He Who Lives By The AR-15, Dies By It

I'm not trying to intentionally be numb to
all the death and mayhem in Orlando, I'm just at a loss from a world that keeps rushing out to buy AR-15's whenever another lunatic uses one to terrorize US again. It's hard for me to imagine how the murderers and the potential victims will all sneak weapons into church or the club for impending gun battles.

Depending on where you stand on this issue, Dylann Roof is not a terrorist, and Omar Mateen was more than just an American tormented by issues of religion and sexuality. He was an ISIS operative.

I don't really believe either ideas to be accurate, but it is the best way to explain the unexplained mystery of domestic terrorism and the NRA.

As it stands, the NRA has millions of people running to seek a solution that has yet to solve anything. While the original purchase is well tracked, those panicked gun purchases can eventually  be legally transferred to anyone, sight unseen, through online transactions or gun show sales that are not tracked or regulated.

I don't want to be numb to death, but what hope is there when the same people who totally get the importance of tracking car exchanges, or regulations around flying so we don't have terrorism in flight, consider better gun registration and a terror watch list ban as an assault on the right to bear arms.

The notion of rights being more important than responsible ownership only applies to guns in America. Flying in an essentially non lethal airplane demands way more invasion of our privacy. Nude xrays in fact. Guns remain a real addiction that only God knows when or if we'll ever be cured from them.

Gun advocates insist that we must return to the days of the wild west, when villains had to worry about vigilantism. To the best of my knowledge, villains were not dissuaded by all the legalized carrying that we used to allow, nor do they avoid robbing banks now just because of known armed resistance.

As things stand, our greatest obstacle remains the fact that any sensible legislation goes on the Obama legacy and represents the first loss the NRA has seen in years. Which means, this is not about sensibility and reasonable laws that will help US try something more than making gun sellers filthy rich, it is about politics, power and leverage that gun nuts are not going to relinquish willingly.

Our current conditions would almost encourage the NRA to back ISIS, since their mayhem is so damn profitable to the cause of gun sales overall.

If they have lassoed the Socialist, Bernie Sanders, solidly into their corner, who is not an NRA sycophant? Whenever war breaks out, they funnel firearms to both sides. Apparently, they are now doing the same for both sides of domestic terrorism, yet WE are still waiting for just one of these gun toting good guys to bring their fear inspired, self defense assault weapons to the club or church like these killers do.

No. I'm not just numb, I'm defeated because the 2nd Amendment benefits the gun dealers and the gun addicts way too much. Neither is ready or willing to see the wide reaching impact of their gun lust, and congress has just enough addicts or friends of the dealers to insure status quo.

Until further notice, every attempt to turn away from this endless cycle of self destruction will look like that intervention when the addict just isn't ready to change.

For now, I'm leaving this intervention for the rest of you to deal with. I'll return when the patient stops shaking and finally sits still long enough to listen to reason.

Today's Gun Battle: The Reality Versus The Rhetoric

The reality of guns is simply not matching the rhetoric anymore.

The reality is that responsible users use guns responsibly, but fear ignites gun purchasing for purchasing sake and doesn't insure responsible ownership as an absolute necessity of ownership.

The reality is that gun lovers mostly blame the stupid gun owners and the criminals who use them (for obvious reasons) so as to misdirect the blame that was never pointed at them in the first place.

The reality is that 85% of gun owners actually agree with doing something reasonably different about gun ownership and background checks, but the rhetoric doesn't allow.

The rhetoric says that more guns out there is the best way to deal with the potential danger of the guns we already have out there.

The rhetoric says that only law abiding citizens will follow new restrictive laws and not the criminals.  I shake my head at the very notion of that idea since Webster's dictionary calls a criminal "one who disobeys the laws", which I would assume to include laws regarding gun ownership. By that reasoning, no law applies to the criminal element of society.

Can we at least get most of the criminal guns off of the street with some level of success that reduces street deaths by gunfire?  The Australian plan of offering a "hefty" buy back price to street criminals for those weapons would take some guns off of the street, but the means by which they got there in the first place has to be addressed as well.

Is The Gun Industry Supposed To 
Be Self Sustaining Like Farming?

Weapons in Mexico are almost exclusively created and purchased in the USA, and almost never under legal means.  So unlike weed-  which can be grown almost anywhere in the course of 100 days- weapons don't just grow out of the earth.  They are engineered, serial labeled, packaged and shipped under strict tracking for an end destination that isn't currently tracked very firmly at all.

