Going Ballistic

America is armed and dangerous.

Inflammatory words endanger us

As they immediately circulate

And raise the heated temperature of hate.

Scenarios of shooting are not new:

The rooftop assassin is déja vu.

In schools the fears that someone armed will kill

Are so familiar that the children drill,

Anticipating covering their back

Someday if they’re the victims of attack.

Now drills may not be limited to class,

For kids must worry while attending mass.

Our politicians hesitate to greet

A door knocker, fearing that in the street

They will be met by someone with a gun

Who’ll shoot whoever answered and then run.

And if you’re at a big public event,

You need to make a plan to circumvent

The crowd so you can get out of the way

Of bullets an assault rifle might spray.

Most shooters whose motives we can divine

So far have been caught up in memes online.

Some imitate the boys of Columbine;

Some read the words of hate and self-assign

To carry out for real themselves the rage

That stirs them up as they surf page by page.

None so far has been linked to organized

Associations that have deputized

Them. None has had a planned partisan role.

They’re loners; they turn out to be the sole

Agent and secret planner of the deed—

With others only in the words they read.

Those words and images incendiary

Dehumanize their portrayed adversaries

And heap upon them blame to motivate

And justify the violent crimes of hate.

Those who’ve committed them they celebrate

And make of them heroes to imitate.

Innumerable net rats participate

In posting frenzies that can instigate

One of their number to take up a gun

To make himself the necessary one.

This witches’ brew of posts’s always on boil,

But there is one whose posts have power to roil

The cauldron and heat it to overflowing,

To blow to flame the embers that were glowing.

When enemies are attacked, he ignores it;

When he or his are hit, he both deplores it

And blames opponents without evidence

And threatens reprisals for their offense.

He stirs the pot of hate, eggs on his fans,

Washes his hands when they meet his demands

For vengeance, giving them a knowing wink

While turning his nose from the cauldron’s stink.

Kirk’s death provoked Trump to pontificate

About the tragic consequence of hate

Expressed toward “those with whom you disagree,”

But then he singled out his enemies.

Enraged at the killing of his evangel,

He called out troops of his avenging angels

Against the “radical left” who would dare

See a great man like Charlie and compare

Him to the Nazis—warning to the brashest

Of us who’d call Kirk or Trump himself “fascist.”

Dramatic killings like these make the news,

Familiar story lines that we peruse

With shock and fear and well-worn indignation.

But much more gun violence in the nation

Goes on, a darkly rumbling statistic,

A toll of deaths done by weapons ballistic

That add up daily without headline notice.

Some of them get attention from the POTUS

If immigrants have caused them. In blue cities

He’ll send the feds to stop them without pity.

But most of them—the suicides, the fights

Among armed kids that end in deaths at night,

The murders of provoked husbands or wives

Who have the guns at hand, quicker than knives,

What Trump just called “the little fight with wife”

That all too frequently can end her life—

These gun deaths just add up. The Court’s intendment

In reinterpreting Second Amendment

Gun rights plays this continuo of death

While we all watch the cauldron of Macbeth.

But Kirk may have left us some reason for cheer:

“It’s worth . . . a cost of . . . some gun deaths [each] year

So that we can have the second amendment”—

To some of these deaths we can give assent—

“To protect our other God-given rights.”

These words ought to be read at his last rites!