On Friday, October 31, the fourth victim of the Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting, lost her struggle for life.
The Big Truth
Her name is Shaylee Chuckulnaskit. She’s fourteen years old, described in glowing terms by family and friends as a “shining light.” The light has gone out. Shaylee Chuckulnaskit is dead. Killed by yet one more “school shooter”, a term that has become in relatively recent years as common as “most likely to succeed” or “class clown.”
One more school shooter, one more dead classmate; a headline on the AOL news site for one day, then gone. Shaylee Chuckulnaskit doesn’t matter. Her family and friends are forever broken-hearted, left to wonder why and what could have been while the American public, from an action point of view, doesn’t give a shit.
We have allowed the National Rifle Association, along with a frightening number of talking-point-driven disciples to promote an argument so foolish, so outrageously absurd, that it almost sounds like an argument (See Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, et al). They trot out ex-soldiers and police officers, the two groups who should know best the dangers of putting firearms in the hands of the public (and many of whom do) to trumpet the Big Lie that guns equal freedom. They get firearm embracing “tough guys” to call anti-gun activists “pussies.” Well, tell you what: pussies, properly employed, are quite nice, and it’s impossible to BE one.
The next Big Lie is that it’s really not about guns, it’s about mental health. They spew that vapid assertion in the same breath they use to crush any legislation that would fund the slightest increase in mental health services that could begin to address the issue. Plus any honest mental health specialist would tell you that the likes of Ted Nugent or Joe the Plumber or George Zimmerman or the guy who shot the black kid in the convenience store parking lot because his music was too loud, would be the first to lose their gun ownership rights because they carry a gun in hopes of having the opportunity to prove they need to use it, which is fucking crazy.
Truth: Ted Nugent probably isn’t going to shoot anyone; neither will Joe the Plumber. Other Truth: We have no idea who will. Other Other Truth: We know what he’ll use.
Recently I got into a dust-up on Facebook (I know better, but I’m doing it again) with an ex-serviceman who said I had no right to tell him what kind of weapon he could use to protect his family…and that I had an agenda. He intimated that because he is ex-military and I’m not, he is more qualified to pontificate on issues regarding firearms than am I. Well sorry my friend, but I don’t ask race car drivers to make traffic laws, and I don’t ask people with a philosophical love for an instrument designed for the sole purpose of putting holes in things, to decide on how large the holes or how fast we can put them in, because when we put holes in things what is inside leaks out, and way too often what leaks out is blood.
DUH! that I have an agenda, but if I and other anti-killing activists can get enough voters together, then I WILL have the right to tell him what kind of weapon he can use to protect his family. Once again to Gandhi: There is so very little we can do and it is so important that we do it.
This problem has a generational solution, which means I’m not going to be around to see it solved. Self-styled tough guys will call the likes of me “pussy” and gun manufacturers will continue to trumpet the notion that forefathers they can’t even name, meant to pave the way for a nation of thoughtless cowboys. Conventional wisdom will have to change which means someone with a far more powerful voice than mine will have to lead the call to disarms. It may be the voice of the parent of a slain child whose sound will somehow rise above the wails, or more likely, the parent of a shooter, with the courage and the grit to hold the Big Truth up for us all: If your philosophy trumps your decency, you have a fucked-up philosophy, and worse, a fucked-up allegiance to that philosophy.
I part ways with my liberal friends as they peel off to find reasonable arguments for gun ownership that go one inch beyond hunting for survival. I know it will have to be gradual, we have made guns so available to the disenfranchised and the bullied and those in other ways kicked to the curb, that we now feel the need to arm ourselves against those we have armed.
Maybe I’m delusional, but somewhere down some distant road, I have to believe I hear that voice…
So goodbye Shaylee Chuckulnaskit. Your name now disappears into the sea of the slaughtered. Wouldn’t it be fitting if members of your Tulalip tribe - once called savage by citizens of a savage nation – the tribe who spawned both you and your killer, were to find a way to lead that savage nation to grace.
