Can We Talk?

I'm not going to preach. I just want to ask a few questions. Do you remember that Heston quote, "I'll give you my gun when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands?" It became the NRA slogan--kind of their battle cry. Do you think Heston would have said that if it were his son or daughter lying on the tile floor of Columbine, Sandy Hook, or now in Parkland? Do you think if he had felt the cold hands of one of his children as a result of one of these shooters carrying one of these guns, he would have the same attitude? My question is, what's it going to take for people that choose to dig their heals in on this "Second Amendment" crap to have rational discussions about reasonable gun legislation? Does it have to be their child that get's gunned down? Is there just no room in this gun culture for empathy anymore?

Let me ask you another question; for those folks that point to the obvious mental illness that this shooter and many other shooters have displayed, what should we do about it? You realize that last year, this administration actually rolled back legislation that would prevent severely handicapped sufferers of mental illness from purchasing weapons? So now what? Do we pass more laws addressing mental illness and purchasing weapons? Do we bring back the laws that were repealed? And even those laws wouldn't have prevented this person, or the guy that blasted over 500 people in Vegas from purchasing these weapons. These shooters had no record. They were completely legal to purchase and own weapons that were used for only one purpose--mass destruction.

We should have seen the signs on social media, right? Yeah, a lot kids did but they didn't know what to do with it because they are kids. You've heard the of the invincibility theory in teenagers, right? It's why they engage in risky behavior because they don't think the negative consequences will affect them. They believe they are above it all so when they see things like some other teen going off on social media, they don't get involved because they don't perceive it as a risk nearly as much as the risk of being wrong or just being a patsy that would rat someone else out. So, do we open up social media to law enforcement to have free reigns to check in on us? Do we force parents to somehow monitor all kid's behaviors on Facebook? Do we make it illegal for kids to be able to block their parents? And even so, this guy is 19 years old. He is an adult so who was suppose to be checking in on him? Big brother? Oh yeah, but we don't want to give up any of our freedoms to privacy, right?

I've also heard that we should ramp up the security at our schools. And listen, I agree. I think there are a lot of areas we could be better at to prevent some of this. But don't you think it's sad that we would have to employ guards and metal detectors in EVERY school? What does that say about our culture? And I say EVERY school because we have no idea where the next shooting is going to take place. All we know, with absolute certainty, is that there will be another shooting and please, PLEASE, can we not excuse the behavior by saying something like, "Well, that's just the reality of having our freedoms?" Are you f'n kidding me? That is a quote from someone on Twitter this morning! Do you think other countries with similar freedoms deal with this number of shootings? Look at the numbers before you blast me. Do some research. Eighteen school shooting in the USA this year and it's only February. Compare that to any other industrial country, adjust for population if you want and you will be shocked. (You should be shocked.)

And besides just the morality behind all of this, who's going to pay for it? How many times have you voted in support of school levies? How hard is it to get local home owners to vote to raise their taxes to support schools? And on a federal level, how important was that twenty or thirty extra dollars in your paycheck in the name of a tax cut? Not to mention the billions of dollars being saved by the 1 percenters. We all say we should ramp up security. We should have metal detectors. We should do any number of things to prevent this but then the bill comes and we all get alligator arms. You know what I'm talking about. The check is sitting on the table and we just somehow can't reach it so we wait for the other guy to pick it up. And then we say, "Oh, are you sure? Well, thanks! I'll get the next one."

So here's my final question, how fun would it be to throw hand grenades into a pond and watch the water, mud, weeds, and maybe even fish fly? To have that kind of power would be insane! It would be so fricken cool, right? But we can't because you or I or most Americans cannot purchase live hand grenades. Why? Because of the massive destruction one can wield. In this last shooting, the shooter pulled a fire alarm so that there would be a high density of people in an area where he could just start pulling the trigger, easily firing off 30 rounds or more in seconds and not even really having to aim. He killed 17 people and wounded over a dozen more. Could you imagine what would have happened if he had a hand grenade? But he didn't because a hand grenade isn't legal for the average citizen. He couldn't purchase one so the next best thing...

Keep 'em where they live...