Category Archives: Gun Control

American culture, American People., Fiscal Cliff, Gun Control, Hollywood, Sandy Hook Elementary, Society, United States

The Unused Power of the People


Much has been made of the now-averted “fiscal” cliff, but truthfully, we’ve gone off the selfish cliff.
From almost forgetting the horror of Sandy Hook to our resignation that it’s OK to raise taxes and spending as long as it’s not my taxes, we just don’t seem to care unless we are affected directly.

What will it take for us as a people to act? We have so much more power standing collectively than fighting as individuals.

Should someone come into your home and just grab whatever money you have in your wallet or purse each night? Would that do it? Would you feel violated? Outraged?
I know several friends and family members that are completely fine with the argument that the country’s wealthiest earners should pay more in income and payroll taxes.
“I don’t make over $400,000 a year,” said someone to me recently. “Why should it bother me? And those people should pay more.”
It should bother you, me and everyone because even though it’s not you this time, it will be next time. They’re coming for more money. And they start with the rich and work their way down the line.
See, the conversation and discussion is all wrong – this isn’t just about one economic group in this nation, it’s about all income levels. Whether you pay $150 in taxes or $1.5 million, where is every dollar going and why?
What we should be asking – no, demanding – from our elected officials is this: why is there a need to raise taxes on anyone? Why do you need more of our money? We can’t trust you with what you get from us now!
The package that was passed earlier this week to avert said “fiscal cliff” will add $4 billion in debt. How is that even possible? How do you raise taxes and over time still add that much money to the deficit? What’s worse is the deal made by Congress earlier this week was seen as a compromise – of course it was. Because they created this mess, let’s all congratulate them for averting disaster and putting off the debt ceiling conversation for three months.
Well done, guys and gals.
What if we all agreed to not vote for anyone, any incumbent, who contributes to raising the debt? We might get 100 new elected officials every year for the next four years, but we’d eventually find people who do what we want them to, right? Because as crazy as it sounds, that’s what our elected officials in Congress are there for – to do the will of the people. They represent us.
Except they don’t. They represent themselves and re-elections. And as for the “us”, well, we can’t get out of our own way and get our stuff together in terms of values, guiding principles and general decorum.  
There was an article posted late Monday night about how all the staffers and members of Congress had to order out and get pizza and wings on New Year’s Eve and how depressing that was.
I laughed because I thought it was the punchline of a joke. That’s not sad. Millions of Americans eat like that every New Year’s Eve – and not by choice. Millions of Americans work late into the night on a holiday because they get triple pay for overtime. We need more because now we give more than ever before in our history.
Meanwhile, we spend less time with family, with friends, with spouses.
This vacuum is why Facebook and Twitter exist. They keep us connected to the world when we’re so wrapped up in ours. Except they dehumanize our relationships, take the emotion out and make everything instant and matter of fact.
What do we get when we spend less time with our children? Or better yet, what do they not get from us? How about our spouses? Are marriages stronger? Relationships of any kind, when less time and energy and effort go into them?
And we ask ourselves how we ended up with the massacre of elementary school students? Shootings in a movie theater? High divorce rates? Rising debt? Unmotivated masses, shrinking more each day into their own bubbles.
Wake up! We are the problem. We don’t take the time to fix it. We talk about it on Facebook and Twitter or at our holiday parties and then we move on. Next issue. On to my personal problems, right?
Wake up! Is it going to take your child’s elementary school being unspeakably shaken by tragedy before something is actually done to protect them? I mean, I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, but I’m not sure why anyone needs to be able to buy a Rambo-style machine gun and as much ammo as they can fit in their car trunk.
But Congress can’t talk about that for a few more weeks because they’re “fixing” the “fiscal cliff” they created by mismanaging our money to begin with. So what makes us think these geniuses can fix something like coming up with a logical, modernized second amendment that while protecting the rights of citizens to arm themselves, won’t allow for them to pretend they are preparing for Red Dawn, Part II?
That debate that everyone said we needed to have on gun control lasted in the media for all of 10 days – right up until Christmas and Kim Kardashian announcing she was becoming Kayne West’s baby momma.
We’re running out of time, my friends. What our ancestors and American decendants worked so hard to build in terms of values is being short-sold by our own selfishness, obsession with the material and overall failure to act. We expect others to clean up these messes, but we don’t take action – or build sustained action – ourselves.
There is great power in the people – us, the collective whole that make up our society. If we can set aside these specific arguments, say on faith, tax brackets, marriages, for a brief moment and look at the bigger picture to unite under, we’ll have a greater success at reclaiming and reestablishing our guiding principles that sustain our first world way of life and the freedoms we so take for granted.
Is this the kind of world we want to live in or leave our children with?
Case in point: a recent pollsuggests a majority of Americans don’t feel it’s necessary for Congress to force Hollywood to produce less violence in their products. Yet when every fabric of our vast knowledge suggests that violence begets violence, especially when exposed to the young, why wouldn’t we want that? What if we absolutely forbade anyone under the age of 18 from seeing an R-rated movie, even with a parent?
Our collective selfish nature says we don’t want them to take away what we, as adults, enjoy so much. Do we? Because since Sandy Hook, I can’t watch a violent movie, kudos to you who can. It’s difficult to separate reality from art now. As I said then, everything is different – and it has to be. The very essence and core of our lives is at stake.
What are we doing? What’s it going to take? What will be our breaking point?
Because we are already, quite rapidly, defining our downfall.
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Connecticut, Gun Control, Guns, Josh Brent, Newtown, NRA, Sandy Hook Elementary, Violence

