As a storyteller, I make stuff up. I am not beholden to gravity, so to speak, in service of the narrative. I can go anywhere the story takes me facts be damned. The only thing that guides me is that I want my work to be good and good fiction is always True. This is, of course, a metaphysical True, not a factual one. I'm not claiming that as a storyteller you can lie your way to the Truth. I am saying that good fiction resonates as Truthful even though the particulars are made up.
The challenge is when a lie resonates more powerfully with your audience than Truth.
Yesterday, December 14, 2024, was the 12th anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. If you remember that day, you remember how sick you felt as the news slowly rolled out. You remember the people around you saying, 'we cannot let this happen again.' You may have said it yourself. I know I did. And yet, twelve years later, nothing has really changed. Our children are not safer. In fact, firearms are the number one killer of children and adolescents aged one to nineteen.
I got my first gun when I was twelve. I am not anti-gun, or anti-hunter, but I am disgusted by the carnage that guns bring to our society. I am more disgusted that our political class not only does not have the political will to protect our children, but they have also sold us a false narrative: that supporting the 2nd amendment means we have to accept mass shootings as the byproduct of maintaining the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution. This is BS, plain and simple.
If you are an originist, then it is time to remember that when the Framers penned the constitution, they were thinking about black powder muzzle loaders that fired one shot at a time and then required significant time to reload. I'm thrilled to let folks have as many of those guns as they wish. If you really believe that the Framers foresaw the technological advancement of weapons and intended everyone to own AR-15s, then join a 'well-regulated militia' aka the National Guard and have at it. It would be great if all gun owners joined the National Guard. No country would ever mess with us.
It is time to remove weapons of war from our culture and teach our children to express their differences with their words, their art, their songs, but not their bullets.
If this post offends you, you have my permission to not read my stuff. If it makes sense, consider donating to the Sandy Hook Promise at www.sandyhookpromise.org. Maybe together, we can turn a false narrative into a redemption story.
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