Daily Deaths Pre-empted By Sniper

By Michael Moore, AlterNet. Posted October 28, 2002.

The note from the sniper could not have been more clear: "Your children are not safe, anywhere at anytime." How did snipers get to be so smart? Have truer words amidst such madness been spoken before? "Your children are not safe."

The parents of the DC area were in a state of holy terror. The news media were at full throttle: "Keep your children home! Your child could be next! The sniper is everywhere!"

For the first time, there was talk that perhaps election day in the Capital area should be postponed -- or at, the very least, the polls must be manned by armed troops. Fear reigns. The democratic process can wait. Our children are not safe.

A sniper suspect is now in custody -- but yes, our children are still not safe. They have not been safe for some time. Every single day in America, at least eight children (19 years old and younger) are killed by gun violence in the United States. Every single day in America between 30 and 40 people are murdered by someone using a gun. Every single day in America another 40 to 50 people use a gun to kill themselves. None of this has created a panic. These 80+ deaths a day by gunfire do not lead off the evening news. We have, sitting in our homes, a quarter-billion guns. And, yet, not one of those guns would have saved anyone shot by the sniper. The sniper knows -- "Your children are not safe."

But it is not just because of his actions or the actions of those who collaborate each day in his -- and our -- carnage that makes our children unsafe.

Your children are not safe because we live in a country where we value bombs and missiles more than we do textbooks and teachers.

Your children are not safe because we still will not provide them with the most basic of human rights, one that nearly every other country on earth has: that ALL children have a right to free health care should they get sick.

Your children are not safe because we stuff them full of McDonald's and Ritalin and then wonder why they have diabetes at 13 or shoot up the school a week before graduation.

Your children are not safe because they saw us adults allow a man to steal the White House, and then we did nothing about it. They learned that lying and stealing are OK, but "one person, one vote" is a sham.

Your children are not safe because one in six of them lives in poverty, while Bush's friends and business partners make off with loot from the pension funds and the stock market.

Yes, the sniper had it figured out. The children have been targets for some time, and the "snipers" who take their lives, ruin their lives, run loose.

If you want to do something to make our childrens lives a bit safer, one thing you can do is to participate in one of the protests against Bush's war against Iraq (check out my website www.michaelmoore.com for details). Nearly a half-million Iraqi kids have died already in the last decade, thanks to our sanctions which have starved them and our bombs which have killed them.

Now Bush the Sniper has a new message to the Iraqi people: "Your children are not safe, anywhere at anytime."

Death in DC, death from DC. It is all too much, and it all has to stop. If Bush and his NRA buddies hadn't prevented the formation of a national database for ballistics fingerprinting, the police would have been able to trace the sniper's bullets to the actual gun that he was using before he killed so many people. He might have been caught sooner. But no -- we must protect the rights of the sniper to make sure that his constitutionally protected assault weapon is not registered or on any kind of list anywhere, anytime.

I am sick and tired of the children not being safe. I want this insanity ended now. Remove the Republicans and Republican-wannabes on November 5 and tell your children that we are sorry that this is the world we have created for them and that we will now do whatever we can to make it a safer place.

Visit author and director Michael Moore online at MichaelMoore.com.

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