FICTION
Death was last seen in the auction room, looking worried. Behind him and around him were the goings on of the event; well-dressed ladies in colors as rich as their husbands and stoic-looking gentlemen (the kind who always conceal their true intentions) were betting on relics found in the basement of the old building – which wasn’t necessarily the very bottom floor of the once ornate palace. Only the bravest of men would venture down there, and even they wouldn’t stay too long.
“…Showing here. Do I have ten francs? Five, then. Five? I am bid. Six? Seven?” The auctioneer’s voice faded in and out, simply white-backgroundish noise to Him. He was here to find the man who’d evaded him for so long. His assistant had failed, many years ago, and now he Himself had to get the job done.
“Lot 665, ladies and gentlemen, a papier-mâché musical box in shape of a barrel organ. Attached, the figure of a monkey in Persian robes, playing the cymbals.”
This was it, if this didn’t draw him out, nothing would. He had made sure the man traveled all the way from halfway across the globe to get this silly artifact.
Hands went up, money was bid, and the item almost sold. Death thought His heart would stop, would He have had one, until a man from the back of the room, older now, but handsome and with a Mephistophelian smile in his day, raised a frail hand and outbid the others. The money was paid, the auctioneer thanked the patron, and the man collected his small prize from the polite nurse in his employ who pushed his wheelchair; his little musical piece of the past. Death could hear him at the other side of the room, though no one else could. The man spoke low and his voice was heavy with age and sorrow, though it was still musical.
“A collector’s piece, indeed…every detail, exactly as she said. Will you still play, when all the rest of us are dead?”
Indeed it would, as would the rest of these artifacts. They would all continue to glisten and twinkle and sparkle in their own particular, peculiar, perverse way. These were His tools, His silent servants that would play for Death until forever. Though these two beings – this man and this something else – were entangled in their own business, the auction continued in the grand hall of the now closing, yet still famous Paris Opera House.
“Lot 666, then: a chandelier in pieces. Some of you may recall the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera: a mystery never fully explained.” A chill swept through the room in the shape of an ethereal wind coming from the open doors, which no one could remember if they had closed or left open. “We are told, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the very chandelier which figures in the famous disaster…”
Disaster? Ha! The deed had never been done. Nobody had even died, not even by accident. How this man could call it a disaster…
He looked up at Box 5, hanging pathetically from the wall of the decaying theater, the favorite public hiding place of His old servant who had failed so miserably and shook His head, turning His attention back to the auction.
“…Our workshops have fully repaired it and wired parts of it for the new electric light. Perhaps we can frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination. Gentlemen?”
The chandelier rose, and the clock turned back.
And they were both young again.
NON-FICTION
Why Nobody Needs a Gun: A Response to the Las Vegas Shooting
My cousin is a police officer here in Rhode Island. He puts his life on the line every day and has had to draw his weapon in self defense. The thought of losing him to a rouge lunatic with access to high-powered weaponry turns my stomach. However, when he became a police officer, he knew the risks of the job he was hired to do. He has been trained to be the best he can be and he puts his life on the line to keep others safe. He needs a weapon to do that.
No one else in The United States of America should have firearms. Period.
Why does anyone need a gun? What were they made to do? Kill and maim, nothing else. Every other kind of weapon serves another purpose, except for firearms. They are useless without the intent to kill.
The Second Amendment protects the “right” to bear arms, but I believe it’s outdated and irrelevant. When the Second Amendment was written, there was no formal police, emergency service, or proper militia in the colonies. People were living just steps outside of wilderness and needed to protect themselves from those who might hurt them (including wild animals). Today, we have organized police forces and animal control. Today we have technology.
I realize that today, in 2018, the police aren’t exactly everyone’s best friend. Several dozen officers have used deadly force in a questionable or downright reprehensible way over the past several years and many have died because we, the citizens, put weapons in the hands of those who should protect us, and it can make people do crazy, stupid, thoughtless things.
I’m not here to defend police officers who have gunned down innocent civilians, far from it. I believe they should have to answer to justice just as anyone else should. My original belief on the matter would see firearms taken from them as well, but I this is not an article on police brutality, it’s an article on gun control.
Lots of people have said to me: “Well even if you make it illegal, people will still find a way to get their hands on guns.” That’s true. They’re right. But it will be a hell of a lot harder. Jack Whoever from Nowhere, Illinois can just walk into any shop he wants and pick up a rifle. A quick Google search for “how to buy a gun” yields a disturbing number of results. Firearms are for sale on eBay.
Firearms have no place in civilized society. Those who like to hunt can find other hobbies. Killing animals for sport and not eating them or using the entire animal is a shameful practice. Hunting for food is one thing, hunting for sport is entirely another. I don’t care about your “rich traditions” – find a new one, one that doesn’t put the lives of others in immediate danger.
Making firearms illegal in a broad sense will make them much easier to track. If civilians aren’t supposed to have them, and a police officer finds one in the home of a civilian, there will be no loopholes or flaws in the law to hinder that. That weapon is illegal unless in the hands of trained police.
