retreat into nature and art

We got 4” or 5” of rain over four days from three storms. They're saying the rain came too late for the feed corn crop which tasseled already and the silk is turning brown but apparently the ears aren't developing kernels. The cotton was dying in the fields but is looking much better now so it may not be a total loss. The cotton field at the end of my street has large patches of brown where the little cotton plants had already died. It's been a bad year for tomatoes in people's gardens too having gotten too hot and dry too fast. They were going for $4 and $5 dollars a pound at the Farmer's Market on Saturday and they were all fairly small. Guess I won't be making my own tomato sauce this year, not with those prices and the basic scarcity.

I did stop to chat with one purveyor. He was selling his tomatoes for $4 a pound and I picked out two sort of medium sized tomatoes as we talked about how badly everyone's plants were doing this year and learned that he is one of the two men that bought the house that the people I buy my coffee from used to own. Janet and Jeff import organic fair trade coffee beans, roast them when they get an order, and then send it out. They bought a place in the Valley and moved several years ago. But this guy was a big man, tall, not overweight but solid, wearing a cowboy hat and I didn't notice right away but he had a pistol in a holster on his hip manning his booth at the Saturday Farmer's Market. I wonder what he thinks, wearing that gun, that he's going to be the hero, the good guy with the gun? That he's going to defend his vegetables from a would be thief?

And just a day or two after Uvalde someone posted on the local FB chat that some teenagers were pulling pranks like turning on outside faucets. One woman commented that they better hope they don't get shot. I was appalled, that someone thought shooting at a teenager because of a prank and possibly killing them would even occur to someone. But that's the country we live in now. Someone annoys you, maybe pisses you off, and that's reason enough to use lethal force.

Despite the rain, which cooled down temperatures for about a day and a half, it is so hot out there. And so of course our AC quit working Friday late so it was an after hours call on a holiday weekend. Yay! Just under $500 but we have cool air.

Saturday I planned to either work on my watercolor or the box. I did neither. But we did watch the first three episodes of Stranger Things season 1. I'm hooked. We also started watching Night Sky last week. Did I already mention that?

I am mentally, emotionally exhausted, angry with this nation's plunge into moral depravity fueled by the NRA and gun manufacturers and our greedy politicians who don't see the dead, only the money, who ridiculously attempt to justify these military grade weapons and hollow point ammo for the general public. So I'm going to lose myself in nature and art and leave you with pictures from the big backyard this morning.

Looked up yesterday late afternoon to see this tattered luna moth right outside my window.

Three views of the west side long flower bed. First image nile lilies, second image three elephant garlic flowers clustered together. Third image double orange daylilies in the foreground. You might remember I didn't get a single bloom out of these last year due to the arctic blast that sat on us for two weeks in the spring.

 

yes, the problem IS the guns

We are a violent people. We are a violent people that loves guns more than we love our friends, neighbors, more than we love our children. This country has been at war, and sometimes more than one war at a time, for nearly every year of our national existence. We have more guns in this country than people, approximately 120 guns to every 100 people and we protect those guns far more than we protect our citizens. We worship guns, churches bless them, families' Christmas photos show every member brandishing a gun, after every mass murder the answer is not restricting guns but always more guns. Nineteen elementary school children and three adults were murdered yesterday and right on cue the gun nuts clamor that the solution to school shootings is not restricting sales or requiring background checks or instituting a waiting period between purchase and acquisition or requiring training or requiring insurance or outlawing semiautomatic weapons and high capacity magazines or any other measure to reduce the ridiculous amount of guns but giving the teachers guns to protect the children because of course that's all that's needed, never mind that once gunfire erupts it's absolute chaos as people try to flee. Never mind that trained security guards with guns on site of these mass shootings are always killed. It's not like these shooters announce their intention before they open fire.

We have unrestricted access to guns, you need only be 18 to buy one legally. I've been to estate sales where guns were sold no questions asked and the only restriction to buying a gun from an individual is having the right amount of money. In Texas almost anybody can carry a gun without a permit thanks to our governor. Guns are not the problem, they like to tell us. It's mental illness. And then they fight against national health and mental care. But we don't have any more mental illness than any of the other affluent first world nation and they do not have the gun violence we do. A gun cannot walk up to person and discharge itself, true, but all the gun violence victims would still be alive if guns weren't at hand. So yes, guns are the problem. Guns and hate and violent rhetoric from politicians, even some religious pastors, against those who aren't white straight christian conservative males fearful of losing their supremacy. Our national identity, our history, is war and violence and cruelty born out of imperialism and racism and sexism and demonization of other religions. Already we have more mass shootings than days of the year this year. This is not mental illness, this is a society where violence and murder against the other is seen as an acceptable response to annoyance. How many people would still be alive if that 'good guy with a gun' hadn't had a gun at hand when his anger flared or a cold blooded response rose to irritation? Because these shootings aren't committed by criminals. They are fueled by hate and anger and some misplaced feeling that they are being oppressed. Well, everybody with a gun is a good guy with a gun until that moment they aren't, when they consciously become criminals. It is rarely the oppressed who commit these atrocities. Where are we as a nation when the most recent ex-president is openly calling for a civil war because he was not re-elected.

So what's the answer? The obvious answer that has worked in every other country is to severely restrict guns; who can have them, the kind they can have, the amount they can have, and what they need to do to have them but that will never happen here because our politicians are cowards. They want that money from the NRA more than they want to protect our children, they want to keep their jobs more than they want to do their jobs regardless of what the people want. And unfortunately and to our detriment, a good portion of our population is just fine with all this gun violence as long as it doesn't touch them or their guns, so long as they can continue their own violence, hatefulness, and racism unimpeded.

The fact is, we are not safe in this country, none of us. We are not safe in our homes when stray bullets zip through, we are not safe if we park our car on a public street, we are not safe in our cars from someone we inadvertently cut off, we are not safe at a concert or a nightclub, we are not safe in our workplaces or schools, we are not safe hanging out listening to music with our friends, and now not even our democracy is safe from those with a gun and a bone to pick. Getting rid of weapons no citizen needs or should have a right to won't get rid of the hate and anger and innate violence Americans harbor but it will end these mass shootings. We have only to look at other nations with strict gun control laws to see the truth of this.

We are a nation rotten to the core when murdering 19 children only elicits 'thoughts and prayers' from the very people who allow it to happen. We are a nation rotten to the core because this isn't the first time or even the second time but just the latest in a long string of such atrocities.

It didn't used to be like this in this country. Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter today is on the history and rise of gun ownership and gun violence in this country. You can read it here.

 

better weather, cold work, and gun nuts

Last Thursday it was overcast and rainy drizzly and cold and other than my sister and I going out for an estate sale in the morning, I got nothing accomplished all day. I know, I know, I've said the same thing about the previous days and then listed everything I did but Thursday I was so cold I spent the entire day on the couch under a blanket under the heat vent with the electric heater on and I didn't warm up til 6:30. Friday was warmer and I did more cold work on the heron box and the snowflake ornaments 

and picked up more pecans, ditto Saturday though we had a Friendsgiving with our little social group on the street in the afternoon...chili and cornbread and a salad and several deserts. It was a pretty day and fairly warm until the sun went down and it got cold again.

Also Saturday my frames/shadow boxes from my brother came so Sunday and Monday I worked on those doing a final sanding and starting to paint them but I ran out of paint so that's on the agenda for today and did more cold work on the heron box. Weirdly enough, when we re-fired it I guess it consolidated more ie more air was compressed out because I lost an 1/8” of height after I reground the bottom flat (though I didn't take that much off the bottom) so I'm having to take an 1/8” off the bottom of the neck of the inlay piece. I also worked more on the line down the front where the flashing was. I'm happier with it, not happiest, but happier.

the white line down the front is where the flashing (raised line where the melted glass oozed through a crack in the mold) was, the white will be finished out but the line where the flashing was will still be visible under certain lighting

new mounting for these tiles from last year, took them out of the expensive stands and attached them on a piece of plywood that replaced the glass from these hobby store frames for hanging on the wall

We've been having some really nice weather, supposed to be in the mid-70˚s all week, sunny, a few rain showers later. My trees are still dropping pecans, I'm picking up about a gallon's worth every day. I've shelled all I'm going to shell I think, 14 pounds, so now I'm just waiting till they stop falling to take them in and sell the rest. The gingko trees still have not turned yellow which surprises me, getting there but still more green than yellow.

