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lyrics

Went in to work first thing this morning
First thing that happens, with no kind of warning
My boss comes up lookin kind of fraught
says he wants to see me today in his office at three o’clock
Am I fired?
I wondered

Well I figure it’s curtains for me, I guess
So I took the liberty of cleanin out my desk
At 3pm I’m outside his door
With a few other folks who work on my floor
We give a knock
The door opens…

Inside there’s this crowd of people huddlin
In front of em’s our boss, he’s explaining something
He says, “…now I don’t want to hear no more of your complaining
We’re going to sit through this active shooter training—
And you’re gonna like it!
Might even learn something—!

He introduces the keynote speaker
This fella dressed in Kevlar from helmet to sneaker
He’s a retired cop and an ex-marine
Says he’s here to tell us about some of what he’s seen
In the line of duty
The field of battle

He says, “I was in Colorado in ‘99
When the call came through from Columbine;
few years later they had me take a look
at what went wrong at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook
that church in Charleston
and the Orlando Night-club…”

He says, “Nowadays you can’t be too prepared
A mass shooting can happen most anywhere:
In churches, synagogues, concert halls,
Schools, playgrounds, dance-clubs, malls
They’re happening wherever there’s people gathering, really
The more the scarier





He says “I wish I could give you a rule of thumb
But the truth is, an active shooter can look like anyone
They can be young, middle-aged, elderly
They can look like you or you or—even me!
Then he grins real big
Pulls out his pistol

He says, “I ain’t your boss, but if it were up to me
You can bet it’d be mandatory
Everybody in here would own a gun
And would be well trained in how to go about using one
Says he’s got one in every room of his house
Keeps a loaded one under his pillow

He said, “In schools now they’re given guns to teachers
In churches they’re giving guns to preachers
If it were up to me and I could get my say
Every red-blooded one of you’d join the NRA
And he pulls out his membership card
And an armload of pamphlets

About here he pauses and says, “Are there any questions?
Comments? Insights? Thoughts? Suggestions?”
There’s something I couldn’t quite understand
So I waited a minute, put up my hand
He says, “You there! Scrawny guy!
Shoot!”

I said “I’m sorry if I find this a bit confusin
but if guns are the problem, then shouldn’t the solution—”
He cuts me off like he’s all offended
Starts reciting the second amendment
Says: who ever said guns was the problem?
Guns don’t kill people—crazy people do!

I asked if he could define his terms a little
The nation’s full of crazy people
I’m no scholar but to me it seems
it’d be harder to kill people if they didn’t have the means
He said now you’re talkin crazy

In America you’re free to buy a gun
Go outside and shoot someone
If you’re wealthy, white and affluent
You can claim you did it in self-defense
You’ll get away with murder,
if you’re a officer—

You don’t have to take em all away
but to make a few more of em illegal might be okay
I mean, does anyone need an automatic weapon
for target practice, deer and rabbit huntin?
Shootin pop bottles off a picket fence?

And maybe we’d not need so much gun protection
If the manufacturers didn’t make it so easy to get em
And maybe there’d be effective legislative solutions
If politicians’d quit taking NRA campaign contributions
Hell, I don’t know
It’s just a thought…

credits

from Unravelled Tales - Volume 2, released July 24, 2021

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Sam Steffen Boise, Idaho

Sam Steffen is a Pennsylvania-bred, Boise-based singer-songwriter whose songs are the torch-wood for a new generation of folk music that has learned from the best stuff in the tradition and aims in spite of everything to keep the human spirit alive and kicking. A versatile musician and skilled finger-picker, Sam is at heart a story-teller, and a prolific one. ... more

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