It's been ages since I've written a blog post regarding religion or politics. I've purposely done that because those issues tend to ruffle too many feathers and quite frankly, I haven't felt like reading a lot of other people's bitching and moaning lately. What a selfish wench I am! Although we all like to believe we're 100% correct regarding our political ideology and spiritual beliefs, I'm intelligent enough to know that rarely is one side completely right about anything. The exception to that rule is the dogma surrounding Mildredism. Mildred, after all, is right about everything!
Today is the day I'm going to break my dry spell and jump back into the insanity of public opinion. One issue I'd like to weigh in on is the increased gun violence in the United States. Without stepping on anyone's toes or Second Amendment rights, I really believe something concrete needs to be done to curb the violence. Too many innocent people are being slaughtered daily. I listen closely to all the rhetoric surrounding this hotbed issue, but all I really hear appears to be are confirmations of an irrational need to be heavily armed and a quite twisted relationship between weapons and their owners. Instead of people focusing on a very real problem and having a rational discussion about it so a consensus can be reached, all I hear are people wailing about their guns being taken away from them. To that I say BOO FUCKING HOO!
Perhaps when the Constitution was first written a need to be armed was a truly legitimate need, but it's an entirely different world now than it was then. At that time people had to hunt to provide food to feed their families. Veganism wasn't the going rage back then. People were meat and potato connoisseurs not bean sprout and tofu gurus. Back then guns were a person's only defense in the savage environment they were settling. Today fewer people hunt to feed their families and those who do hunt, do it more for sport than for dietary need. Those who chose to hunt and it is a choice because meat is readily available for sale at any store near where they live certainly can do so without doing it with a semi-automatic firearm. Wouldn't hunting be more like hunting if it were done with bows instead of guns? Just a thought!
Having a fully equipped arsenal of weapons seems a little bizarre to me and just a wee bit on the paranoid side. Maybe I feel this way because I've never felt a need to own a gun. As many times as I have attempted to discuss this issue no one has ever adequately explained to me any rational reasons why people have a need for weapons in this day and age. What I generally get are loud tirades that come off sounding more like something an emotionally unstable person might rant. And oh boy, that's the kind of person I want armed and ready for anything! Today's savage environment doesn't include marauding bands of Native Americans or outlaws who rape, plunder and pillage. The savage situations of today are school shootings and crimes of passion. Could the answer be as simple as taking all weapons away except those used by law enforcement and the military? Perhaps if that was done, the violence might vanish. Just a thought!
So what's it going to take to turn the violence around? Any thoughts on the subject? Other industrialized countries don't seem have the amount of gun violence we have here. Are we not doing something right? What's their formula for a relatively peaceful co-existence? Are we just a nation of spoiled children who want what we want when we want it regardless of the consequences of our actions? Have people become incapable of compromise? Has our gun violence gotten so out of hand that it can't be fixed and why does the NRA seem to wield so much power? Who made them Grand Poobah of Gunslingers? These are just some of the questions floating around in my bleeding heart liberal brain.
* Repost from June 25, 2014