Weaklings, racists, and drooling loners

These are the people Republicans want to have guns

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You’re going to hear a lot in the coming months about how background checks wouldn’t have stopped the Atlanta killer of eight this week, even the kinds of enhanced background checks called for in the two bills passed by the House this week.  The accused murderer, Robert Alan Long, 21 years old, didn’t have a criminal record.  He had never been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility.  He bought the gun he used on Tuesday earlier that day from a gun shop and shooting range called Big Woods Goods in Canton, Georgia.  He had the proper identification required to purchase a gun in that state.  He passed the background check required by law.  When he was arrested hours later, he was still carrying the 9 millimeter handgun he used to shoot and kill eight people.

A few Republicans in the House joined Democrats in passing the new background check laws, but a far larger number of them voted against them.  We all know why that is.  They take money from gun manufacturers, from gun lobby groups like the NRA, and they want the votes of gun culture Republicans who are against any kind of so-called “gun control” laws.  But those laws aren’t the point.

The point is this:  Republicans want people like Robert Alan Long to have the right to go out and buy guns.  They actually want people like him to own guns.  You have to look at it from the point of view of the lowest common denominator.  If you are going to have a system of laws in this country which makes it permissible in almost every state in the Union to walk into a store and put down your driver’s license and a few hundred dollars and walk out with a deadly weapon and all the ammunition you can carry, then you’re going to have weak-chinned, vacant-eyed, racist loners like Robert Alan Long walking around with guns.  Because the laws that allow the easy purchase and ownership of all sorts of guns, from .22 caliber pistols to AR-15 military style semiautomatics to .50 caliber sniper rifles, apply to everyone among us.  They apply to people walking around who hate Black people and women and Asian people and people of Latin descent.  They apply to people who hate Jews.  They apply to people who think that leaders of the Democratic Party are pedophiles who secretly rape children and then eat them.  They apply to people who believe that the United States government is secretly run by lizard people from outer space.  The laws don’t discriminate based on your beliefs, or your desires, or what kind of moral character you have.  They apply to all of us.  Everyone has the “right” under the Constitution established by the Heller decision to buy and “bear” arms.

That’s the problem right there.  Because guns aren’t like anything else you can buy.  They aren’t like a hammer, which you can certainly use to kill someone, but which is designed and intended to drive and remove nails.  Guns aren’t like a 14 ounce can of soup, which you could throw at someone’s head and kill them, but which is intended to be opened up with a can opener and eaten.

Guns have one purpose:  to kill.  You can use them to shoot at paper targets or cans or bottles, but the purpose of a gun is to project the power to kill away from yourself.  You can buy a gun and walk into a room and stand 15 feet away and point it at someone and with the simple, easy pull of a trigger, you can kill them.  You don’t have to walk up close to them.  You don’t have to touch them.  You don’t have to get their blood on you.  You can legally buy a gun in this country called the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle that is accurate at distances of up to a mile, which means that you can set up that Barrett rifle and aim it and kill a person who is 5,280 feet away from you.  Don’t let anyone tell you the Barrett .50 caliber is intended for “hunting.”  It’s for killing people.  That exact rifle, and sniper rifles just like it, are used by armies all around the world for that exact purpose.

That’s why weaklings like this 21 year old “man” named Robert Alan Long like guns.  Because for a few hundred dollars, he can buy himself way more power than he should have --  in the case of his 9 millimeter pistol, the awesome power to kill.  Republicans and others who oppose measures to make it more difficult to buy guns want to make it easy for people like Robert Alan Long to buy a gun, just like it was easy for him on Tuesday.  It probably took him less time to buy the gun he used to kill eight people than it takes me to buy a week’s worth of groceries at my local Stop ‘n Shop.  That’s the way the Republicans in the House who voted against the bills passed this week want it.  They want drooling racist lunatics who shouldn’t even be allowed to drive to have the right to buy and own a gun and all the ammunition they can afford, and they want to make it easier for them to do it than it already is.

I remember the first time the state of California allowed the publication of the addresses of sex offenders.  You could go on a website run by the state and put in your address and an image similar to Google Maps came up showing all of the sex offenders who lived in your neighborhood.  We lived in the Hollywood Hills at the time, so I typed in our address and zoomed out the map so it showed the streets around our house to the distance of about a half mile.  It was stunning.  There were more than 150 red X’s showing the sex offenders living on the streets all around our house, people who had been convicted of sex crimes like rape and assault and sexual harassment, all of the categories that required them to register with the state.  I had no idea there were so many terrible people within walking distance of the house where we had two small children.

Republicans don’t want those sex offenders in my old neighborhood to have the right to buy a gun – at least I think most of them don’t.  But they want every other adult person over the age of 18 living in every other dwelling in that neighborhood, and in every other neighborhood around the country, to have the right to go out and buy a gun.  If there were 150 people who had been stupid enough to commit sex offenses and get caught and convicted, I’ll bet you there were at least twice as many in that same neighborhood who hadn’t gotten caught, who hadn’t been convicted, who were out there walking around looking for more women or children to rape or abuse.  Every single one of them had the right to buy a gun that they could use to commit such a crime.  If there were people in my old Hollywood neighborhood who hated Asian people and wanted to kill them, they had the right to go out and buy a gun they could use for that purpose as well.

That’s the way the Supreme Court decided the insane Heller decision, that somehow a Constitution written more than 240 years ago when there were a limited number of flintlock rifles and pistols in this country, confers on every adult citizen a “right” to own a Barrett 50 caliber sniper rifle, or a 9 millimeter pistol like the one bought by Robert Alan Long on Tuesday.

That’s what we’re stuck with.  That Constitution, that Supreme Court decision, and a Republican Party that’s happy to make sure the level of insane bloodshed carried out in Atlanta on Tuesday can be carried out again and again and again. 

There were more than 600 mass killings in 2020 in this country, 600 times that someone killed more than four people in one incident.  There is no way of telling how many there will be in 2021, but Robert Alan Long and his Republican enablers have gotten us off to a good start.