Another mentally deranged kid marches into a school and mows down nineteen other kids and two teachers with an assault rifle. How the hell do we keep allowing this to happen? How many children must die before Congress tunes the fuck in, sets aside their partisan bullshit, and passes a law that forbids anyone under the age of 26 from purchasing a firearm?
Sandyhook, Parkland, Oxford, I’m sick of waking up and watching the faces of murdered schoolchildren scroll across my TV screen. I weep for the lives they’ll never live, for their parents who’ll never again hug them, or kiss them, or laugh with them as they grow older, graduate school, and eventually have children of their own. I weep for a society which revels in gun violence and refuses to enact change simply because the NRA poisons their thoughts with half-truths and crackpot propaganda.
Back in 1995, when I was 20 years old, I shot and killed a man with a gun I’d legally purchased. And let me tell you, under zero circumstances was I mature enough to own a firearm. I take full responsibility for my actions, and I’m paying the price for those actions as I sit here in my prison cell all these years later writing this op-ed. But I’d also like to stress how I’m no longer that irresponsible 20 year old kid. I understand the catastrophic devastation my actions caused to not only my victim and his family, but to my family and my community as well. So, with that in mind, I write in the hopes that my words reach the right ears and help enact positive change.
People often say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, and I laugh at the absurdity of this argument. Surely such a catchphrase had to have been conjured up by a man or woman who has never shot another human being with a gun, because, having experienced the act, and having lived with thousands of other men over the years who’ve also experienced the act, I can tell you with complete honestly and candor that guns do in fact kill people. Had I not possessed a gun on the night I committed my crime, I’d not have had the impulsive option to shoot my victim to death. Had I been forbidden from purchasing said gun at such a young age (I bought my gun in a person to person sale), I’d not have owned that gun to make such a rash decision.
Please, American, wake up. Kids and young adults don’t need firearms. How is it that the Uvalde Texas shooter was too young to buy a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of beer, yet old enough to stroll into a gun shop or a gun show and purchase an assualt rifle, ammunition, and a tactical vest?
The most current science tells us that the juvenile brain doesn’t reach maturity until somewhere around age 26, so how about our lawmakers act like the supposedly-mature adults they are and hike the age of gun purchase in the U.S. to 26?
America, please call your House Reps, your Senators, and President Biden to demand that the legal age for purchasing a firearm be raised to 26. And if they ask you why you feel this way, feel free to tell them a contrite, 47-year old incarcerated man who murdered someone with a gun when he was a stupid 20-year old kid convinced you it’s the right thing to do.
My name is Jerry Metcalf and I wish to make the world a better place, if you do too, please join me on social media.
Jerry Metcalf
Facebook.com/Jerryametcalf.jr
Twitter @JerryMetcalfJr1
Instagram.com/jerryametcalf_artist.writer
2 Comments
Unfortunately school shootings are not rare, and daily I get news flashes of mass victims being shot over the most ridiculous reasons. A basketball kids are playing with landing on a neighbor’s lawn… a family asking a man in the house next door to please stop firing off his weapon… pulling a car into the wrong driveway for a delivery.
This madness must stop, instead of buying a gun if one is afraid one should see about getting some mental health therapy and perhaps some Clonazapam to calm one’s fears in the meantime.
The NRA and the Republican Party are ratcheting up people fears and pitting people against one another, all in the hope to “divide and conquer”, and people are falling for it. The person who is afraid is a person who is easier to manipulate and control. A gun is a false hope of security, most guns are used to kill their owners.
People used to get along and Republicans and Democrats could disagree and discuss their differences, now it is claimed that restricting gun ownership is taking away a person’s right to bear arms…. a right only given to maintain a militia, from a time when the US depended on militias as it had no regular standing army.
This was obvious for over 100 years and used to be used to limit gun ownership but now the US Supreme Court which has been packed with right wing radical so-called “Christians” has overturned the well established right of states to limit gun ownership and the nation has turned into a bad spaghetti western where you wonder if the Long Ranger will ever show up to save the day. Because SCOTUS sure as heck not going to regain it’s mind, and thinks we should all live in the 1700s. Historical precedent my _ _ _.
A Republican representative in Washington has even given their 2 year grandchild a rifle and are proud to tell the World their still barely walking grandchild is already armed and ready to defend itself. As if a child had the ability to think logically and calmly, more children die from guns then any other reason combined.
This is a mental sickness that even 10 years ago would have resulted in outrage and them being told to resign, leave Washington and never return. Yet she was cheered on after this statement given in front of a NRA gathering. Other Republicans send out Christmas cards with the whole family armed and ready to start a war it looks like. This was shades of Waco that would never have been accepted before. Now instead we have people acclaiming her actions which is highly bizarre and I wonder if the USA has lost it’s mind… or have I now slipped over and am living in a strange alternate universe where the Nazis won WW2.
God help us all, since our government is now overrun by nuts in Republican clothing, so do not look for help there unless you can get Republican voters to wise up and to vote out these crazys, which I highly doubt will happen soon. Voters seem to be brainwashed or drugged into submission to the NRA and the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about.
I pray I am proved wrong and America returns to the real morals and ethics that saw both sides of the aisle in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats acting together to remove “Tricky Dick” Nixon from the Oval Office. Since then the Republican Party has degraded into the worst morass of the morally bankrupt since the 1930s when the Nazi seized power in Germany after WW1, slowly going down the slippery slope into authoritarianism and on the swift train heading to fascism.
Remember one of the first thiings the Nazis did was outlaw abortion and birth control, then they went on to kill their own German disabled and handicapped citizens before looking at eliminating the communists, socialist, gypsies, and Jews.
Control is the main objective, and we see it today with the spreading of lies and fear in order to control people. Where it ends will depend on American voters waking up and realizing they are being manipulated, Hopefully before this goes any further.
The 2024 elections will show if Americans are finally going to wake up from their stupor and return to a wise and healthier view of government. Something like when Franklin D Roosevelt was in office, and when Lydon B Johnson was President of the USA. Both passed laws that helped the mass of ordinary citizens instead of the wealthy few. Right now the Republicans are only interested in helping the rich few who give large donations and line their pockets with other goodies.
You can’t smoke until 18 (21) in some states, underage people still smoke. You can’t drink until 21, underage people still do it. Criminals will get guns no matter what age restrictions you put on it. Just like you had a gun before the age of “26” when you killed a man. As terrible as it it, school shootings are a rare. The media blows it up, and makes it seem like a daily occurrence.