3.15.24; Amended 7.9.24:
Thursday
1,270 days ago, an attempted coup by the sitting president of the United States of America culminated in a disinformed mob being directed by Donald Trump to attack the center of democracy in the free world to stop a constitutional process to try to stay in power.
It was suspected, and it was indicated by the great many who refused to enter a magnetometer (metal detector), that many in the mob carried guns. Many recorded groups of men carrying consumer-grade military-style rifles on Pennsylvania Avenue before the time of Trump’s riot-inciting speech. If one had been fired, they all would have come out. I just wanted to remind others.
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Concerning guns, in our hemisphere now, Haiti proves the necessity of complete national gun control in a democracy, and so does Mexico, where criminals can take over neighborhood by neighborhood and then the whole country.
Now, in almost every country, guns are exported and imported that easily reach civilian hands at all levels by any of many means of transportation using millions of routes and those countless transfers cannot be enforced by authorities. The future looks very violent.
A gun in hand gives one instant authority, so why obey somebody else?
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July, 2024
In the recent couple of years, a settling has occurred, and crime levels are lowering, if not steadying, across America.
Could having never been more frightened of other Americans have anything to do with the historic low-crime dip we are experiencing?
If so, what is that fear doing to the need for us to have conversations or express our feelings, especially our political or religious ones?
There's some other cold steel facts that add to this fear: a mountain of guns where no mountain existed before. There are about 380 million guns in the USA.
It's likely true that in America, fear of people achieving violent retribution has already greatly affected the federal and State governments in decisions of judges, representatives, juries, and voters' choices.
Of course, not escaping the fear is first local people, and it is frightened neighbors, peers at workplaces, and strangers on a sidewalk or in the car next to theirs, all scared of communicating, all intimidated by the new widespread stereotype of an angry white male with an AR-15 and several handguns, blowing their stack.