Gun Shit

I've been weaning myself off opinionated rants because, well, who am I to be speaking out on certain things. At times, I wonder if I've earned my perspective, so I've been focusing on doing that. Earning perspective versus rattling off stances.

But today, I feel reactive.

Ya know, for awhile I've been a bit moderate in my thoughts on the gun issue, pro gun-control in part, certainly background checks seem a helpful start. If that's an infringement on rights, well employers, landlords, etc run background checks and no one's barking about their rights there, so it's really not a "rights" issue where background checks are concerned with guns, is it? Nice try. But I've long felt a sense of respectful politeness towards nice people that enjoy hunting, want to have a protective device perhaps, or enjoy marksmanship. So, I was for finding a balance between the 2nd Amendment, sure, and reasonable gun control.

Reading this - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/01/kentucky-5-year-old-gets-rifle-as-gift-and-shoots-2-year-old-sister-dead/ - it's a gut punch. And my thoughts now are: Let's just be done with guns. Let's just be done. Let's. Just be done. This whole thing is like watching someone use heroin because they enjoy it and we're afraid to jump in there because, well, it's his freedom of choice to do so. But if you love someone, you intervene right? There's some sort of intervention to say, you know what, time to stop, you're killing yourself. Substitute America for the junky and swap out drug of choice with guns, and it's the same scenario. Simply saying, fine let the junky die off is a little different now, because, we are all America.

When I was 8 and inspired by the movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, my friends and I fashioned our own bows and arrows in the woods using branches and string from our mom's sewing chest. Then one day a friend accidentally shot his little brother in the eye with an arrow and we all got our bows and arrows taken away from us. That was a good call on our dad's part. Kid's can aggressive with their toys. Adults can get aggressive with their toys too. America's founding fathers are long gone, their advice a little murky now. America needs a living father figure who has the balls to take away privileges when they are abused. Shit, some bad men, or misguided little boys are ruining it for everybody else. So what. Tough shit. The gun industry may have been a bad experiment.

But what really is at the heart of this gun addiction? Is it protection against the government gone tyrannical? Whoa, even these automatic rifles with hefty magazines won't take a down a drone or a tank or a missile. We've got to get little more creative if we want to keep the government in check, so let's not think the 2nd Amendment so crucial.

The thing is, we all want to feel cool, tough under control. Movies instill in us a sense of how to be cool. I'm not really one for censorship, so let's do a little free market exercise and stop buying into movies that pump our heads full of the imagery below:

One, it's not that entertaining. Maybe that's a snotty thing for me to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. It also feeds our subconscious with a weird, inappropriate way to respond when life naturally frustrates us. We see charismatic tough dudes taking matters into their own hands, and it can be a warped inspiration to a loner having a tough time. Or, if a cold blooded plan isn't floating in one's head, they may, though, be intrigued to play with guns. Like the 8 year me and my friends playing with arrows. We didn't really want to shoot each other, but accidents happen, because it's easy to get reckless when playing with toys.

Now, I'm not against violence in movies when portrayed as it is actually is: creepy, horrifying and stressful. The cool dude shoot 'em up also pumps up the arms industry, it's great advertisement, perpetuating a bloated rationalizing clutch on outdated wording, like the 2nd Amendment. So, how to be done with the physical guns themselves, let's be done with the gun culture. If we don't want the government to make this decision for us, then we the people, let's stop buying gun bullshit, and let the free market fade that shit out.

There. That's my gut. My gut opinion. Now, gun lovers. Convince me that my gut is way off. That my concern for the drug epidemic, that is shooting other people in the guts, is off base and tyrannical.

Bad Friday

The Connecticut shooting earlier wrests a gnawing in my gut this evening, as it does with many of you. A truly horrifying occurrence and just imagining what the families and community members affected must be experiencing brings pain. 

I do not believe there are simple solutions. Would tighter gun laws actually prevent something like this? Maybe it would help a little to slow a pissed off person from grabbing a firearm off a shelf. But someone warped enough to commit to a plan? Drug laws exist, but people find a way to get their hands on their desired goods. Someone hell bent on destruction can find a way. Arming teachers? Would a wild west shootout be a safer place for kids? Today's mass murderer killed himself in the end, I hardly think he'd be deterred by the possibility of being shot down. He had something dark to express, some awful impression he wanted to leave on the Earth, and so he did. Coming out unscathed, preserving his own life, doesn't appear to be on his malevolent itinerary. 

Perhaps an armed good Samaritan could have limited the damage and limited lives lost, yes, but damage would most likely still have to occur before another would become fully aware that a danger needed to be snuffed. So it's not as though arming everyone is a full on solution to eradicating violence. Unless we were all trained to have ninja reflexes and catch every bad action at the slightest inception of the act...even Superman couldn't stop every bad thing from happening, and he had laser eyes.

And the Trayvon Martin incident? Gang territories? Could concealed weapons create more travesty as hyper sensitive and paranoid fellows try to prevent travesty?

The incident, its causes, its symptoms, its prognoses are complicated, and knee jerk solutions have their devil's advocates. This may not be a time for I-told-you-so's to be flung from either side of the aisle.

When these shootings occur the question is thrown; "why would anyone do such a thing?" But the perpetrator is explained away as a monster. They may very well be one. But how is a monster made? Cerebral anomaly? Demonic possession? Weeks after James Holmes went on his rampage we all seemed to forget about him. No psychological lessons lifted as to explore a social cure, an antidote to the atrocious. Perhaps until we dig deeper with this question, turning it on it's rhetorical back, we remain open for frightening repetitions. 

It's easy to want to put ourselves on lock down after watching the news, to subconsciously write suspicion on other people's foreheads. We don't know them or their intentions, keep them at bay. But if we take it so far as to shut out and shut in, what cycles are reinforced? Sick stuff floats in the cold shock waves of alienation. There may always be bad people in the world, but at the risk of sounding like a hippie long since laughed away, a little social warmth may slow the poison from circulating, penetrating, infecting, and spreading.

The best course may really be to hold loved ones close, and not stop there, hold our communities close and make a deep mental note not to wait until events like these happen to remind the people around us that we're all in this, cruising through a flawed society, together.

Gunned Down! Bang Dream!

Last night I dreamt that I was on my way from swimming at a strange overheated, overcrowded local pool house. A black SUV drove by a house and fired away! Just ahead of me. Some folks ducked for cover. A woman emerged from a garage bleeding from the head, a bullet nicked her temple. The SUV came around again for another round of shooting. I made the mistake of giving these punks the bird. They started firing away at me! I ran and ducked for cover underneath a pile of leaves in a backyard, but they drove around to the street on the other side which exposed me and they fired at me as I darted away again to hide in a trash can. I got some bullets to the back.

This morning as I was getting ready for the day, groggy as hell because the vivid dream, or nightmare, must have sapped a lot of adrenaline (I'm certain the brain still fires synapses to gear up the adrenal glands while in deep REM sleep), I thought a little bit about these jerks who gunned me down in my subconscious. I thought about if this were to happen in real life...if I was in a moment of "there's no way out of this" I'd be sure to get a good look at their faces. So I would know who to come back and haunt like crazy. Like throw plates at their head and pull their hair and push them while they're using the bathroom. Retribution can be a bitch. I'd be a petty ghost I think.