If Sandy Hook failed to change U.S. attitude on guns, nothing will

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Pricey America:

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For starters, let me say this: I like People, and I like America.

Principally. Typically.

There’s tons to like. Your persons are open and gregarious and irrepressible. Your nation is bountiful and various and filled with promise.

And a few of us Canadians grow to be People, or have household and buddies in your nation. Personally, I lived there, in Dallas, Texas. Can nonetheless recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Can nonetheless keep in mind my household’s Dallas cellphone quantity (FL1-6325). In no small measure, we’re a part of you, and also you us.

For us Canadians, within the massive drafty room above yours, we’re immensely grateful that you just protect us from the despots and monsters discovered elsewhere, with rising regularity today. You shield us. We all know that.

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However with regards to defending yourselves? You’re not so good at that.

And I don’t simply imply the riot provoked by Donald Trump, now being documented on the Home of Representatives’ Home Choose Committee investigation of the violent Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Or the cleavage in your politics, whereby Left and Proper are orbiting ever-further aside. Or your class wars, that are occurring on a regular basis, about the whole lot.

As a result of we Canadians, if we’re being trustworthy with ourselves — and we regularly usually are not — have had violent assaults on our locations of governance, too. We had one in 2014, when a madman killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo, and stormed Parliament, and shot the place up. And now we have a cleavage in our politics, too — with a Liberal Prime Minister who has crafted a crypto-socialist Axis of Weasels deal on one facet and, on the opposite facet, a Conservative Celebration in a headlong rush to the outer reaches of the perimeter Proper, the place conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and Pierre Poilievre congregate.

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And sophistication wars? Now we have these too. We battle about silly, inconsequential stuff, too, and we miss out on the massive image. Responsible.

However in a single factor, America, you may have us beat. In a single factor, you’re the undisputed world champions. And that factor, in fact, is ritual suicide by firearm. In that class, you might be Quantity One — with a bullet, you may say.

Reciting the grim statistics to you is a waste of time. It hasn’t stopped and even slowed down your descent into the slaughterhouse. Interesting to your higher nature hasn’t labored, both: forests have been felled in the USA, to print up well-meaning and heart-rending pleas for sanity.

And you retain doing what you do. Which is kill one another.

Ask Jesse Lewis.

Jesse Lewis had wished to be within the military. He was robust, however with a mild facet. Every time he might, he favoured ripped denims and a T-shirt — nothing fancy. He was raised on a farm, in any case, with horses, canines, and chickens. He was courageous, too.

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When the taking pictures began, on Dec. 14, 2012, Jesse Lewis noticed the killer pause to reload. He yelled at these round him — 9 of them — to “run.” They did.

The killer noticed, reloaded, and shot Jesse Lewis within the head, killing him.

Jesse Lewis’ title must be acquainted to you — as a result of Jesse Lewis was simply six years previous. He was a scholar at Sandy Hook Elementary College, in Newtown, Connecticut. On the day Jesse was murdered, 19 different first-graders have been slaughtered. Six ladies, too.

Right here’s the factor, America: you can’t declare to be the chief of the free world – you can’t declare to be “the land of the free, and the house of the courageous” – when one thing just like the Sandy Hook bloodbath occurs, and also you do exactly nothing about it. You possibly can’t.

The remainder of us principally admire you and such as you. We do. However should you didn’t change after Sandy Hook?

In case you didn’t change after that — you by no means, ever will.

Yours sincerely,

And so forth.