Guns, guns, guns, I'm so sick of guns

The peace and equilibrium of my home town of Grundy Center, Iowa, were terrifyingly upset last weekend when a 41-year-old man barricaded himself in a house near the center of town and began shooting. He was finally wounded and arrested after several hours.

During the standoff, the man shot and killed Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Jim Smith.

That’s a short summary of a much longer story. I am telling it because you probably didn’t hear about it. I have not seen it in any national news sources, though I am sure it has appeared somewhere.

Who cares about one fatal standoff in a small town in the heart of fly-over country when there are so many other stories of gun violence for us to follow, right up until this very morning, out of Indianapolis? Even if a law enforcement officer was tragically killed? Maybe because both the murderer and the murdered were white, just like when Black people kill Black people? Who cares?

I care. I care deeply, but I fear we are on a train no one can stop.

That train’s engineers are the gun-rights’ crowd that never saw a gun it didn’t adore and thinks everyone has a god-given right to own. Their argument is that the only way to counter the danger posed by all the guns in this country is to have more guns in this country, an argument that flies in the face of facts and common sense.

And it seems quite clear that many law enforcement officers, who should be the best-trained among us in properly handling firearms, mess up with them, too. What confidence can we have a millions of armed civilians getting it right?

The Supreme Court’s (intentional?) misinterpretation of the Second Amendment provides unlimited ammunition for the gun-defenders. Not to mention that former president who encourages them every time he can. Or too many of our representatives, whether in Iowa, or Ohio, or Washington, D.C. Who or what can stop this run-away freight?

Don’t respond by telling me that I don’t know anything about guns, because I already know that. I don’t own one, and never will.

But here’s a thing I know for sure: I felt a lot safer out in the world when there were far fewer gun-toting “patriots” around than there are now. Will I drive home after our trip to the grocery store this afternoon, or will an ambulance take my body, bullet-riddled and bloody, to the morgue? I never used to have to think about that. Now I do, at least somewhere in my subconscious. Hell, I not only felt safer, I was safer.

And we are not a better nation because of it—whether we live in Indianapolis or Minneapolis or Grundy Center.