A pacifist in America

Back in 1987, it was my first flight out of the country.  It seemed never-ending.  I was one of the many passengers who couldn't sleep, nor did I find the movie to be interesting.  It was not a pleasant journey, even though it was one hell of an exciting one.

I wandered over to the magazine/newspaper rack.  I don't remember now whether it was Time or Newsweek that I picked up.  I started leafing through that issue.

I was shocked when I read one report.  It was about freeway shootings in Los Angeles.  I was headed there.  Los Angeles was the city where my graduate school was located.  

Shooting on a freeway?

That, too, was my "welcome to America."  

The land of guns and violence.  The wild, wild, west of the movies was also a real thing.  Cue the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  Well, alright, I didn't know about this movie until after I had arrived in America.

My friend picked me up from the airport.  It was a long drive to his home, mostly on freeways.  I asked him about the shootings.  He laughed.

I was excitedly looking all around.  I was impressed with everything.  I had never seen such an uninterrupted flow of traffic. In India, cows and goats and humans all claimed the road at the same time.  But, not here.  And, all the vehicles were speeding in one direction, and across the barrier on the other side there were vehicles speeding in the other direction.  A gazillion lanes and everybody stayed within their lanes too!

And then the big trucks.  I had never seen such humongous trucks on the road.  Well, except the couple of monstrous heavy-engineering trucks used in the mines in Neyveli.  Whenever those trucks appeared on our street, my brother and I rushed to look at them.  And we always counted the number of tires that rolled past us.

But, here were trucks speeding at sixty miles an hour, and plenty of trucks as well.  Every truck that we passed, I kept staring at it and I always tried to get a view of the driver.  How could just one human drive such a giant with ease!

At one point, my friend mildly suggested that I stop doing that.  "Don't make eye contact with the truck driver."  Ah, yes, the shootings on the freeways of Los Angeles!

A few weeks after my arrival, there was buzz among the Indian students about a group called the dotbusters that had killed an Indian on the east coast.  They shot an Indian?  Was it a continuation of the wild, wild, west, in which they found a new kind of an Indian to kill?

In those first few weeks, I came to understand the American fascination with guns, and about the status of the browns.

Years have gone by.  32 years!

Meanwhile, the American fascination for guns has ramped up with deadlier weapons.  Violence continues against non-whites.  The president says that they are "fine people" and 63 million cheer him on.

This, too, is America!

I can't imagine what you're going through

Take a look at this photo:

Source

And now this photo:

Notice anything different?

One person is missing.

She is dead.

Carmen was one of the 17 who were killed by a gunman at a Florida high school last month.

I was listening to the report on NPR when I was driving back home.  It made me teary as hell.

After that, I shut the radio off and drove the rest of the way in silence.

You, too, should listen to it.  Hear the parents and others. Their emotions.

I don't want to reproduce anything here about Carmen, her accomplishments in the short life that she had, and what people had to say.  Because I want you to listen to it all.

But, I will bring this in because I want us all to think about it for a long, long, time.  Carmen's father says:

People constantly say to me, I can't imagine what you're going through. Well, you should. You should try to comprehend your daughter, who you are so proud of and who was just beginning to live her life, being riddled by bullets. Being told when the medical examiner gives the body back to the funeral home, you can't see her. We have to spend days working on her body. And maybe, maybe you'll be able to see her then. Think about that

Yes, think about that, while you listen. And imagine what they--and many others like them--are going through.  That's the least we can do.



Fucking Second Amendment nutcase bastards and their fucked up NRA!

OMG! Another mass shooting that was committed by a woman?

Seriously, we have two problems: Guns, and men.

The party of thugs, aka the GOP, won't allow us to talk about these two.  Definitely not about guns.

Consider this chart from Pew Research:

Pew notes:

 As recently as 2007, 48% of Republicans and GOP leaners said it was more important to control gun ownership, while 47% said it was more important to protect gun rights.

That's a good chunk of the GOP, along with an overwhelming majority of the rest, in favor of controlling gun ownership.  Until 2007.

So, was there anything in particular that happened in 2008 for the GOP folks to become nutcase defenders of gun rights?  Think about 2008. Something dramatic happened in the country, remember?

