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“Politics and the English Language” for our times.

A writer about Parkland makes George Orwell’s point for a world I doubt Orwell could have imagined: One where one country alone boasts 400 million privately held guns.

The 911 call transcript, Humvees disgorging SWAT teams, witnesses hugging and weeping, ambulances rolling away, candles lit at “memorials.” We never see a body. We never see what a .223 round of ammunition can actually do to a human. It has all been sanitized. When I hear a congressman call for a “moment of silence,” I hear him saying, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

We respond to gun violence in such a manner because the thing of which we speak is so hideous that we need to normalize it.

Margaret Soltan, February 14, 2020 8:34AM
Posted in: guns

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One Response to ““Politics and the English Language” for our times.”

  1. theprofessor Says:

    The problem here, UD, is that Hollywood and videogame makers have been showing us for a very long time now and in increasingly graphic and realistic detail what bullets, knives, bazookas, chainsaws, etc. will do to a human body.

    The fetishization of the AR-15 .223 round puzzles. It is actually a small slug, and because of the high velocity, it is more likely to go through more cleanly than a larger, lower velocity slug like a .308. This is why many states prohibit hunting deer or other large game with it. It simply isn’t deadly enough to kill them quickly. The military advantage of the .223/5.56 was the range, accuracy, and recoil as far as I know.

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