So I've pretty much stopped trying to engage certain people, MAGAts and gun nuts and by gun nuts I don't mean all gun owners, just those who don't feel safe without a gun at hand all the time, because what's the point. And to that end I did not directly reply to a new commenter on Steve Reed's blog who commented on one of his recent posts about encountering crazy but essentially harmless people on his walks with his dog. Anyway this woman commented that she lives in Texas and carries precisely because of crazy people and even recounted an episode when she reached for her gun because someone in another car flipped her off. Personally, I don't think a stressed out driver who gives someone the finger and maybe says fuck you because you cut them off or refused to let them in to be worthy of brandishing a weapon but that's just me, especially here in Texas where open carry without a license is permitted and too many people think a gun is the only solution to every annoyance. Because I didn't want his other readers to think that she represented Texas, I simply commented without directing it to her that I too was from Texas and didn't carry or own a gun, that it wasn't crazy people you encounter on the street that worried me but those who go around armed all the time. So even though my comment was several down from hers, she read it and commented again @ me specifically. First she lectured me on the gun laws here (as if I'm ignorant of those facts) and then this...”You had better be afraid of us carrying a gun because we won't be playing with you and stupidity”...belligerence and threats. She made my point for me far better than I could. I'd feel sorry for people who live in so much constant fear that they have to carry a gun all the time if it weren't for the chance that they would just as soon shoot me as walk away if I pissed them off.

And so to end on a more pleasant note, the wrens have been very active the last couple of weeks screeching at the cat and poking around. I was ready to close up the shop last week and there were two wrens in there and they would not be shooed out so I had to wait til later and then the other night there were two in the garage when I closed it up for the night. They also would not be shooed out though they can get out of the garage when it's closed up unlike the shop and I've already found two dead wrens in there that got trapped. And they often come investigate this corner of the house where I sit and look out clinging to the screens, checking out under the eaves, looking for wasp nests I guess being the wasp and bee eaters that they are.

Alright, time to get busy.

death in America

Three shootings in a week. Thirty three people dead. Thoughts and prayers from Republicans. Demands for gun control and gun safety from Democrats. All guns all the time folks claim more guns in the populace would have prevented it. Except. Except there were 'good guys with guns' at the Walmart who not only did not stop the shooter, they fled, and the police weren't sure who the shooter was because of open carry. Except the shooter in Dayton killed and wounded those people in less than a minute. The police responded in 20 seconds, shot him dead in less than a minute but 9 people were still dead and 26 wounded. No good guy with a gun on the scene could have stopped that. Republicans: it's not guns, it's mental illness. It's not guns, it's video games. It's not guns, it's no prayer in school. It's not white supremacy rhetoric, it's absentee parents. Democrats: It's the GUNS stupid, other nations have mentally ill citizens, play video games, don't pray in school and they do not suffer gun violence. Meanwhile Trump golfs, McConnell issues a statement about how horrified he is but not horrified enough to bring the gun safety bills passed by the House to the floor of the Senate. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And then there is the guy who thinks every public place should have an armed 'discreet' professional security force I thought that's what the police were for like his church has, proud of the fact that he thinks his church is well protected. I can remember an America when we didn't need private security forces, discreet or otherwise, to feel safe in America from Americans.

Just another week in America, the country that loves it's guns more than it's children with a government controlled by Republicans, the party that loves it's NRA money more than protecting Americans, the party that allows the very people they accuse, the mentally ill, to buy whatever guns they want, led by a president that demonizes certain Americans and laughs when his supporters yell 'shoot them'.

We have a chance in November 2020 to put an end to this. If we don't, we may never get another one.

stop praying, stop thinking, start voting

Maybe we deserve to implode. Perhaps our finest moment was WWII and the few years that followed. Because since then we became drunk with our power and have become the world's biggest bully. We have invaded, propped up dictators, subverted other countries elections, armed insurrections, choked other countries economies, destroyed other nations. We are currently bombing seven nations. We are the world's biggest arms dealer. This country was founded on genocide and slavery. Is it really any wonder that we are the only nation to ever actually use an atomic bomb on another nation? Yes, yes, I know, lives saved and time shortened and all that. Not the point.

Is it really any wonder that we descended into insanity? Our murderous tendency had to be eventually turned on ourselves. Escalation is the name of the game. And so our love of weapons and violence tells us that guns are the answer to every problem, that the more you take out the more you win.

I wrote this last night and then dinner was ready and now I'm trying to pick up the thread. Where do I start? With thoughts and prayers? Fuck thoughts and prayers. God isn't going to fix this for us. The only way this is going to get fixed is by the general population demanding that the people they vote for pass strict measures on gun ownership in general and outlawing military grade or military like weapons in particular. And if they don't then vote for someone who will next time.

