I have only this to say tonight – after a day of news about people murdered while praying.
Start where you are
Use what you have Do what you can
–Arthur Ashe
Don’t wait to be asked. Find out where people are needed and go there. Send money to people running for office who believe in equal rights, justice, fairness, and inclusion. Sign up to knock on doors or make phone calls. Go to the march. Make a sign. Hold the sign over your head so people passing in cars will see it.
Do not be afraid. The people who were killed today can’t march, they can’t vote.
With a blast from his pistol, Blackie blew the bartender through the bottles behind him and left him in a bloody heap.
No problem really. What with open carry laws on the books, all he had to do was explain that he thought the bartender, who was Mexican, had been acting in a threatening manner and he had no choice except to blow him to pieces.
And the best part was that the rest of the people in the bar were so scared of him, they’d all back him up.
“Maybe,” thought Blackie, “I should get a shotgun. That would REALLY show’em.”
“Draw, you mangy dog,” snarled Blackie. No one could face down Blackie. He had the fastest gun west of the Pecos and a really bad temper too. And a bit of a drinking problem, truth be told. When he said draw, you could run, but you could not hide.
“Blackie, I was just funnin’ with ya,” he assured him. “No, really, just messin’ around widya. Puleeze, Blackie. I got a wife. A kid. A farm. I’ll never fun witya agin. No way,” he assured him.
Blackie was having a difficult morning. Charbucks had overburned his coffee and his pumpkin spice donut was stale. His horse had bitten him and he had trouble starting the car, too.
He had a really bad headache (too much hooch?) and he was pretty sure he was already late for work. He really needed to shoot someone, but this guy was so lame.
So he shot the bartender.
Then he went to work — selling stocks and bonds. Some days are just rougher than others.
School shootings with multiple victims have become an everyday news story in the United States. It’s become a boiler-plate political issue with second amendment activists led by the NRA holding fast to their rights.
Fighting to keep the right to own guns, even as bullets from assault weapons are taking the toll on the lives of our young people.
Gun activists are seemingly oblivious to the availability of assault weapons through illegal purchases.
Gun rights trump young lives in harm’s way. It’s a deadly serious issue but the solutions offered by some of our elected officials are anything but serious. Do you think Jimmy Stewart’s Senator Jefferson Smith would be okay with arming teachers to shoot it out with offenders in crowded classrooms?
Can you imagine the late Speaker of the House, “Tip” O’Neill, the consummate politician, agreeing to arm the real life “Mr. Peepers” with magnum 44’s to blast invaders as students scatter to avoid gun fire? O’Neil’s reply would minimally question the sanity of his colleagues in the House and the Senate. Sadly, we have no Tip O’Neill to step up with rational solutions to our national nightmare.
Pilgrims, it’s time to deal with the miscreants who surely don’t value human life. Time to answer those whose inner demons enable them to spray bullets with deadly intent into classrooms to assuage their problems.
Time to lock ‘n load but with some creative thing.
SUGGESTION #1–IMPLODING LONG GUNS: Picture the iconic Red Ryder Rifles of our youthful dreams. Long, gleaming barrels with the burnished red stocks, topped by an autographed picture of our 45th President. The sentiment would be clear: “Bad hombres die hard!”. If the school shootist fires this weapon, it’ll blow up in his face. Crisis averted.
If a teacher or defending student fires the weapon, it’s a senseless tragedy — but we must look at the big picture. A Presidential eulogy will ease the pain of more innocent lives lost.
The imploding long guns should be mass-advertised to draw the attention of would be assassins. The rifle’s Presidential sentiment should entice those who are on the edge of committing bloody massacres. They will be nudged by the Commander-In-Chief’s passion for thoughtless, narcissistic behavior. The shooter is sure to take selfies with his presidential embossed rifle and post it on Twitter and Facebook, with pride gleaming in is orange eyeballs.
