I’ve got a funny feeling, there’s something wrong today

I’ve got a funny feeling and it won’t go away

I’ve got an itchy finger and there’ll be hell to play

Don’t ever try to tell me how much you care for me

Don’t ever try to tell me how you are there for me

I don’t believe there’s a reason

I’ve got a wicked demon, his hunger never fades

I’ve got an empty feeling, I won’t be home today

– From “Shackler’s Revenge,” written by Axl Rose (of the band, Guns N’ Roses) in 2008 about school shootings.

Rose’s darkly insightful observations are as good as anyone else’s attempts to offer any explanation for why these school shootings happen.

The key line in the song is this: “I don’t believe there’s a reason.”

For sane persons to contemplate that a monster’s choice to massacre 19 babies at school was caused by no particular reason – to accept that such wicked, unadulterated human malevolence is capable of the most heinous acts imaginable literally at any moment, right where we live – is true horror.

But, I think the line of the song means this: “I don’t believe it’s possible to determine a reason.”

I don’t think the school shooters themselves could tell you the reason.

In fact, these “animals wearing clothes” (as one pundit put it), targeting innocent and helpless school children for the senseless slaughter, to prove nothing and to accomplish nothing (pure nihilism), likely do not even have a reason why they do what they do – as the song offers as the answer to an unanswerable question.

The credentialed professors and quacks, the low-IQ’d-powdered-faced/botox-enlivened talking heads on legacy networks, the ivory-towered experts, the highly-paid and self-aware-less specialists and “therapists,” (to whom the application of nearly-pure subjectivity and rank conjecture is a religion to be imposed only upon others, not at their own homes), the self-righteous educators and their biased unions who claim the privilege of omniscience regarding what they know can only be harm if we “harden” the security of our schools, the feckless legislators consumed solely by the quest to get reelected (i.e., to keep assuaging and stroking the interests of their donors and SuperPACs in any way possible) – what have they achieved regarding the phenomenal, enduring, and deadly dilemma known as the “school shooting”?

Answer: nothing.

They have all proven, in an appalling splendor of ineptitude, that they are incapable and incompetent to do anything to stop school shootings.  They have proven their impotency in resplendent example after example. And innocent dead bodies pave the way to more of it if we keep letting them be incompetent. 

We all know this.  Just ask the mothers and fathers of the 19 babies who just got slaughtered at their Uvalde, TX school. Ask them if they think the American leadership class, the elites from the Ivy Leagues, the genius savants (who can’t tie their shoes – so they wear shiny penny-loafers) from the D.C. think tanks, the credentialed NGO’s (who don’t pay taxes), ask those parents if they think those self-important “experts” have solved anything.

I’m not blaming any of them for anything except for inducing the credulous public into believing the bull shit they fling. 

We should no longer allow them to tell us that they have the answers, or can learn the answers, to the unanswerable question: why do humans become school shooters?

School shootings go back to the 18^th century.  Even if you want to look at “modern” day (21^st century), you will begin with Columbine. Since then, you need a calculator to count the school shootings – and the lives wasted in pools of blood.

Maybe we should stop agonizing over finding the reasons for something that will never stop.

Like human fallibility, school shootings will never cease to be an attraction for the evil-minded, mentally-sick miscreants amongst us. 70% of the school shooters are under 18 years of age. Something exists deep inside of these young monsters. No one has figured out what it is, and no one ever will.

Trying to find the reasons for (i.e., explanations for) these school shootings is an effort of futility and exasperation.  It is a searching in the cold and endless darkness of a bottomless well – we have proven this, and the school shootings have never stopped despite all the efforts to explain them. 

It seems more productive to take a determinist’s approach to this sickening human reality.

A determinist does not believe in free will.  99% of us believe in free will – that the things we do are due to our own volitional choices. Free will: when we do “good,” we get credit; when we do “bad,” we get blame.

Determinists don’t believe in the existence of free will – they adhere to the theory known as “determinism.” 

Determinism holds that our choices and actions are predetermined by the laws of nature/physics.  As Sam Harris puts it in his book Free Will: “you can do what you decide to do – but you can’t decide what you will decide to do.” 

To a determinist (who is not quite a fatalist), you can’t decide what you will decide to do because it’s already been caused by the laws of nature/physics for you (that is, it’s already been “determined”). You are the vehicle, not the driver.

It’s a matter for another day (way too deep) but getting a human to accept the notion that there is no free will is like getting a fat guy to give up his 64-ounce Coke, his bag of donuts cooked in “healthy” vegetable oils, and his favorite spot on the couch.