If Not Now, When?


Over the past few days, since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newport, Connecticut left 20 young, innocent children dead, I’ve been at a loss.
I’ve lost sleep, tears and motivation. A loss of words, comfort and understanding.
But unlike those poor families, I didn’t lose a child. My thoughts and fears are nothing compared to theirs.
I got to go home and hold my young ones tighter than normal for longer than normal, for reasons they didn’t understand. I got to see my six-year-old daughter wear her Christmas dress all weekend. I heard my three oldest children laughing on Sunday while they built a pillow fort while their little red-headed brother napped. I saw their tiny little innocent faces covered in icing at a cookie party we hosted late Sunday afternoon. I got to tuck them in, sing to them and hear them say, “I love you, Daddy – good night!”
There is a deep sense of remorse tied to something akin to survivors guilt over the fact that somewhere in Connecticut, 20 families, and other families of the adults who died heroically trying to save them, are needlessly burying their loved ones a week before Christmas.
Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote about gun control and said that perhaps while we need more of it, the root problem lies within.
It’s still true, but it’s changed. I was wrong. We need to change all of it.
From a lifetime family of hunters, ancestry through Cherokee Indians and all the pride that comes from feeding your family, even if that means I can no longer hunt, then fine.
Comfort cannot be found for the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters of those dead. I know this because I’m uncomfortable. I slip in and out of focus, my mind drifting to those poor children and the horror their families have been facing.
My wife and I quietly mentioned how we didn’t want our children to go to school today. We did it, because we have to believe it can’t happen here.
But it can happen anywhere. Now without connection, reason or motive.
We watched our children play from afar this weekend and got emotional just thinking about it. That could have been them. School is supposed to be a safe environment. Movie theaters, religious buildings. But over the past year, an attack on one becomes a psychological attack on all.
We’re all affected and effected by this. Certainly not even close to the extent of the families and townspeople of Newtown. But the dark clouds of fear have settled over our nation yet again.
There is nothing to be learned by this horrific tragedy, but much to be done. As I heard on Sunday, the simple and uncomfortable truth is that it all starts with us. We can remove guns and knives and anything else, but not the seeds of evil. I still believe that. We can discuss how mental illness must be addressed better, how parenting and isolation and video games all play a role.
But if we’re really going to not tolerate this anymore, then it’s going to take a concentrated effort from all Americans to simply be better today that you were yesterday, better tomorrow than you were today.
Gun control? Fine. Just don’t stop there, please. Because this is not about just getting the guns. We have to get out the darkness in our own hearts, the sinister things we fail to see and remove them.
Nothing can ever be the same again. It doesn’t mean that high schoolers and college students being murdered is less significant, it simply means we’re reaching our ultimate breaking point when six year olds in kindergarten are the victims of these acts.
No one should ever have to be murdered in this fashion, or at all, but if this doesn’t motivate us all under the common ground and cause of real change, what will? If not now, when?
We must change. No more road rage, middle fingers and sense of entitlement. No longer believing that we’re more valuable or important than anyone else. No more texting and playing on phones when we’re surrounded by friends and family.
We must be present in our lives, in our families and children’s lives. We must engage more socially than disengage and retreat. We build community and a sense of good and right and wrong that way.
