In the wake of the latest school shooting, I read this on Facebook:
"Hey, how about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion -- mandatory 48 hour waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he's about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence ...
"Let's close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun. It makes more sense to do this with young men and guns than with women and health care, right? I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds, right?"
Well, that's a pretty controversial proposal, juxtaposing two of the most controversial topics in our society. You can hardly find someone ambivalent about either topic, much less both.
While the reactionaries in this country have been crying, "Obama's gonna take our guns," it's actually women's rights to reproductive health care that's been whittled away. Legislatures in some of our most backward states are doing everything they can to deny women their constitutional right to an abortion.
The argument that back-alley abortions will endanger the lives of women falls on deaf ears. Why? Apparently too many Americans actually prefer to put women who need abortions in the hands of butchers rather than doctors. This is in spite of the fact that one in three women in this country has had an abortion. The shaming and silencing may end only when women start sharing their own stories, although that shouldn't be necessary.
The president of Planned Parenthood went before a congressional committee last week to be pilloried over a fake documentary alleging her organization traffics in dead baby parts. The next day a Planned Parenthood clinic in California was intentionally set on fire.
Makes me wonder why no congressional committee has called on the head of the NRA to answer for all the innocent children it has helped kill, not to mention the children never born because their future mothers were shot to death. Where are the "pro-life" activists trying to burn down NRA headquarters?
Let me be clear, I own guns. I know how to use them. I also am a woman. I know from personal experience that it's easier to get bullets than birth control. That's insane.
There have been 142 school shootings since the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2013. One hundred forty-two. That's almost one a week. If terrorists were attacking a school a week, would you get off your duff to demand that Congress come up with a better response than "stuff happens?"
Talk is cheap. Incredibly cheap. In a national crisis, I definitely want politicians who respond with "thoughts and prayers" rather than action. Because, you know, thoughts and prayers are like little bulletproof vests for our kids. If the politicians were as concerned about students sitting at their desks as they are about fetuses, we'd have a Blackhawk circling every playground.
Is there really nothing our national legislators can conceive to prevent students from being gunned down, en masse, in classrooms? Apparently not. They're preoccupied with the much more important issue of making it hard for women to manage their own pregnancies.
If you don't want women to get abortions, help them get birth control. That isn't exactly rocket science. Start there. Don't keep young men or women ignorant about how their bodies work. Understand that "abstinence only" is wishful thinking, not rational public policy.
Congress is obviously too cowed to do anything about gun violence. The only prospect for change -- and it's a slim one -- is a righteous uprising of voters unwilling to put up with it anymore. Congressmen, like the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, work in barricaded buildings, shielded by armed guards and metal detectors. They aren't expected to carry Glocks on their hips, prepared for a shootout every day they come into the office.
If those congressional weasels had only the protection afforded kids going to school, parishioners going to church or young adults headed to the movie theater, they would see things differently. If they were only as safe as the average school child, I guarantee they would see gun violence as a problem in need of a better of solution than thoughts and prayers. As it is, they've made themselves safe. They're not afraid of shooters, they're afraid of the NRA.
If, as they disingenuously argue, the problem is mental health, what exactly are they doing to improve care for the mentally ill? ("Obamacare" is a step in the right direction, but they're determined to get rid of that.) Don't bother checking, the answer is: Not a damn thing.
Right now, congressional Republicans won't even fund the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence as a social contagion, which it clearly is. When Congress failed to close the background check loophole after Sandy Hook, the country lost and the gun lunatics won. It seems to them a few dead children are the acceptable price of unfettered universal access to guns and bullets.
So let's get back to work on that bogus Planned Parenthood scandal.
Shannyn Moore is a radio broadcaster.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com