Tragedy and gun control

I love freedom. I love the freedom to get online and buy cheese made in Australia, or fruits that only grow in Indonesia. I hate that I can no longer get cigarettes that taste like chocolate or vanilla.

I love freedom.

Children being guided from their
school in Sandy Hook, CT, after
a shooting that killed 21 kids

But I hate what people are willing to do with their freedom. I want cheese and flavored cigarettes. But some people want to lash out their rage, and they lash it out on children. Whether those children are the direct victims, such as during the recent tragedy in Sandy Hook, CT, or the sons and daughters of the victims, as happened earlier the same week with a shooting at a shopping mall in Oregon, children are the victims.

Outside the Aurora theater shooting

One of the victims of the shooting in Oregon had a step-son, 13, who suggested that the reason she was shopping that day was for a gift for him, a gift he had requested. Is it right that a 13 year-old be burdened with that guilt? What about the survivors of the school shooting? Survivor's guilt is extremely common in mass shootings.

As a mother of two, you can't convince me that the kids near to each of these victims isn't riddled with guilt. My son, a cancer, cries if he even THINKS that something he did MIGHT result in someone's death or harm.

Now the debate is, already, turning towards gun control.

I have a very middle-of-the-road view of gun control. Living in rural Nebraska, guns are a way of life around here. It isn't "do you own a gun?" It's "how many guns do you have?"

We hunt a lot out here. I like the idea of DH and the kids learning to hunt. I learned to hunt and I regret not having more experience with that. I like the independence of bringing home food.

We also believe in protecting our own. Our friends, family, home and land - these things can and will be defended with a bullet, if necessary. But this can be done with the same rifle or shotgun used to hunt large game.

However, I don't agree much with handguns or assault rifles. I can understand handguns to an extent - in the city, you don't often defend your home and body with a four or five foot long rifle- but anything that has "automatic" or "semi-automatic" in the description is a little much for me. Essentially, hunting animals, good; killing people, bad.

The problem I have is this: the more that guns are available, the greater the need to defend oneself from guns. So then you have to have a gun, also. But that means that someone out there might perceive your gun as the threat and get one of their own. It's a psychological arms race, right here in America.

Some of the more recent shooters

Now, I have heard, and I understand, the idea of the 2nd Amendment and a militia. But a militia is a trained and organized group. Random people walking around with multiple high-powered handguns is not a militia, and never will be. And let me be perfectly clear, I do not believe in gun control that eliminates ALL gun ownership. Nor do I believe that any such law is even on the radar for any governmental agent or agency in the United States.

That said, this whole problem comes down to two things.

One, each person who owns or deals with guns needs to take responsibility for themselves. If you go out and "rid the world" of someone who you don't like, you have justified your actions to yourself, but not everyone may agree with you. Even worse is when someone else's justification results in the death of someone close to you, or someone like you, racially or religiously, physically or philosophically.

Take responsibility for what you do with the freedoms that you have, because freedoms can be abused, and no one believes that they are the ones abusing them.

Two, we need to work more towards solving the problem of violence that this country has. I don't mean locking more people up. That only results in more violent violence.

We need to start addressing the economic, social, and even psychological problems that lead to violence. The people who have committed these crimes have a reason for it. That reason may be dramatic or illogical to you or me, but they are valid to the perpetrator, and that's why people are dead.

Love is the cure

Some of the causes of violent crimes, just off the top of my Psychology-minor head, include: mental illness or depression, poverty, a feeling of hopelessness or bullying, a feeling of frustration or revenge, unfulfilled sense of entitlement, fear of the way the world is changing. There are so many more.

These are the problems that need fixing. The isolation that so many of us feel, the pressure to be more and more successful in the face of rising inequality, the hopelessness that many of us have in trying to better ourselves with a rising wage gap and higher costs of living and education.

Every little bit helps. Even a smile could be the difference in someone's life, and you would probably never even know it.



Related links:
Mother Jones - A Guide to Mass Shootings in America
A Timeline Of Mass Shootings In The US Since Columbine
Eleven facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States

The Dark Side of Parenting: Get Your Own Damn Cookies!

This morning, I was watching the news on the fallout of the Casey Anthony acquittal on the Today Show. One of the guest experts talked about how this trial touched so many because it was the "dark side" of parenting. Naturally, that caught my attention.

The dark side of parenting, in my definition, is the nasty-mean thoughts and SMALL actions that happen when parents get to the end of their rope. Like saying mean things that you would never otherwise say. Like slamming the door to the kids' bedroom so you don't have to keep looking at their whiny little faces or hearing their whiny little voices. Like plotting to duct tape them upside-down in their closets until they've gotten through puberty.

Then I thought about it. (Hey, I'm an air sign... thinking is what I do.)

There can be quite a fine line between plotting a duct tape incarceration and actually doing it. A little loss of control can have huge consequences.

Yeah, she's just the picture of
a little demon child...

But is that what really happened here? Did this little girl drive her mother out of control to the point of killing?

Maybe. But that isn't what I ever had a problem with.

Crap happens. People lose control. Accidents can lead to death and worse. That is the dark side of parenting. Well, ONE of the dark sides of parenting.

No, not THAT mama grizzly. Ack!

The other dark side of parenting is the mama grizzly. That part of you that envisions ripping a pedophile limb from limb because they glanced at your child. The part of you that would cross over into whatever afterlife there is to keep your child healthy. The part of you that would rip the throat out of anyone who threatens the life and well-being of your child. The part of you that would destroy death himself should he approach too soon.

Yeah, he got too close to my kid...
You got a problem with that?

Those are what I consider the dark side of a relatively healthy parent. Dirty dancing with other chicks while your child lies dead in the woods where you put her? Not so much.

Now, I do agree with the jury in one sense. There wasn't enough solid evidence to show that it was anything other than an accidental death. That is my opinion on the legal issue.

"Don't judge me...I heard a wake
is like, a big party!"

As for the moral issue? I say give her five years... of a slow torturous death, just for being a selfish bitch and going out partying when she should have been acknowledging the death of her child.

That's not any "dark side of parenting," that is just plain fucked up.