In 1212, a twelve year-old boy named Stephen of Cloye said that Jesus
visited him in his room one night and told him to get thee hence to Marseilles
where He would part the Mediterranean so they could all walk to Jerusalem and turn everyone into Shake-n-Bake Christians. All Steve would
need was unwavering faith and thirty thousand blind sheep. I mean, what's a shepherd
without something to herd? Even a deluded one.
From Cloye south to
Marseilles, nearly 800 kilometers or 500 miles, a mass of humanity most of them children were want to make the trip. But for failing to impress the Pontiff, the Children's Crusade went south in the
metaphorical sense as well. No Vatican support meant they were on
their own. The guy in the high hat was God's guy on earth and he'd be damned if some punk named Steve was going to upstage him. Apparently Jesus never visited him when he was twelve in his room, Goddamnit.
So the march went ahead as unplanned. Ironically, many of the
faithful that completed the trek ended up on ships bound for the slave markets
of Marrakesh rather than Jerusalem proving yet again that it sucks to be stupid. I mean, where were their parents?
Fast forward a few centuries and we're faced with another children's crusade. One born of senseless slaughter rather than religious
delusion. Not the dire imaginings of
Saracens despoiling the Holy sepulchre but of real murder in the first
degree. These are the voices of those with first-hand knowledge of the
carnage one addled individual can commit with a military grade weapon.
Maybe we should start there. Stop calling them "assault" rifles
and start calling them "military grade" and thereby contextualize
both our military, its weaponry and our national fetish with them both. Militarism is like a bloody stump cauterized with ideology, salved with
religion and hide-bound with nationalism. So let's not kid ourselves, the hand is not growing back.
That said, America and the ideals for which
it stands are not in danger of despotic rule whereby the populace is left
indefensible. But seriously, do weekend warriors really think they can hold any amount of ground against the world-class ass-kicking reputation of the Marines, Army or Air Force in any kind of battle? What makes these chuckle-heads conjure a world where they survive an encounter with the likes of Apaches, Warthogs, Abrams and Reapers?
So give us all a frigging break about guns keeping us all safe from tyrants. Better we listen to the angels of our bereavement and stand up for the innocents that have been taken from us by someone with a right to bear arms, a bag full of thirty round clips and a bone to pick.
Why not reclassify all modern weaponry with the capacity of inflicting mass murder as Class III weaponry thereby making them much more inaccessible to the everyday crazy. Perhaps a new Class III-b license would work. Like medical coding for Medicare, we could create a way for aficionados, collectors, competitors and others to access BUT they would have to pass muster.
Yes Mildred, this is akin to elitism but other than that, the average gun owner would have to satisfy him or herself with a
more modest capacity for carnage. Heck, Timothy McVeigh did it with fertilizer and kerosene.
