Politics - Student's March

Politics - Student's March

Explain to me what is today, because this is the only thing I can see:

Thousands, thousands and thousands of students who rose up in protest.

Maybe a million. Maybe millions.

Students, teenagers, CHILDREN. Protesting their right to live. To draw attention to the fact that adults have failed them. Adults have failed them again, and again, for 19 years. Since a fateful day in April, 1999, when 13 people died and Americans did nothing.

The pattern repeats itself. Over and over, until Sandy Hook. 20 children are shot and die. Their ages are between 6 and 7.

America does nothing.

Stoneman Douglas literally one month ago. Another 17 students are shot dead, another 17 wounded. In the face of despair, and the agony of what they shared, those same teenagers now are demanding MORE. They are rising up, they are angry and RIGHTLY so.

They have been failed, and they recognize it. You have a country where a dude tried to blow up his shoes and now we all check our shoes before we go on an airplane. But the response to a gun in a school was to arm every teacher.

No one believes it. The NRA has become an organization lobby for the profit of itself and to maintain its stranglehold grip on power by any means necessary.

Including sacrificing children.

Politics - Gun Control

Politics - Gun Control

The opposition I see all the time to the term 'gun control' is split into two categories. There is the irrational, which is not worth engaging in because it has no recourse based on reason. And there is the rationale that sits in a position whereby the imagination has not yet seen a path forward on gun control. Whether wilful, or ignorant, or both, is not what I am interested in expanding upon here.

Instead, here is a straightforward proposal about what reasonable gun control could look like, based on a handful of other examples in other nations.

Politics - Stoneman Douglas - On Evil

Politics - Stoneman Douglas - On Evil

Consider this: Right now, someone is doing a calculation on how much money it costs for the lobbying and marketing campaign to ensure that yesterday’s tragedy happens again. It happens so often, they might already have a spreadsheet for it. They plug in what state, elementary, junior high, senior high, or post-sec, how many children died, how many teachers, was the shooter black, or muslim, or white? They put in the guns the shooter was carrying, the put in whether the shooter killed themselves at the end. The put in a bunch of variables from the long list of shooting history

That spreadsheet kicks them back a number in the millions. That's the dollar value they spend on ads about 2nd amendment rights, on 'protect yourself and your family', on botnets and forum posters that 'the Democrats are coming for your guns'. On lobbying politicians to push their agenda.

That's the kind of evil we're up against.

Michael Moore - Don't Look Away

Michael Moore - Don't Look Away

Michael Moore posted in his blog today, the link and article are below.  It's hard to put into words what exactly you feel about it, a couple months after the fact.  It's still visceral, and in many cases you want to stop reading, you feel compelled to stop for your own sanity's sake.  But you have to keep reading, because it is difficult, and troubling, and horrifying.  But it bears witnessing.

Hopefully the day he talks about is coming soon.

Musings - On Gun Ownership

Musings - On Gun Ownership

What if, everyone in the world who was willing to pull a trigger had to take a shot in the chest.  No kevlar, no shielding, no anything.  What if anyone and everyone, who was willing to kill someone else had to take a hit first, had to know how it feels like, really how it feels like, before they could ever commit to the same action against others.  Had to watch themselves bleed, had to deal with the pain, with the lasting damage, with the time it takes to get better, or the chance of not getting better.  All before they could fire their own weapon.