In 2008, it seemed clear that the country would vote in a Democrat to the White House, after eight long Bush years of wars and crises that were ending with the global recession.  The two leading Democratic candidates belonged to demographic categories that the GOP typically does not favor: A woman and a black man.

The election happened.  The Onion carried the day with the best caption ever.

Gun sales skyrocketed.  And the GOP became cemented in gun rights.

In June 2017, Pew reported:

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats (64%) say there would be fewer mass shootings in the U.S. if it were harder for people to legally obtain guns; only about a quarter of Republicans (27%) say the same. And Republicans are skeptical that making it harder to legally obtain guns would have an effect on mass shootings: 54% say it would not make a difference, while 18% think restricting access to guns would lead to more mass shootings.

Tell me again how awesome the GOP is?

Source

Holding steady in Orygun

It was time.

I had to get it done.

I could not put it off anymore.

I walked into the store that liberals love to hate.  All because of that one thing.

I walked without even casually looking around at anything there.  I was a man on a mission.

I reached.  I stopped.  It was all mine.

I sat down on the seat at the blood pressure measuring machine.  I erased the display and slid my left arm into the designated slot.

I looked up as I hit the "start" button.  Waiting for the pharmacist was a white guy, about 45 or 50 years old.  He had a camo-colored baseball cap that had the letters "NRA" in bold and uppercase.  On his side, was a gun in a holster.

A white guy with a gun in a store.

The machine whirred and whizzed and the tightness on my arm eased.  I shifted my attention to the display, wondering whether the sight of the gun would have caused a spike in the numbers.

Steady Eddie, despite the gun!

I don't care whether or not liberals or conservatives love that store; I am not going there anymore.  This pacifist does not want to witness people parading their guns in public spaces.

If the stereotype holds good, then the gun-carrying white guys won't come to shop at the places where I get edamame and paneer, and I will gladly restrict myself to those stores alone ;)

It is so bizarre that people--almost always white guys--publicly walking around with guns is apparently acceptable, but the sight of a woman wearing a hijab makes this country go ballistic!

America, what a country!

The tragedy at Rocket City, USA

What an awful news :(

Officials said the dead were all biology professors: G. K. Podila, the department’s chairman; Maria Ragland Davis; and Adriel D. Johnson Sr. Two other biology professors, Luis Rogelio Cruz-Vera and Joseph G. Leahy, as well as a professor’s assistant, Stephanie Monticciolo, were at Huntsville Hospital. Mr. Cruz-Vera was in fair condition; the others were in critical condition.

Yet another family-murder-suicide ....

Late last year, I blogged about a horrific murder-suicide in an Indian American family:

Karthik Rajaram was a former employee of PriceWaterhouse Coopers and Sony Pictures in Southern California, but had been unemployed for a few months. He committed suicide, after killing his family — his wife, mother-in-law, and three children aged 19, 12 and 7. It is unfortunate that this Indian-American resorted to guns, reinforcing the notion that guns and violence, too, are as American as the oft-repeated apple pie and mom.

When I went to India later in December, a high school classmate said he was Karthik Rajaram's college-mate during their undergrad years at IIT-Madras.

Now, another such incident--this time in Northern California:

The police identified some of the victims of a murder-suicide that left six people dead in Santa Clara but were still trying to uncover a motive. The police said that on Sunday night, Devan Kalathat, 42, an engineer at Yahoo, fatally shot his 11-year-old son and his 4-year-old daughter and wounded his 34-year-old wife. Before committing suicide, Mr. Kalathat also killed his brother-in-law, Ashok Appu Poothemkandi, 35, a Hewlett-Packard employee; Mr. Poothemkandi’s wife, Suchitra Sivaraman, 25; and the couple’s 11-month-old daughter.

In Rajaram's case, it seemed like his worsening financial situation might have contributed to his going beserk. In this recent incident, the motive is not clear at this stage. Tragic ....

As we get deeper into spring, we will all be reminded of Columbine and Virginia Tech. I hope we will not experience anymore such tragedies.

Guns don't kill people

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