Why Are We So Obsessed With Guns?

Disclaimer (and I hate to have to place this here..but experience):  If you don't have something constructive and respectful to say...keep it to yourself, no one needs snark, rudeness, sarcasm, or jabs... not every statement made on someone's blog, facebook, twitter... is an open invitation for someone to try to be funny.
Thanks.

I've heard all the Second Amendment defenses I care to hear, unlike a lot of people who just scream Second Amendment when they think someone might dare bring up the idea that gun cultures cater to gun violence... I've read the Constitution.

If you want to own a gun to make yourself feel safe... I do not have a problem with it, granted you understand that unless you are trained and know how to use that gun... you could endanger your friends, family, pets, random people...just as much as anyone who might pose some harm that you are protecting yourself against.

I do NOT allow guns in my home, I WILL NOT allow guns in my home and I do NOT care if you think that is a faux pas... it still will not happen.
Does that make me any less American... if you think so, I feel sorry for your perception of what American means.

Recently Georgia passed an insane law that 1. lets you basically carry a gun anywhere you want 2. bars police from asking for gun licenses... yes... BARS POLICE FROM ASKING TO SEE A GUN LICENSE...
that terrifies me.

The Governor has not signed it yet, but I have little hope...

I know quite a few responsible, trained, and logical gun owners...guess what, they don't feel the need to tote their guns everywhere they go.

So... Do you think it makes people feel safe when they see a random person carrying a sidearm?  Let me talk about my recent experience...

While volunteering at an event a patron arrived with a gun on his side, not in a locked holster, but just in a loose one, there were TONS of little children around, including my 15 month old son.  Was I glad to see a citizen was there to protect me from what??? random attacks??  No.  My husband actually thought about letting our son run about, because it was nice out...it was an open space...and he is in the toddler run phase...but when he saw the man with the gun...he decided against it.  He actually went far away and soon after left and came back to pick me up when I was done... mentioning to me that he just didn't feel safe with our little boy running around a man who had a gun out in the open like that...

Have we ever asked ourselves why as a society we are so obsessed with having a gun knowing how many innocent people die at the other end of them daily....   When is it not OK anymore?  When is it appropriate for people to have honest adult discussions without both sides becoming so defensive that NOTHING gets done...

Not when people get massacred in a movie theater....
Not when dozens of little kids get murdered in their elementary school...
guns are too important...how dare we concerned parents speak up when something honestly worries us???

Business Owners (you know the people we praise in America) cannot even have an opinion about keeping guns off their property without catching a complete firestorm.....

"One is Sean Brock, a well-regarded Southern chef with restaurants in South Carolina and Nashville.

He shot his first gun when he was 8, and sleeps beside a 9-millimeter handgun every night. But he doesn’t want guns in his Husk restaurants.

“It’s a bit strange to me that you think you need to carry a gun when you’re having a cheeseburger,” Mr. Brock said."

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I wanted to post the above article on Facebook, but I have relatives and friends who I respect and care about, who would immediately get snarky, rude, and aggressive that I didn't....
God forbid I take that tone with anyone who has an opinion, they would jump my case...
but it is quite alright for people to bully those against gun violence because we dare bring up the idea that perhaps our gun obsession in America has gone a bit too far.  Its awesome to poke fun at us because we truly worry about the influence guns have on people....its stupid for us to worry about the safety of our families...I mean...why not just get a gun??? right???



Do I think we should ban guns?  No.  I have moved away from that utopian concept that perhaps we don't need guns in a modern and advanced society...
Do I think we need to have an honest discussion about safety, regulation, and the responsibility of owning a weapon that when used can easily kill someone?  Yes.

I just do not, for the life of me, understand why it is so hard to be logical, respectful, and empathetic about a subject that causes so many problems....

Because statistics are not used to hold down the gun owners of America...

Guns in the Home and Deaths

More Guns = More Homicide

Additionally...
There are studies that also cite unsupportive evidence, and I am fair... Academic studies are not perfect and experts on both sides of the argument note that guns can help and hinder crime...

Gun Crimes Plummet



but all I want is a movement towards awareness, education, and efforts to remove illegal guns off the streets...
Why is educating a person about the weapon and requiring safety classes or training in order to own a weapon such a bad idea?  Why is making sure you own a gun legally an infringement of your rights?