Tweet from Shaun King...The United States is not #1 in much. Not education, not healthcare, not economic equality, not much. We're #1 in mass shootings and mass incarceration. It's not even close. That's where we lead. This is what we're best at.

And these mass shootings are increasing. 45 days into this new year, this is the 18^th school shooting and something like the 37th mass shooting. But according to the Republicans that have had a choke hold on Congress for the last 7 years, it's never a good time to talk about gun control no matter how many people die, no matter their age. They don't want gun control because they get millions from the NRA.

Tweet from Marco Rubio...Just spoke to Broward School Superintendent. Today is that terrible day you pray never comes.

Marco Rubio has taken over $3 million from the NRA and never votes for gun control. Fuck Marco Rubio.

Tweet from Trump...So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!

Two months into his term, Trump nullified Obama's background checks for mental illness for gun purchases. Fuck you Trump.

According to BuzzFeed, the FBI received a tip about this most recent shooter months ago and apparently did NOTHING.

Seems I saw some politician said no one knows how to stop this (couldn't find it again). Well, other countries know how to stop it. I know how to stop it. They can start by outlawing and confiscating military style weapons. They can limit the number of weapons one person can own. They can get rid of open carry. They can require thorough background checks on ALL gun purchases. They can require a waiting period and training before acquiring the gun they want to purchase. They can require gun owners purchase insurance. They can classify the NRA as a terrorist organization or at the very least make it illegal for the NRA to donate money to political figures.

All this would be possible if we really cared enough. The first step though is to get rid of every politician that has ever taken money from the NRA. Unless that happens then the next best thing is to outfit yourself and your family with body armor and wear it every day because Congress will not protect you.

good guy with a gun?

I had an encounter with my 'new' neighbor, R, yesterday. They've lived in Frank of the Bountiful Garden's house for about two, two and a half years now (and that property is way more than they can manage). They moved from Katy, a 'small city' engulfed by the big city. This is the guy who's first response to stray or loose dogs in his yard is to shoot them. He's a bit disabled, suffers from lymphedema, can't move very fast and uses a fancy walker so apparently he keeps a gun by his side at all times (but I kinda think he probably did already before moving out here), on disability, wife still works and commutes to the city. He's also one of those people who wears a big cross and tells you to have a 'blessed' day. After the third time he shot at some poor dog I told him don't shoot my dog. Fortunately, so far, he hasn't hit or killed one. Unfortunately those bullets still keep going. I'm glad there is a vacant half acre between us.

There are two reasons dogs (or raccoons or possums or cats feral and otherwise) come into his yard. They have two outdoor cats and so they feed them outdoors in their garage which they keep open so the cats have access which also gives dogs and other critters access and sometimes those critters beat up on his cats. The other reason dogs (and raccoons and possums and hawks) come into their unfenced yard is that last spring they acquired a baker's dozen of baby chicks which have grown into mature egg laying chickens that they do not restrain at all during the day (they do lock them up in a coop at night) so these chickens wander all over the place...into the vacant half acre (I've chased them home more than once from the edge of my property plus trying to train Minnie not to chase them) and into the neighbor's yard on the other side and across the street. At one point during last summer he put up plastic orange mesh fencing, the kind contractors use to cordon off areas, on two sides of the property...my side and the back, the other side neighbor has a fence around his back yard...leaving the front open so the chickens were still able to roam out of their yard.

So yesterday, I took Minnie out so she could run around some in the empty half acre and R was taking down the orange fencing in order to use it to cordon off a large area around the old greenhouse coop for the chickens so he wouldn't have another “butt-hurt neighbor”.

“Oh, yeah?, what happened?” I asked.

The neighbor on the other side took issue with R shooting at his dog that had escaped the fenced yard and I guess was chasing some chickens.

“I didn't know it was his dog”. Really. He didn't recognize the dog he has lived next door to for two years?

Anyway, I supported my other neighbor and told R that guns were not always the solution (something I repeated at least twice more before the conversation ended).

“I have a right to defend my property”, R says a little tightly. And, true, when he first started encountering dogs in his yard (at this time going after the cats) he called the sheriff to ask what his options were and so since there is no animal control in the county, the sheriff told R to just shoot them if they were being a nuisance. I wonder if R told the sheriff he lives in a residential neighborhood and not isolated out in the country. I wonder if it would have mattered to the sheriff).

