I just finished reading a book I bought while Sara and I visited the Eden Prairie Library last Sunday: “Superman: The Man of Steel, Volume 1“. These were stories from 1986 – 1987, shortly after I – rather unfortunately, it seems – stopped regularly following the various Superman titles. This would have been from the time of my senior year in high school, through my freshman year in college.
One of the stories in the volume, “Bloodsport… He Plays for Keeps!”, had me reflecting tonight on how much the nation has changed since then – and not for the better, in this case. It deals with a heavily-armed sociopath who goes around shooting large crowds of people in Metropolis, motivated by PTSD related to the Viet Nam War. His attacks, after the first one shown in in the story, get into the science fiction stuff about teleporting weapons from an unknown location, including rocket launchers and kryptonite dart-shooters that allow him to actually challenge Superman. However, the first attack, which seemed extraordinary enough to warrant a call to Superman in 1987, had a body count and display of weaponry that would qualify as an all-too-average average Thursday in the US, after 34 additional years of lobbying and buying state and national legislators by the NRA.
Finding that I had started college when the story was originally published, I realized that, through all my formal education, including graduate school, I NEVER participated in an active shooter drill. Now, our boys have had to participate in them since they were in 4-YEAR-OLD PRESCHOOL! It is absolutely sick that we live in a country in which I have to worry that, should there ever be an instance in which it is not a drill for them, and he needs to rely on being silent not to be discovered, Michael’s impulsiveness and gabbiness that is part of his ADHD could be fatal.
Somehow, other civilized democracies are able to get by with reasonable restrictions on firearms without feeling their freedom is violated. And they live without the underlying fear of getting shot up by all too readily available weapons and quantities of ammunition.