Slavery, history, the excuse of heritage, and hate....

Reading about slavery every day for this entire semester proves to be a daunting task more often than not.  While the work does not bother me, the amount of reading and writing does not bother me, the fact that there were (and honestly still are) people who believed there are reasons to quantify one human being as less than another does bother me.  The first book my professor assigned this semester (apart from some contextual readings that we read throughout the course) was The Slave Trade by Hugh Thomas.  The book is a massive chronicle of the slave trade, the participants, the victims, and the effects of that trade on all it touched. Reading the horrific and torturous conditions captured slaves endured was hard enough, but in all honesty reading first hand the disregard human beings had for others made the book very difficult to stomach and unfortunately...that characteristic of this course does not end with finishing that book.

Currently I am reading Inhuman Bondage by David Brion Davis and also looking at actual slave codes in various colonial settlements in the 17th century.

Here is one from Virginia:

...if any slave resist his master (or other by his  master's order correcting him) and by the extremity of the coercion could chance to die, that his death shall not be accounted felony, but the master (or that other person &c.) be acquitted from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murder a felony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate.
                                   -From Slavery To Freedom 2011.

Now...lets advance a few centuries after a bloody Civil War ripped the United States apart and ended with the death of slavery but the birth of a long lasting southern grudge against the rest of the world and the creation of a myth that the noble and courageous war was not fought to maintain a man's right to own another human being as property.

For every single southern apologist out there who believes the rebel flag is a heritage symbol and it is dandy and just fine to fly it and celebrate it...please understand my complete disgust with it. 
(note: if you want to wear, display, revel in this symbol, I am not saying you cannot, I am just being honest and explaining that you need to know what you are celebrating)

There are a lot of people who claim that the Civil War, the Confederacy, and the cause of the South was not about slavery.... please allow me to clear that up..

In 1861, Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens delivered what is known as the Cornerstone Address which explained the fundamental differences between the US Constitution and the Confederate Constitution (the document that is the foundation of each government)
He said:

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

I am sorry...but if that is not clear enough... let me go further....
Specifically I refer to Articles I, IV, and VI.... You can read the Constitution here:

The Confederate Constitution

In closing, if you want to wear, fly outside your house, put on your car, or other methods used in order to display the Confederate flag...be my guest.  This is the United States, you have the right to express yourself in any way you wish to do so... but, and this is a BIG BUT... if you do not like the idea that some people assume you are racist because you display the symbol of a racist regime....I am sorry.  Facts are tricky things, but not liking a fact, not liking the history of a subject....this does not make those facts any less true. 

Uggg

Facebook makes me want to punch walls. 

History Pet Peeve of the Night

Alright slave traders, slave ship captains, and slave owners... you really should not assume you know that a person is better off a slave than in a state of poverty...as if you knew what it was like to be either. 

First... you are not poor or hungry and thus you do not understand the plight of the poor.

Second...you were not taken from your home, sold into eternal servitude in a foreign land and forced to endure a long and deadly voyage across the Atlantic in order to become the less than human property of another person...


So... ignorant merchant in Liverpool or equally ignorant slave ship captain... you need to shut your stupid mouth.

Thank you...
Someone almost 300 years in the future. 


 

My Music Obsession Right now!

The Mother We Share - Chvrches

Recover - Chvrches

Lies - Chvrches

Gun - Chvrches

One Example That I Have a Touch of the Crazy.... and how I don't care...

In my youth and honestly...now...when I have time to read the magical genre of books called "fiction" I possessed a complete obsession with Vampires.
pre Twilight people... I am old school.


I had dozens and dozens of vampire novels as a kid...yes, as a kid...I was strange, leave me alone.

If there was a novel that had vampires in it during the 90s, I owned it, I probably read it, and I could critique it on command. 

In my senior year of high school a student had to write a research paper for their English course, I wrote mine on the way in which modern fiction treated the myth of the Vampire in comparison to the earlier versions like Dracula or 19th century poems featuring the creature....

So yea... Before Stephanie Meyer even went to college...I was a child obsessed and that is just OK with me...

