This is the last collection of pictures from the March for Our Lives Rally.

I was going to write a parody of the views of some of the gun nuts I have known and their reactions to the news of school shootings.

Mostly a lot of hand wringing and worrying that a gun might have gotten hurt in that school shooting and hunkering down with the sticky pages of their Guns & Ammo magazine.

By gun nut I don’t mean the ordinary gun owner. I mean the guy (and I’ve know at least 2 of them) that have told me that Sandy Hook was faked.

I’m not going to do that though, I’ll just let the last set of images speak for themselves.

I hope at least a few of you enjoyed this 8 week walk through my experience from the March for Our Lives rally. I would encourage everybody to attend a political rally of some kind. Even if you don’t agree with the cause. Cause, this is what democracy looks like.

A few more American gun violence fun facts:

Homicides by firearm per 1 million people:

Australia 1.4
New Zealand 1.6
Germany 1.9
Austria 2.2
Sweden 4.1
Ireland 4.8
Canada 5.1
Switzerland 7.7

And the United States….

29.7

Fun Fact #2

There have been more than 1,600 mass shootings since Sandy Hook in the United States.

Fun Fact #3

On average, there is around one mass shooting for each day in the United States. (A mass shooting means 4+ victims, including shooter.)

Fun Fact #5

States with more guns have more gun deaths.

Rhode Island (5% gun ownership) has the least amount of guns and the least amount of gun deaths per 100,000 people.
Alaska has the highest gun ownership and the most gun deaths per 100,000 people.
Louisiana is second.
Mississippi is third.

Fun Fact #8

States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths.

States that have at least 1 firearm law designed to protect children have (at the aggregate level) 5-10 gun deaths per 100,000.
States that don’t have any such laws have 10+ gun deaths per 100,000.

Fun Fact #9

Most gun deaths are suicides.

Over 22,000 suicides in 2016.

Fun Fact #10

Guns allow people to kill themselves much more easily.

Fatal Suicide attempts:

Cutting: 5.1%
Poison: 7.4%
Gun: 96.5%

Fun Fact #11

In states with more guns, more police officers are also killed on duty.

Low Gun States: .31 per 10,000 law enforcement officers
High Gun States: .95 per 10,000 law enforcement officers

Fun Fact #12

Specific gun control policies are fairly popular.

Preventing the mentally ill from purchasing guns – Republicans 89% – Democrats 89%
Barring gun purchases by people on no-fly watch lists – Republicans 82% – Democrats 85%
Background checks for private sales and at gun shows – Republicans 77% – Democrats 90%
Banning assault-style weapons – Republicans 54% – Democrats 80%
Creating a federal database to track gun sales – Republicans 56% – Democrats 84%

That was fun. Hopefully look at these pictures will be fun. A couple of my favorites are in there:

My 2 favorite pictures are the one with a woman holding a sign that reads:

“No way 2 prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens…”

This is a reference to THE ONION. Every time there is a mass shooting they publish the exact same article with that headline. The only thing that changes is the name of the town. Sometimes comedy can really shine a harsh spotlight on some uncomfortable truth.

Next to her is a woman holding a sign of a parody tweet that we see after every single mass shooting. It reads:

“US Lawmaker
@boughtbyNRA

I’m devastated to hear about the tragedy (insert city here). My thoughts & prayers are with you.”

The number one response that absolutely despise after a mass shooting is the person that says:

“It is too early to politicize this.”

It is too early to discuss policy that could prevent mass shootings to happen, but don’t worry, I’ll let you know when it is okay.

Cause let me tell you something, if I were to be killed in a mass shooting. There is no mourning period for you to ask, “What could we have done to prevent Chris from being mowed down at that Waffle House he loves so much next to that seedy motel in Kansas City.”

That doesn’t go just for guns.

If I die because the government is allowing big corporations to dump harmful chemicals into our drinking water. Wait no time to discuss what policy could enact to prevent another person from dying in the same manner.

But thankfully, I think the “too soon, but it is always too soon” people have mostly dried up.

However, the other one that I have begun to despise is the “thoughts and prayers tweet” from some congressman that is lining his pockets with NRA/Russian money.

I’m not against thoughts or prayers. As a man of faith, I believe strongly in the power of prayer.

However, maybe the standard prayer for lawmakers shouldn’t be:

“Dear God, I hope these people that just got mowed down will make it upstairs. Please bring comfort to their devastated friends and family. Make sure this NRA check doesn’t bounce. I know it is harder for Russia to funnel money to them these days. Amen.”

