This Is the World the Gun People Want

They are not heartbroken over the Uvalde massacre. They are perfectly fine with it.

Families hug outside the Willie de Leon Civic Center in Uvalde, Texas. (Photo: Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images)

So here we are again, with dead little kids again, and endless heartbreak again, and grief and rage again, and empty thoughts and prayers again, and the same speeches again, and the seeming certainty that nothing is going to change again. We do this again and again and again because it is a core feature of life in the United States to do this again and again and again. We did it just last week in Buffalo and now we’re doing it this week in Uvalde and we will do it again soon somewhere else. It is part of what makes America America.

Millions and millions of people are not happy about this, but we are where we are because the gun people are happy about it. By “gun people” I mean the rotted ecosystem that has flooded this country with guns and ensured that all available avenues to restrict their use are closed. The NRA, the Republican Party, the Supreme Court, the media maniacs—they are happy for children to be routinely slaughtered. They will lose not a second of sleep over the families in Uvalde who had to give DNA samples in order to help identify the mangled bodies of their murdered children. The screams of the grieving won’t disturb them in the slightest. We are fast approaching their ideal version of America—one in which people are forced to have children against their will and then forced to live in a society that places no restrictions on the ability of someone to blow those children’s heads off if they so desire. That, in a nutshell, is the “pro-life” movement’s fondest wish. This is the world they want. The bodies of dead children are little more than collateral damage on the way to the fulfillment of that dream. 

These people are ably assisted by what passes for the political “opposition” to their efforts. It is long past time for us to widen our definition of what it means to support the unfettered right to slaughter children in this country. If, like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, you profess your outrage about gun massacres but are blocking the legislative path to curb them in any way, you are one of the gun people. If, like Joe Biden, you wonder when “we” will “stand up to the gun lobby” (who is “we,” Joe, you are the fucking president) even though you still won’t commit to reforming a Supreme Court intent on striking down every gun law in America, you are one of the gun people. If, like Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn, you move mountains to elect a pro-NRA Texas congressman, you are one of the gun people. (Henry Cuellar appears to have won his primary on the same day as the Uvalde massacre—hope you’re happy with that outcome, Nancy.)

This country is beyond diseased. It is killing itself from every conceivable angle. Well, that’s not true exactly—it is being slowly murdered by the political and economic system that blithely looks on while the rest of us beg for something to change. But nothing will change until this system is irrevocably torn down, and until something better is built in its place. Anyone who tries to prop that system up, who says that it is important to maintain, is ultimately consigning more children to their death—is saying that, at the end of the day, Uvalde is just a price we have to pay to keep America humming. May all of the gun people never have a moment’s peace.