In 1996 in Australia, the deadliest mass shooting took place in their history, with 35 killed and 23 injured. Legislators immediately sprang into action and created a more structured, organized system for selling firearms and made rapid-fire weapons illegal. The government offered a no-penalty buyback program and took possession of over 1 million newly illegal firearms, destroying them. This cut the number of gun-owning households in half.
There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since 1996, largely because of the measures put in place by the government.
Europe’s recent spike in mass killing events (bombings and car-jackings, for example) being the exception, there aren’t nearly as many events like those in Las Vegas as there are abroad. But that isn’t just because of stricter gun control. Experts say it has a lot to do with culture. Europe isn’t as fascinated by firearms and automatic weaponry as the United States seems to be. Be that as it may, numbers are still numbers.
There’s another element that I’ve been putting off until now because it almost deserves its own article: self-defense. I can almost hear the rifle-toting, NRA member with several TRUMP bumper stickers on the back of his car: “I have the right to defend myself and my family against any whacko who breaks into my home!”
Of course, you do. You also have the right to pick up the phone and call the police the moment you feel unsafe. That common sense argument being set aside, what are the numbers? How many times has a gun saved a family from a home-invasion scenario? Using numbers from the LA Times, in 2012, 259 justifiable homicides (or homicides that occurred in self-defense in which deadly force was necessary) were recorded amongst 1.2 million other acts of violent crime. 259 out of 1.2 million. We don’t even know if all of those were home-invasion cases. That is the total number.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, between 2003 and 2007, only 9% of home invasions involved serious injury to an occupant. There isn’t even a number or statistic involving firearms. This article provides a more in-depth look at home invasions considering guns and tells us that “gun use as self defense during home invasions is quite rare.” It even goes so far as to define the term “use” – whether or not it means to simply brandish a firearm or actually fire a shot.
The reality of it is that civilians don’t need guns. According to a joint investigation by USA Today Network and Associated Press, a child dies every other day in the U.S. due to gun-related accidents in the home. This could bring forth legislation on safe gun storage, excluding usage and permits to carry altogether.
Guns are bad. That’s a fact. But I’m not going to give you the tired phrase “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” I understand that some have an attachment to firearms like I have an attachment to my mother’s guitar. I understand that they can be heirlooms passed down through generations. I understand they can hold deeper meaning. That’s fine. Using them to kill another human being is not fine. There should not be a family tradition of murder.
59 human beings were tragically ripped from this earth before their time. Some even went out as heroes, protecting others. No one should have to do that. No one should have to throw themselves, quite literally, into the line of fire to protect their loved ones. No one should have to be that kind of brave. All human life is sacred, no matter what race, creed, orientation, nationality, or belief about gun control you hold. Everyone is equal, everyone deserves to live.
So let me ask you again: Do you still think you need a gun?
A Separation of Church and State
I grew up in a Roman Catholic military family. I was sent to Catholic school for my entire life. I studied theology – of the Catholic Church and many other faiths – out of pure interest in my spare time for years. Religion can serve a good purpose in this world, but it does not belong in government.
There’s so much debate about the official separation of church and state, that nobody can really say whether or not it’s unconstitutional for the United States government to be secular. Some say, the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion is all the proof they need. But others point out the fact that “separation of church and state” appear nowhere in the Constitution, but in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church.
There are parts of the Constitution which prohibit “religious tests” as a qualification for holding federal office to prevent the amalgamation of church and state, but the official separation is much more ambiguous.
Though the freedom of religion and a clear separation of church and state seem to go hand in hand, there are things that violate that principle that are apart of everyday American life. The “under God in the Pledge of Allegiance” debate has been raging since it was added in 1954 by Dwight Eisenhower.
Many groups argue that “God” can mean any god – Christian, Jewish, Muslim or otherwise, but the word “God”, capitalized as such, generally refers to the Christian notion of God the Father. It seems a little convenient.
The legality of the separation of church and state isn’t something I can speak very prolifically about. I’m not a law student or a theologian. I don’t believe in God, and I’m rapidly losing faith in the United States government with each passing day. As “President” Trump continues to drive a wedge further and further into the American demographic, it seems religion is just going to be the next controversy on his list.
Whenever I hear Trump talk about the United States being a “nation of Christians”, I almost want to be sick. We are not a nation of Christians. We are a nation of Christians and Jews and Muslims and Catholics and Baptists and Atheists and Taoists and Hindus and Buddhists and Pastafarians.
We are the Great American Melting Pot. Our ancestors came from across the world, bringing not only their customs, but their faiths as well. The point of all this is that America isn’t a nation that fits neatly into a little box. We are diverse in many ways, including religiously.
Something I can expound upon, though, is how lucky I feel to be able to even sit down at a computer and write this article – to be legally allowed to express my opinion on the way our government is run. I don’t have to live in fear of being kidnapped or executed or made to disappear because I published a controversial opinion.
MORE COMING SOON
Alyssa Anderson 