Melt The Guns

For those of you who have been following my project of listening to my music collection from A to Z and writing reflections on each album: no, I am not jumping ahead from D to X.  Instead, inspired by a friend of mine posting this tune in Facebook on the day we learned of yet another  school shooting, this one in my own backyard, so to speak, I felt compelled to post it here–not just the audio, but these lyrics, penned by Andy Partridge of the great XTC (an English pop band) in 1982.  Nineteen-eighty-fucking-two.  It only takes a quick google search to learn that school shootings in the United States did not originate in the late 20th century and into the 21st. We have a long history of them going back all the way to the 18th century. However, I think it’s safe to say that none of these shootings were of the magnitude and the devastation of the ones that we’re now seeing in our time. In 1982 Andy Partridge could not have imagined the depths to which his brethren across the big pond would sink in their efforts to hold on to their personal arsenals despite one devastating loss after another devastating loss. And yet, here’s this tune, so spot-on, so embarrassingly true.

Please read along while you listen.  Neither the audio or the lyric are reproduced here by permission. I’m hoping, that if he ever finds out, Andy Partridge will forgive me.

Melt The Guns

Programmes of violence
As entertainment,
Brings the disease into your room.
We know the germ
Which is man-made in metal
Is really a key to your own tomb.

Prevention is better than cure,
Bad apples affecting the pure,
You’ll gather your senses I’m sure
Then agree to

Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more to fire them.

Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more desire them.

Children will want them,
Mothers supply them,
As long as your killers are heroes.
And all the media
Will fiddle while rome burns,
Acting like modern-time neros.

Prevention is better than cure,
Bad apples affecting the pure,
You’ll gather your senses I’m sure
Then agree to,

Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more to fire them.

Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more desire them.

I’m speaking to the justice league of america.
The u s of a,
Hey you,
Yes you in particular!
When it comes to the judgement day and you’re standing at the gates with your weaponry,
You dare go down on one knee,
Clasp your hands in prayer and start quoting me,
‘cos we say…
Our father we’ve managed to contain the epidemic in one place, now,
Let’s hope they shoot themselves instead of others,
Help to civilize the race now.
We’ve trapped the cause of the plague,
In the land of the free and the home of the brave.
If you listen quietly you can hear them shooting from grave to grave.
You ought to,

Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more to fire them.

Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
Melt the guns,
And never more desire them.

“Melt The Guns” is track #7 on the album English Settlement by XTC. It was written by Partridge, Andy.

Lyrically, this song is not perfect–not very many rock tunes are.  There are places in this lyric that confuse me and bits of it that don’t seem quite right, philosophically. But what I most admire about this indictment is the attention it calls to the way in which guns have been embraced by American culture to the degree that our society lacks all imagination for any other vision. It is a madness so pervasive that we do absolutely nothing after grade schoolers are gunned down in Newtown. I also appreciate the song’s bridge where Partridge points the finger directly at the United States! And in this fascinating move (if I understand it correctly) Andy points the finger right back at the U.K.   –as if somehow England left us not only with our independence, but with our guns and our second amendment–an abused and misused and misunderstood little piece of the constitution if ever there was one.

I have very little to add to this conversation.  It’s all been said so well and so eloquently by countless others.  It’s more personal because I work in a school and because I have a child in school–along with millions of others who must also be tired of this new terror and sick to death that our politicians do nothing about it. It seems to me that any politician who takes money from a gun lobby should be ineligible for office. Vote these fuckers out, please.

I’m way anti-gun.  I’m in favor of strict gun-control. I will never have a gun in my household. I have mixed feelings even about my son’s nerf gun arsenal. No, actually, the feelings aren’t mixed.  I feel bad. But I understand that it’s not just about guns; it’s about a lot of other things too. I’ve read so many articles over the last couple of days about this subject (I should probably stop), that I have difficulty remembering all the sources, but this piece by Mark Manson stands out, not only because he calls attention to much of what we don’t understand about the issue and its causes and effects, but because his conclusion comes down to a level where every individual has some agency and control–and that is about the way we care for one another, the way we are in our communities, the way we love and the way we listen. Empathy. He’s right.  I think about the way I could help. I think about the way I could take better care of my students. And then I remember that I have 178 of them. I have classes of 36 kids in the same room at the same time. One of my principal charges as an educator, a core-value of mine, to KNOW my students, is next to impossible in these conditions. It is the nature of the beast that the students I most need to help are suffering in silence and I will never know it.

Andy Partridge of XTC was correct, too, decades before it would be up in our faces like it is today, but he only described part of the problem, albeit a huge part of the problem.

Do we want to live in a less violent society? Do we want teachers and students to work and learn without constant fear? Do we want to feel and actually be safe in public places, in movie theaters, concert halls, malls, fares and markets? Do we want automatic weapons and assault rifles out of the hands of any civilian, no matter how upstanding, no matter how law-abiding, because we understand that these kinds of weapons have only one real purpose? If we can keep our cities and planes safe from terrorists abroad for 15 years running, can we not do something to keep our citizens safe from the terrorism of gun violence at home? We must act as if these things are not only possible, but absolutely non-negotiable. The eternal optimist: I think it can be done.

I’m out of things to say for now. Here’s some material to consider:

Say No to ‘The New Normal’ — Five Things You Can Do About Gun Violence

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-simple-truth-about-gun-control

Need “ammunition” for an argument against the pro-gun crazies? Look here.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/4-pro-gun-arguments-were-sick-of-hearing-20151001

And then there’s this from The Onion, which strikes me as not even a piece of satire, but an honest statement about our insane belief that we are helpless against terror: http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-51444

And we’ll leave it at this: