Thoughts and prayers don’t cut it anymore

Lizzy is our 1-year old cat. A few weeks ago, she began spitting up. Then she stopped eating. All the tests have been negative. An X-ray was inconclusive. We’re about to embark on an expensive round of specialists. Hey, you spend your money the way you want, we’ll spend ours the way we want.

For obvious reasons, Lizzy has been in my thoughts and my prayers. After reading this, maybe she’ll be in yours as well. My thoughts and prayers have not been able to cure her.

Neither have my thoughts and prayers prevented a single insane person from shooting up schools, festivals, big box stores, movie theaters, workplaces, their families, and their own skulls. While “thoughts and prayers” might be kindhearted expressions of grief and solidarity, they are not a substitute for action.

Recent weeks in America have been awful. A madman shot his way across the San Fernando Valley. A few days later, the Gilroy Garlic Festival was hit, with three killed. Then, El Paso, Texas saw 21 murdered, with 10 more gunned down in Dayton, Ohio later that night. Last Thursday, a maniac with a knife and a machete stabbed four people to death in Garden Grove. While the nation was fixated on Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Chicago saw nearly 60 shot, seven fatally. It’s hot in the Windy City. Killing weather.

This is the 16th column I’ve written after a terrible domestic atrocity. Once again, the same feckless cycle of finger-pointing and handwringing fills the airwaves and truthfully this newspaper column. I can’t solve my cat’s problem; how is anything I write going to end the pandemic of mass shootings?

Still, there is a cure if we are willing to take it.

1) Reinstitute the assault weapons ban. Assault weapons are not hunting rifles or tools for personal defense. Ronald Reagan supported the assault weapons ban. Donald Trump should, too.  America is being held hostage by a small number of people who stockpile weapons of war for the day they anticipate fighting their own government. If we have to turn AKs and AR-15s on American soldiers the country will be beyond saving. The glass is not that half-empty.

2) Gun laws should be nationalized. One of my best friends had his gun safe broken into in Vermont. A few weeks later, one of his guns was recovered in Seattle. It doesn’t matter if New York, Chicago or Los Angeles has strict gun laws if the surrounding cities and states don’t.

3) Respect the Second Amendment. Montana, Wyoming and Alaska are not Irvine, Tarzana or the Upper West Side of Manhattan. People living in rural America are their own first responders. Europe doesn’t have West Texas. In many places in America a gun is their Grub Hub app.

4) We need to invest in mental health and drug addiction treatment programs the way we did in the race to the moon in JFK’s day.

5) And we need to throttle back hatred in all its forms; race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and political affiliation. After last week’s slaughter, every death was pinned on Donald Trump.

Yes, words matter. The president is a coarse, vulgar, belligerent man. He uses his enormous pulpit to bully. A few days after the slaughter, a mob gathered outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home. They chanted for his death. It ain’t only Donald Trump’s Twitter account that’s the problem.

Let’s do the do-able, with the understanding there is no single perfect solution.

Banning assault weapons will be hard for many of you to swallow. So are Lizzy’s pills. I have to literally stuff pills down her throat at night. My cat bites and scratches me and sulks for hours after each dose. I don’t care. If that’s what it takes to make her better, she’s swallowing her medicine no matter how distasteful.

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. He can be reached at: Doug@DougMcIntyre.com.

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