Gary Busey could do television ads for the imploding long guns. Busey’s colorful style would make the guns an easy sell, especially for those who want to make their mark in the world.
SUGGESTION #2 – IMPLODING TRUMP BOBBLE-HEADS. These terrific replicas of our President have all the verve and sexually traumatic attraction of DJT. They’ll be personally autographed in that familiar, illegible scrawl used to sign faux bills. The bobble-heads have a floating toupee that easily separates from the rest of the bobble-head on implosion. School security would locate the bobble-heads at strategic positions on campus likely to be invaded by would be shooters.
Psychologists believe the invaders will be disoriented by the bobble-heads, pick up the miniature DJTs and blow themselves into a parallel universe occupied by ORANGE-haired robot women, all named “Stormy”.
Roseanne Barr will do all advertising for the Bobble-heads, emphasizing her belief in MacCheesehead’s legacy as emperor of the world.
These are just the top of our R&D campaign for alternatives to avert School Shootings. We’re working on DJT dart boards that will explode when a dart hits the spot. THE spot.
Let’s stand strong against idiotic suggestions to avert school shootings. You can voice your opinion in the mid-term elections that, hopefully, sweep out more of the corrupt and mentally challenged officials who are pigging out at the public trough.
I can no longer count all the mass shootings in this country. We’re still into serious protesting about the February 14, 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and I’m rooting for the kids to finally get done what we have obviously failed to do.
Last November there was another mass shooting in Texas. Which was just weeks after really big mass shooting in Nevada. Which was a mere few weeks after the mass shooting in … Oh, I don’t know.
I don’t remember. Pick a state. Odds are, a mass shooting recently happened there, too.
Given the state of the state and since obviously “thoughts and prayers” don’t seem to be getting the job done, this seemed relevant.
I can look through the posts on Serendipity over the months and years … and instead of becoming dated — because we fixed this or that — or at least moved on to a different issue, we are months and years later dealing with exactly the same stuff. Our “leaders” — such as they are — are spouting the same slogans and platitudes.
So … on the subject of guns …
I’ve been thinking about why this country is so gun crazy. The craziest of the crazies keep saying: “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” This is, of course, ridiculous. Now the right-wing is saying that in the case of the recent Texas shooting, apparently a good guy with a gun did chase the bad guy with a gun. The only thing they left out is he chased the guy AFTERHE KILLED 26 PEOPLE AND WOUNDED A LOT MORE!
Then it hit me. It’s our fault so many people believe this kind of thing. By “our fault,” I mean the fault of those of us who grew up in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Our heroes were cowboys. We grew up watching Westerns in which everybody, men and women alike, had guns strapped to their waists. (Dale Evans was a hell of shot. So was Annie Oakley.)
Everybody had a gun. Good guys. Bad guys. Grandma. But, the world was a lot safer in those westerns than it is now — and not because everyone had a gun. Or two. Or three.
First. The bad guys rarely — if ever — actually hit anybody at whom they shot.
Second. The good guys merely shot the guns out of the bad guys hands. They weren’t trying to kill them.
Third. Grandma just shot people in the ass. Usually with a shotgun filled with rock salt.
Okay, sometimes the good guy would need to be little more extreme, so he’d shoot the bad guy in the shoulder (or “wing em” as we used to say). But it was always just a flesh wound.
BAD GUY: “OW! You shot me in the shoulder!”
GOOD GUY: “Oh stop whining. It’s just a flesh wound.”
BAD BUY: “Well if you shot me between the eyes wouldn’t that technically be a “flesh wound” too?”
GOOD GUY: “Hmm. Never thought of it that way. You know, you’re rather astute for a bad guy.”
BAD GUY: “Thank you.”
Another thing. When the bad guy used up his bullets shooting at the good guy, he’d throwthe gun at him! I never understood this. Seriously. You just fired a few dozen bullets, each traveling at about 1000 feet per second, at a guy a couple of hundred feet away. Youmissed everyshot.
