How Stupid Are We?

I really didn't  get it. I mean why would you really want some monster gun to hunt a deer. It's like minting a trillion dollar coin and putting it in the US mint. Makes no sense right? Why does the NRA really care if you can tear a fifty five gallon drum in two with your Uzi. But then you start to look at at in a different way. You don't  have to go far. Just put your ear to the ground and listen to the buzz. Wayne LaPierre and the boys want these guns to fight the government. Huh. So you mean that we should let them keep these guns so when the shit goes down they will have the necessary firepower? Exactly. Duh.

So that means  he NRA is a front much like the IRA. They are a front for all these shadowy organization who want to have as much firepower as possible? Which means they are really a seditious organization hiding under the Second Amendment. How conspiratorial. How bizarre. How Jesse Ventura. And yet we are left with this odd situation of a bunch of people who really want to keep military assault weapons. Lets look at our history.

Right to bear arms. Right to revolution. But of course we don't want to plant the seeds of our destruction. We sure didn't let the Japanese or the Germans have guns. Nope. That was against the law. But these "Patriots" are just fine. Sure. Give them as much ammo and guns as they need to you know fight the United States. Land of the free. Land of the extremists. Just watch a couple YouTube videos and you will see what is really going on.

So we are back to where we started. If the stated reason people want to have these assault weapons is to fight the government  then you cant blame the government for being a little nervous about giving them the weapons. I mean how stupid do some people think we are? Looking across the current landscape of three hundred million guns....

Pretty stupid.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

Why Americans Love Downton Abbey

The Masterpiece theatre series Downton Abbey is very popular. It is a show  about a landed family in England at the turn of the century. It is very well done and the plot lines are very intriguing. Still it is not that different from other dramas Masterpiece theatre has aired, but this one seems to have caught on like wildfire. Now why is that? Why do we care about an aristocratic family and their Irish servants? Could it be that we crave something about that old world so lacking from our own now?

Lets face it. American society is pretty crappy about now. We have these horrible shootings that are so heinous we cant even talk about it and yet, yet, we cant do anything about it. We have a government that is split down the middle with calls for revolution, secession, impeachment. Our television and movies export so much violence we suffer PTSD after we walk out of movie theatres. We now have armed guards at our schools and theatres. We have been in a five year recession. We yearn for a simpler world. Not only that, but a world where all is in order.

And Downton Abbey even with it's drama is all about order. The aristocracy is on top and the servants are on the bottom and every one is ok with that. For all our freedoms and our assault on classicism of any type, we have lost something in the process. We have lost any certainty our society can handle its own problems. We have lost the fait that we can provide a decent world for our kids. We are out of control and we know it now. Twenty dead children say it is so.

And so we tune into this bygone world of Lords and Ladies. Of footmen, butlers, and valets. We even envy the Irish servents who know their  place, where they will live, and where they will die. We know nothing of our future or our place in the world anymore. Is it any wonder that a world where honor and tradition are pre-emiment would appeal to us now. If only we could go back in time.

And stay there.

www.billhazelgrove.com

The NRA versus Parents

If you are a parent the NRA is not your friend. You may have an arsenal in your basement. You may have a tank or a bazooka. But the NRA is not your friend. They are your enemy. They do not care about the Second Amendment. They care about money. Your job is to protect your kids. The NRA does not care about your kids. They care about the money. They get money from the gun manufacturers. That is who they care about.

The NRA does not care that your child sits in a classroom.  They don't care that the Assault weapon used in Sandy Hook literally blew away half of the skulls of those children. They don't care they were shot eleven times. They don't care that another person right now might be planning the same thing. They don't care about anything but the guns. They believe it is their right to own a weapon over your right to protect your children. It is that simple.

They do not want to stop assault weapons. They do not care that a gun that can fire a hundred bullets a minute killed twenty small children. They don't care that the gun used in Sandy Hook cut small children in two. They don't care that the gun blew the adults away like manikins thrown against a wall. They don't care that someone else will do it again. They don't care about your kids. They never will. They care about the money.

The NRA is against parents everywhere. They are a danger to our children. They are a danger to society. They are death mongers. They don't care about the parents who lost their kids. They don't care about the children who lost their lives. They don't care about your right to bear arms. They care about money. They care about guns. They are not humans. They certainly are not parents. Parents protect their children

They are the enemy.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

Make Assault Weapons part of a Terrorist Act

Look we all know an assault weapons ban is DOA. Congress will not let it pass. Make that the NRA wont let it pass and we all know they represent the will of the people. So instead of going through that tired exercise that will result in a watered down  bill that will mean nothing, lets cut to the chase and get assault weapons classified as a weapon of terrorism. We already interpret threats and bombs and plans to kill people  as acts of terrorism. Is this really such a leap?

First of all assault weapons are a terrorist dream. They kill in large numbers. Look at Sandy Hook. If killing children is not an act of terrorism then I don't know what is. Of course it is. It goes to who we are. Terrorists know this. And so we had a brutal act of terrorism committed with a brutal weapon of terrorism. An automatic weapon designed to fire so fast that people are not hit with just a few bullets but upwards of ten or eleven. It is a killing machine.

