GRAPHIC IMAGE: What the reports on Allen TX aren't showing us. TRIGGER WARNING

[calimary]

45. I think we HAVE TO look. We HAVE TO.

Last edited Sun May 7, 2023, 07:11 PM - Edit history (2)

Otherwise it’s all sanitized and thoughts & prayers and cleaned up. The comedian Shelly Berman used to have a routine about “cleans ‘n’ dirties”. And sometimes you also have “clirties” when the lines dividing the two concepts blur away. A “clirty” according to ol’ Shelly Berman was a cleaned-up dirty. Like all of those “sanitized for your protection” cleaned up news stories about death-by-gun where they thoughtfully spare you the literally gory details and bloody bodies - DEAD bodies.

NO. It’s NOT pretty. But we should all be painfully aware of it. And it should be in our faces until we finally have the courage and determination and the resolve to stop this carnage. And STOP these guns. If I could, I’d get rid of EVERY gun in the U.S. EVERY last damn detestable one of ‘em.

And I STILL want my two friends back. Lost when an accelerating argument ended in a murder/suicide. Fourteen years ago. And it Still. Hurts. Like. HELL. Even 14 years and two-and-a-half months later.

Ironically, only yesterday, I was at our Congresswoman’s local office with two fellow Indivisible members, and we each took an issue to make a brief presentation about whatever our topic was. I was the “gun one”. And when it came my turn, I told the Congresswoman’s two office workers my story about losing two friends to an argument that ended in fatal gunfire. And I started getting choked up. But by Jove I said what I came to say. The two young dudes listened solemnly and took some notes.

I know it won’t do much good. I have the great misfortune to be “represented” by a Republican, for the first time in my life. I know what I care about matters very little to her. But I’m not gonna shut up OR go away. I’m gonna keep leaning on her two liaison-guys. And I will not relent. OR give up. And if all I wind up doing is making them feel bad, well, maybe that’ll give them a hair’s width of an idea of how I’m bedeviled by this loss every doggone day, to one extent or other. I don’t mind talking about it, either. And every doggone day that this issue sticks out like a bleeding thumb, I’m gonna remind them.

THEY’RE the lucky ones. Everybody seated at that conference table was NOT a survivor - which I learned was what you call someone who’s survived gun violence whether it was losing someone you cared about to gunfire, or you yourself were injured by gunfire but you lived. Nobody at that table had even passing experience with gunfire to THAT degree. Maybe that’s what keeps it from being as urgent and high-priority an issue for them as it has become, for me.

And all I have to do is think back to that evening service at the beach, and remember the agonized cries of Holly’s mom.

Sorry about the rant. I guess I still carry the burden of those grieving loved ones - and I’ll keep on carrying it straight into that damn Republican Congresswoman’s damn conference room.