God Is a Bullet

Listen while you read:  Concrete Blonde

There's a green plaid jacket on the back of the chair
It's like a moment frozen over there
Mom and Dad had a lot of big plans for their little man
So proud

Mama's gone crazy 'cause her baby's shot down
By some teenage car chase war out of bounds
It was the wrong place, wrong time, wrong end of a gun

Shoot straight from the hip
Gone forever in a trigger slip
You know, it could have been
It could have been your brother

Shoot straight, shoot to kill
Blame each other, blame yourselves
God is a bullet. Have mercy on us, every one

They're gonna call me sir, they'll all stop picking on me
Well, I'm a high school grad, I'm over five foot three
I'll get a badge and a gun and I'll join the P. D.
They'll see

He didn't have to use the gun they put in his hand
But when the guy came at him, well, he panicked and ran
And it's thirty long years before they give him another chance

And it's sad, sad, sad
John Lennon, Dr. King, Harvey Milk
All for goddamn nothing
God is a bullet. Have mercy on us, every one

~  Johnette Napolitano (for Concrete Blonde)

Concrete Blonde was a Los Angeles band that was active from 1982 until 1995 and then reunited a couple of times after that. "God Is a Bullet," which was a college radio hit, appears on their 1989 album, Free. Johnette Napolitano wrote it in response to the proliferation of street gang warfare in the streets of L. A. In light of the mass murder in Las Vegas this week, it seemed timely to revisit the song.

Killings by gunfire has been a problem in this country since it was founded. Nothing new there. But one cannot escape the reality that, in past decades, you could count the victims of these murders on one hand and still have some fingers left over. Napolitano mentions three of the more famous victims at the end of the song. These days, it seems like a contest to see which crazy person can kill more people and break the record. Part of the reason for this is that handguns have been overshadowed by assault rifles and automatic weapons. As we all know, gun rights activists rely on the Second Amendment to support their objection to gun control. And as gun control advocates tirelessly point out, there were no AK-47s when the Second Amendment was added to our Constitution.

And once again, we are already at an impasse in a conversation that many right-wing politicians claim it's "too soon" to have. Will this renewed argument lead to any changes this time?

Have mercy on us, every one.