And if terror is our criteria then go back and look at Aurora movie theatre shooting. Listen to the testimony of the officers on the scenes. The one cop driving with blood sloshing around in the back of his car. The first responders to Sandy Hook who will never ever be the same. They have been terrorized as much as anyone who was at Ground Zero. Killing in large numbers is an act of terrorism. It has always been an act of terrorism. So logically you have to make it illegal to own the tools of the trade.

Again. The exercise in congress is futile. We know this. The NRA will block anything. We are not the NRA. The American people deserve to be protected from assault weapons. They deserve to be protected from Terrorists. Ergo. Make the owning and the use of  assault weapons an act of terrorism.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

Include Assault Weapons Under the Terrorist Act

There was a strategy in WWII called island hopping. Basically the Japanese occupied many islands across the Pacific and the United States saw it would take months to take every island on their way to Japan so they decided to just go around the islands. To leave the Japanese in place and go after the main target which was Japan. That is what we have to do now. We have to go around the islands and forget about negotiating with the blood soaked stooges of the NRA and pass an  executive order. That order would include assault weapons under the Terrorist Act.

Assault Weapons are weapons of terror. That is what they were designed for. Killing on the scale these weapons perform on is terrorism. Killing multiple adults is terrorism. Killing children is an  act of terrorism. Killing people in movies theatres is an act of terrorism. Killing people at political events is an act of terrorism. Automatic weapons are the tools of terrorists. They are designed to murder humans as fast as possible. They are the modern terrorists weapons of choice. No different than a bomb or a man with a box cutter.

For what is more of an act of terrorism than killing our children. There can be nothing more that strikes fear and terror into the hearts of Americans. We have outlawed carrying weapons on planes because they are interpreted as possible tools of terrorists. Certainly the only difference for assault weapons is they are not on a plane but are in our schools and theatres our churches our political venues.

So lets side step the islands of the NRA. Four million members don't compare to the three hundred and fifty million other people. We are being governed by a minority that is making  the gun industry rich. The President should declare all assault weapons as tools of terrorism. And we can then go after the real target of getting rid of guns.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

The NRA's Wild West of America

We hoped. Come on we did. We thought the NRA might have a come to Jesus moment and say enough is enough and lets get these assault weapons off the streets. It was a fantasy but it seemed there might be some daylight out of the darkness of the horrific carnage in New Town. But Wayne and the boys quickly dashed our hopes with their heartfelt solution: lock and load. Everyone should now be armed. The teachers. Us. Security Guards. Because the nuts out there are out of hand and we have to stop the bad guys.

Now we come from a history of this in our Western Frontier. Before there was any law in the territories people had to take the law into their own hands. Many people were armed and this bore out the legend of the Wild West where people shot each other at will and everyone had a six shooter on their hip and the sound of DRAW resonated through dusty towns out on the Prairie. The Frontier was declared closed in 1900 and that mythical world faded into movies and dime store novels. But now we have the NRA saying that the Wild West is our society now.

And the best they can offer is a training program for teachers and anyone else who wants to meet someone with an AR15 with an AR 15. Right. Where is Wyatt Earp when you need him? The problem is Wayne does not realize the country has changed, the frontier has closed, and we are no longer cowboys. We are a polymorphous people who live in urban centers primarily and have to get along. We just don't have enough room for everyone to have a six shooter anymore.  Look at Florida and Stand Your Ground. Already two young men are dead under questionable circumstances. But the NRA sees no complicity. They see no need to give up their precious right to have a Semi Automatic rifle. No need to curb any ones right to buy a gun at Walmart, Sportmart, or K Mart.

So it looks like we are going to have to do this without them. Surprise. Surprise. Still, there was a moment. A glimmer of hope that maybe the safety of children might bump aside their precious right to tear apart a fifty five gallon steel drum with an automatic weapon. But that probably belongs to the fantabulists and novelists  who created worlds like the Wild West.

A mythical world now far far away.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

The Great Sorrow

Maybe it is because they were just sitting at their desks. I have gone to teacher parent conferences for my children. You sit at those small desks and lift the top and look at the crayons and the rulers and the scissors and the glue. You look at the clock on the wall so important then .And all those pictures on the walls about writing and reading and arithmetic. And that is what I think about. They were just sitting there and  had no say in their fate. No say at all.

And yet we have politicians who still will not speak. We have people who still wont stand up for them. But we  have the twenty children for all time. So we must do something because that sorrow can overwhelm you if you let it. It is something you cannot quite define. The nausea when you first heard it was children. That it was a high powered assault rifle. That the carnage was unspeakable. And so where do you begin.

And I go back to those small desks. I go back and sit in that desk again and look around the classroom and it does speak of beginnings. That is how I always saw it. Here is where I began. It is where we all began. In a classroom learning the basics of the world. And it was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to be removed from the world. And yet evil came in with unspeakable horror and left us with the great sorrow of twenty dead children.

And in my daughters school they had a song at their Christmas concert for the tragedy. And in the song all the children held a candle. And at the end they put their candles out one by one. All twenty of them until there was only one candle left. Flickering in the darkness.

Then that small candle  flickered.  And died. 

www.billhazelgrove.com