Campaign Action
Welcome to 2018. It's going to be another year filled with gun violence in the name of "freedom," a year in which various responsible gun owners decide to murder someone else for what seemed, at the time, to be an absolute necessity.
Many of the gun deaths will be the result of family disputes.
Ashley Marie Newman, 30, was pronounced dead at 12:14 a.m., according to WSYX News. Her husband, Sean M. Newman, 32, is accused of shooting her. [...]
A family dispute between an unidentified man and his brother resulted in a fatal shooting around 4 a.m., according to KTRK News.
Some will be disputes between friends or roommates.
Police officers were dispatched to the residence in response to a 911 call, according to WITN News. There, they encountered 28-year-old McKinsey Britton, who allegedly told them he had shot two people.
Many will be workplace disputes.
A 27-year-old man was reportedly shot inside a Redford Township recording studio around 12:30 a.m. Monday.
All of these will be brushed off as not representative of responsible gun owners, but still necessary sacrifices for gun "freedom." We will do nothing. Our nation's law enforcement officers will still be trained, of necessity, to respond to every minor call and disturbance as if everyone they are about to meet is carrying a weapon of mass murder; we will make noble-sounding bleats about the heroism of our officers, and the sum total of our efforts to keep them safe will be to authorize new military gear that will, we hope, at least keep our police departments from being outgunned by those they face.
None of the murders above will raise an eyebrow. Those count as the background noise, the first evening of 2018; they do not even rise to the level of requiring thoughts and prayers from legislators or from pundits. They are, industry lobbyists will insist, necessary murders to ensure freedom for the rest of us, where freedom is defined as the right to commit murders of our own in the future, if any single person among us decides on any single evening that it is time to do such a thing.
At some point, probably within the next month, there will be another mass murder that qualifies as horrific enough to make national news. We will learn that the perpetrator was a responsible gun owner, up until the moment he was not, or we will learn that the perpetrator was not supposed to be able to acquire a weapon at all, but did so effortlessly through the various avenues set up in the nation to allow it. And it, too, will be declared the required price of a national freedom that no other so-called civilized nation finds necessary.
So let's wait. Let's wait for that day. Will it be children in a school? Concertgoers? The assembled congregation of a local church? We can apparently do nothing, so let us all sit and wait to see who the new martyrs will be in 2018. It won't be any of the victims above. They don't count. They are just the background noise—not a politician in America will pretend to give a damn.