Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. Little Johnny Murderer

What a bunch of chickenshits we Americans are! We're afraid to tackle our collective problems in any kind of substantial way. Worried we might offend somebody if we tell the truth. Terrified that we'll discover our problems can't be solved with a soundbite or a politically "safe" law. Just so damn scared that we might find that we have to actually do something; to roll-up our sleeves and get dirty; to try and actually make a difference!

Of course I'm talking about our reaction to six-year-old "Johnny Elementary School", who shot poor Kayla Roland dead in Mount Morris, Michigan this week.

The list of SNAFU's that ultimately resulted in a six year-old boy standing next to Kayla with a loaded .32 in his hand is so long and so tragic that it staggers the imagination. Just to scratch the surface: at the moment the gun was fired "Johnny's" primary residence was a "crack house" where drugs and weapons were a part of daily life. His mother was nowhere to be found. His father was in prison, a violent criminal. "Johnny" had a history of behavioral problems including fights and the pencil-stabbing of a fellow student. And the gun he was holding had been stolen and was left under a blanket for "Johnny" to find. All this, and still, the less thoughtful among us want to use this as an opportunity to scream that this is about guns. It's disgusting, it's irresponsible, and ultimately, it's dangerous as hell.

Anyone who suggests that, despite "Johnny's" upbringing, Kayla would be alive if it weren't for the existence of guns is a poly-friggin'-anna, pure and simple. Let me tell you the way the world is. There are 300 million guns in the hands of Americans right now. Guns are a part of our social equation, and will be so for a long, long time. This is a fact. It does no one any good to wax philosophic about how different the world would be if there were no guns. Because at the end of the fantasy, that girl is still dead. How about asking why?

Kayla is dead because of "Johnny's" parents. End of story. "Johnny's" parents turned him into a killer, and none of us did anything to stop them. Kayla died as a direct result of an American cult of parental irresponsibility made deadly by a society that doesn't care.

George Bush Jr. came closest to getting it right. The day after the tragedy, a Fox News reporter tried to back him into a corner. "How can parents feel safe sending their children to school when so many kids have access to guns?", she pleaded. Bush refused to take the bait. Instead, in an answer I found too hesitant and a little mealy-mouthed, he mumbled something about parental responsibility and trigger locks. Close George, but not good enough. What he should've said to the reporter is, "I don't know. You don't know. No one knows. What we do know is that there is no easy answer to that question. A lot of things contributed to this shooting and for me to sit here, in this 30-second interview, and try to find one thing or one person to blame would be irresponsible, and would only compound the tragedy of Kayla's death. Instead of looking for politically poignant one-liners, why don't we all get together and try to figure out what made that kid want to pick that gun up and point it at a little girl in the first place!?"

Talk about winning the Republican nomination with one homerun swing.

No law, not a single goddamn one, could've kept that gun out of that kid's hands. Everything about what he and his "parents" did that day was already illegal, and could not have been made more so. So what's the answer? Why are our kids still dying in their schools from gunshot wounds?

Because we haven't had the balls to send the cops to every house in America to confiscate every gun, you say? Well there's a couple of problems with that. Besides being completely impractical, there's that pesky Constitution in the way again. The right to be secure in one's home... the right to keep and bear arms... unreasonable search and seizure... probable cause... any of this ring a bell? Ah, what the hell, let's shred the Constitution a little bit because it's expedient to do so in this case. Sure, why not? I mean hell, it's only the thing that made, and keeps, us free.

The Pen thinks that just when it would be most politically expedient to ignore the Constitution is exactly the time when we should be extra careful not to do it. Forcing ourselves to solve our problems within the framework of that document is what makes us Americans, dammit! The Constitution is not a list of suggestions. They are requirements for citizenship. They are, in fact, responsibilities.

Drugs don't cause violence, neither do movies, or music, or guns, or bad economies, or alcohol, or prisons, or TV, or working parents, or pornography, or Jerry Springer, or radio shock jocks. Violence in America is caused by a vast, amorphous Evil that incorporates a little bit of all those things. And Evil grows best in places where no one is paying any attention... like little "Johnny's" house.

The United States of America has become a factory, and its business is manufacturing killers. And yet, you wanna know what really scares the hell out of the Pen? What makes him break out in a cold sweat every time he thinks about having children and dropping them off at school? It's this: some day we might actually find a way to eliminate guns from society forever. And on that day, we will all wake up to find that, despite every gun control law we've enacted, our society is still churning out sociopaths at an alarming rate. And we will realize that because we spent all our time chasing this symptom, or that symptom, we never really learned how to cure the disease. And in the meantime, another generation of kids will have been lost.

But hey, at least we'll get a couple of real pretty laws out of it right? I'm sure the parents of the dead will be comforted by that knowledge.