Another Shooting. Seriously!?

So, another school shooting. Another ten dead. Another ten lost souls to add to the growing list. Meanwhile our Congress people sit on their cushioned seats in their high security building. A million miles away from the battle field that those young students and teachers were forced into. They didn’t enlist. They didn’t volunteer for this fight. They were plunged into it by the machinations of a highly disturbed psychopath.

Is this our new reality? Is this something we simply have to live with now? A teacher who penned an open letter brought up a good point. That the innocent victims must face a madman with a gun because our politicians are too scared to stand up to pro-gun lobbyists.

How many more more lives need to be lost before people get it? Your right to own a gun is NOT more important than someone’s right to live their life. How can anyone know all the facts about what’s going on and still think there’s nothing wrong? How can you bark on about how important your gun is to you when so many people are dying for no reason at all? No one is looking to take your precious guns away. We are just trying to take steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who have mental issues. Any responsible gun owner would agree that safety is incredibly important.

I read a comment from someone in an article that referred to guns as tools. A gun is NOT a tool. A hammer is a tool. A screwdriver is a tool. A drill is a tool. All three of those things can be used to hurt or kill someone but their main function is to build. Guns have only one purpose. They are built only to kill. You don’t drive nails into wood with a gun. You don’t tighten a screw with a gun. The only gun that is a tool is a nail gun. Guns are weapons and the only thing you can do with them is kill. It baffles me that so many people refuse this truth. Is your gun so precious? Is it more important than a human life? If you lose a gun, you can buy another. If you lose your life, that’s it. I’d say this country needs to embrace the fact that life is more valuable than guns. The amendment that grants the right to own a gun, as outdated and misinterpreted as that amendment may be, does not override the right to simply live. We are all afforded the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If your happiness requires a gun, then you should go and seek serious help.

The equations seems so simple to me. So many mass shootings by emotionally disturbed people. So many dead. It comes to a point where we all must say that the right of gun ownership is no longer worth it. The NRA would have you believe a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun, but the reality is that when anyone is holding a loaded gun, they are neither a good guy nor a bad guy. They’re just someone with a loaded gun, capable of killing just the same. Don’t argue that you’re a ‘responsible gun owner’ who objects to new gun legislation. A truly responsible gun owner would know that any common sense precautions that can be taken, should be taken. From the looks of things now, it looks to me like this country is devolving into Pandora, from the Borderlands games. In case you are unfamiliar, Pandora is a lawless, wild west-esque landscape where everyone’s got a gun and survival is a daily struggle. A world where people shoot and kill each other over seemingly nothing. (btw, there was a story about a New Jersey priest who threatened an 8 year old boy with a musket simply because the boy was planning on rooting for a football team that the priest did not like. Let that sink in.) This is the world we’re leaving to our children. How did that happen? For decades I kept hearing people warning us about granting future generations a terrible world, and here it is. It’s happening! How bad does it have to get until people finally start taking this seriously? It won’t be easy to change gears now, but it’ll be worth it down the line. I’m not sure now whether to keep fighting against  this wave of hysteric violence or give in and join the band. Maybe we should all just give up, arm ourselves and accept the fact that we are now living  in an active war zone. I for one, am sick of this. We are the laughing stock of the world. We have the highest rates of gun violence and incarceration in the world. The worst test scores. The highest inequality, both social and financial.  If you want to swaddle yourself up in the flag and keep saying this is the greatest country on Earth, go right ahead. I would think if you’re so proud of this country, you’d want to take action to preserve it and truly make it as wonderful as we claim it to be. Make it a place where it is safe to raise a family. A place where people of diverse backgrounds can live together in peace and happiness. It sounds like some hippy day dream, but when you think about it, is it all that bad? No. It’s not. To paraphrase a song lyric, “What’s so wrong with peace, love and understanding?”


Big Day For The Supreme Court

It’s a great day for someone today. The Supreme Court not only eliminated campaign contribution limits, but they also have declined challenges to gun control laws. I’m starting to think these guys in the robes are the real problem. They are really trying to stack the deck for their own party. I thought they were supposed to be impartial. BTW, I love this quote:

“With the ruling, we continue to chip away at the long entrenched status quo from the grassroots — a status quo that has kept challengers, better ideas, and new entrants to the political arena mostly locked out,” McCutcheon said in a statement. “Ensuring that citizens are able to contribute to multiple candidates or causes who share their views only provides further support to a system in which ‘We the People’ hold the ultimate reins of power.”

He’s actually trying to say the rich and privileged are the victims in this. Are you kidding me!? If your party is losing, maybe it’s because their ideas and policies are out of step with the rest of the nation. Maybe you should attend to that first. And once more, the Supreme Court makes a ruling that completely flies in the face of all sense and justice. I mean, they aren’t even trying to be subtle about it. They’re the ones responsible for this Citizens United nonsense in the first place. I really hate that thing. The name makes it sound noble, but all it does is give corporate America a blank check to buy the government and now they’ve opened that up even wider.

Get ready for the future people. A government that’s up for sale and guns for the mentally unstable. Woo hoo!