Decades of Death
Decades of Death
Bullets Over America
December 8, 2020
Imagine, Act
Five years ago "Rolling Stone" magazine reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tallied 1.15 million gun deaths in the United States between 1980 and 2015.
There have been about 150,000 since then.
That's nearly a million and-a-half souls taken by guns in this country since the shooting death of John Lennon 40 years ago today, about 30,000 a year.
John Lennon said, memorably, "imagine." We say, "move." Move our country away from this senseless barbarism.
But how? What legislation can change the American mentality of shoot first? Can we turn to new laws or old morals? What can be done to convince people they are safe without a gun? Or is that even the question?
Neighbors on either side of me have been broken into. I have not. If I had, would I buy a gun? If I were a woman who walks alone, if I lived far away from a police station, if I felt there was no other choice?
There have been studies that say death is on the rise this year. Not just from COVID-19 but from other things, gunshots likely included. It has been a year of isolation, frustration, and death, and in many American households a gun is always nearby.
What if John Lennon had never left England? What if New York had never been his home? Would he still be alive now, at 80, imagining the next chapter of life?
Forty-one Christmases without John Lennon. We enter our fifth decade since his murder as frightened as ever, imagining what to do next. A hail of bullets through time. A paucity of places to hide. --TK
Tuesday, December 8, 2020