The Collective Insanity of the USA: Why Gun Control Is Doomed Here

With another gun-fueled school massacre in the body bag, and with the responses including balloons, teddy bears, sympathy for the victims and their families, and calls for mental health vigilance and gun control, let me explain why the latter will never happen in the United States of America.

The nation's natal chart (July 4, 1776, 5:13 p.m., Philadelphia, PA) features a Mars-Neptune square and a Mercury-Pluto opposition. The opposition is separating thanks to the fact that Mercury is Retrograde in Cancer, but this aspect is strengthened because Mercury is in the 8th House (naturally ruled by Pluto). A Mercury-Pluto opposition is a hallmark of paranoid thinking; this aspect would prefer to beat the enemy with slanderous words, but whatever weapon is employed, obliteration is the aim. A Mercury-Pluto opposition also believes that playing fair is for suckers, while hitting below the belt (Pluto) is just plain smart.

The US's Mars-Neptune square is an even more dangerous aspect because it is closely approaching, with Mars in Gemini in the 7th House (manifesting in other people with itchy trigger fingers) and Neptune in Virgo, the sign of its detriment, in the 9th House of legal matters. Whereas Mercury thinks, plots, and communicates, Mars acts.

Any aspect involving Mars and Neptune can have a hard time telling fantasy from reality, and can entertain downright disturbing fantasies. When Mars-Neptune forms a sextile or trine, a powerful imagination and a drive to be creatively productive can result (I have the trine, and am very thankful for it), but the more challenging aspects can manifest in downright craziness. Please don't understand me too quickly; if you happen to have a Mars-Neptune square, opposition, or a conjunction in your natal chart, I am not saying that you should be taken away in a butterfly net. However, if you are truly honest with yourself (something an afflicted Mars-Neptune combo cannot always manage), you will see this is a downright troublesome aspect that often causes great conflict within yourself as well as with the people in your orbit. You might think the insanity is always coming from others, not from yourself, but you just might be mistaken. To repeat my earlier observation about US's Mars: placed in the 7th House of "others," it is always someone else who is the problem. The US simply cannot own (i.e., take responsibility for) its own Mars.

It is the US's Mars-Neptune square that glamorizes (Neptune) firearms (Mars). It is the US's Mars-Neptune square that is responsible for the "we're so exceptional" delusion (more Neptune). It is the US's Mars-Neptune square that also dictates the "pull yourself up (Mars) by your own bootstraps (Neptune)" attitude and therefore denies universal health coverage or anything else that smacks of "socialism."

At the dawn of the recent Uranus-Pluto square, back in December 2012, 20 kids and 6 adults died in Newtown's Sandy Hook school massacre. I figured that if gun control laws did not change then, with all the tears shed about those poor innocent children, nothing would do it. Nearly three years and a buncha massacres later, all we have is a graying, somber-faced president giving a speech about how this routine has gotten old and that we all need to vote smarter and safer. I suppose I can hope that will happen, but with an election year featuring a Saturn-Neptune square, I cannot say that I feel that hopeful. I would love to be proven wrong.

The Lunatic Is in the Hall: Another Manifestation of the Uranus-Pluto Square

Friday, December 14, 2012, 9:40 a.m., Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, in the state that rhymes with "etiquette."

Unless you happened to be in a coma yesterday, or in a media blackout zone, you know the grisly, tragic, senseless details of what happened -- if not why.

Looking at the chart of the kindergarten massacre is giving me very little solace, for a number of reasons. Sometimes one just cannot bring order out of chaos -- sometimes it does not do a damned bit of good. Millions of people went about their mornings with three Capricorn planets -- Pluto, the Moon, and Mars -- transiting the local real-time 12th House, and survived.

However, with 29 degrees of Capricorn is on the Ascendant, the chart's ruler is Saturn in Scorpio in the 9th House, forming a very close, approaching sextile its despositor Pluto in the 12th. I do think that if there ever was the perfect time to discuss gun control laws, that time is now -- as well the fact that increasing numbers of mentally ill individuals (mostly young men, if we can stand to be politically incorrect enough to engage in such profiling) have been allowed to slip through the cracks of our society because mental health in this nation has taken a backseat to just about everything. And it's not just the NRA and the government that must be held accountable. All of us have blood on our hands, whether or not we own guns. It's the "I have mine, screw the rest of you" isolationist attitude that is rewarded as American individualism. It's the glamorization and normalization of violence. Hell, I feel guilty for having become addicted to The Sopranos earlier this year.

Prayers are not enough. Tears are not enough. The hubristic philosophy of America being so exceptional, so strong, and so unified in times of crisis is not enough. This year alone in the United States, there have been far too many incidents of mass violence in places that, like schools, are not recognized as war zones: at the movies, in a shopping mall.

I am not so naive as to believe that if only the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution were amended to make it illegal to buy Glocks, AK-47s, and semi-automatics with mile-long magazines (which our Founding Fathers were unfamiliar with because they had not yet been invented), these weapons would not find their way into the hands of criminals and mentally ill people. There is, after all, a black market for everything. Yet in Australia, after a 1996 massacre in Port Arthur left 35 dead, the inventory of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns was greatly reduced, gun registration was made universal, an improved licensing system was introduced, and gun storage demands improved. This has resulted in a country where innocent people just going about their lives are far less likely to be shot to death. I absolutely believe in self-defense, but the idea of arming kindergarten teachers with guns to protect themselves and their students is just not the answer. Nor do I think that throwing mentally ill people into jail or ignoring them instead of getting them real help solves anything.

Gun control (and neutering the political influence of the previously relatively sane NRA) is far from the only solution. We are in the midst of a Uranus-Pluto square that will last until March 17, 2015. Similar to the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the mid-1960s, and the last Uranus-Pluto square of early 1930s, explosive violence is a crucial issue. How effectively and compassionately a nation takes care of its own people of all ages, all income brackets, all degrees of wellness both physical and mental, is an indicator of how healthy that nation happens to be. Under the stress of a prolonged Uranus-Pluto square, a time of extreme economic uncertainty, societal upheaval, and erratic weather patterns (e.g., Hurricane Sandy), it is clear that more people than ever before are cracking up. The pressure is just too great to keep everyone sane. This is not an excuse; this is a warning that is already coming to pass.

I do not think this is the America its Founding Fathers had in mind. They would indeed be mystified that most of us mourn for a few hours or days at the latest killing rampage, and then go on without pressing for real change. And I am not preaching from some high horse. My own life is in such disarray that my main focus is to fix it, and myself -- not the nation's considerable ills.