But it might be a way to address the utter hopelessness, and helplessness, we sense regarding any societal ability to stop school shootings. Maybe we just accept that they just are, that they just will continue to be.  It’s predetermined.

A determinist will accept that these school shootings will happen in the future, and they will never stop. 

Taking that approach, we must be ready for them – we must expect them.

This is not a nihilist’s pessimism. This is facing a horrendous reality that has already proven to be an unstoppable force of nature.

Our government legislators, and our executive branch government officials, are incapable and incompetent to do anything to stop school shootings.  They have proven their impotency.  We all know this.  Just talk to the mothers and fathers of the 19 babies who just got slaughtered at their Uvalde, TX school.

Yet, these effete and impotent “leaders” and “experts” continue to spew their bottomless nonsense, and their “our thoughts and prayers go out to the mothers and fathers with the murdered babies.”  Nothing changes, and nothing gets better.

We, the people, must take action ourselves.  Get rid of these talking heads, and these feckless bureaucrats – these pawns of industry, power, and of high places – these princes and princesses on their knees praying to the God of Reelection. Get rid of all of them.  Change them all out.

The government we have can’t help; they are helpless. They will only waste our money and make things worse.

Meanwhile, we, the lowly Citizenry, have to be ready for the next school shooting. Vote for leaders who will harden security at the schools.  Vote for leaders who will spend less money tearing buildings down and spend it instead on having locked-down entrances, and armed guards in the schools.  Vote for leaders who are not afraid to be defeated at the polls.  Vote for leaders who are fearless.

Defense is the best defense.  And offense is the best offense.  We need both.  Let’s be clear about those truths.  Lock the doors and arm the doors.  We must defend and arm ourselves against the barbarians at our gates. Drastic times demand drastic measures. When babies are getting gunned down at schools, the definition of “drastic” has been vibrantly, and sickeningly, colored for you – in red.

Fecklessness was never an American characteristic – until now. We can change that, with our vote.

To those hand-wringing bleeding hearts who think “hardening” the schools with protection and counter-attack plans (which will 100% save the children if we do it competently with competent people) will only “traumatize” the children, or give the appearance that schools are militarized zones, or whatever other nonsense and drivel they spew about it, the truth is not always pretty. 

When babies are getting gunned down in pools of blood while reciting the multiplication table at school – then the schools should be “militarized.”  Ask any parent what they think about that.

These same “Feelings Matter” wilting flowers are the first ones to scare little children to death that the planet is on death watch, that the planet is on its last legs, that the world is going to end in 8 years because of what bad people are doing to the climate on Earth.  That does not “traumatize” them?

These same “Feelings First” do-gooders tell small children that their country is evil, and it was born of evil – that our country’s traditional culture must not only be resisted, but eradicated, and replaced with one with better feelings.  Children, you are living in a malicious and evil country, conceived of evil, and with an unspeakably horrendous American history and culture. Children, you must be absolved of your sin for being an American, you must seek salvation, you are tainted by the evil of your country.  That does not “traumatize” small kids?

We tell small kids that COVID will kill us, and will kill their parents and grandparents, everyone.  It will kill the entire population of the World – if we don’t wear paper masks and take shots.  We tell our kids this.  We scare them, on purpose.  COVID will kill everyone – if we don’t obey – we tell our kids this.

But, hardening a school from a real threat of death is too much fear? That’s your “bridge too far?”

The rest of us, we’d rather save the children – even if it hurts their feelings (which, by the way, is an absurd proposition in this regard). 

We need to wake up.  Secure the schools, harden the schools with tight security and ammunition and professionals willing to take a bullet to save the kids. 

We have the money to do this – cut the fat.  Get rid of the fat cat do-nothing government legislators and government executives who cry their crocodile tears and are so generous with their fake “prayers” (as if they get down at the foot of the bed at night and pray for all the dead babies gunned down a Parkland or at the Uvalde school – phonies).  They keep doing nothing, year after year after year after year (except cashing their paychecks and getting re-elected). 

Wake up and expect nothing to change until you make it change.  Action, action, action. Get rid of them.

Like water, the school shooters are never going to stop raining down on us, and they will find the path to least resistance.  It’s our responsibility to make sure we are ready and prepared if our community finds itself on that path.  Defense is the best defense, and offense is the best offense.  We owe it to the children who can’t protect themselves.

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