Bad Medicine

by Victor Milan
[email protected]

         We are inevitably going to hear endlessly about today's slaughter at that high school in Littleton for days, if not weeks.
         We'll hear everything, in fact, except the truth.
         The truth is that the Littleton bloodshed proves, not that we have too many guns in our society, but that we have too few. Or at least, too few in the hands of everyday people who need them.
         When two kids can walk into a school and butcher twenty-five of their schoolmates (the figure being mooted as of 2200 MDT on April 20 - who knows if that number'll turn out to be any more reliable than the "100,000 missing men in Kosovo" claims seem likely to?), then we are too fucking helpless.
         Had even one of the potential victims possessed a gun, the slaughter might've been stopped cold. Even prevented altogether. The higher the percentage of potential victims carrying firearms, the earlier the massacre could've been stopped, the more likely it would have been to be aborted before anyone innocent was hurt.
         Shit, let's nail the bottom line: if a reasonable percentage of teachers, or, yes, kids had been packing, the little fucks who pulled the stunt would in all likelihood never have tried. There would've been no percentage in it, no glorious slaughter. Just a quick ignominious exit.
         But of course law-abiding citizens can't carry guns on or even near schools, thanks to our Nazi-in-Chief and, of course, the pisslickingly subservient Republican Congress. The perpetrators, in short knew without peradventure that they would encounter no resistance.
         So instead the students and faculties at that high school allowed themselves to be slaughtered like sheep. It was the only option they knew of. They had no physical means of defending themselves, and heaven knows that anyone proposing to teach upstanding middle-class white kids the mental wherewithal to defend themselves, even without adequate weaponry, would be widely ridiculed if not jailed outright.
         Of course, as they cowered beneath desks in their classrooms, the victims-to-be and those who would be spared this time could comfort themselves with the thought that they, like the rest of us, had no need to defend themselves: the police would do that for them. Those kids and teachers had a long time to hold those thoughts, too; it took two hours for the SWAT team to arrive. Nor is it at this point clear whether the SWAT team contributed anything at all to the situation other than herding terrified survivors from the building at gunpoint, forcing them to hold their hands above their heads as they fled. The perpetrators may indeed have done the world a favor by killing themselves before SWAT even arrived.
         It's simple, people. It really is. As long as we provide ready victims, we will call into being those who are eager to victimize us. It's basic ecology: an abundance of prey engenders an abundance of predators. Kids who indulge themselves too greedily in standard-issue adolescent Angst and death-preoccupation can go out with a splash and take a big honor guard with them, without having to go to the substantial effort entailed in learning to fly an F-16 well enough to bomb refugee convoys in whatever part of the world we're helping at the time.
         Hell, if these little bastard perpetrators had been smart enough, they wouldn't have offed themselves at all. They would've just surrendered. Then they could've claimed that movies and video games - and, of course, guns - made them do it, they had no choice in the matter at all. They could, with a half-bright lawyer and an altogether stupid press agent, made themselves into the victims.
         Then, hell, another year or three, the rising flood of drug-war arrestees, along with those busted for an ever-increasing torrent of new crimes - thought crimes, environmental crimes, possession of firearms without criminal intent - will force the authorities to turn them loose along with the other violent criminals who are perpetually being released to make room for committers of victimless crimes. They'll need those cells for somebody who cleared weeds off his back ditch, or raised some pot to ease the ravages of AIDS medication.
         Meantime Blood-Slick Willie and Jackboot Janet, only a day from toasting themselves triumphantly on the anniversary of their own triumphant kiddie-massacre at Waco, are gleefully assuring us that we need more laws to prevent incidents such as this. Yeah, all the other laws you passed worked so well to prevent it, huh?
         The cure they will try to sell us - and will force down our throats regardless - isn't just worse than the disease. It's the fucking cause.

Victor Mil�n
[email protected]

"The distinction between rulers and ruled is as fundamental as the distinction between wolf and lamb - diner and dinner."
- Uncle John Lucero, The War For America

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Cited in "Capitol Hill Blue" (4/21/99):

Quote of the Day: "It's a shame the NATO conference might get in the way of this." -- A White House aide complaining that the NATO summit in Washington might prevent President Clinton from going to Colorado in the aftermath of the high school shootings

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