On Being Tough
The path down to the riflery range was steep and winding, littered with roots.
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Posts Tagged: gun control
Within the Scope
While my friends write their truths in nearby cabins, I wear my silence like a bulletproof vest.
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A Friend in the Dark
The process of guiding people to speak their truths was isolating.
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Two Extraordinary Books: Bullets into Bells and Inquisition
The obscenities and tragedies of American life pile up with speed, and in quantities, that are appalling.
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Guns or No Guns: Mental Health Crisis in Schools
I do the best I can to reach out to those I see isolated or disturbed, but I have to also be careful I don’t make myself a target.
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What to Do with My Body in the Event I Die in a Mass Shooting
Don’t join them in their prayers (the god they pray to doesn’t exist).
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Boyz n the Hood, Chi-Raq, and America 2016
And while the faces and nomenclature between these historically discrete agents of change differ, the one governing commonality remains the same: unfettered gun ownership and correlative violence play a pivotal role.
...moreOn Refugees, and Refusing to Be Scared
The news that governors are suddenly deciding that they don’t want to welcome Syrian refugees has really driven home to me just how cowardly much of this country is. We talk tough, mind you, but when we’re asked to really open ourselves up to something, we refuse. I’m not talking about the country’s willingness to […]
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The Truth is Ugly
In light of this history that Vann has uncovered, in light of more recent tragedies, the questions remain, as then, the same: How did this happen? What might we learn from this?
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Guns in the Family
In my extended family, a generation ago, it was the odd household that didn’t have guns. I think that for my father’s father, a gun served mainly as another mechanical thing to tinker with.
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Today, Enough
We are crying out for change, for a mental health care system that can truly help the people who soothe their inner torment by reaching for weapons of such destruction. We are crying out for gun control laws that, at the very least, make it more difficult for such tragedies to occur.
...more“I’ve had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies . . .”
” . . . Once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself.” All across the country, people are having conversations about the insanity of gun violence here in America. Kiese Laymon, a […]
...moreA History of Gun Control
One of the Longreads selections from the past week is this article in the Atlantic on gun control and the ambiguity of the second amendment’s language. This story doesn’t just divide into a two-sided argument over the right to bear arms in this country. This one applies to the Civil Rights movement, the ideological differences […]
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