Fight like a Mother by Shannon Watts

Fight like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World by Shannon Watts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

More than a book about gun policy! It's a book about activism, feminism, intersectionality, and generally making the world a better place. Strongly recommend this book!

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American Gun by Chris Kyle

American Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms by Chris Kyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's not in the book but Kyle was a marine and war hero, and the deadliest marksman in United States military history. (Of "American Sniper" fame.) After his return to the US, in 2009, he foiled two men trying to carjack him by grabbing his gun and shooting them before they were able to shoot him. Did he have any philosophical thoughts about guns in war or in domestic use? No, not really. His one thought is that having the best guns in war saves lives on your team. Other than that, this is just the facts and no analysis.

The historical facts, as stated by Kyle, are interesting. And the facts certainly persuade me that having the most up-to-date technologically advanced guns are necessary for warfare. However, Kyle talks about how mobsters in the US starting buying Tommy guns, the nickname for "Thompson submachine guns" with nary a commentary about what a complete disaster that was. Glocks became popular with police and criminals at the same time. What does that say about the lack of gun regulation? No thoughts from our gun expert Kyle.

Of course, the whole time I was reading this I kept thinking about what ultimately happened to Kyle. Kyle was murdered at 38 years old with his own .45-caliber pistol. He was murdered by a 25-year-old marine that Kyle knew was mentally ill but took to a shooting range because he believed shooting had therapeutic value. If Kyle had had a psychic premonition of his own death, would he have developed some analysis? What would that analysis have been?

Here are some more facts: https://lawcenter.giffords.org/facts/gun-violence-statistics/

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Parkland: Birth of a Movement by Dave Cullen

Parkland: Birth of a Movement by Dave Cullen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I put off reading this book for a couple of months because I was worried it would be about the shooting itself. Thankfully, it's not, and once I picked it up I flew through it. It's about the survivors of the Parkland shooting and their lives and political action since the shooting. A lot of it is instructive and inspirational to the rest of us and is so important. I think this book is a great companion to March by John Lewis, about the civil rights marches. Action is hard and takes a very long time, but history moves forward if we're all willing to work, and we really all need to get to work.

When I was 22 at my first job in DC, I met a Columbine kid who was working on some political action regarding th shooting at a nonprofit located in the building I worked at. Columbine is now seen as the beginning of the school shootings, and it's been 18 years, and many school children have died, and now I have my own kids in school. My kids regularly practice "active shooter" drills. They did so when they lived in New York, and they do so in Nebraska because nowhere in our country is safe now. It's a horror, and I wish I’d done more starting 18 years ago.

I really do not understand the conservative position in this country, especially regarding assault weapons. These people are opposed to abortion but are comfortable giving everyone the weapons to instantly "abort" hundreds of children and adults? Do they lose sleep worrying about their own children and grandchildren? Some of the Republican congressmen who were personally shot claim that they don't think guns are the problem. This is especially insincere because they refuse to give money to the National Institute of Health to study the problem so that we can all point to what is and isn't specifically the problem. And look, this isn't my first book on the gun problem, I get that the statistics point to a bigger problem with gun-related suicides, urban violence, or gun owners turning the guns on their own family members, but those issues are also important to me. It's not this gun problem versus that gun problem. It's the huge toll of all the gun deaths together. It's hard to imagine where we go from here beyond talking to the younger generation but it's clear that the gun control movement needs our time and our donations.

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The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson

The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first few essays were tough to get into but some of the essays in the middle deserve 10 million stars. This is really challenging reading, but so worth it. Where I don't agree with Robinson I have to suspect I might be wrong or missing crucial information because she is just so brilliant.

I highlighted many sentences but this is one of my favorite: “We would not now have a sizable part of our own population prepared to engage in homicidal violence if they truly believed that that young man in the hoodie was an image of God.”

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Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw

Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Talk about unreliable narrators! The characters' intentions are a muddle, and this is surely done intentionally. The debate about good versus evil and Christianity versus capitalism is crystal clear and deeply depressing. Nothing changes in history.

Andrew Undershaft is pretty explicitly an antichrist figure. The Jesus of the Bible is clear about morality vis-à-vis poverty and wealth. I think Barbara represents most people- knowing it's all wrong but drawn to the allure of it nonetheless. Not to mention that while Undershaft could make his arguments with wealth from any industry and be more convincing, Shaw makes his industry the weapons industry, the business of which is literally to kill as many humans as possible. This makes Undershaft's arguments almost impossible to accept. I think Shaw made that choice on purpose.

I don't really see the play as anti-Christian just because Andrew Undershaft appears to prevail. I thought of it as having characters presenting two views. The expression for presenting an argument you don't necessarily agree with is "Devil's Advocate" for a reason... there are always great arguments against goodness or God, not that those are always the same thing in a debate.

I guess between Andrew's argument, and Shaw's little sticky points- I'm not persuaded by Andrew. The little sticky points being: Andrew makes the tools of war, Andrew doesn't pretend to care about charity at the beginning but then later uses it to win Barbara to his side, Barbara seems moved to Andrew's side more by greed than a continued desire to do good (though I'm not completely certain here), and Cusin's general spinelessness. And at the end, we're uncertain if Barbara has lost her soul or not.

It might just be a spoof on both sides and on society in general. Perhaps Shaw's view is: You can live in wretched poverty or destroy everything with civilization. Pick your poison.

Definitely the kind of play that's worth rereading for me. Lots to think about.

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