Can We Just... Can We Have Gun Control Now Please?

18 dead in El Paso.

 There was a shooting today at a Walmart in the Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas. So far, all we know is that at least 18 people have been killed, several more injured, and one shooter, identified as a 21-year-old male has been taken into custody by police. There have also been reports of there being two more shooters, though they haven't been caught yet.

Probably, in the next few hours, we will find out all about this shooter (and the others, should they turn out to exist). That he was mad at girls for not wanting to fuck him, or that he was mad at some random minority group, or he was mad that a cashier didn't honor his double coupon. We will hear from his family who never saw this coming. We will hear about his mental health situation.

I don't care. I don't care what this asshole's problem was or who hurt him. Clearly, we live in a world in which an inordinate amount of people think that the answer to their problems is killing a bunch of people and we are not going to stop living in that world any time soon. We can have all the candlelight vigils we want, send all of the thoughts and prayers, but it is all bullshit until we actually start instituting some serious gun control measures.

I'm sorry, people who like guns and hate background checks. This isn't working out. It's just not. It's going to keep happening, over and over again, until we actually do something about it. You have yet to do a good enough job of convincing the rest of us that this is a fair trade off. We're supposed to tolerate seeing hundreds of people die or losing our loved ones in mass shootings just so you can continue having sexy fantasies overthrowing the government with your assault rifle someday? I don't think so!

Maybe at some point in our history, America could handle lax gun laws. Like it or not, that is not the world we live in anymore, and our laws need to reflect that. It's like when you're a kid — if you can't handle a privilege responsibly, it gets taken away. The United States has proven over and over again that this is not a "privilege" that we can handle.

Nearly every other country on earth has figured this shit out. They have a mass shooting, they implement laws so that it doesn't happen again. Not us! We have to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Fuck that. Fuck all of this. Fuck the NRA.

Also this is your open thread. Feel free to talk about something entirely different in the comments, because this shit is depressing AF.

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