Happy 4th of July! The mass shooting in Highland Park was one of 250 so far in 2022.

We make a huge deal out of celebrating our nation upon this day.

The fireworks, the barbecues, the time with friends and family. The drinking. Oh my lord, the drinking.

While we were bickering and cooking and lighting money on fire for garish displays of conspicuous consumption, 6 people died in Highland Park, Illinois.

We are halfway into our year, and to date, we have had over 250 mass shootings. Halfway through our year, and by what is a steeply conservative estimate, we have had more deaths per capita via guns than every other advanced nation combined. No one is even remotely close to us.

‘Murica.

That’s the problem with today. So many people will use today to launder America’s dirty history through the rose-colored glasses of a family gathering and use that memory to justify sticking their heads right back into the sands.

What’s worse is that because of a handful of radicalized, unelected, lifetime appointed individuals, all of those numbers are about to get dramatically worse.

In one of the most horrific civil rights supreme court dockets in our nation’s history, the conservative majority voted 6-3 in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. v. Buren that the right to carry concealed firearms was an unimpeachable liberty granted by the 2nd Amendment. This decision will lead to unanswerable bloodshed and the ‘might is right’ justification used in the ruling will do nothing but further enable the firearm fetishists which have taken the reins of the GOP at almost every level.

I want to celebrate this day. I want to sit here and eat food with friends and laugh without a care in the world. I can’t though. Just like I can no longer use my small corner of the internet to tell stories and hide from reality, I can no longer cling to the tattered blanket of my patriotism and turn a blind eye to the daily horrors that occur in our country.

Too many have become comfortably numb to the violence and death. I might not be able to fix the world but I can refuse to become part of its problems.

To that end, I exhort to you; use the time that is given to you on days such as this to cry out for change. So that one day, we might not need defense mechanisms to shield us from the constant, needless slaughter of so many of our fellow citizens.

Until then, today shall be a day of remembrance for those taken from us by the scourge of gun violence.

Dutifully, 

The Unsheathed Quill