2015 was a rough year, especially for those who believe in the absolutism of beat cops and badges, or that the bootstraps of hardworking Americans can’t possibly snap. This was a difficult year for innocent bystanders, or anyone thinking they were safe. But it was, and remains, the most challenging yet for those convinced that guns are God-given.
At first I thought I’d go with the excuse offered by Subway Jared and his lawyers who, prior to his prison sentence for child-ruining, blamed his Subway diet for his pervert crimes. Essentially, these morally challenged morons claimed that, had Jared “received help,” he wouldn’t have “traded a horrible food addiction for a horrible sex addiction.” Subway Jared is about to find out Where Excuses Go to Die.
Then, when I heard how many people were proclaiming Donald Trump’s principal virtue as his being a “real” man who just “says it like it is,” I became convinced Trump would steal the 2015 Golden Excuse from right under Fogel’s formerly fat ass. ‘Cause “the Donald” does not speak truth to power; he grubs for more and more and more of it. He does not, and will not, serve his country; he makes his country serve him. And he will continue to do so on the backs of those who believe the excuse that we somehow need his crass, self-aggrandizing insensitivities to better ourselves.
But then came the post-shooting public analysis of Paris and San Bernardino…
And with that, the 2015 Where Excuses Go to Die Golden Excuse of the Year had to go to the argument that guns suppress evil. That more guns are the path to ultimate safety. That guns are a God-given right for the righteous among us. The perpetrators of the San Bernardino massacre met their end at the hands of superior and overwhelming firepower, yes. But did that save a single innocent life?
The argument has been put forth that, had those in the room (or the Paris cafes and concert) been themselves armed, the evildoers could have been taken down before tragic deaths occurred. That, my friends, is myopic denial to the nth degree. It’s just as likely that such firepower would have long before been turned on non-terrorists, non-perpetrators – the innocent themselves. Anyone remember a guy named Dylann Roof, just six months back? Or, for that matter, how violent people can be at stadiums even without guns? And let’s not even open the worm can of cops “mistaking” regular people (brown people) for imminent threats to themselves and to those they “protect and serve.”
I don’t have a beef with the 2nd Amendment. But how far we’re willing to take it, how puffed up and self-righteous we’re eager to become by using it as a shield, is indeed worthy of being named 2015’s Excuse of the Year.