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Are We Going to Do Anything, to Protect Our Everythings? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-13

There are times when stories become hard for me to write. They don’t flow. This is primarily due to the fact that there is an anger that wells up inside of me. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was not angry. I understand that 1 in 2 of us get it, that there are a whole list of reasons for it, and it will take decades to sort out and hopefully, cure.

But there was no single bang my head against the wall moment of regret where I could pinpoint my own errors leading up to it. It is just life. The problem is, some things have been accepted as “just life” when most of the rest of the world does not live like this. Nations with strict gun regulations do not have citizens that live in constant fear of a bullet piercing the night sky while they are trying to make a deal for a toaster.

The description, which was once my original title, is straightforward:

Child Killed in Texas Shooting With Multiple Victims; Appears to be Result of a Flea Market Fight.

This shooting was not like what we have come to think of with regard to the term “mass shooting” in that there appears to be no manifesto, no pre-conceived plan to carry it out. I don’t know how that is supposed to assuage the pain of the parents. But I wanted to be precise in my description because there are different images conjured by the term, “mass shooting.”

Gun violence is a choice, both for those who wish to engage in the behavior, and politicians more interested in standing on the street corner nightly when the NRA wants a trick turned. It is a choice. It isn’t a child’s decision to risk their life in a society that does not care for them. Adults made that choice. Or at least, human beings that have reached the legal age commonly considered adulthood.

Authorities said a child has died after a shooting at a flea market in Pearland Sunday. According to Chad Rogers, Public Information Officer for the Pearland Police Department, the shooting happened at Cole’s Flea Market in the 1000 block of N. Main Street at approximately 5:34 p.m. “I’m not sure if they both had firearms, if one person had firearms, I do not know the number of rounds that were fired, but it appears as though it was two subjects that got involved in a disturbance and that’s what resulted in the shooting,” Rogers said. x BREAKING: At least 5 Shot, Including minors at Pearland, Texas Fleamarket:



- At least 5 people have been shot this evening at the Cole's Antique Village & Flea Market located off North Main Street.



- The Gunman is still on the loose according to police scanners.



- Police are… pic.twitter.com/yf0rIW7rPA — Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) November 13, 2023

So that’s it. Another blurb about a lost life, potential destroyed, perhaps the person who was going to capture carbon, gone. This can’t happen without guns. The two who engaged in this argument could have swung lamps at each other, thrown kitchen utensils, tried to strangle each other with electrical cords, even swing a baseball bat, but the child is only dead because one or both had firearms. That’s it.

People want to be ignorant jackoramases all the time now, it seems. Nary a day goes by where we don’t hear of a story where some ego gets tweaked and out comes their incendiary phallic compensation device.

And a kid is dead. This child now goes down as a statistic with the thousands of other kids that have died from gun violence, since January 1st, and this should be no surprise, as the number one cause of mortality for human of an age that shouldn’t, you know, be expected to die is gun violence.

But this Pearland incident, at a large flea market, was relatively, a small mass shooting. It is nothing like Allen, as it does not appear to have been targeted. It seems as if it is just a case of two people who can’t use words residing in a state that makes it far too easy to use guns. In some ways, that is no less frightening.

We don’t have details about victims. There is no suspect in custody. So I am left here to ponder what this child thought, or felt, in their last moments. What might their sadness as their light flickered out been centered around? Maybe they never saw Disney World. Perhaps they wanted to cure Covid.

See for me, as I thought about the end, the day I went under the knife, I thought about all of the work I had yet to finish. Most of that work centered around this nation’s future, and how I could contribute.

I most definitely fought hard to survive. See I have this wild notion that someday our efforts, together, will one day bring the scourge of gun violence to an end. Maybe someday there will be no more children bleeding out from a gunshot, left to wonder what Orlando might have looked like or what kind of difference they would have made to the world.

But we will never know what this child would have been. We only know what they could have been:

Anything.

And to their family, their loved ones, I know what they were:

Everything.

So I have one question to pose:

Are we going to do anything, to protect our Everythings?

-ROC

If you like my work you can support me at The Claw News Patreon.

Love,

ROC

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