Most of that prayer is solid. We all know how inconvenient a bounced check can be. But perhaps next time they could add a line about being granted the wisdom to come up with policy that will help prevent such tragedies in the future.

I don’t pretend to speak for God, but I’ m willing to guess God’s answer won’t be: “Blame video games.”

The other sign that really speaks to me is the person holding the sign that says:

“I have asthma. It is easier to get a gun than an inhaler that saves my life.”

I know I have posted a ton on the March for Our Lives Rally. The reason isn’t just that I support some basic common sense gun control policies. I mean it is ridiculous that the CDC is banned from doing research on gun violence. The Dickey Amendment is a cruel joke that needs to be repealed.

The reason isn’t that seeing so many from the younger generation out and motivated and educated and trying to make a difference in the realities of their existence gives me lots of hope for our future.

Gun control isn’t the issue that I’m really passionate about.

The 2 issues that really move the needle for me are social justice and health care.

The fact that anybody in the richest country in the world (for now) can’t afford health care or their prescriptions is a flat out abomination. Double sad because (like gun violence) every other developed country in the world has figured this one out.

The sign sticks with me because I know it is true and I have been there before. It is a place nobody should be. Not even in the poorest countries in the world.

But I digress. There is one more bout of pictures from the March for Our Lives Rally in the hopper.

It is Thursday. That can mean only one thing. Time to check back in with more pictures from the March for Our Lives Rally from back in March.

But before we get to the pictures, here is a little fun fact:

90% of gun owners (including me, technically) don’t belong to the NRA. Despite the NRA claiming to represent gun owners, it does not. Almost all of the funding for the NRA comes from gun manufactures (heck they probably get more money from Russia than they do from individual gun owners) because the actual aim of the NRA has nothing to do with representing the views of gun owners. The NRA has one purpose and one purpose only, that is to increase gun sales. By any means necessary.

This is why the NRA LOVES school shootings. They can put out their scare propaganda and send their followers running to get guns. Thus sending the profit margins of their true benefactors through the roof.

This is the reason that a staggering 90% of gun owners don’t belong to the NRA. They don’t reflect the views of the average gun owner.

There are roughly 75 million gun owners in the United States. Sounds like a lot, until you realize that is less than 30% of the population. Of those 75 million gun owners, less than 5 million gun owners belong to the NRA.

These are the statistics on gun control measures that the NRA has lobbied against for their benefactors (and probably the Russians).

Universal Background Checks: Over 70% of NRA members favor universal background checks, Over 89% of gun owners – non-NRA favor universal background checks.

Ban on assault style weapons: Over 40% of NRA members favor ban; Over 50% of non-NRA gun owners favor ban.

Ban on high capacity magazines: Almost 50% favor ban; Over 60% of non-NRA gun owners favor ban.

When gun owners that don’t belong to the NRA were asked why they don’t belong to the NRA this was some of the responses:

25% I disagree with the NRA’s political beliefs.
22% I don’t feel that the NRA represents people like me.
49% I don’t see any benefit to being a member of the NRA.

Several people wrote in answers like:

“There’s no place for politically moderate, POC gun owners in the NRA.”
“They give us actually lawful gun owners a bad name.”
“They hijack issues, spread fear and propaganda all to sell, sell, sell!”

I bring up these statistics because people try to paint people that are for more gun regulation, with being anti-gun. There is more than enough meat on the bone to be a gun enthusiast and understand that there is common sense gun control laws (since the majority of gun owners favor gun control) that can be passed that can help stem the tide of the genocide that is going on in the schools (but not just the schools) in this country at a rate that nobody wants. I mean, besides the NRA and gun manufacturers.

(These statics are from a Pew Research poll)

More pictures from the rally:

Yes, there are more photos from the March for Our Lives Rally in the hopper. How many more? Only time will tell! Stay pumped!

Here is another collection of images from that snowy day around the Iowa Capitol during the March for Our Lives Rally. I thought I would share the words from a pamphlet that a guy was handing out:

“The Second Amendment

A Sacred Covenant of Ethnic Cleansing and Slavery Between the Nation State and Settler Militias

There is a myth that has infiltrated the core of the American imagination. It is the belief that the Second Amendment is a result of the Revolutionary War, thus, a right to self-defense and to protect the country from any enemies that rise. It is also believed that if the government fails to protect its citizens, the citizens have the right to revolt. However, the historical context that led to the creation of the Second Amendment is actually based on the process of land annexation and the mitigation of local populations through assimilation, genocide or slavery–much of which took place at the point of a gun. The colonists that built this country ousted the British for many reasons, but fundamentally, ‘what colonists considered oppressive was any restriction that British authorities put on them in regard to obtaining land.’

