It happened again. We wrote about one massacre, oh, way back in 2017. The spikes in thoughts and prayers that follow every suicide and murder materialized again, predictably, but not one of those fervently uttered entreaties did squat for the families and friends of the deceased. And especially nothing for the ones with the bullet holes in their heads and torsos, buried and cremated now, cut off from the futures they once dreamed about, cut off from their next breath.

The well-regulated militia marching around to save American society from home-grown tyrants (as they should) didn’t show up to stop the shootings in Uvalde or Buffalo, or in the cities that hosted any of the other murder sprees that come to mind. Perhaps because to the extent there is a well-regulated militia (there isn’t), it is neither regulated nor regulated well. So, three strikes against all those freedom keepers and their good intentions.

We thought that perhaps in the stead of the armed crowd Big Tech would step in with a thoughtfully-designed, focus-group-approved product to halt mass (and not so mass) slaughter.

Alas, no. They remain fixated on introducing a new color for our next mobile phone, on building an electric universe to which we can escape, on building a rocket on which we (select few) can escape, on “investing” in digital “art”[i].

With no one else stepping up and politicians (bless them) fresh out of ideas, we spent the last twenty minutes brainstorming solutions and offer these, all guaranteed to work and 100% free of charge.

• Give every school-aged child a stick of dynamite and a lighter.
• Ban the manufacture of bullets, then build a wall so no illegal bullets get in.
• Ban the manufacture of new guns. There are more than enough, and besides have you ever seen a gun wear out? Then ask Gates or Musk to donate the funds to buy back the rest. The first one goes for a million and each one thereafter declines in price. Key point: don’t tell anyone which position they slotted in until all the buybacks are done.
• Put as many restrictions on driving as there are on gun ownership. Chances any wannabe murderers will get run over before they can start shooting.
• Improve childhood education. They should know better than to go to school.
• Take the hundred million allocated for school fortification and dole it out to aspiring murders in exchange for staying home.
• Offer every angry young man who is about to go on a shooting spree a slot on the Masked Singer as trade for all their weapons. They want attention, don’t they?
• Insist more girls and women get involved in the growing field of rectifying grievances with guns.
• Assign an armed security guard to every citizen 24-7.
• Create local versions of the Roman Coliseum and every Friday invite all the murderers in waiting to shoot at each other. It will be like Festivus.
• Swap prisoners to the schools and school children to the prisons.
• Give everyone a gun. Or, as the NRA insists, ten. But each one must have two barrels: one that fires forward, and one that simultaneously fires backward.

Hold onto your thanks, and save your praise for those who crave it.

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[i] Just to be clear: 99% of NFTs are not art. They are decorations. Art can be a decoration, too; but a decoration cannot be art.