Happy Birthday, America! Eat hot death.

Today was the 4th of July, so we’ve been treated to several days of fireworks, set off by the municipality last night and a bunch of individual freedom-loving patriots the rest of the time. I’ve grown to hate the way we celebrate this holiday, and the dogs are miserable when it rolls around each year. When I was a kid, I used to love going to see the fireworks. The bright colors and the loud booms were so exciting and fun, and I looked forward each year to that finale, that last tremendous series of explosions that lit up the night sky. We laughed and ooh-ed and ahh-ed and applauded in appreciation for the show. I can’t remember now the last time that I went to view a display of fireworks, but it’s been a while. Somewhere along the line, I stopped being wowed by fireworks. Maybe it was the planes flying into the towers in New York, or the wildfires that had their beginnings in errant bottle rockets, I don’t know; maybe it’s all the mass shootings.

I just know that lighting off all that gunpowder doesn’t give me much of a thrill anymore.

We loved it when we were kids, but we were not allowed to light so much as a firecracker when I was growing up. Sparklers were permitted, but every time we asked about firecrackers or bottle rockets or Roman candles, we got The Stories. My father was a police officer in Wayne County, Michigan, and he had a wealth of stories that told of foolish children blowing off their fingers every year or blinding themselves when something went off in their faces. The only time I can recall having a firecracker was the time a friend gave me one. My mom found out before I could set it off, and she took it from me, telling me she’d put it “someplace safe” for me. I never saw it again. I didn’t find out where she’d hid it until Thanksgiving, when we were all startled to hear an explosion from the turkey roaster. (She’d forgotten she had hidden it inside.) Only the sparklers were ever allowed.

Even the sparklers have lost their charm for me, though, and this day is a day of dread for our pets. They cringe and look mournfully at us, silently asking us to make it stop. I’d like it to stop myself because the violent explosions no longer excite me. There have not been any screams of pain that we’ve heard, even though I know there are probably people in the emergency room right now with only eight or nine fingers left on their hands. What I do know is that there were screams in Illinois today, as many shots rang out in Highland Park during an Independence Day parade. And now as I listen to the M-80s going off down by the lake, I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach. Yet again there are a bunch of people dead or wounded, killed by an extremist with a rifle, and the irony of the firecrackers going off nearby is not lost on me.

Don’t Mean to Spoil the Party

My intention is not to ruin everyone’s enjoyment of the fireworks tonight. Shasta the Australian Shepherd, panting at me with eyes wide open, wouldn’t mind a small respite from the loud noises, but we’re all hoping it’ll soon be over. For us, at any rate. I worry about our country, as these shootings seem to be accelerating rather than showing any signs of abating. People are losing their minds; either that or we are seeing the beginnings of a new era, one in which it is considered an act of bravery to fire into an unsuspecting body of persons and kill or maim as many of them as possible. I mean, these people just wanted to celebrate the birth of our nation, which our forefathers effected for us more than two hundred years ago, and they went to watch a parade. They wanted to laugh and have fun watching floats, and brass bands, and young right wing incels firing into the crowd. That gunman could fire into that crowd because those same forefathers included ownership of every firearm known to humankind to each one of our citizens.

Well, maybe not. They did guarantee that a “well-regulated militia” could “keep and bear arms,” and no one is suggesting that that is somehow being challenged; it would be nice if that applied to today’s individual, but the NRA has ensured that the Second Amendment is intended to remove any common sense from the equation. They have at least half the country brainwashed into thinking that any attempt to regulate gun ownership is somehow infringing on our rights—even though the document in question even uses the phrase well-regulated in the text. As a result, anyone that is at least eighteen years of age can go and purchase a weapon that can kill—how many was it? Oh, only six, but at least another 24 were wounded. So I know many of you insist on keeping your weapons, and I doubt there is any measure that you’d support in somehow controlling the carnage, right?

Why is everyone so resistant to basic measures? There was a ban on assault rifles in the 90s, and things were better for a while. Did anyone feel any less free in the 90s? I think I felt more free back then.

Oh, well, I suppose you having an AR-15 is more important than me living through a trip to the grocery store—or going to a parade. In Chicago or anywhere else, because it doesn’t matter if the person lives in an area where gun laws might be stricter; this murderer lived in the city of Highland Park, if the latest reports are correct, so he obviously went elsewhere to exercise his Constitutional semi-right. As long as there are outlying areas in which those kinds of weapons are readily available to the general public, a ban in one small area is never going to stop this massive problem we have with gun violence in this country. To make matters worse, our national lawmakers refuse to display the moral courage to enact some kind of reasonable set of laws to control the carnage. They must not care until it happens to someone they love.

This Should Be DEpendence Day

In honor of today, we should change the name of this holiday to “Dependence Day,” because those in power are so dependent on the money they get from lobbyists that they will never actually do anything to address the clear and present danger that easy access to rapid-fire guns and lots of ammo pose to our way of life. And we’re all so dependent on knowing our rights and our freedoms that we have forgotten how to care for our fellow Americans; we’ve totally lost the understanding of what our rights are actually meant to guarantee. Many of us are so dependent on a political party—ANY political party—to tell us how we should act or behave or believe, we have left behind our humanity. If our own children are at risk, why do we not come together and agree on some common-sense rules that we can all live by? I worry every day about my son being at risk in a state like Florida, where access to guns is free and unfettered.

Most of America is a free-fire zone, really, and that makes it clear that not enough of us out there care enough to hold the elected representatives of our nation accountable. Four dead must be no big deal unless we know them personally. (I know that isn’t true, but I am scared and angry, and I make sarcastic jokes when I’m scared and angry.) Mass shootings have happened so often just this year that I’m not sure if I feel safe going anywhere anymore. When a big bunch of people got together today to watch a parade, some angry young white dude decided it was Open Season and opened up his own Killing Zone. This is happening so often now that one has to wonder—are they connected somehow? Or are we all just that fucked up? There doesn’t seem to be any place in the country where we can gather together safely anymore, and if you ask me, that’s a bigger freedom lost than whether or not I can carry a Glock in my ‘Rari.