LITERATE APE

View Original

Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of May 22, 2022 — Guns Edition

By David Himmel

• If I manage to somehow get lucky enough to keep my kids alive through school, then at work, then shopping at a grocery store, and avoid any terrible illness, they still end up much like me. They’re fucked.

• Nothing like shopping for a Kevlar backpack for your pre-schooler before 7 a.m. only to learn than none on the market protect against a blast from an AR-15.

• Uvalde cops lie. They are cowards. They are partly responsible for the death of 19 children and two adults. But, hey, at least they got to return home safely to their family so they can talk about how hard their job is—handcuffing parents who are begging them to be brave and do the thing they swore to do: protect their community.

• My hope is that the Uvalde cops are all God-fearing Christians so that they can burn in the very hell they made up for people just like themselves.

• Can’t prevent all evil. But we can reduce it. And this gun/mental health/shitty cops thing is a lot to unpack and fix. But, c’mon, we need to have an actual conversation to begin the hard work. It is cowardice to not do so. You hear me, NRA members? You reading this, GOP? This making sense to you, Officer Krupke? Oh, and Gov. Abbott, just curious… you regretting your decision to cut mental health funding in the state? No. Probably not.

• My confidence that this country is not in its final days is running on fumes. And you know what, good. It’s time to take America out back and shoot it. That’s an unfortunate metaphor because really, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Shooting our kids to death and creating a culture of distrust, one without safety is quite literally killing our future.