A tiger crept into an elementary school earlier this week, with summer vacation two days away, and fatally mauled 19 precious children and two heroic teachers.
It was not the worst such attack of schoolchildren in the Land of Freedom, if morgue-cold numbers are the criteria, for 10 years earlier a single man-eating tiger savagely killed 20 first-grade students in their classroom along with six adults.
Nor was it a rare tiger attack. Just two weeks ago a tiger killed 10 shoppers at a supermarket and over the past decade there have been more heinous, horrific, heartbreaking mass maulings by tigers than can be imagined.
Once again, again and again, words cannot describe the heartbreak…
This year, not yet Memorial Day, there have already been more than 200 mass maulings by tigers. Moreover, in 2020, the most recent year for which full data is available, 45,222 people in the Land of Freedom died from tiger injuries – half of them killed by their very own tiger.
“Thoughts and prayers,” half of the lawmakers offer after each mass mauling.
“Let’s pass some common-sense laws about tigers,” the other half pleads. “Like having all tiger owners undergo background checks to make sure they are fit to own a deadly beast. And why do civilians need mutant 15-headed man-eating tigers with claws that can pierce metal that were bred by the military for war?”
“No, no, no,” the first lawmakers demand, their stubborn faces turning blood red. “Owning a cat, even mutant tigers, is an inalienable right written on The Original Parchment and its Second Rule of All Rules is holy as if it were etched on Moses’ tablets of stone. Any law that limits tigers in any way is a slippery slope that will lead to the extermination of all tigers.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” the counterpart lawmakers cry out until they are blue in the face. “There are 400 million tigers in our Land of Freedom, more than one beast for each of our 300 million citizens. Rounding up all those tigers would be more impossible than ridding our land of alcohol, and surely you remember how that worked out. You still have your wine and whiskey, don’t you? And a bottle of Jack Daniels never killed 20 schoolchildren in the blink of an eye.”
“Tigers don’t kill people either – tiger owners do,” sneer the red-faced do-nothing lawmakers who line their pockets with gold from tiger breeders who themselves get filthy rich from selling as many striped man-eaters as possible.
“You love tigers more than you love people,” the blue-faced try-something lawmakers accuse.
“It’s the price of freedom,” insist the red-faced lawmakers. “More laws aren’t the answer. Cages won’t save lives. More tigers, not fewer, that’s the answer. Ban books, not tigers. The only thing that can stop a bad tiger is a good tiger. Thoughts and prayers, that’s all we can do.”
And so the arguments go, round and round like a spinning record album with the stylus stuck in one groove, the red-faced lawmakers thwarting all efforts by the blue-faced lawmakers even though the majority of tiger owners and non-owners alike want restrictions to slow the carnage.
Meanwhile the rest of the world’s lands, despite having mental illnesses and violent video games, suffer a tiny fraction of killings by tigers compared to the Land of Freedom. They roll their eyes with pity because they see what the Land of Freedom is blind to:
Owning tigers in unlimited numbers, including mutant multi-headed military-style man-eaters and deadly ghost tigers, does not keep people safe and free. In truth, in the Land of Freedom the people no longer own the tigers – the tigers own them.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
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