Essays in Idleness

There is gun violence in our schools, but it isn’t prompt enough. I gather this from news reports originating in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas; especially from the latter, where the (late) Accused, one Salvador Ramos, age eighteen, had twelve minutes of leisure to shoot randomly outside the school building, without being bothered. He then entered the Robb Elementary School, uncontested; to spend an hour with the children and their teachers — still firing rounds, now into them.

I understand that he murdered 22 in all, including, constructively, himself, for he eventually attracted the attention of another gunman, in the fullness of time. A couple dozen more were maimed or otherwise injured. But the interceding gunman, who had experience with “Border Patrol,” finally blew the Accused away; whereas local officers, who had already congregated outside for more than an hour, were trying to make up their minds, whether to storm the building. While they idled, a number of still-living children, trapped inside, begged to be rescued, on their cellphones.

“Safety is our highest priority,” we often hear in public propaganda. The safety of police officers was the absolute priority in this case.

The best thing to do, when you find a stranger (or even a familiar) shooting children (whether your own, or others’) is to gun him down, promptly. I know this will not look like the most charitable reaction, and that we live in times and places that are governed by shallow appearances. But, in the greater scheme of things, it will usually be the only merciful course. Preparing our citizens to act in emergencies, cultivating the capacity to do so, and the courage to act in defiance of cowardly instinct, is further required.

New laws, administering “gun control,” depend on appearances instead, on a concept like “niceness,” and on the emotionalism and low intelligence in society at large. “Guns cause violence and fewer guns will mean less violence” is reasoning on the moron level.

It is a scandal when such people are allowed to vote.