As the U.S. reels from the deadliest shooting in American History and everyone seems to weighing in. The Media has jumped in with both feet to make this the story of the year.
As if this doesn't happen over and over.
I stop and think about another massacre that everyone all but ignore until it was an epidemic and now that it's not, we went back to ignoring as if the thousands had not died. Ironically, the victims of that massacre were also gay- at least, initially.
There was a famous quote used, a book written around that quote and even a movie made.
To what am I refering?
"And the band played on..."
But my argument stands (the grammar nazis can bite my butt- I am going to keep using but to start a sentence! It's a Rant, get over it...I think Stephen King said that).
If I had a gun and bullets, it makes shooting people and things so much easier.
And it is the ease that scares me.
It's so easy to get a gun.
buy bullets.
and then go out and take all the frustration and anger and hurt and resentment and fears out on a group of people or persons who have gone out of their way to hurt or torment you in some way.
or just some random target or targets because you can't find another solution to your problems other than taking the easy way out.
I know someone will say it's not the easy way out.
I agree. It's the easier option.
Surviving, overcoming, living with the horror that your life has become is much much harder.
It's a given, as a seemingly average white middle age man who lives with his mother, I am painfully aware that I fit the stereotype of the psychopath, rapist, abuser, mass shooter profile.
I also have a history of being abused.
I could easily generate a long list of people who have treated me poorly, made me a social outcast, gone out of their way to harass me, hurt me, ruin my prospects with any number of women, destroy my reputation, make me into a self loathing overweight monster filled with such rage and despair that taking up a gun seems like the only way to show the world who I truly am.
It's a nice lie to tell yourself while looking in the mirror before you go out and do the unthinkable evil that is done in this country on a daily basis.
Kill someone.
No One is Immune.
We all have this potential to be that shooter.
We all have the same potential to stop that shooter.
We all can stop the potential for any and all shooters.
What is the answer?
I suspect it's the same answer that changed my life. It's the reason that a man who has so many negative attributes is also the same man who to those who actually bothered to get to know him realize that he is, in fact, a good man.
It's love.
It's why I am a Christian.
I do it for love.
It why I am a liberal, a social democrat, American and South African, a geek and a dork and an erstwhile nerd, a best friend, a good son, uncle, cousin, would be significant other.
I have potential (as we all do)
I have love.
It is that simple.
Find love and by that I mean the real stuff.
not some hot chemical human reaction to bliss but the stuff of godliness.
I found it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from Galilee.
You might find it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from India or Spain or Central America.
You will probably find it in the way your mother looks at you (assuming your mother found it as well).
The real stuff comes from the Creator of life (the universe and everything).
For me, it is in the Bible (along with all the other stuff, but it's the point of the whole book)
For me, it set me free, with it I can be who I want to be, not a product of my culture or past or present, or upbringing or religion or lack of such.
With love all things are possible.
with guns, nothing but death awaits.
If I were to dream a dream, I would wish for a world free from the need for such a tool as the gun.
It is a tool, there is no denying it.
So, instead of preaching on- which part of me wants to do, because that part believes if I can just make you see my point then surely you will join me in a weapon free world; I will, instead offer this olive branch.
Come up with a reason to love that is not as important as a reason to own a gun.
If you do, it is time for you to look in the mirror and ask yourself the hard questions.
You probably know them a lot better than me.
and that is the rant according to Mike.
As if this doesn't happen over and over.
I stop and think about another massacre that everyone all but ignore until it was an epidemic and now that it's not, we went back to ignoring as if the thousands had not died. Ironically, the victims of that massacre were also gay- at least, initially.
There was a famous quote used, a book written around that quote and even a movie made.
To what am I refering?
"And the band played on..."
- from whence: And the band played on is an expression used to describe the deliberate masking or downplaying of an impending calamity by authorities.
- sometimes is used in reference to the band playing on while the Titanic sank.
- In 1987, a journalist by the name of Randy Shilts would use it for a book that chronicled the discovery (creation), development and subsequent epidemic of the AIDS virus.
- My mother read the book, I tried to read it, but I could not finish it as the disease took away an uncle that meant the world to me, even as the hatred for the disease was only displaced by the new found hatred for Gays who many believed were the cause of it.
- In 1993, the book was made into a movie.
- The impact of the book was profound and helped push the ignorance around AIDS out, things got better, but in the end we still have the disease and the ignorance that scared everyone into believing all kinds of wild ideas about the disease returned to pretend we beat the disease and now it's safe to go back to unprotected sex again and so on.
This blog post is not about the book or the movie or AIDS, it's about the title of the book in reference to the problem that we all face. A few people, will recognize the problem(s) at hand while just about everyone else (or so it seems sometimes) will do anything and everything to deny or pretend that this problem(s) does not exist and the minority who believe in such a thing is delusional or communists (socialists) who need to be silenced or shamed into silence.
And the band played on.