What we don’t do is glorify these things. We must stop. And that goes for what we saw on CBS Sunday afternoon, for example. To take in the NFL this weekend was to try and escape. But there it was, another reminder of our lackadaisical attitude toward violence, justice, right and wrong. There, on the sideline of the Dallas Cowboys stood Josh Brent, who just last weekend drove drunk, crashed his vehicle and killed his teammate in the process.
It’s appalling the Cowboys did that as an organization. It’s even worse the NFL allowed it. It’s grotesque that CBS showed it.
This change I speak of, cannot be accomplished with simply more laws. It must begin within.
For our family, this process began long before last Friday. We decided some time ago to control more what we can. From the people that we surround ourselves with, to what we consume on TV, radio and in discussion. More Beatles songs, George Harrison singing “My Sweet Lord” and “What is Life” and saying prayers for people outside our family. More giving away to others less fortunate, less consumption of “stuff”. More discussion of what we’re thankful for all year, not just for a day in November.
Garbage in, garbage out, right? It’s time we just say no more garbage, period.
In times like these, we weep for those involved in such an unthinkable tragedy before turning our attention to where to lay blame. This process has begun in earnest with the massacre in Newtown, too.
All the buzzwords are there. Guns. Gun control. Lobbyists. The NRA. The NRAs money and it’s affect in the political realm. Parenting. Mental illness. Isolation. Broken home. Lack of prayer in school. Video games. Violence. Security.
It’s not one particular thing – it’s the collective whole, guns included. Hollywood, video games, families. All of it.
A difficult truth is that good and evil are allowed to exist in our world. It’s our choice how and when we engage. We can point fingers at laws or the lack of them, violence and it’s prevalence in our society, the media, and so many other things. But in the end, what will we have really changed? If we haven’t changed ourselves and our families, then we’re still failing.
You see, all we do is blame. As I’ve said before, we are a selfish society. It’s time to own up to our part. We need to own what little we can control in a world so obviously out of control: us.
We are still the collective problem. That was the case two weeks ago when I wrote about guns and gun control and remains the case today.
But we’ve got to do more.
So I look in the mirror and ask what this man can do to improve a little each and every day to the benefit of those around me.
An internal focus would do us some good. How can we be better people, spouses, parents, children, working staff and members of society today than we were yesterday? Because the moral depravity we encounter daily without intervention is essentially just watching our society decay. We must parent better. We must be kinder. We must learn to shut off the things that are contributing to our moral depravity that so deeply affect and effect our psyches. And this doesn’t have to even be in affiliation with religion.
The worst thing we can do is get morally outraged for a week or two and then go back to the way things were, which is generally what we do. We can repost comments on social networks and say we agree on this, disagree on that and say that things have to change, but it means nothing if we aren’t the change initiators.
How can we be better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today?
It’s the only way real change can occur and ensure that our tomorrow is not worse than our yesterday. Because everyone lost something  in our collective yesterday. We can’t watch in horror as six-year-olds are slaughtered and not make actual change. I can’t continue to look at my four children and fear for what they might have to face.
We must change. All of it.
Let’s get back our tomorrow. Let’s start with today, because it begins with us.
If not now, when?
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Bob Costas, Gun Control, Jason Whitlock, Jovan Belcher

