New Flag Regulations

In recognition of the frequency of mass shootings occurring on a daily basis now, the US Congress is revising the Title IV United States Code regarding the flying of the US flag at half staff. “Mass shootings have become so frequent that the flag has flown at half-staff continuously for nearly 250 days now,” one Congressman said. “We need to adjust our statutory framework to accomodate the modern weaponry anyone can own now. We are past the days of lever action repeaters or the six-shooter. Therefore, we must distinguish between the every day ordinary mass shooting and the special extraordinary mass shooting. Just because a bunch of innocent people are gunned down in broad daylight by mentally deranged people carrying AR-15s doesn’t mean we need to fly the flag at half staff. I think we need to quantify these daily events with extra points for slaughtered children or the involvement of radicalized Muslims. In addition, the percent of women v. men could be a factor and the age of the children. Five dead 8 year olds equals one dead 12 year old. The metrics of this can be worked out - a carnage point scale. And, of course, the religion of the killer{s) should always be considered. So for example, the murders of those at the Planned Parenthood office in Colorado would be considered an ‘ordinary’ mass shooting, whereas the mass shooting in San Bernadino would be an ‘extra-ordinary’ mass shooting because of the terrorism aspect involved.” He went on: “Some may want to include radicalized Christian mass murderers, but there is less support for that. Perhaps we can pro rate two radicalized Christian mass murders will equal one radicalized Muslim mass murder. One other possibility in this revision is to redefine a mass shooting from one where 4 people are injured or killed to one where the threshold is 10 people killed or injured.” He went on to say that the revision may need to include an automatic escalator clause as nearly 2 million assault weapons and billions of rounds of ammunition are now in circulation and are being seen on city streets on a regular basis. “What that means is that in the event that large scale mass shootings like the one in San Bernadino are more or less commonplace next year, which is quite possible, then we need to index the criteria for the half staff flag provision. We would also need to index the slaughter of innocent children in these mass shootings upward as well. Perhaps we’ll require a body count of 20 young children. And index this upward each year so that by the year 2025, 50 dead children would be required. We just can’t be flying the flag at half staff every day. I mean, what would that say about our country? And regular handgun mass shootings should not qualify at all.”