We have another shooting. 49 gay men and women (and I suspect straight/pansexual/transexual/etc) people were gunned down by a man filled with anger/hatred and violence. Who found that the easiest way to express his feelings/intentions/beliefs/purpose was with the problem that everyone will debate until no one really wants to talk about it anymore and we will rail against each other until we are hoarse and our own fears and hatreds will destroy the rhetoric that really matters here and we (as a whole) will ask the band to play on until someone else goes on a shooting rampage and kills a lot of people at once.
The problem is guns.
Many of us like them (lots of reasons). Hell, I like them.
But people do horrible, terrible things with them.
Almost everyone who handles one will do what should be unthinkable with one. I know what you are going to say, but hear me out.
You may not shoot another human being with it. You might never shoot anything with it but a target.
You might never even shoot it at all (you would be almost unique for that) but you are more than likely to fantasize shooting someone or something alive with it. I know what you are going to say, and you are right, it's just a fantasy.
But let me ask you this.
When you went to the shooting range or out to the woods (I hope it was in the neighborhood or next to my house) to shoot your gun (that is any firearm) to shoot that target you didn't imagine it was a human target. This means you with the human silhouette target, Frank.
Bottom line, a firearm is designed to do one thing: KILL.
It's not designed to paint pictures or make music. Yes, it can do these things. A fork is designed to help you eat food but you can, with enough effort kill someone with it, but it wasn't designed to kill someone. There is also the argument that people kill and guns don't. The answer is you are right it takes a person to use the gun to kill someone...unless you drop it and it goes off and kills your best friend or wife or child. Gun accidents alone account for a great many deaths in the US each year.
I could present my proof, I could spend pages and hours pouring over the evidence only to have some self righteous gun owner or troll debunk it with a single phrase.
The Second Bloody Amendment.
A right (not a law) originally written to prevent the government of 200+ years ago from abusing its citizens as the British were commonly believed to do. The amendment is dated and retranslated over and over again so that it pretty much means that anyone who wants to claim anything about guns or WMDs has a right to own one and strut around preening with it.
Today marks yet another defeat of reason against this madness as the same group of Republicans kill yet one more attempt to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. My own state's elected cronies are headliners on that one.
One Day, though, the tide will turn.
I have to hope it does, because believing it is too hard.
I have a dream where this country will stop believing in the lies of a handful of angry white men and start believing in the the hands of all its citizens regardless of gender, sex preference, race, economic availability, political philosophy. On that day, we all will finally become Americans, not just the privileged easily bought out white male agenda driven loud mouths that are running this country into the ground.
It is so hard not to give "Them" a face and believe that they are a real threat.
We don't have to ban guns.
We should ban guns.
But we don't have to, just to find a place where proliferation is not a problem.
The law should read that you can only own as many guns as you can carry while outrunning a raging bull in your underwear.
Sure, some ingenuitive gun owners will hook extra weapons to their underwear, but since the majority of them are overweight lazy deer hunter types, they will be hauling ass butt naked.
It's a nice metaphor that makes me smile.
This is just a rant.
I hoard firearms in Fallout 4. I can be caught carrying at least 8 at any one time in this videogame.
In case you are unfamiliar with Fallout, it's a post apocalyptic video game where pretty much everyone and everything is hell bent on killing you. Like a liberal journalist at a Drumpf Rally.
But it's just a game.
I don't own a gun.
I do own a Daisy single cock Buck model BB Rifle. Which I don't use much anymore, it turns out to be useless against skunks.
I suspect it wasn't designed to kill much more than wood bees.
I can hit the broadside of my barn with it.
I have been tempted to point it at people. this scares me, because I can recognize the lure of power a firearm presents.
The main reason I don't own a firearm is that I have Clinical Depression and there is a history of suicide in my family.
I like my ugly mug in it's mostly original shape, in other words.
I call this a responsible decision, for myself and others.
Yes, by the argument of so many detractors who will read my blog (or at least the headline) and then call me names and write me off as another liberal kook, I say this.
I could probably do myself in with a spoon. I might even be able to attack someone with one of the knives or swords I own or the machete I have for chopping undergrowth or with the chainsaw- assuming I can ever get it going.
It's true.
Chainsaw deaths in this country are equal to the number of grown men crying in the backyards with raw hands, cramped biceps, screaming incoherently at their fucking tools for not working. or stalling mid cut
Oh the Humanity!I could present my proof, I could spend pages and hours pouring over the evidence only to have some self righteous gun owner or troll debunk it with a single phrase.
The Second Bloody Amendment.
A right (not a law) originally written to prevent the government of 200+ years ago from abusing its citizens as the British were commonly believed to do. The amendment is dated and retranslated over and over again so that it pretty much means that anyone who wants to claim anything about guns or WMDs has a right to own one and strut around preening with it.
Today marks yet another defeat of reason against this madness as the same group of Republicans kill yet one more attempt to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. My own state's elected cronies are headliners on that one.
One Day, though, the tide will turn.
I have to hope it does, because believing it is too hard.