And I am not going to hate on Twilight, it would be a lie to say I haven't read them, watched the movies...just reveled in the fact that my chosen little obsession from high school became popular for a bit.... but then I read this (shared by Anne Rice)"

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/celebrity/news/hot-vampires

Ok let me just say it...
This list is Bullshit. 
It is complete bullshit to be clear.

Lestat 13???? WHAT
Louis...the most insipid whining man child of a vampire...above Lestat... oh WHAT ON EARTH???!!!???

And where is Gary Oldman... WHERE IS GARY OLDMAN?????!!!!!!!!!!

I may seem emotional, but you don't know how many times I watched that amazingly beautiful version of Dracula and thought that Gary Oldman WAS Dracula...he was so painfully wonderful that I...to this day...adore him.

Yes, Eric is cool...YES Damon is amazing... but neither of them hold a candle to Lestat or Dracula (Gary Oldman) and this is a fictional vampire list, not just a portrayed in TV or Movie list...

so WHERE IS MARIUS????????   Where is Zillah from Lost Souls????

This list angered my heart.
and Its not the wine talking....

GARY OLDMAN CROSSED OCEANS OF TIME DAMNIT!!!

So...that is my two cents.
And you take a good look at that and you tell all those other vampires to take a hike into a sun filled afternoon of fire water.

 

 

 

 

 

Someone Dying Is NOT Funny

Perhaps I am sensitive (I know I am) or a bit more serious than a lot of people I know and while I enjoy social media, there are some characteristics of the thing that kind of truly bother me and that includes a level of distanced insensitivity that people have because of it.

What is this about?
Why is it that when a celebrity dies, someone eventually thinks its quite alright to make some sort of distasteful joke about it?
Why is it funny that someone suffered, that something bad happened, that family and friends are hurt deeply... I don't get it.
It never fails, someone dies (today it was actor Phillip Seymore Hoffman...who I thought was amazing) and within a few hours I see at least one person make some off color remark and it kind of turns my stomach a bit.

Just because someone is famous doesn't make their death any less significant or more significant...someone died, it is sad and people are sad and its not funny, at all.

So anyway...
Its bothersome to me and I don't think I will ever get used to that trait we've acquired thanks to Social Media.

Someone had a drug problem, a drinking problem, drove too fast, had an accident, got cancer, died of old age...we all have had friends and family that experienced the same and it is never, not once...funny.

I don't think I am too mature for the internet, but I think I am at times a great deal too sensitive.

 

So I Don't Forget

A while back my husband and I bought a GPS for our car, we had used a pretty decent one on our phones for a while, but it would deplete the phone battery quickly and we wanted something a bit more complex for when we traveled.
Adam's parents live in North Florida and we visit often, especially now that we have son and so we used the GPS on the way home to see if there was a quicker route than the regular one we took and...there was...through a town called Mariana, Florida.  We liked the route because the drive was better, there were more places to stop if we needed to, and it was a bit quicker.

But....
Whenever we passed through Mariana there was this one area that was fenced it, it looked as if it were overgrown and the buildings were very old and in disrepair...and to be honest, just creepy looking.  The place looked like a set of a horror movie.  Nowhere were there any markers or signs so I had no clue what it was, just gave me an ick feeling....


So today... as I looked through reddit.... I found this.

Bodies Exhumed in Florida 

I wanted to not forget this article, because I've wondered about this place FOREVER and now I know...
I would really like to know more, but this is really creepy.  

a snapstop posted by Tampa bay news

It Snowed!

I was skeptical, but it finally did snow and now it is time to take the obligatory photos because it does not snow here often.

Snow??? GO GET SOME BREAD DAMNIT!!!!!

Maybe because I've traveled to places that have real snow storms.
Perhaps it is because in Minnesota in February, I once veered off a cleared path and sunk about two feet into snow...
and maybe it is because I look at our forecast beyond the one moment where we are slated to get some amount of the frozen stuff to realize that the morning after it is supposed to get up to 40 degrees...
but you wont be snowed in your house no matter what people.

Let's take it down a notch or two...chill out, and dont make a rush on the bread and milk because you think you will somehow magically transport to the upper north and live in a tundra.
anyway...as I saw on the internet today....
Why does the mention of snow lead to people wanting to make French Toast?