Little Morsel #2 — “Goodnight AR-15” We’ll pull a novel off a shelf faster than we’ll pull a weapon off the street — and somehow call that safety. Picture it: A fluorescent‑lit school board meeting, folding chairs in neat rows, the smell of burnt coffee and anxiety. A mother clutches a paperback like it’s radioactive. She reads aloud a single sentence — the “offending” passage — her voice trembling with moral urgency. The room nods. The vote is unanimous. The book is gone by Friday.
Meanwhile, on the muted TV in the corner, a news ticker scrolls: Another shooting. Multiple victims. Suspect at large. No one looks up.
The Speed of Outrage
Banning a book is quick work. One complaint. One meeting. One memo. By Monday, the shelf is lighter, the librarian is quieter, and the children are “safer.”
Addressing gun violence? That’s a decades‑long pilgrimage through the desert of “thoughts and prayers,” punctuated by the occasional oasis of a committee hearing that leads nowhere. We can redact a wizard in a week, but regulating a weapon takes generations of funerals.
Safety Theater
In a bold stand against the creeping menace of literacy, the Board has heroically purged our shelves of the most dangerous works ever to threaten young minds. Gone is The Very Hungry Socialist, whose reckless advocacy of cupcake redistribution could topple entire economies. Banished is The Giving Tree Pays Her Taxes, a subversive ode to civic responsibility. Goodnight, AR‑15 has been removed for promoting firearm bedtime neglect, while Charlotte’s Web of Lies was deemed an insidious attempt to radicalize children into believing spiders can read. And of course, If You Give a Mouse a Minimum Wage — a thinly veiled manifesto against the free cheese market — will never again gnaw at the moral fiber of our youth.
The Cultural Reflex
Why is it so easy to ban a book and so hard to touch a gun? Because banning a book is symbolic control. It’s a gesture. It’s a way to say, Look, we’re doing something without actually doing anything.
Regulating weapons is actual control. It’s tangible. It’s messy. It’s political suicide in certain zip codes.
We’ve turned the Second Amendment into the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not infringe. And like all commandments, it’s interpreted selectively — absolute when it suits us, negotiable when it doesn’t.
The False Equivalence Parade
We’ll ban drag queens before we ban high‑capacity magazines. We’ll regulate pronouns before we regulate background checks. We’ll police bathrooms before we police gun shows. We’ll protect children from fictional wizards, mythical beasts, and the occasional queer subplot — but not from the reality that someone can walk into their classroom with a weapon designed for war.
Each misplaced priority is a drumbeat. And the rhythm is always the same: Control the symbol. Ignore the substance.
The Quiet Indictment
This isn’t about banning guns. It’s about the absurdity of what we do ban first. It’s about the moral math that says a paperback is a greater threat to a child than a semi‑automatic.
If we can move this fast to protect children from fiction, imagine what we could do if we tried protecting them from reality.
Coda
The school board meeting ends. The paperback is gone. The mother feels victorious. The librarian feels defeated. The children feel nothing — they weren’t reading that book anyway.
And somewhere, in another fluorescent‑lit room, another meeting is starting. Another book is on trial. Another shelf will be lighter by Friday.
The ticker will keep scrolling. The headlines will keep coming. And we’ll keep calling it safety.
That’s your Little Morsel for the day. Sweet dreams, America — mind the bedtime stories, not the body count.
Next up: Little Morsel #3 – Thou Shalt Not Drag. Follow, share, or scream into the void — just don’t look away.
