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My Age Of Violence

John F McMullen

November 22, 1963
the day that the
Age of Violence
of my lifetime began

Lee Harvey Oswald
killed the President
of the United States
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
turning my life around
as well as that of the country.

We had had presidential assassinations before
        Abraham Lincoln
        James Garfield
        William McKinley
but they were well before my life
and simply stories in history books

While we had two more
high profile assassinations in 1968
        Martin Luther King, Jr.
        Robert Kennedy
the nut murderers had already
begun to emerge in 1966 with
Charles Whitman in the Texas Tower
shooting pedestrians below on the street

And then in 1969 the country was shocked
by the Manson Family and its senseless killings

Even John Hinkley’;s attempted
assassination in 1981 of
President Ronald Reagan
not because of his political stances
but rather to impress actress Jodi Foster
(who didn’;t know him)
could be classified as crazy

And then we added hate to crazy
Hate for:
        Blacks
        Jews
        Gays
        Muslims
        Children
And
        Who the hell knows?

And we get
        Parkland
        Columbine
        The Pittsburgh Synagogue
        Uvalde
        The Q
        Cheaspeake Walmart
        and many, many more

In 2022 alone we have (to date)
        3,179 “Mass Shootings“ (4 or more people shot by shooter)
in which
        637 died
        >2,500 injured

When will it end?
        when will hate go away?
        when will crazy go away?
        when will rapid-fire weapons be banned?
We may not be able to eliminate the hate and the crazy
but less will die if we eliminate the rapid-fire weapons
as the great Pete Hamill years ago wrote
“How many home runs would Babe Ruth have hit without a bat?“

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