Addicted to Violence

America is addicted to violence.  Look around you and see if you think this is true.  Which movies are the highest grossing of all time?  How many weapons have been purchased by Americans in the past 100 years?  In the past 50 years, what are the highest selling weapons?  What is our favorite sport?  What is the highest grossing sport in America?  FOOTBALL. When you think of soccer, is it the carefree sport that you remember with beautiful passing and scoring, or is it the head butt by the French in the 2010 World Cup?  Maybe you think about the hooligans that travel with their teams and start fights in the stands. People go to car races to see them crash.

Violence is the driving force all over the world.  I don’t care where you were born or raised.  Violence rules the world we live, and people seek recognition for their ability to used violence to their advantage be it in the octagon or the ring or in the bar. The Middle East is on fire and violence is the name of the game. Violence is used to control societies in which the state has failed to protect its citizens.

You look around the world and the most violent run many of the governments.  They use others to carry out their violence. It matters not.  Violence begets violence and it is rewarded with power.  We celebrated the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.  We filled the streets with thousands of cheering fans of this violent end to a man who believed power emanated from the violence he was able to inflict on those that opposed him.

All societies believe in an eye for an eye.  If you look around our country, you will see violent hate groups ready to strike and attack at the heart of our government.  The most vocal of these violent hate groups is the leaders of the NRA.  It will always be their way or the highway.

They do not care how many people are killed with their weapons as long as there are 10 more people ready to purchase their products.  They do not care about mass murders or any data that demonstrates the dangers of their products.  They are an organization that uses irrational arguments to press their agenda and their members parrot this irrationality in the press and throughout social media.  They use coercion through fear to press forward.  The NRA loves violence because it sells their product. 

As a nation we love violence as long as it does not hit too close to home.  Most Americans did not even think about the assault weapons or high capacity magazine ban until Denver and Connecticut.   Ten years ago, after my father died, I sold all his assault weapons and used the proceeds to buy a motorcycle.  I did not want to have anything to do with them.  They bothered me.  I still own a 12 gage Remington 870 and 30-06 Winchester if I ever go hunting again, and I just purchased a Taurus 605 revolver for target shooting. I am not just some left-wing wackadoodle attacking gun owners.

 There may be reasonable people out there that own weapons of mass murder e.g. AR 15 or AK 47 derivatives with high capacity magazines, but there is no reason to have them.  They are meant to kill other humans.  Watch the movies or video games and see how these weapons are depicted. Or check out videos where ballistic jelly is used to simulate the human body and head and tell me these weapons aren’t meant to kill people. Don’t watch some bogus firing range demonstration using paper.  Watch film from Vietnam; they work really well.  I am not going to change anyone’s attitude about these weapons because we do not buy them based on anything but an emotion response. 

We love the violence that these weapons produce when we unleash their awesomeness.  It has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.  Join the National Guard if you want to support the Second Amendment, then, you can be trained to shoot a government issued AR15, and you will provide a much needed service to our country. 

I want to reiterate that American is not the most violent country in the world.  We are addicted to violence.  We avert our eyes when it kills our young especially when the young are not white suburbanites.  When Americans are killed at a rate of 100 a week, you would think that we were in a war zone and outrage would rule the land. The only outrage is from gun owners ready to take up arms.

Get out your check books or credit cards and head down to the gun range, the gun store or a pawnshop and pick yourself up a weapon of mass murder.  Use it in good conscience.  Go out with your buddies and pull off a few rounds.  Teach you husband or your wife how it is done.  Teach your kids.  My dad taught me. My nephew loves to take out his AR and rip it up.  Just don’t tell me Americans aren’t in love with violence.  It is an American right we like to call the 2^nd Amendment.