Under the Gun


Following the horrific shootings in Aurora, Colorado this past summer, when a man who believed he was the Joker busted into a movie theater during The Dark Knight Rises and killed 12 people while injuring 59 others, there was an open call for more gun control.
Then last weekend, after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend, then himself, NBC sports anchor Bob Costas spoke out on needing more gun control, following respected sportswriter Jason Whitlock’s column regarding the need for more restrictions and getting the guns off the street.
I respect these points of view and their merit. And I don’t entirely disagree with any of the statements. 

But they don’t go deep enough. 

We don’t go deep enough. We’re not a very reflective bunch.
The truth is, as we’ve heard before, is that guns don’t kill people – people kill people.
Guns may be a tool, the same as a knife, or bare hands. People are often horrified because of the damage guns inflict. They are loud. It is messy. It’s sudden and powerful. But the end result of shooting a gun is the same as using a bow and arrow, a knife, or one’s own hands.
So we do ourselves a great disservice when we break down these tragedies to simply espousing the need for more gun control, more regulation and restrictions. The Second Amendment isn’t the problem. It may be something that needs addressed, but it is not the problem.
People are the problem.
To be fair, what we very may well need is more analysis on people before they are allowed to purchase and possess handguns, automatic weapons and shotguns. But again, even that is short sighted. The simple fact is that people can and will fake their way through these tests. We may call a murderer crazy, but they aren’t necessarily all stupid. Masking and hiding tendencies is generally how we get to the point of the interview with a neighbor where so-and-so “was the last person they would suspect” of doing something like this.
Did you know that Americans are 40 percent more likely to be killed by guns as citizens of other countries like England and Canada? 40 percent! The easy response is that’s because of all the readily available handguns. Get rid of the guns altogether and you fix the problem. 
No. No. No. You can do that all you want and all you are doing is duct taping the problem. You can take away the weapon or the tool, but you cannot remove the intent and the penchant for violence.
This is America’s biggest fault – we’re too rapid with our responses. It’s a fast-food society, too quick to determine actual and effective cause and solution. Massive deficit? Tax the rich! People shooting each other? Take away the guns! 
We don’t research, we don’t think and process information or theorize. We’re too busy to critically think through our issues. Band-aid solutions are abound. We want the best outcome with the fastest response. In the absence of genuine, well-thought solutions, any old idea will do.
How often at work are you in meetings? I know a lot of people that spend most of their day meeting with co-workers about action items and to do lists and then go on to the next meeting. In a variety of different industries. And there is less time to do the actual work, to think, to devise creative solutions. 
We’ve removed thinking and pontificating from our daily lives. And we apply this logic – or lack thereof – to other problems in our culture all the time.
And that is exactly what we’re doing when we speak so vaguely about guns and gun control. We turn to the violent nature of guns instead of examining the violent nature of people. 
It’s easy to blame the weapon – it cannot defend itself or rationalize an argument. You cannot arrest a gun, or put it on trial or declare it insane. You cannot interview it, you cannot assess its logic. It’s a static tool – it’s used. It doesn’t think, have feeling, emotion, practice a religion or process outcomes. But it can be blamed because it’s there.
Simply put, I urge us to look deeper if we want to know why we’re a more murderous culture and society than the rest of this planet.
Not everyone is prepared, or sane, or cares – about the outcome when they use guns. They are carrying a weapon to defend themselves, so they think and say, and often turn to the device when most angry, challenged or upset.
This isn’t a new thing for Americans. And while this could be a racial or class issue, it’s really an American issue to a far greater extent than other places in the world.
Remember the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr? We fought a revolution with muskets when we didn’t like the King’s taxes. We didn’t use guns to throw tea into the Boston Harbor – an act of violence. But that was OK, because it was justified, right?
We turned to violence in 1776. Less than a hundred years later, we got violent with each other over a Northern industrial economy and a Southern farming economy. Brother versus brother. We turned guns on each other because we were offended and threatened. 
We still do so today.
We are a violent society and, frankly, always have been. We can justify which actions require the use of weapons, automatic rifles and handguns. We can openly question why someone needs a machine gun, a glock or an AK-47 if they aren’t serving in the military and stationed somewhere. That’s all fine. But we will always fail to get to the root of the problem.
The problem is us. We are the ones who pull the trigger. We are the ones who turn to guns and violence in fits of rage and anger.
We’re also not strict enough with the laws currently in place. It’s illegal for convicted felons to carry handguns, yet many still find a way to get them. Why? Guns weren’t used on 9/11, violence and terror and fear were.
As I wrote earlier this week, to discuss these topics after the fact is too late. When someone’s already pulled the trigger or has a gun to their head is the wrong time to debate whether or not the gun control laws are strong enough. 
The presence of a gun increases chances of violence that already exists in the first place, but doesn’t remove the chance altogether. But that still misses the larger point: the existence of violence is more detrimental than the existence of the gun.
Many argue that guns exacerbate the situation; they remove time for thought, regret, reaction. There can be no denying that. The rate of deaths, drive-bys, domestic violence ending in fatality would probably lower if we removed guns completely – but you’re not digging up the weed by the root. You’re not fixing it by masking it. Domestic violence exists with or without handguns. Lack of a gun may prevent death, but the violence is still there.
You see, this has to be a societal change. Is America ready for that? Are we ready for that discussion?
Because we can’t have massive gun control reform and then have 10 million people sit down and enjoy an MMA fight, The Sopranos, The Wire or buy the latest edition of Hitman. We cannot celebrate the values depicted in The Patriot, then argue that guns shouldn’t be in our midst. It’s counter-intuitive.
On Sunday, Costas said, “If Jovan Belcher didn’t posses a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
We simply do not know that to be true. We can assume that, since the statistics show it would (obviously) greatly enhance their chances of being alive. But that’s just not deep enough analysis. It doesn’t remove the intent to do harm to one another.
Certainly, the guns made it quicker, deadlier, more violent and definitive. So let’s just band-aid it, wrap a bow around it and proclaim that guns and gun control are the crux of the issue.
No – guns are part of the issue. Guns may be big part of the problem because of their impersonal nature, availability and quick finality.
But they are not the problem.
We are.
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