Who’s lost, the bullet or us? – 08/30/2023 – Sérgio Rodrigues

Language is dangerous. The first time a child was shot down in some crowded alley of a Brazilian metropolis and we decided to file his death in the “stray bullet” drawer, going on with the day without thinking about it anymore, we lost part of humanity.

It is difficult to say exactly when this inaugural act took place. Stray bullet is an old expression, perhaps as old as firearms. Projectiles have always managed to stray off target, tracing fatal straight lines through chance territory.

Less ancient is the immense probability that such a straight line, unappealable like an indifferent god, intercepts a boy playing soccer in the street or a girl leaning out of her bedroom window and whispers in her ear: it’s over.

Not that something similar couldn’t happen before our metropolises began to swell, throb and rot more than half a century ago.

It could happen, but it was a very rare event while there was this endless war between police and bandits, the border between the two sides often blurred – and a lot of people in between.

Lack of training, expertise, professionalism? Well, even if all shooters were Olympic medalists, there would still be stray bullets. And we haven’t even talked about “stray bullets” which are pure cynicism, a euphemism for slaughter, fired from behind or at point-blank range.

Liar or candid, the preference of that candy for children is strange. Could it be because these are serelepes and insist on meddling in matters of big people, where they were not invited?

Or no, none of that, people of all ages die that way – and are we, addicted to sentimentality, only giving importance to the banal when it befalls the future?

Yes, the stray bullet dehumanizes us. It begins that nothing is lost. She’s super-focused, self-assured. Made to kill, go there and kill. Lost, the bullet?

Even when it makes a mistake and doesn’t kill or injure anyone, and ends up stuck in some random wall or tree trunk, that’s not even the case of saying it got lost. Drilled a hole, didn’t it?

So. Bullet business is opening a hole, even more than killing. Of course, opening a hole is very good when the objective is to kill, but it also serves other purposes. Let’s say the shooter’s intention is to, I don’t know, break down a locked door; bullet works for that too.

And it can happen, of course, that someone wants to break down the door and then kill someone on the other side; happens, nothing stops it, as long as there are enough bullets. Knocking down doors requires a lot of shells, which is why so many experts recommend the automatic pistol.

The bullet that is said to have been lost is very much found, whizzing around as it was designed to do, stretching a thread that can cut destinations like the line of wild kite with cerol. Lost are the others; lost are we.

Lost, very much, is who fired the bullet. It is very rare for a person to be walking down the street and, accidentally bumping into his revolver, see bullets go wild around the world. More common is that he puts his finger on the trigger where the nose points and does whatever God wants – and thus the shooter becomes lost.

Of course, the person the bullet finds is even more lost, but at the end of the shootout, we are lost, all of us, who let the history of so many lives stupidly destroyed be insulted by a cowardly and immoral expression.

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