Last week the jackpot in the Mega-Millions lotto topped one billion dollars.
One
billion.
That’s
a thousand times a million.
To
give you some perspective (and I think we all need to gain some perspective on
occasion), at the rate of pay I was earning as a high school teacher, I made a
million dollars every twelve years. Roughly, in twenty-seven years of teaching,
I made (and spent—trust me) two and a quarter million dollars.
But
in order to make a billion dollars, I would have had to work a thousand times
that long. Yep. If I’d kept working, I would have made a cool billion dollars
after twelve thousand years (give or take a few hundred years).
Makes
me tired just thinking about it, though I’m sure I would have enjoyed spending
that much time with my students—kids who were kind, smart, funny,
compassionate, and always entertaining. Sweet kids. Innocent kids.
It
also makes me think, now that I’m living on my pension (and not earning much
from my writing—I mean, you’re currently reading my words for freeee!) that
perhaps I might have chosen a more lucrative line of employment.
Take
gun sales, for example. Know how long it took gun manufacturers in the U.S. to
earn a billion dollars? Ten years. Oh wait—they made much, much more than a
billion in ten years. That’s just what they made on assault-style weapons. You
know, AR-15s and such. Those sales alone earned them a cool billion dollars. In
ten years.
Don’t
you wonder what they do with all that money? I do. I’d like to think they put a
few million aside to pay medical bills and PTSD counseling and grief therapy
and renovations of the crime scene whenever there’s a mass shooting. I’d like
to think that, all right. But I can’t. Because they don’t.
Ever
wonder who pays the medical bills for victims of mass shootings? They do. The
victims, I mean. Well, their insurance companies, but as we know, insurance
companies only pay for certain things these days. “Out of pocket” expenses can
be astronomical. Especially when you’ve been hit by multiple rounds that basically
explode inside your body. (CNN has a non-graphic simulation video posted on
YouTube of how the round from an AR-15 affects human tissue. You can view that by
clicking here.)
Curious,
I did a search of “mass shooting” on the Gofundme.com page. There are hundreds
and hundreds of accounts set up to help victims. Because, as I said, if you’re
hit but don’t die, you’re going to need really good insurance coverage.
Because
gun manufacturers are using their billion dollars for other things.
Look, I know I’ve been harping on this issue for months. Is it too much?
Could it
ever be “too much” as long as mass shootings are still happening?
Am
I “one of those Dems” who want to “take all the guns away”? No. No, I am most
decidedly not. I believe the founding fathers had good reason to say everyone
who wants to have a gun at home should have the right to do so. I have no issue
with the handgun my nearly-ninety-year-old neighbor is ready to bring out
should civil unrest rear its ugly head here in our senior community. I have no
issue with a single friend who keeps a gun in her nightstand in case her
abusive ex-husband decides to come at her again. I certainly have no issue with
my brother’s hunting rifles because he hunts deer humanely, and he eats what he
kills (and anyway, most of the time he just has fun camping out with his
friends and doesn’t bag anything).
But
if we have any chance of stopping the type of carnage we have seen in recent
months and years, we have to do something.
How
about we reinstitute the ban on assault-style weapons? Because you know, they
were banned for years. And the percentage of these types of mass shootings
dropped dramatically. And in those years that they were banned, my brother
continued hunting and neither my friend or my neighbor felt unsafe without
their handguns.
I
do have one friend who owns an AR-15 and feels threatened by any conversation
involving gun control reform. He uses his AR-15 to hunt coyotes. So he can kill
an entire pack at one time.
So yeah, I wouldn’t mind if we passed a law saying he can’t do that.
Mostly,
though, I’m more focused on no more children dying deaths so violent, their
parents have to give samples of their DNA in order to identify their bodies.
Give
it some thought. Maybe call or write a senator. Or vote for only those
individuals who sincerely support gun control reform. Please.
Because
this:
And because this is a reminder of how quickly we forget:
Oh,
by the way, we know now that someone in Illinois won that billion-plus Mega
Millions jackpot. Wouldn’t it be cool if it were someone in Highland Park?
Yeah, I think so, too.
Great job, Kay! I agree 100%
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