"Send Lawyers, Guns & Money"

The gun really is a wretched piece of technology. It is unlikely that the human being exists who could be safely trusted to own a gun - much less an automatic/mass killing weapon. It is a technology that delivers virtually instantaneous death with a twitch of the index finger. Human beings are temperamental creatures. We require highly sophisticated, finally attuned and calibrated cultures and environments that are based in wisdom traditions in order to not become mentally & spiritually unwell. US America in 2021 is about as distant from such a culture and environment as one could imagine. Allowing people living in such a system, one whose social bonds are utterly fractured or hanging by the thinnest of threads to own portable machine guns is infinitely insane. Rather than "random," the mass shootings that are occurring several days a week in the US are predictable in every way, save for their specific locations.

The focus of the system into which we were born is declared in its name: Capitalism. I actually appreciate that candor. What is considered of prime importance and attention in this socioeconomic order is: capital. Not people, not other living beings, not the future, not the past, not the present, not your ancestors, not your children. Not joy, not health, not love. Not the earth, not air, not water. Not god and not the goddesses. But capital. Cool, distant, abstract. Capital. Theoretically it works. Theoretically, everybody, “pursues their own happiness.” Theoretically.

In reality, if you adjust human behavior to accommodate capital above all else, what results is: Austin, Kenosha, Indianapolis. Boulder, Miami, Muskogee. Predictably, people break down within this system. Astonishingly, health care is a for-profit industry. So, getting mental health care is complex - financially and otherwise. And, remarkably, virtually anybody can buy a portable machine gun. There have been two mass shootings in only the last 24 hours in the US.

Austin, Kenosha, Indianapolis. Boulder, Miami, Muskogee. Our cities are named after people who were “ethnically cleansed” out of their homelands to make way for capital. Or for generals. Thus far, the politicians in the US are reacting to the problem of mass shootings in the way they react to all chronic problems - with rhetoric, prevarication and over-complication. If you have ever been close to somebody with an addiction, their behavior is very familiar. The illness must be accommodated. Not the body and not the soul. Well, people in this country and around the world are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. We understand that it doesn’t have to be this way. The deception that it *does* have to be this way has... just about run its course.