I agreed, he did, but there were other ways to do that. I also told him this was the country and everybody in this neighborhood probably owned guns but the only time they shot them off was when they were hunting.

“I'm not going argue with you about defending my property,” all up about his 'rights'.

Told him again there were other ways to do that. like fence your fucking yard

“I'm glad I missed,” R said.

“So am I,” I told him, “but that bullet kept going,” something I've said to him in the past when he has told me about shooting at and missing some poor dog that was probably abandoned out here.

After once again telling him guns weren't always the answer I told him I just hoped he never hurt anyone then I paused and told him I wanted to be a good neighbor so I was going in and I scooped up my dog and headed back to the house.

“Have a blessed day”, he says as I walked off.

this is who we are

So. Once again, for the 273^rd time in 275 days in this year alone, (383 in 2016), the nature of this society called America has shown itself in spades. And it ain't pretty. But apparently no massacre is bad enough to do something about the gun violence in this country. No group of victims is too heinous to do something about the gun violence in this country. No, anything besides unfettered access to whatever and however many guns a person can have, no matter their criminal or mental or social dis-functions, is unAmerican.

Captured from FB

Hard to argue with that.

I also read an article from the Atlantic about the dark truth of this society...

“No other society allows the massacres to keep happening. Everyone around the world knows this about the United States. It is the worst aspect of the American national identity.”

As long as it's white male 'lone wolfs' whatever they do is tolerable.

The other truth is that this is who we are and we know it. We know this will continue, and it will, because we do nothing to change it. 

No other nation that is not ruled by anarchy allows this to happen.

The 273^rd mass murder, defined as four or more casualties, and the worst to date in terms of casualties inflicted, in 275 days. That's almost one a day. One mass murder a day not counting just the one or two killed. The thousands of women killed every year not by an unbalanced individual but by someone they know and possibly love. The hundreds of children killed every year, now the third leading cause of death. The thousands of people shot because someone was enraged and had a gun. The thousands of suicides every year.  Some statistics here from Newsweek.

And because the body counts aren't high enough, Congress, the lap dog of the NRA and gun lobby, wants to throw silencers into the mix.

myth verses reality

This is long and I've written about our nation's gun problem before. I debated whether or not to post it in two installments but decided to just get it over with. Read it or don't.

I just don't know what to say. It is so crystal clear and yet so many refuse to see. Every study, all the research, comes to the same conclusion over and over. More guns equals more gun violence. States with more guns per capita have more gun violence. States with less guns per capita have less gun violence. And gun ownership has no effect on the crime rate. In fact, gun ownership increases the likelihood many times over that the gun owner or a member of the gun owner's family will suffer from death or injury by that gun. Women are 7 times more likely to be killed by a loved one if that person owns a gun. Children are dying by the hundreds because there is a gun in the home.

The NRA has convinced a large segment of the population that the only thing standing between themselves and chaos is a good guy with a gun, preferably themselves but that's why we have a police force. That's their job. The NRA's creed of an armed society is a polite society has filled this country with guns. As it stands now, there are enough guns in the population for every man, woman, and child. And still the gun nuts don't feel safe.

This is what it has come to. With the exception of the instability in the Middle East, the drug wars in Central America, and some rogue African nations, America is the most dangerous country in the world and the danger comes from our own citizens. You wouldn't expect the biggest 1^st World nation to also be the most dangerous. But we are. Now instead of just worrying about being killed by the police with their tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, we have to worry about every stranger on the street as well.

Cases in point...

1. A man witnesses a carjacking and whips out his gun and starts shooting. He does not stop the carjacking and shoots the victim in the head instead. Then he gathered up all his shell casings and fled the scene.

2. A woman witnesses a man coming out of Home Depot being chased by a store employee. The man gets in his car and starts to flee the scene. She whips out her gun and starts shooting at the fleeing car. She does not, in fact, know whether this man has shoplifted anything and yet she takes it upon herself to shoot at him instead of just taking down his car license and a description of the vehicle to give to police.

In both these instances, which happened in one week, these citizens appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner. In the Home Depot case, she didn't even know if a crime had been committed. And since when did we give start giving the death penalty for theft? They are lucky they didn't kill anyone (the head shot victim lived). The woman could have killed a child in that car or the driver whose moving car would have then careened into some other family or she could have just as easily shot one of the many people who were in the parking lot.

