What, How and Where?

The Topic of this blog is American Gun Violence.

Not American Gun Murder, that is a subset.
Not American Suicide by Gun, that is a subset.
Not American Injury or Maiming by Gun, these are also subsets.

The term "American Gun Violence" covers all of that, but by homogenizing the subsets for our own interest or experience, we are minimizing the others. We are also giving those that we are having a conversation with, something to fixate on as they try to disprove or follow along with something we may have brought up as a point.
When we talk of these things it is best to use the term "American Gun Violence," and then converse on the subsets as they arise. We don't want Americans invested in this topic fixating on any one aspect. That draws the conversation out as we explain, and if you have to explain, you are lost.

Nowadays I mention up front that American Gun Violence includes these other aspects before delving in any deeper. It strengthens my position and becomes a basis for the outrageous yearly numbers we Americans create.

For instance; the number I relate in these conversations is the total number of people physically affected by American Gun Violence each year.

For 2019 that number was 69,072. *

That is 189 people per day shot and killed in the US. That number includes all forms of bodily death and injury perpetrated on Americans in 2019 by statistic. A number that is outrageous and also seldom used. We somehow feel that displaying the number of dead people every year will turn some heads and gain favor, but it doesn't.
We play the disingenuous shell game with the murder and suicide number, negating the fact that the people on the other side of the topic are as educated and as observant as we are.
When someone does this type of thing to me, I get indignant.
They must think I'm a fool.

Enter the modern age of the internet and the good people of the GVA.

If anyone wants to see the yearly statistics of American Gun Violence, all they need to do is go to : gunviolencearchive.org (GVA)*

There, anyone can find the statistics for nearly any subset you can imagine except race and religion.
If you want to be morbidly entertained you can go to their active display of Gun Violence perpetrated in the last 72 hours. Refresh, and it changes in front of your eyes to display actual, verifiable gun violence incidents from every State and County in the entire United States. Their searching algorithms pull this information from municipalities and news sources all over the country in real time. You can even follow each incident to the address it happened at and sometimes even the names and witness accounts of each incident. Dozens and dozens and dozens each day of the year.
Before looking through the site I would recommend checking out their links to their mission statement and methodology. This is a completely non-partisan statistics gathering site that does not embellish in any way. No editorials, no discussion, no ideas, just actual, factual numbers that we Americans create on a daily basis, and they have subsets you may not even have realized were a subset at all.

This is where I get my 69072 number. Ive put the Suicide # plus injury # and murder # all together in one number. The result is Outrageous.
This is a number to consider. A number that pales the murder and suicide number.
A number equal to the population of a decent sized American city full of dead and injured people.
The injury number is rarely brought up or added to the deaths number but I consider it the most important to the conversation.
Why?
Not just because I am included in this number. No.
Because most of these people can still talk, think and vote, and we are pissed.

Live Love
Mac/

Nesting Dolls of American Paradox

 In 2020 America, our entitlements have become a double-edged sword. One side is used to separate us from others on earth and give us claim as leaders of the free world and the other to oppress those people in our own country that hold a more worldly and humane view that refuse to become slaves to those out of control entitlements.

With these Ideas of American entitlement, we have created nesting dolls of Paradox. 

For instance, America's out of control Gun Violence epidemic held in place by unbridled Capitalism. This unbridled Capitalism held in place by shiny baubles, and shiny baubles held in place by the carrot of American entitlement.

Entitlement to something, and deserving something, are not the same, they are not synonymous, they are mutually exclusive. For a person to deserve something infers a measure of value to become deserving. A person did something which in turn provides them value of some sort. They deserve the results of their efforts (or lack of effort). To be entitled does not suggest the same. Entitlement is a condition where a person is afforded something because someone else says they do. A decree offered by a person or entity in control and the power they wield. These two words play together, their definitions are muddled together, and they are used in America as interchangeable. 

A representative sentence on this subject might be; We are entitled to unobstructed gun ownership in America, therefore we deserve the results.

If we accept that we can own and use guns as we please, as entitled by our founding documents, the results are what we deserve because we have taken no action to prevent the negative effects of that entitlement. Yes, we can deserve out of inaction as well as action.

Americas founding documents are revered the world over. The ideals within were visionary for their time and have spurned human advancement throughout the world. The paradox they now create in America could not be foreseen by candle light. We no longer need leeches to bleed us dry. Our entitlements, freedoms and population have taken their place.

Through our American entitlements, we are now negating our founding documents. Unfortunately, only one of our founding documents is upheld legally. The others are given no weight in the face of the Capitalism they have spurned. Our founding Fathers would not, under any circumstance, have considered a business of any kind to be on equal standing with an actual American human. We all know this to be true, it is a very easy concept to grasp. But through fuzzy interpretation of our founding documents we have allowed our American Corporations, and even those of other countries, to direct our American lives for profit.

The American Declaration of Independence was what the Continental Congress of 1789 intended when they approved the new Constitution. This declaration spells out human moral entitlements, it elaborates on the reasonings and means. The Continental Congress, through the efforts of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and others, created a Constitutional document to enable the people of the United States to finally enjoy these human morals in an environment of solidarity, to be upheld by force if needed, a force entitled and upheld by our Constitution.

Our Declaration of Independence states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, All men are created equal," and that all men are afforded the basic, human, GOD GIVEN right of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

This Capitalist bane of firearms we have created in America and the attitudes they breed are taking those unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness away from nearly forty thousand Americans and their families, every year, and by proxy, tens of thousands more. This is happening every single day of the year, without fail, and is increasing in scope as we sit by enjoying our moral degradation and what we now think is our God given right to kill as we see fit.

America's Declaration of Independence states these rights have been given to us by our creator and that governments are created to protect these rights. How many Americans confronted by American Gun Violence are able to now enjoy these God given rights? 

If we were talking about any other inanimate object, I'd say that this situation sounds like a law suit waiting to happen. Except of course that the Declaration of independence has no legal standing and that other avenues have been closed by our own PLCAA laws. driven not by need, but by the corporate greed our Babbitts of Congress allow.

Paradox often, if not always, includes a measure of irony. Intents of action ironically negated by the actions themselves. 

In 2020, with 320+ million people in the United States and through Corporate entitlement we have negated our American Constitution. From Article One, Through Article Two and on to the Preamble and Amendments, our legislative actions prove that our leaders no longer hold these truths to be self-evident.

It may be time to form a society for the friends of the intent of the Constitution.

All this, after un-nesting only one doll.

Mac/