It’s Tuesday, March 28th as I sit to write this. Today I had myself scheduled to make some new reels and videos. My books are full of work to be done. My planner has lists.
But I just couldn’t. Instead I’m writing here and then I’m going to take some time to do some reading… Buddhism. It seems to be my go to when I feel lost, angry, sad, grieving, and powerless in this world that more and more is being created in some sick image of an authoritarian God who judges and punishes, a world where the faithful are really the fearful, a world that values one particular “freedom” over all others.
On average, we are seeing one school shooting a week. A WEEK.
But this last shooting in Nashville has an added layer that is dangerous for an already marginalized group of people. This added layer is what those fearful “Christians” immediately grabbed on to, and within moments of the news, they started churning out hateful rhetoric that is inflammatory, dangerous, and actually, as usual, full of lies.
They are claiming that trans people are the new dangerous group. I won’t quote them, but I will quote some actual REAL and TRUE stats, which are easy enough to corroborate just by going through all the news stories yourself and counting but here:
"4 shooters out of over 300 mass shooters since 2009 are transgender or non binary. That's just 1.3 percent of all shooters," Anthony Zenkus, a lecturer in social work at Columbia University, wrote on Twitter. "You just proved our point: 99 percent of mass shooters in the United States are cis gendered.”
* Cis gendered male, to be more precise. For more of those stats and the rest of that article, go here.
As usual, our politicians, most of whom are the whores of the NRA and other violent groups, are trying to distract us from the reality that this country is sick, and specifically, that our love of guns in this country is a mental illness.
As a cis gendered woman who has had plenty of opportunity in my life to feel frightened and actually threatened by the men around her, I have never once thought, “I should carry a gun…”
As a person in a group of humans who is actually targeted with rape and murder, I have never thought that I should arm myself and prepare myself to kill another.
So what are all these cis gendered men who carry their AR15s into GROCERY stores so fucking frightened of?
They have bought into a story told to them from on high… that someone, some mysterious someone is out to get them. Though they themselves hold most of the power, they have bought into a story that their power is being threatened and can be directly protected with violence.
Again, we are sick.
And guns only make our sickness more obvious. Every other developed country that has instituted strict gun control (not even just the wimpy ass variety we’ve been begging for for decades) sees an immediate decrease in violence and death.
“But the criminals still have guns.” That falls flat when you take a real look at the stats for those countries just mentioned. I’m guessing they still have crime and criminals, but guess what they don’t have? Mass shootings. School shootings. Ever growing graveyards of children.
Statistically this country has more people who claim to be on the left than on the right. But the right has somehow highjacked our political system and is imposing their fear-based, ugly, violent, restrictive, and yes, fascist vision on this country. (You immediately become a fascist, FYI, when you ban books. Period.)
When I say they have somehow highjacked our political system what I really mean is that they have very intentionally squashed voter rights, instituted gerrymandering, and made their gun ownership as visible as possible so that the rest of us stay in place, too frightened to fight…
I don’t have any answers. And I don’t think it’s people like me stockpiling weapons themselves.
Because unlike most “Christians,” I actually believe in the nonviolent Christ who was very clear about weapons.
My mind is all over the place right now so I’ll end with a couple of suggestions:
First, if you’re not already, follow, support, whatever a gun reform group. This one is good.
Second, if you’re a trans ally, start being louder about it, and if for whatever reason, you feel like you can’t be louder, then be more supportive in other ways.
Here’s a national one you could support but every state and city has smaller groups that always need help.