The Big Truth
Her name is Shaylee Chuckulnaskit. She’s fourteen years old, described in glowing terms by family and friends as a “shining light.” The light has gone out. Shaylee Chuckulnaskit is dead. Killed by yet one more “school shooter”, a term that has become in relatively recent years as common as “most likely to succeed” or “class clown.”
One more school shooter, one more dead classmate; a headline on the AOL news site for one day, then gone. Shaylee Chuckulnaskit doesn’t matter. Her family and friends are forever broken-hearted, left to wonder why and what could have been while the American public, from an action point of view, doesn’t give a shit.
We have allowed the National Rifle Association, along with a frightening number of talking-point-driven disciples to promote an argument so foolish, so outrageously absurd, that it almost sounds like an argument (See Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, et al). They trot out ex-soldiers and police officers, the two groups who should know best the dangers of putting firearms in the hands of the public (and many of whom do) to trumpet the Big Lie that guns equal freedom. They get firearm embracing “tough guys” to call anti-gun activists “pussies.” Well, tell you what: pussies, properly employed, are quite nice, and it’s impossible to BE one.
The next Big Lie is that it’s really not about guns, it’s about mental health. They spew that vapid assertion in the same breath they use to crush any legislation that would fund the slightest increase in mental health services that could begin to address the issue. Plus any honest mental health specialist would tell you that the likes of Ted Nugent or Joe the Plumber or George Zimmerman or the guy who shot the black kid in the convenience store parking lot because his music was too loud, would be the first to lose their gun ownership rights because they carry a gun in hopes of having the opportunity to prove they need to use it, which is fucking crazy.
Truth: Ted Nugent probably isn’t going to shoot anyone; neither will Joe the Plumber. Other Truth: We have no idea who will. Other Other Truth: We know what he’ll use.
Recently I got into a dust-up on Facebook (I know better, but I’m doing it again) with an ex-serviceman who said I had no right to tell him what kind of weapon he could use to protect his family…and that I had an agenda. He intimated that because he is ex-military and I’m not, he is more qualified to pontificate on issues regarding firearms than am I. Well sorry my friend, but I don’t ask race car drivers to make traffic laws, and I don’t ask people with a philosophical love for an instrument designed for the sole purpose of putting holes in things, to decide on how large the holes or how fast we can put them in, because when we put holes in things what is inside leaks out, and way too often what leaks out is blood.
DUH! that I have an agenda, but if I and other anti-killing activists can get enough voters together, then I WILL have the right to tell him what kind of weapon he can use to protect his family. Once again to Gandhi: There is so very little we can do and it is so important that we do it.
This problem has a generational solution, which means I’m not going to be around to see it solved. Self-styled tough guys will call the likes of me “pussy” and gun manufacturers will continue to trumpet the notion that forefathers they can’t even name, meant to pave the way for a nation of thoughtless cowboys. Conventional wisdom will have to change which means someone with a far more powerful voice than mine will have to lead the call to disarms. It may be the voice of the parent of a slain child whose sound will somehow rise above the wails, or more likely, the parent of a shooter, with the courage and the grit to hold the Big Truth up for us all: If your philosophy trumps your decency, you have a fucked-up philosophy, and worse, a fucked-up allegiance to that philosophy.
I part ways with my liberal friends as they peel off to find reasonable arguments for gun ownership that go one inch beyond hunting for survival. I know it will have to be gradual, we have made guns so available to the disenfranchised and the bullied and those in other ways kicked to the curb, that we now feel the need to arm ourselves against those we have armed.
Maybe I’m delusional, but somewhere down some distant road, I have to believe I hear that voice…
So goodbye Shaylee Chuckulnaskit. Your name now disappears into the sea of the slaughtered. Wouldn’t it be fitting if members of your Tulalip tribe - once called savage by citizens of a savage nation – the tribe who spawned both you and your killer, were to find a way to lead that savage nation to grace.
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