Archive for gun violence

When You Get What You Wish For…

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , , on September 11, 2025 by chemiclord

I am not even going to pretend to celebrate the miserable life of Charlie Kirk. Not for someone who willfully created this political environment expressing truly heinous and disgusting “opinions.” A man who willfully stoked hatred, and who called for the oppression of the oppressed. A man whose only real guiding principle appeared to be pushing the boundaries of what would be considered proper discourse. He was a real life Twitter troll manifest in flesh, and that is nothing to laud.

If Charlie Kirk wanted people to speak kind of him in death, he probably should have tried not being a worthless, vile, antagonistic, miserable, deplorable piece of rancid pig shit in his life.

I’m not even going to pretend to mourn the death of a man who up until the day he died held the belief that people dying to gun violence was an “unfortunate” acceptable cost for the right to bear arms. Though I suppose one could say that he died for his beliefs, I guess. That’s more than most of his ilk can claim. So, I guess he has that going for him.

And I’m certainly not going to mourn his death when other far more deserving victims that damn day were shot in a school in Colorado. I also think there was another shooting incident elsewhere, but my short digging couldn’t find mention of it thanks to Charlie Kirk burying pretty much all other news outlets in horrible pandering to some sort of comity that he absolutely did not deserve.

I’m also not going to try and shame the reaction from a growing number of the left celebrating the monster’s demise. I really don’t give a shit how uncouth “polite society” might think it is. The amount of political violence aimed towards the left is so tilted against them, that I am not at all surprised that a relatively large segment is going to cheer it finally turning the other way.

This is the world that the right wing created, so the idea that they are appalled that the left would finally start pushing back with the same sort of bitterness and bile should not be the slightest bit surprising. Patience and understanding runs thin over time, and this has been an environment that the political right wing in America has been shaping for a very long time.

Though I strongly suspect, like most of these amoral cretins that perpetuate these shootings, we’re likely to discover that trying to plot their political leanings will be a lesson in futility. The sort of person that decides that shooting someone dead is the next rational step in their lives likely holds very little rational beliefs at all, with the only consistent trait among them of being shaped by the cult of violence that is increasingly finding purchase in every corner of American life and society.

So no, I neither celebrate nor mourn the life and death of Charlie Kirk. He doesn’t deserve my, or anyone’s sympathy. He doesn’t deserve mine, or anyone’s, sorrow. To put it more crudely, fuck Charlie Kirk, the horse he rode in on, and the casket he leaves with. Good riddance, and rest in piss, asshole. You, at least, got exactly what you wished for; which is something I can’t say for most of the victims of gun violence in this country.

If there is one thing that I mourn beyond those who did lose their lives tragically yesterday (it’s actually not entirely clear if anyone in Colorado has died outside of the shooter, because even trying basic current updates for that gets Charlie Fucking Kirk news spit back out by the goddamn AI algorithms), it’s that I already know where this political violence takes us, and it is nowhere good.

As satisfying as it feels to learn that the vile gun advocate died due to gun violence, absolutely no one is going to have the epiphany that all of this is heading towards a massive cliff, and once this train flies over the edge, it’s going to lead to a whole lot more people across all walks of life, winding up dead with their blood flowing in the streets.

The tit-for-tat has only started. Now begins the escalation.

Good luck, America. We’re gonna need it.

On Violence and Gun Control

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , on August 27, 2015 by chemiclord

Well, here we are again, my friends.  Looking at the aftermath of another day riddled with horrific gun violence in a very public fashion.  And once again, it’s time to rev the engines on the hottest debate to flood through the laymen and women of this country… gun control.

Now, I don’t want to dismiss the issue of gun control.  I do believe it’s important.  I do believe that easy access to guns with very few restrictions and little effort to enforce those few restrictions is a very big problem.  But at the same time, it’s not the only problem, and just improved gun control isn’t going to solve the tragedies that seem to occur on nearly a weekly basis nowadays.

These sort of events, this sort of complete collapse of humanity and general empathy to another person or group of people isn’t like a visit to Dairy Queen, where you pick one thing and consider your dessert run complete.  It’s more like an all you can eat buffet, where you get a whole meal taking from a bunch of different items.

Just removing easy access to guns isn’t going to solve the distressing lack of support for mental health and initiatives that aid people with mental illness.  It’s not going to quell the increasing disquiet about simmering racial tensions and culture of fear that lead to police officers shooting unarmed black men.  It’s not going to solve the increasing plight of people feeling they don’t have any other options to affect change in our social and economic structures.

It’s all well and good to fight for stronger gun control.  But humans (especially us Americans, it would seem) have this very obnoxious tendency to win one battle, then happily walk away like we had won the entire war.  We cannot allow this one flashpoint be the only one we address in our deeply scarred culture.