Dead to rights
Maybe it would help if more movie stars killed people.
Ever since Alec Baldwin, in character and rehearsing a scene, drew a pistol and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie they were filming, details of the shooting on the New Mexico film set and impassioned reactions to it have found their way onto front pages and prime time newscasts on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, nary a national peep about the shooting death of Devon Trey Heyborne in nearby Albequerque, or any of the other nearly 100 people shot dead in New Mexico’s largest city this year.
Maybe if the guy who shot Devon had hosted Saturday Night Live a few times that shooting might have caught our attention.
Yeah, I know. Harsh. Cold.
But true.
A celebrity gun slinger catches our attention. An ordinary poor schumck? Not really.
If we gave one day’s shootings across the country the same paper and ink devoted to this one death we couldn’t cut down trees fast enough to keep up. Every morning paper would have the heft of an old Sears catalogue. We’d be buried in death.
There’s no chance of that happening though. How can we be expected to concern ourselves with the Oct. 6 demise of Manuela Rodriguez, who lived on the 6300 block of Spring St. in Long Beach, Calif., who lingered nine days after being shot in the upper body? Or the two individuals shot and killed Oct. 23, in a home invasion on the 6500 block of Brookstone Lane, Fayetteville, N. C.? Or Mickail Sean Batchelor, shot and killed on the 5100 block of 105th St., Milwaukee, Wis…
The list could go on and on …
And frankly, we wouldn’t give a damn.
If we did, something would have been done.
Long ago.
Somehow we’ve become indifferent to our neighbors’ death. Our neighbors’ suffering. Nearly 100 people dead of gunshot wounds every day.
We flip past the reports on our way to the funnies. Druggies. Gang-bangers. Creeeps. Disposable people… It’s easier to write ‘em off with a word than read their names, see their faces, think of their families. Out of sight, out of mind. Not from my neighborhood? Not one of my family? Not a friend, acquaintance or co-worker? Good enough. Let’s see how the Vikes are doing…
Unless, of course, it’s a movie star. Every month we pay the cable company to bring them into our home and, after a while, they’re sort of like digital family. Even though they couldn’t care less if we live or die, we know every little thing about them, and when bad things happen, we worry. And put it in the papers. And do something about it.
Already there’s a proposal to enact “Halyna’s Law” that would ban guns on movie sets.
That’s a good step. But if we can protect actors playing with pretend guns in make-believe worlds, how about a law to protect all of us disposable people from getting shot up as we go about our day-to-day?
How about “Manuela’s Law” to get guns out of the hands of homicidal boyfriends and “Mickail’s Law” to get them off the streets of our cities? How about a law to get the gun out of the hands of a kid thinking about suicide?
How about doing whatever it takes?
Oh yeah … here’s where we hear about “my Second Amendment right.” Maybe it’s time we start referring to that right as what it really is … the right to die. The right to die violently. Needlessly. On the streets. In our homes. On a movie set.
But it’s a right, and what could be more sacred than the right to walk around with a .38 stuffed into your pants?
Certainly not the life of some nameless poor kid playing in her back yard.
The Supreme Court says so.
They’ve got us on that one.
Dead to rights.