People kill people, not guns?

If anything happens I love you! (2020)
Animated Short Film

This 11-minutes short film won itself an Academy Award in the Best Short Animated film category. In a concise graphic representation, the storytellers managed to capture the essence of emotions surrounding the loss of a young child. This emotional turmoil can make or break a family unit. The gamut of blaming, what-ifs, guilt and fault finding missions would eventually lead to a brick wall among the living but definitely not bring back the dead.

The death of a member of a family who has not lived his full potential, however, may invoke a myriad of responses. They say an addition to the family, especially the first-born, unites families. The sight of a newborn will make everyone all jello but strong enough to cement whatever minor frictions that may have been present in day-to-day dealings. It may make or break the bonds between the close relatives, especially parents, in the case of a young child.

This short film with no dialogue but a single song, 1950 by King Princess, tells the pain that a couple of parents endure when their pre-teen is killed in a random school shooting. The couple gradually grows apart with overpowering grief. All the while, their genuine emotions, feeling for each other and worries about each other are depicted by their shadows. When the door of their daughter's room, which they refuse to open all this while, suddenly opens, both parents enter the room to the sound of their daughter's favourite song. They reminisce about all the joyful times that they had together through a series of flashbacks. Finally, they shed their tears and reached a resolution.

The film highlights the problem of random shootings in the American public space, especially schools. Over the years, the interval between these types of shooting is getting shorter, and the types of weapons used are getting complex. It is no more pistols or hunting rifles. Instead, we are talking about assault rifles and semi-automatics. Pretty soon, the general public may be walking around with bazookas as it is their right to bear arms to protect themselves as permitted by the second amendment of the American Constitution. 

So many Presidents have come and gone promising to put a stop to all this gun violence. Even though many countries, the UK and Australia included, are testimony that this is indeed possible with very tight regulation of weapons ownership, such a situation will never happen in the US. The gun lobbying groups hold the purse string to the political parties. Being the central capital of weapon provider for the whole world to fight each other to maintain American interest and sustain despotic regimes worldwide, it will bad for business to put an all right ban on guns. 

Anti guns will continue doing their thing.  Aggrieved parties will pour their heartfelt disappointments, and the world will light an occasional candle at shooting sights, but the stock owners of Smith & Wesson and Colt's Defence will continue run laughing all the way to the bank. And they justify their rights by saying, "People kill people, not guns!" But, what they do not understand is that people just get a bruised face, dented ego or at most a broken rib with physical might. A gun has only one mission, to cause severe damage to the victim with minimal effort of its user.

All the loving feelings wither over the years. A child may make or break, not only by what turns out of them but in wanting to give the best for them. Differing parenting approaches and domineering-type of parenting accentuates drift. You ask yourself, "Is this the same woman that I married? "You coax yourself telling, "No, these are just battle wounds traversing the journey of life!"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.