I have a dream where this country will stop believing in the lies of a handful of angry white men and start believing in the the hands of all its citizens regardless of gender, sex preference, race, economic availability, political philosophy. On that day, we all will finally become Americans, not just the privileged easily bought out white male agenda driven loud mouths that are running this country into the ground.
It is so hard not to give "Them" a face and believe that they are a real threat.
We don't have to ban guns.
We should ban guns.
But we don't have to, just to find a place where proliferation is not a problem.
The law should read that you can only own as many guns as you can carry while outrunning a raging bull in your underwear.
Sure, some ingenuitive gun owners will hook extra weapons to their underwear, but since the majority of them are overweight lazy deer hunter types, they will be hauling ass butt naked.
It's a nice metaphor that makes me smile.
This is just a rant.
I hoard firearms in Fallout 4. I can be caught carrying at least 8 at any one time in this videogame.
In case you are unfamiliar with Fallout, it's a post apocalyptic video game where pretty much everyone and everything is hell bent on killing you. Like a liberal journalist at a Drumpf Rally.
But it's just a game.
I don't own a gun.
I do own a Daisy single cock Buck model BB Rifle. Which I don't use much anymore, it turns out to be useless against skunks.
I suspect it wasn't designed to kill much more than wood bees.
I can hit the broadside of my barn with it.
I have been tempted to point it at people. this scares me, because I can recognize the lure of power a firearm presents.
The main reason I don't own a firearm is that I have Clinical Depression and there is a history of suicide in my family.
I like my ugly mug in it's mostly original shape, in other words.
I call this a responsible decision, for myself and others.
Yes, by the argument of so many detractors who will read my blog (or at least the headline) and then call me names and write me off as another liberal kook, I say this.
I could probably do myself in with a spoon. I might even be able to attack someone with one of the knives or swords I own or the machete I have for chopping undergrowth or with the chainsaw- assuming I can ever get it going.
It's true.
Chainsaw deaths in this country are equal to the number of grown men crying in the backyards with raw hands, cramped biceps, screaming incoherently at their fucking tools for not working. or stalling mid cut
But my argument stands (the grammar nazis can bite my butt- I am going to keep using but to start a sentence! It's a Rant, get over it...I think Stephen King said that).
If I had a gun and bullets, it makes shooting people and things so much easier.
And it is the ease that scares me.
It's so easy to get a gun.
buy bullets.
and then go out and take all the frustration and anger and hurt and resentment and fears out on a group of people or persons who have gone out of their way to hurt or torment you in some way.
or just some random target or targets because you can't find another solution to your problems other than taking the easy way out.
I know someone will say it's not the easy way out.
I agree. It's the easier option.
Surviving, overcoming, living with the horror that your life has become is much much harder.
It's a given, as a seemingly average white middle age man who lives with his mother, I am painfully aware that I fit the stereotype of the psychopath, rapist, abuser, mass shooter profile.
I also have a history of being abused.
I could easily generate a long list of people who have treated me poorly, made me a social outcast, gone out of their way to harass me, hurt me, ruin my prospects with any number of women, destroy my reputation, make me into a self loathing overweight monster filled with such rage and despair that taking up a gun seems like the only way to show the world who I truly am.
It's a nice lie to tell yourself while looking in the mirror before you go out and do the unthinkable evil that is done in this country on a daily basis.
Kill someone.
No One is Immune.
We all have this potential to be that shooter.
We all have the same potential to stop that shooter.
We all can stop the potential for any and all shooters.
What is the answer?
I suspect it's the same answer that changed my life. It's the reason that a man who has so many negative attributes is also the same man who to those who actually bothered to get to know him realize that he is, in fact, a good man.
It's love.
It's why I am a Christian.
I do it for love.
It why I am a liberal, a social democrat, American and South African, a geek and a dork and an erstwhile nerd, a best friend, a good son, uncle, cousin, would be significant other.
I have potential (as we all do)
I have love.
It is that simple.
Find love and by that I mean the real stuff.
not some hot chemical human reaction to bliss but the stuff of godliness.
I found it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from Galilee.
You might find it in the words and deeds of a lowly man from India or Spain or Central America.
You will probably find it in the way your mother looks at you (assuming your mother found it as well).
The real stuff comes from the Creator of life (the universe and everything).
For me, it is in the Bible (along with all the other stuff, but it's the point of the whole book)
For me, it set me free, with it I can be who I want to be, not a product of my culture or past or present, or upbringing or religion or lack of such.
With love all things are possible.
with guns, nothing but death awaits.
If I were to dream a dream, I would wish for a world free from the need for such a tool as the gun.
It is a tool, there is no denying it.
So, instead of preaching on- which part of me wants to do, because that part believes if I can just make you see my point then surely you will join me in a weapon free world; I will, instead offer this olive branch.
Come up with a reason to love that is not as important as a reason to own a gun.
If you do, it is time for you to look in the mirror and ask yourself the hard questions.
You probably know them a lot better than me.
and that is the rant according to Mike.
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