So When Exactly Is The Time To Talk About Gun Regulation?

After crazed gunman, Stephen Paddock, opened fire on a huge crowd during a Jason Aldean performance as part of a country music festival near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, killing more than 50 people and sending over 500 to the hospital, in what has been described as the largest mass shooting in American history, right-wing pundits were unanimous in declaring that now is far too soon to politicize the event and begin discussing sensible gun regulation in this country.

My question for these patriotic pundits is this-when is the right time?

What is the proper moratorium after a massacre before it is polite to launch the conversation about what could be done to prevent such a tragedy? One day? Two days? A week? A month?

How long do we have to wait before we can search for a strategy that might help us prevent slaughter like this from happening in the future?

I’m not talking about gun control, either. Neither I, nor anyone I know of, is interested in going door to door to take away the hunting rifles and handguns of citizens of this country. Anyone who tells you that is what’s on the table here is lying to you. Obama is not coming for your guns. The Deep State is not coming for your guns. Crooked Hillary is not coming for your guns. Liberals are not coming for your guns. You can keep your damn guns. When the police burst into Stephen Paddock’s 32nd floor hotel room, however, he had more than 20 rifles with him, including AR-15-style assault rifles, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Is there really any logical reason why an American citizen would need to turn themselves into a walking, one-man army? The Trump administration recently overturned Obama-era protections that made it more difficult for the mentally ill to purchase guns. Is it really such an infringement on our freedoms if there are fewer firearms in the hands of those with serious mental illnesses? The NRA has been fighting for the right of people on the FBI’s terrorism watch list to still purchase guns. Seriously? A good portion of this country wants every, single Muslim removed or denied entry, but it’s perfectly acceptable for known terrorists to buy guns whenever they want?

The only thing I can figure is that the American people must like it this way. They must want it to happen. Over and over and over again. I mean, the wholesale murder of 20 children at Sandy Hook in 2012 wasn’t enough for people of this country to say enough is enough. Now that Stephen Paddock has killed more than any gunman in history, all we’re hearing is that it’s “too soon” to begin figuring out how to save lives. What will it take? When someone kills 100? Or 200? Or 1,000? At what point do we say this carnage has got to stop? We must enjoy the spectacle and the drama. If we didn’t, we would stand up as one, in the only country on Earth where this ever happens, and demand that human lives are more important than being able to brandish automatic weapons. We know that the members of the NRA make money off of people being afraid and purchasing more weapons, but what do the rest of us get?

So please, give me a sign. Let me know when it no longer rude to begin speaking publicly about the level of ordinance one human being is allowed to hoard, waiting for the day they snap and can commence offing their fellow citizens.

Give me a heads up when it is acceptable to declare that, at the very least “Some Lives Matter.”

I, for one, am goddamn tired of waiting.