Living in The Land of the Gun
By Craig Pugh
What’s it like living in the Land of the Gun?
Let me tell you right now: not much fun!
I mean, some days it feels like everyone’s
got one. What the heck are they all protecting
themselves from — each other? C’mon, man!
Don’t we have police officers and sheriffs for
that? I scratch my head and wonder: Is this
really the Right Wing’s version of freedom in
the USA in twenty-eighteen? Because this is
a nightmare, not a dream, a culture where nuts
strut about with assault rifles and guns while
we citizens get slaughtered by the hundreds
(adults at concerts, children in schools) because
traitors in congress bow down to NRA fools.
This American culture with men spewing death
and toxic masculinity is so bad, so discouraging.
Gun nuts try and pass it off as normalcy. Really?
If this were true I’d have to give up on humanity.
It’s hard to stay positive and not let the politicians
make me believe in their sick vision of protecting
the second amendment at all costs, even if that
means I have to die for it and you do, too. Look.
Christians don’t own guns. Neither do they run
around killing shit. Did Jesus have one? No.
Now do me a favor: don’t tell me I need one.
I am a child of God, an angel who temporarily
set his wings aside to experience life on earth
with all its pain and sadness, its joy and mirth.
I came from love and will return to love. While
here I try my best to be a healthy cell in the body
of humanity. I believe that’s what God wants of me.
I don’t know what else to tell you except that
it would come as no surprise to me at all if one
day I got shot by a nut with a gun simply because
I had the great misfortune to be born American.
It’s like that, you see, in The Land of the Gun where
we walking dead keep a gallows sense of humor
and grim perspectives on our mortality because our
so-called leaders made a mockery of public safety
along with every word our Founding Fathers wrote.
In fact, our House of Representatives is a joke that
turns children into targets to be filled with bullet holes.
Oh, the tears in the eyes of the twenty Newton children
who knew they were going to die as they stared terrified
at Adam Lanza’s assault rifle! They cried so hard, held
out their little arms for mommy and daddy as the bullets
tore them in two and cut them in half, shattered their skulls
and splattered their guts and brain matter on the walls.
Twenty lumps of dead flesh, blood running on the floor
and the monsters in the U. S. Senate did nothing at all.
Sorry kids. You gotta go. From Columbine to Parkland,
Maine to New Mexico. You all simply have to go. Why?
I already told you so! It’s the sacred second amendment.
How many times do I have to tell you how precious it is?
So now you know the feeling we who live in The Land of
the Gun have about being sacrificed to the real terrorist:
an angry white American male with an assault rifle. Life
means nothing here. Seriously, it’s just so much fun trying
to stay alive in America. Aren’t you glad you don’t live here?