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Drastic Times Call for Drastic Measures

This week, following the 130th mass shooting of the year (https://www.wbay.com/2023/03/29/us-surpasses-125-mass-shootings-2023-heres-every-event-mapped/) , this meme showed up on more than a few Facebook and Instagram pages:


Thoughts and Prayers
Actions and Policies 

To which, Rep. Tim Burchett (R, TN) said, "We're not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals... My daddy, who fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, 'Buddy,' he said, 'If somebody wants to take you out and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.'"  Burchett, a self-described gun owner who has sponsored bills to expand gun rights, was asked in the hours after the shooting whether there was “any role for Congress to play in reaction to this tragedy.” He said there wasn’t.

Does that make you want to throw up?  Read on.

Steve Scalise (R, LA), House Majority Leader: "The first thing in any kind of tragedy I do is, I pray. I pray for the victims, pray for their families. I really get angry when I see people trying to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts, there are facts coming out. It looks like the shooter originally went to another school that had much stronger security and ultimately went to this school. Let’s get the facts, and let’s work to see if there’s something that we can do to help secure schools. We’ve talked about things that we can do. And it just seems like on the other side, all they want to do is take guns away from law-abiding citizens before they even know the facts. The first thing they talk about is taking guns away from law-abiding citizens. And that’s not the answer, by the way. So why don’t we, number one, keep those families in our prayers? Let’s see if there were things that were missed along the way. We’ve talked about the need to improve mental health in this country, and that’s been a driver of a lot of these shootings as well."

Just doing the background research for you.  Keep going.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) Stopped in a Capitol hallway Tuesday, Donalds noted that he had an 11-year-old son and called for sobriety in the aftermath of the shooting.

“Make sure you get all the facts before you have these rushes to judgment,” he said, “because what we’ve typically seen is that the facts actually are very different than the initial narratives that come out.”

Donalds, who was a state lawmaker during the 2018 shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that sparked a nationwide gun reform movement, said, “it wasn’t until we actually had an investigation of what happened in Parkland that we were able to actually get down to real solutions.”


This week, the Florida house sent a bill to our new favorite friend, Gov. Ron DeSantis, for his signature.  The bill will allow for permitless concealed carry of firearms in Florida, adding to the following list of states:

In order to carry a handgun, an individual must be: 

  • Able to lawfully possess a handgun per federal law (e.g. not a felon or an individual with a conviction of domestic abuse) and any state requirements
  • Be in a place where the person has a legal right to be
Excuse my French, but Jesus H. Christ and Ernie's mother

So forgive me if I'm not particularly optimistic about Actions and Policies quickly replacing Thoughts and Prayers.  These jokers want to wait for the 'facts' to come out about mass shootings.  What could be more factual than a dead person?

To this end, I am proposing a very specific action: a return to the Vomitorium.  It's a commonly held misconception that the ancient Romans designated spaces called vomitoria for the purpose of literal vomiting, as part of a binge and purge cycle.  Let's put this to a different use.

Given that legislators, predominantly Republican, appear loathe to even acknowledge that gun violence in a problem in the good ol' USofA, (evidently they don't have enough facts), we need to figure out a way to draw their attention away from playing Candy Crush on their cell phones and to the work at hand.  Actions and Policies.

Here's what I am proposing you do, because something tells me they might take notice if a dozen or more boxes of vomit show up in their office.

1.  Eat or drink something that you know will make you throw up.  Not necessarily encouraging purging here, but if that's what it takes, drastic times call for drastic measures.

2.  Throw up into a container of your choice, just not the toilet or sink.  You need to be able to collect the vomit.

3.  Collect the vomit in a zip lock bag, then close it but leave just a tiny bit open at the end so the malodorous aroma can seep out.

4. Wrap it in Bubble Wrap, seal tightly, drop it into one of those priority express boxes you can purchase at the USPS.  Choose a Senator or Representative who is not supporting gun control (which 58% of Americans support in some way, shape or form), add a note about what you think about their inaction (vis a vis the vomit), tape up the box and spend what you might spend on a cup of coffee shop coffee sending it to Washington.

5.  Those staffers in the legislators office might not react favorably to opening box after box of vomit.

6. How naive is it of me to believe this will have an impact?  About as naive as believing thoughts and prayers are going to do the job.

ps--America.  You would not wish this on your worst enemy.






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