“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

In light of the latest automatic weapon shooting atrocity in the land of the quick and the dead, I have a proposal to make and it doesn’t involve any politicians.

Let the millennials deal with it. They get it.

Small wonder as this was the eighth school shooting in the US this year (30 mass shootings of four or more, according to the Gun Violence Archive) and we’re not even past February. Many millennials are saying they will never listen to another politician again as they spout platitudes about “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of yet another serial, school slaughter.

Do you blame them?

What else can be said after President Trump and Congressional House Leader Paul Ryan spoke about the tragedy, but never once uttered the word “gun!” That, of course, eliminated any mention of gun control laws, and for that matter, the law itself, or the lack of law when it comes to America’s Number One National Blood Sport, slaughtering young innocents with the most technologically efficient, killing machines the world has seen since the Nazi death chambers.

How “people,” like Trump and Ryan – politicians to the core — can look straight into the camera and blithely declare the Florida carnage a mental health issue when they know full well that without the semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle, a favourite of the National Rifle Association (NRA), most of the 27 dead victims would be alive today.

Trump and Ryan, of course are looking ahead to the mid-term elections this year, and wouldn’t think of crossing the NRA, one of the richest and certainly the most callous political special interest groups in the land. How callous? Well, on the same day as the Florida killing spree the NRA was promoting a post Valentine’s Day tweet urging people to buy guns for their loved ones!

But anything goes in a country where almost any 18-year-old like the Florida killer can’t legally buy a beer in the state but can purchase an automatic weapon capable of mowing down an ISIS brigade or 27 students and teachers at the school down the street. Surely that’s the supreme irony of this sickening saga?

But let’s get back to the millennials, who bear the brunt of these recurring tragedies every time another sick loner watches one violent video too many and goes over the edge in a blind rage to purge his demons. Apparently, the latest high school shooter was well known at his school for his demonic rage and shooting fantasies. He even joked about it, said one teen to a local TV station. “I stayed clear of him most of the time,” adding, “he showed me his guns personally through his phone.”

Despite this, nothing was done about the troubled 19-year-old, who at one-point last year tweeted he wanted to become “a professional school shooter.” Someone, who read the tweet reported it to the FBI, which began an investigation but dropped it after being unable to trace it to any specific person.

And, thus, the stage was set for tragedy.

We all know too well the drill after this. More platitudes about mental health, tighter security and crocodile tears from the politicians, especially Trump’s Republican supporters. The Democrats, especially the likes of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, will fight the good fight for gun control, but it will be to no avail. No swords will be pounded back into plow shares. The latest school shooting will be “normalized” and become but a memory until the next one.

And there will be a “next one.” That’s the one thing you can count on as the American Empire slides inevitably into darkness and anarchy as did Rome.

And if Trump is still around, he’ll surely be playing the fiddle.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist who is troubled by hypocrisy and history repeating itself at the cost of innocent lives

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