There was a television documentary in the Sixties, in the depth of the Cold War, that examined how nuclear war with the Soviet Union would impact two cities in the United States: New York City and Tucson. New York was an obvious choice, given its prominence, but Tucson? In the 1960s, Tucson was home to a Strategic Air Command (SAC) facility and ringed by an array of 18 Title missiles armed with nuclear warheads, which made it a primary Soviet target. The documentarians’ cold assessment: at least a million people would perish in New York City; nobody in Tucson would survive.
A few days after that documentary, I dove under my desk at school as a siren wailed, a Death Banshee signaling a make-believe nuclear attack. My school was less than ten miles from Tucson’s SAC base and pretty much in the bullseye of the missile ring. I had seen the documentary, yet I played along, diving under my desk with my classmates when the siren wailed, acting like it would make a difference when I understood if I wasn’t incinerated by the fireball I’d be pulverized by the shock wave. We knew a lot about the effects of a nuclear blast back then, as we knew we were helpless pawns in history’s most dangerous chess match. That’s why we visited Jellystone Park.
The Dangerous and Irresponsible Video Game Diversion
Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
– George Jean Nathan
Let’s begin with a word problem: The United States has experienced 1,624 mass shootings in 1,870 days. Over the years, many shootings took place in a school, resulting in 137 deaths since Columbine. Overall, the largest body counts were in Las Vegas (59), Orlando (50), Newtown (28), Sutherland Springs (27), Parkland (17), San Bernardino (16), and Aurora (12). Those are among 35 mass shootings that involved use of an AR-15 style rifle. Many assailants were able to legally acquire their weapons, including the AR-15s, while displaying symptoms of mental unbalance. Choose the most appropriate resolution to the problem:
According to Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem and others, the correct answer is “C.”
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