This is called vigilantism and it is against the law. Just because you have a license to carry does not mean you can whip out your gun and start firing away anytime you want to. The law is very clear about when you can use a gun to protect yourself or someone else and theft, not even of your own property, isn't one of the reasons. You can see a thief carrying your fancy TV or whatever out of your house and you still cannot legally shoot and kill that person.

Did you know that the only time a gun buyer is subjected to the briefest background check is when they buy a gun from a gun store? Once a person owns that gun, they can sell it to anybody they want as long as that person has the money to buy it. No background checks needed. You also don't need any kind of background check to buy a gun on-line or at a gun show. There is no limit on how many guns you can own or how much ammunition you can buy.

Here's a few myths that need dispelling...

Good guy with a gun: well, I think that one has already been addressed above but in the case of mass shootings about which the NRA loves to tell us the solution is more guns, anyone who is not highly trained is not going to be effective and will likely just get themselves shot or shoot other innocents. Any combat veteran can explain the fallacy of John Doe citizen bringing down a shooter while all hell is breaking loose. Target practice or plinking at cans does not equal 'highly trained'. Target practice or plinking at cans is not going to give you the training to ignore that adrenaline dump with your brain screaming at you to run away while scrambling for your weapon with trembling fingers. You are not Rambo and real life is not like the movies. And even in the few cases where a good guy with a gun was present and did manage to prevent or stop the shooter, the few lives saved does not in any way make up for the thousands who are killed by the over abundance of and easy access to guns in this country.

An armed society is a polite society: Right, that's why people with guns shoot at other cars in road rage. That's why people get in an argument and before you know it, someone has pulled out a gun and started shooting. That's why these open carry idiots strut around with their guns and get in your face and insult and threaten you because you don't agree with them. That's why back in the frontier days the sheriffs made you check your guns in at the office when you came to town.

If you ban guns, only criminals will have guns: You do know where criminals get their guns, right? They get them by buying a weapon that has already been legally purchased or they steal them from people who legally purchased them. Less guns in the population means less guns available to criminals. Did you know a gun company created a gun that would only fire if it was being held by it's owner? Yeah and the NRA put all it's might behind making sure that it didn't make it to market or failed to find buyers.

Guns are needed to prevent the government from becoming tyrannical, also known as we need guns to protect ourselves from the government: Almost 250 years and not one tyrant that needed to be or was brought down by citizens with guns. The system works folks, or it did until Citizen's United and the Lobby consortium took the power away from the people. It's not the government we need to fear or bring down, it's the corporations who think they can buy the government. And really, the largest and most advanced military in the world is not going to be brought to its knees by a bunch of untrained yahoos with guns, not even by those private self-styled 'militias'. I don't care how many guns they have. If the government wants to take your guns or take you down, it will succeed.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people: Yes, and they do it with freaking guns! If a person is determined to kill someone, they will find a way. Knife, poison, hit 'em with a car, use a baseball bat or iron skillet, yeah, people will kill. A gun takes no determination. All a gun takes is a little twitch of the finger and you don't even have to get close. If people had to get up close to kill there would probably be a whole lot less killing.

Freedom!: Sorry, your freedom will not be abridged because you can't have a fucking personal armory. No one is coming to get you unless you become a threat with your fucking armory. We live in a civilized society where, yes, bad things do happen but on the whole people go about their daily lives for their whole lives without ever needing a gun. And your right to freedom does not allow you to abridge the rights of others. We have the right not to be afraid every time we go out because of some yahoo carrying a gun.

The 2^nd amendment was written because the Founding Fathers want people to be able to rise up against the government: Wrong. That's a myth. The second amendment was written to appease the slave holding states that had their private militias to hunt down escaped slaves look it up. This gave them the authority to continue to do that (you know, the 'well regulated militia part'). Also, they recognized that many people needed their arms, which consisted of muskets and cap and ball pistols, for food and safety on the frontier. It was the Supreme Court that twisted the 2^nd Amendment into what it is today and we are reaping the results of that in thousands of deaths a year.

Liberals want to ban guns: Well, that would be nice but it's never going to happen. What liberals want is extensive background checks every time a gun is sold or re-sold, required extensive training, waiting periods, limits on the amount of ammunition that can be bought, limits on the type and quantity of guns an individual can own, insurance so that if and when you are irresponsible with your gun you will be responsible for the damage. We want you to have to show a need for that gun and we want you to keep it in your house and locked up with exceptions when you can show a need to take it out in public. And we want all that reviewed every year. Any of or all that would be great. Why should it be harder to own a car than a gun?