The Second Amendment is actually a sacred religiopolitical covenant between the Nation State and the settlers of this continent that recognizes the fundamental ideology of land expansion through ethnic cleansing and slavery. It is nothing more than recognition that this cleansing and slavery. It is nothing more than recognition that this country was founded on the actions of generations of Europeans with a maniacal lust for Indian killing and the control of Black people. Men were expected to bear arms (at one point it was the law) in order to protect themselves, their families, the State and process of westward expansion. In essence, extreme violence was a god given right and an obligation of the average “citizen” that took on the singular role of a vigilante and that formed into small groups that cleared the way for the rise of the American government. The average citizen was a raider, a ranger, a frontiersmen, a marauder, a pirate and the average colony was a settler militia, an armed household, and a slave patrol.

The nation state did not create the Second Amendment to protect its citizens from invasion but to allow its citizens to invade. It is written permission to continue on with the doctrine of discovery, manifest destiny, westward expansion, i.e., the work of the white supremacist. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, ‘The astronomical number of firearms owned by US civilians, with the Second Amendment considered a sacred mandate, is also intricately related to militaristic culture and white nationalism. The militias referred to in the second amendment were intended as a means for white people to eliminated Indigenous communities in order to take their land, and for slave patrols to control black people.’

The violent approach to Indigenous and Black populations is still practiced in current day American society. For instance, Native Americans have the highest police murder rate per ethnic group in the county and vast majority of these deaths are through the use of a firearm. According to the Center for Disease Control, ‘for every 1 million Native Americans, an average of 2.9 of them died annually from 1999 to 2015 as a result of legal intervention’. For the Black population the number is 2.6, for the Latinx it is 1.7, for Whites it is .9 and for Asians it is .6. This is a startling statistic because Native Americans only make up .9% of the population. However, these deaths are probably under reported just like the other epidemics that Native Americans face, such as missing and murdered women, abuse, rape, stalking, runaway children and violence committed by non-tribal members. According to Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center, ‘The data available likely does not capture all Native American deaths in police encounters due to people of mixed race and relatively large homeless population that is not on the grid.’

The notion that there is a rise in gun violence in this country is actually a misunderstanding of history. There was just a period of time in the late 19th and early 20th century where guns were not essential for the coercive control of brown people as the government had created reservation internment camps and implemented Jim Crow laws to segregate ‘problem populations’. However, the rise of the NRA, gun lobbying and the mass production of automatic weapons tied to a long held gun fetish in the American imagination has given white supremacists updated permission to dust off their ancestors weapon of choice and reenact the violence that this country was founded upon. America is a young country and lacks a distinct culture of its own, but one thing is certain–Americans covet their sacred right to free real estate, cheap labor and the gun, thus, the Second Amendment is but permission to steal, kill and dominate in order to fulfill this expectation.”

If nothing else, it is an interesting piece of reading and you can think it over while you are looking at this collection of pictures from the March for Our Lives rally:

This guy spoke about losing his son to gun violence and the miracle of forgiving the person that killed his son.

Remember these activists.

Late birthday present ideas for me: A resist fist

The gentleman that spoke about losing his son to gun violence had an incredible story. I wish I would’ve caught his name. He spoke about forgiving and then helping raise the kid that killed his son. He concluded his speech about how his son’s murderer (who was also his son’s friend) recently had a son of his own. That baby has a birthmark in the shape, size, and on the same part as his murdered son.

“Don’t let anybody ever tell you that miracles don’t exist.”

He concluded his speech.

The two high school girls I told you to remember, they gave the last speech before the marching started. Their speech was also very impressive. They talked about the fear and horror they felt when their school was thought to have an active shooter on campus. While it ended up being a false alarm, something clicked in them on that day and they decided to be more active in the political process.

They arranged a meeting and spoke with their U.S. Representative David Young.

Representative Young in a condescending tone, explained to them that while gun ownership was a right (a horrible misunderstanding of what is a “right”) and that voting was a privilege. Dismissing them because they were not old enough to vote.

They concluded with saying:

“Well David Young, we will be able to vote in November and it will be our PRIVILEGE to vote against you.”

Then they lead the marching.

Don’t worry, there are still plenty more March for Our Lives Rally photos in the hopper. Get pumped, or remain pumped.