Sep
15
2015
Aw, shoot
Author: adminRemember when a teacher/professor once gave you a low grade you didn’t think you deserved? As you dealt with the shock of the perceived injustice, you probably said something like “I’ll get him” or “I could just kill!” Well, now a days, friends, you can actually do that.
About a year ago, a grad student at the University of Maryland just picked up the old .45, made a beeline for the prof’s office and BANG! No more undeserved, low grades from that S-O-B. You showed him!
Sorry to say, that educational tragedy was not a first. No, not by a – pardon the phrase – long shot. Universities, colleges and even public schools have been the locales of low grade avengers, fraternity haters, slighted sorority pledges, disgruntled athletes and even a jilted staff member or academic or two. This week it was an apparent love triangle at Mississippi’s Delta University. The Smith & Wesson solution has been all too apparent.
Which got me thinking. Aside from the ivy-clad walls of higher education, where else have we innocents been used as clay pigeons by the unhinged. Let’s see, now. Theaters, bars, gymnasiums, school lunchrooms, banks, classrooms, grocery stores, shopping malls, car dealerships, doctors and dentists’s offices, beauty salons, barbershops, interstate highways, airports and airplanes, cruise ships, marinas, football, basketball or baseball seating areas, sidewalks, a plethora of stores in shopping malls, mobile home parks, funeral homes, churches, synagogues, museums, art galleries, military bases, hospitals, nursing homes, city halls, county courthouses, state capitol buildings, under the U.S. Capitol dome, the White House, backyards, living rooms, bedrooms and – as in the Pistorius case – the ever lovin’ bathroom.
In case I missed a few, go ahead and add your own.
The American public has been worried for years about “right to privacy” and being under surveillance by cameras here, there and everywhere. Not me. I gave up stressing about strange folks watching and listening to my comings and goings long ago. The damned devices are everywhere with more coming. Including those nearly silent drones we can’t hear and don’t see whirring over our heads. Can’t be stopped. No, Sir! I’ve just made up my mind to dress better and pay more attention to my personal appearance with so many agencies and governments watching and listening.
I’m far more stressed by going to a movie. Or, shopping for new clothes. Or, wandering a used car lot. Or, sitting in a prayerful mood at church. Or, jogging the nearest greenbelt – driving the interstate – sitting at a stoplight – stopping for a latte. I get nervous now in my dentist or doctor’s waiting room. Noises I used to think were cars backfiring or blasting from a movie soundtrack now send me behind a tree or under the seat in front.
We used to be the good ol’ U.S. of A. But now, U.S. of A means “United State of the Armed.” Thanks to the N-R-A – and all the political cowards that won’t tell ‘em to take their money and “shove it” – we’ve traded our “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” for becoming shooting targets agt anyh moment we try to reach for those lofty guarantees.
The same bastards who wrap themselves in a “Constitution” they’ve likely never read – and which far too many don’t understand – are in danger of taking away the rights assured by that document for the rest of us. Including those who HAVE read the damned thing. And DO understand it.
How did we get to be a nation that witnesses Americans of all ages being blown away because of a idiotic gun culture instead of living under our recognized system of laws and of enforcement of those laws?
When the boys in Philly signed off on the Constitution in 1776, they realized a lot of the new American communities needed to be protected when the men of those communities were out fighting in the Continental Army. So they provided for a “well-armed militia” to protect the home front. Good idea then. Before creation of the National Guard as an instrument of “protecting the home front.”
Second Amendment rights have been twisted into a contorted definition meaning any breathing soul has a “right” to be able to kill anyone he/she pleases regardless of competence or mental state. That has to stop!
The N-R-A uses a scoring system to determine which member of Congress will receive an uncontested primary or access to outsized political handouts. The higher the score, the more loved/rewarded you are by its old PAC. Well, here’s a “breaking news” flash for Wayne LaP. I’ve checked on your rankings for every politicians on my ballot in 2016. Any of them scoring higher than zero will not get my vote. Makes no difference the political party or where that person is on any other issue.
I used to loudly condemn “single issue” voting. But this issue – an Americans’ right to live life without being in someone’s cross hairs – is just too damned important.