What exactly do you hope to accomplish by throwing the gun at him? Bonk him on the head?
GOOD GUY: “OW! What the hell?! Did you just throw your gun at me!?”
BAD GUY: “Uh, yeah.”
GOOD GUY: “Well that really hurt! Look! I’ve already got a lump! What’s wrong with you?? Why would you do that?”
BAD GUY: “I ran out of bullets.”
GOOD GUY: “And whose fault is that?! If you’re going to a gun fight, come more prepared.”
BAD GUY: “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
At this point, seeing that the bad guy doesn’t have a gun with to shoot anymore … and all the good guy was intending to do was shoot the gun out of his hand, both go home feeling oddly unfulfilled.
I don’t own a gun, but I took a gun safety course. I’ve done some target shooting. So I know guns are REUSABLE! That’s right! All you gotta do is find more bullets for Pete’s sake — and that gun’s back on the job.
FYI, don’t call them bullets. They’re cartridges. The bullet is the lead part you actually fire from the gun. (See? I told you. I took a course.)
One more thing we tend to forget about Westerns. If you went into a town that had a Sheriff, you had to leave your guns at the sheriff’s office. When you left town, you got your guns back. The Sheriff understood the only reason anyone came to town was to go to the saloon. Which, let’s face it, was a brothel with a liquor license. Letting a bunch of horny, drunken cowboys hang out in a confined space with booze, hookers, and guns is not a great idea.
Even if you were in a town where they let you keep your guns, there were rules.
1 – If two bad guys got in a fight, they at least gave everybody a few seconds to move their chairs out of the way, or jump behind the bar.
2 – If a good guy and a bad guy got into a disagreement, they would usually schedule the gunfight for the next day in the middle of town. That way, no one else got shot.
3 – They set it up for high noon.
Why high noon? Probably because it was the lunch hour. Everybody in town could come out to watch. It also made it easier for the combatants. It wasn’t always easy to get time off for a gunfight.
BAD GUY: “Hey boss? Can I get off early today? I have a gunfight at 2 o’clock.”
BAD GUY’S BOSS: “Okay, but I’ll have to dock your pay.”
BAD GUY: (Sighing) “Never mind. I’ll reschedule it for lunchtime.”
Besides, “Gunfight at Two-ish” doesn’t have the gravitas of “High Noon.” So yeah, everybody had guns in old Westerns, but they were more mature about using them. You could argue things were simpler back then. “Things were more black and white,” you say.
To this I reply: “So what? Westerns weren’t more black and white. They were completely black and white.” They didn’t go to color until the mid-sixties.
These days, everything contains infinitely more shades of gray. With a whole lot of color thrown in.
We had a rifle. It was my first husband’s rifle. It took just one bullet at a time since it was really a competition rifle. It wasn’t intended to do anything but hit targets. Paper targets.
It was a very pretty gun, though and my son still has it. He keeps it clean and oiled, but I don’t think it has been loaded in more than 20 year. Maybe more.
One of my last photos developed in the darkroom, the wood-stove in the camp in Maine
We used to take that rifle with us up to Maine where we went camping. We didn’t build the site. It belonged to a friend of my husband’s parents. It was a big, open one room cabin with six beds stacked up on one wall with ladders to get to the upper ones.
There was an old Home Atlantic wood stove that was the absolutely easiest and most effective wood stove I’ve ever used. There was a gas range and gas lamps. No electricity when we were there, though it did arrive later and along with it, came pollution as people emptied their washing machines into the lake. All that grey water ended up killing many of the large mouthed bass and driving away the loons.
But this was before electricity, when everyone lived quietly without loud music and no washing machines. We did have a weather radio that ran on batteries.
One day, it was time to “go hunting.” This meant taking the rifle and a handful of bullets. Nailing a paper plate to a fir-tree, then killing the paper plate. And there we were, killing that plate deader than dead.
