A few years back, I came up with this chart to illustrate how the current mass extinction event isn’t a foregone conclusion, actually can be mitigated and perhaps even reversed — at least for the plants and critters we haven’t yet killed off entirely.The damage already done is so vast, not even an instant otherwise non-traumatic removal of Humanity from Earth would stop the ecocaust already underway. We have a positive moral responsibility to stick around (perhaps in fewer numbers, perhaps far fewer) and make...reparations.
So...why now? We’d rather talk about gun violence, black and blue alike, thanks.
Because gun violence, of all scales, kinds and target colors is an environmental factor, is a potential extinction level event for our country.
Take a look at the chart above. Replace “species” with “country” or “society” or “version of America”.
Are we thriving? Are we thriving yet? Are we even headed in that direction?
As this is SUCH an open-ended question, let’s focus on gun violence, specifically, What exactly would be the shape of a thriving society with abundant private weapons ownership? Who are the dominant voices in such a world? Which interests are paramount? How do police, for example, function in this place? Who holds responsibility for public safety in an open-carry country? Do gun fatalities go up or down in this brave new world...and if they go up in some prolonged (but not permanent) short term, is this a bad thing?
(Raises hand) Perhaps there’s a competing hypothesis: A species of society which willfully introduces danger to its stability and then magnifies — no, subsidizes — that threat to the level of self-endangerment cannot long survive, never mind thrive.
Lincoln once invoked the Book of Mark, saying a house divided cannot stand. He was addressing the strife around slavery, the gun issue of its day.
As of 2016, our house is getting shot to splinters from outside, from inside, from all sides. We cannot withstand this.
We are not thriving. We are not stable. And until we right our situation, ALL versions of America, all visions of what is could and should be, are endangered species.
Invoking the Food Lion, that’s just my two cents.