I'm not against guns per se. I know there are people out there who are justified in owning their gun...people who hunt, those who live out in the country and have to deal with things like venomous snakes and wild hogs, people who are isolated and any call for help would take a long response time, people in urban areas who have to be in high crime rate areas, people who transport large sums of money or other valuables, people who have a reasonable fear of assault, etc. I grew up in a time when people carried their hunting rifles on the gun rack and my father had guns that he kept locked up, I've gone skeet shooting. But this unfettered access to a ridiculous array of weaponry combined with a complete lack of mental health care and the glorification of violence (we are the most war mongering nation on the planet, have been in one war or another for nearly every year of our national existence look it up) and division and this particular national feeling of entitlement to whatever we want and want to do, because America!, has got to stop!

Right now, we don't need foreign enemies because we have lost more people to gun violence than to all the wars and terrorism. And we did it to ourselves. We've had more mass shootings than days of the year so far just this year alone and that doesn't count all the other forms of gun violence.

What the fuck is wrong with us as a nation that we do not have what it takes to do what it has to take.

another day, another mass shooting

What has happened to this country? What has happened to the people in this country? When did the right to own guns trump the right to life?

When did the people of this country start to believe that it was their right to solve every problem with a gun? When did people start thinking it was an acceptable thing to do to threaten, intimidate, and stalk those who are protesting for stricter gun laws?

I engage, at times on FB, in conversations about the level of gun violence here and, of course, with the paid trolls who continue to extoll the virtues of guns and gun owners, most recently about the two men who brought their assault rifles into a family restaurant making sure everyone saw them and striking fear in the hearts of everyone else there.

The troll's position was that it was their right to do so in that open carry state. Perhaps so, but that doesn't count for a reason. When I asked for one reason, other than it is legal for them to do so, that they felt it necessary to carry assault rifles into a family restaurant in a civilized community I was met with silence. When other posters commented about the fear that these men caused, the troll wanted to know why people felt fearful if the men weren't acting in a threatening manner.

Seriously? How is anyone supposed to know that these men aren't going to open fire? Personally, I wouldn't wait around to find out.

They will also tell you that crime has decreased with the increase of gun sales but crime rises and falls for many reasons. What they don't talk about is the rise in gun violence and gun deaths with the rise of gun sales.

Just today, on FB, someone posted the link to the news statement of the father of one of the victims of this latest shooting. Predictably, someone commented that guns don't kill people, people kill people witness the guy who drove his car into a crowd at SXSW in Austin and the Boston marathon bombings.

Yes, people do kill people and they do it most often with guns. Do you know why bombings are so rare? Because it is illegal to possess or make bombs. But who needs bombs when you have an arsenal at your disposal?

Unfettered access to guns in this country is a serious problem and if you don't recognize that then you are part of the problem. It is easier to buy a gun in some states than it is to vote.

Here's a link to some statistics about gun violence in this country. 

But, they reply, why punish responsible gun owners. It's not punishment to restrict the kinds and quantities of guns and ammunition, it's not punishment to require extensive background checks, waiting periods, and extended training because all gun owners are responsible until that moment they aren't, until that moment they let their anger get the better of them, until that moment they forget to lock up the gun and a child finds it and commits suicide or accidentally kills a sibling or friend, until that moment it is stolen.

More statistics about gun violence as it pertains to women and children

And here, the 10 favorite pro-gun myths shown to be exactly that.

The fact is that the gun culture as promoted by the NRA and it's craziest proponents have turned this country into one of the most dangerous places on earth. They have equated unfettered gun ownership to religious observance and they refuse to acknowledge the correlation between increased gun sales and ownership and increased gun violence.

So, have we had enough yet? Will this country ever have enough? Will the politicians ever actually represent the will of the people and tell the NRA 'no'?

Oh, who am I kidding, of course not. The most warlike country on earth, this country that has been at war, one war or another, for almost every year of it's existence, will never curb the kinds or amounts of weaponry available to any Tom, Dick, and Harry regardless.

It won't matter how many innocent people are killed.

Edit: I am not against gun ownership but I do think guns should be much harder to acquire than they currently are and I am for restricting the types of guns ordinary people can buy. People who want to buy guns should have to submit to extensive background checks, a waiting period, extensive training, and a license that must be renewed every year. Guns are not toys. Any responsible person should not object to these restrictions.