Along came the pheasant. He walked slowly up to the tree where we had nailed the target plate. He stood there. And waited.
A long argument ensued. Should we shoot the pheasant? We could eat it, right? Except no one had any idea how to clean a pheasant. Or even pluck one. And what if we shot it, but it didn’t die? Would someone be willing to shoot it again?
No one was willing to shoot it in the first place, much less twice.
My version of caged birds
Another long consultation. After which, we all got together and virtually pushed the stupid pheasant into the woods. He didn’t want to go. For some reason — you’d have to ask the pheasant what he was thinking — he wanted to hang out with us. We were, apparently, more interesting than his usual crowd.
When finally we convinced him to go away and please, don’t come back, we packed up the gun, gave up on targets, picked a few more blueberries and had fresh corn and blueberry pancakes for dinner.
No pheasant that night — or any other night. Just not our thing.
And this is why arming teachers to shoot the guys with assault weapons is such an incredibly stupid idea. I bet none of the teachers could shoot the pheasant either.
From 2 years ago, February 2015. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
I’ve been listening to arguments against gun control since I was a kid. As a child, I didn’t understand why anyone would object to sensible gun regulations.
I mean, Wyatt Earp did it in Tombstone. Should we be doing less in Boston or Austin?
YOU NEED A LICENSE FOR THAT
Virtually every aspect of our lives are regulated.
Without a license, you can’t cut hair or sell insurance. Drive a car. Most places, you need a license to build an extension on your house, change the wiring, remodel your kitchen, or replace your roof. You need a license for your dog. A permit to hold a parade. Or sell booze.
So what’s the big deal? Why are guns different? We control and limit more or less everything, so why are guns off-limit? The answer is obvious. They aren’t, not really. What makes guns off limit isn’t the Constitution. It’s a powerful lobby group that has caused generations of politicians to fear for their congressional seats.
To me, it’s simple and obvious. If you can’t hold a scissors in a barber shop without a license, you should not be allowed to carry a loaded rifle in Walmart without requiring at least as much accountability.
The arguments against sensible gun control are specious. Stupid. If can’t drive drunk, how come you can walk around drunk — with a gun? I would never limit anyone’s right to own a car without good reason. Like bad eyesight. Driving under the influence. Lack of insurance. A flunked driving test. Surely we should require at least this much oversight for guns.
A COMMONSENSE GUN CONTROL PLAN
If you want to own guns, you have to pass a licensing test which makes sure you know how to shoot and care for weapons. You are obligated to keep it out of the wrong hands. Your eyesight should be good enough to hit a target. You need to pass a background check to show you aren’t a felon. Or nuts.
You have to register your guns. All of them. You are obligated to keep track of your guns, to know where each of them is. You may not lend them to anyone who is unlicensed any more than you can loan your car to an unlicensed and/or uninsured driver.
If your gun is lost or stolen, you absolutely must report it to the cops. None of that “Gee, I guess it must have been stolen” crap. You will carry liability insurance on every weapon. Should a weapon registered to you be used in an illegal act — with or without your consent — you are responsible for damages. If you don’t go to jail, you will still pay. As you should.
The nation, as well as individual states and counties can tax your weapons and refuse to license weapons deemed inappropriate for private owners. If you want a weapon deemed unsuitable, you will have to get a different license, not to mention explain why you need it.
Simple, isn’t it?
LICENSE AND REGISTRATION, PLEASE
We license cars because cars are potentially dangerous. Which doesn’t mean we don’t own cars. Obviously we own millions of them. We try to control who drives while maintaining reasonably accurate records of who owns what. We can’t keep every drunk off the road, stop cars from being stolen, or prevent accidents.
We do the best we can. For the most part, the system works. It would work for guns, too. Equally well, equally badly. Imperfect, but a lot better than the nothing we have in place now.
I have yet to hear a coherent argument against such a plan — probably because there isn’t any. Any reasonable person can understand we need to regulate guns. Like everything else.
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