistical. Inevitable. Undeniable. Like our rights.

And what of those rights?

The 2nd Amendment promises that part of being American is having the right to a gun to defend yourself from tyranny.

But at the point that the tyranny comes from the gun itself, how can we defend ourselves?

What good is that promise?