Way too many liberal gun laws (Texas) allow firearms to be purchased under the darkness of night and lost into the growing world of firearms in America and South America. We know who created them and when, but can't always pinpoint who has them now.  And our laws currently say, that's okay.

If this one broken reality could be the only change that we make, we would have taken a major step forward. Unfortunately, the rhetoric works to maintain laws that say any person who owns a gun should have the right to sale that gun without hoop or hurdle, to whomever and whenever they please....because this is America. Most laws expect the purchaser to register that weapon under their name (like you do with a sale of a car), but nothing insures the step, allowing guns to get lost in the shuffle.

Suddenly, what seems like a reasonable idea gets lost in the swirl of fear and anger laced comebacks that are rooted in things that force you to peel back the onion skin even further to make sense of it all.

If you mention restricting mentally ill from the danger of themselves, the company line against that is a recognition that very few confirmed  (diagnosed) mentally ill folks have committed these crimes and the confirmed crazy but dealing with it folks don't want to be made a target of  our displaced frustration with senseless killings at the hands of just a few of their demented young brethren.

If you then switch the target of the argument onto assault weapons and weapons typically catered for environments of war, the crux of the true debate might finally reach the surface.

Most gun lovers have been convinced by the rhetoric that they need to uphold a Constitutional concern of the government moving to overtake the individual by taking away their guns first.  They are not focused on the reality that an entire block of neighbors who all have multiple AR-15's, wouldn't be able to hold back the military force that exists in today's America versus the single shot musket world that wrote the damn Constitution.

Words (rhetoric) are clearly powerful. Much more powerful than guns, yet they crumble in the face of reality.  Gun lobbyists are keeping their harvest  and production of guns ripe and fervent from season to season with distorted perceptions created by powerful rhetoric of fear.

Most gun owners who come to the end of the line with the reality of the 85% concession on background checks, will reticently draw the line back, but only a little bit with their well trained 'agree to disagree' rhetoric that goes: "if you don't want guns in your home, that's fine....just keep your hands off of mine".

Does that also include your bullets?  In California, a measure is moving forward to require background checks on the actual deadly parts of guns (bullets) instead of fighting the war with gun owners over the encasement of the bullets. California is not only chasing to deal with the access to ammunition, they are doing it using the same ballot initiative approach that brought medical marijuana to California. With technology available to uniquely assign bullets to the owner of a gun (microstamping), limiting access to death pellets is a reasonable next step towards addressing the reality of gun growth, the challenge of tracking gun deaths in America in the ongoing effort to solve crime and reduce gun deaths.

Direct Democracy?

Whilealso admitting to some drawbacks, California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom called laws that permit state ballot initiatives, Direct Democracy.  I personally call it the way in which America stops fearing its own government and finally recognizes our capacity to govern ourselves while modernizing our sacred Constitution for times like these.

Our voice is way too loud in this digital era for Congress to hold the will of the people hostage to the power of  rhetoric, generated by the gun lobby. Yes, over reach is always a risk during government intervention efforts. But not more risky than continuing to insist that doing nothing can possibly make something change.

 

Pattern Is Pointing Out America's Terror Problem

Sometimes in the quest for agreement, you have to recognize when your opposition has moved an inch back.

Such is the case for this horrific crisis that way too often ends in an argument over what is the right way to go about dealing with terror.  Some will tell you that we should be ready to shoot back instead of being at the total mercy of a deranged shooter, while others have concluded that nothing, and they repeat, nothing can be done about the issue of lunatics who kill people in mass.

So let me ask the question in another fashion to see if I am clear.  You mean there is nothing that we can do to stop these things, or there is nothing that we should do?  I'm not sure if we want to make Tim McVeigh the father of American terrorism or if we would share that crown between Dylann Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine killers.  What I do know is that the model is not incredibly new, nor is the problem.

Since we really didn't start to address the potential for these crimes until Columbine happened, I will give Klebold and Harris the nod. Since back when they disrupted the conscience of the state I was born and love, to date, the states that have passed comprehensive gun legislation have also benefited from the compromise. Thanks to the vast number of states that have refrained from change, America remains the most violent civilized nation on the planet.    

4.4% of the people on this planet live in the United States along with 42% of the worlds guns.  People occasionally buy guns for the sport of killing animals or for the memorabilia value that old guns often bring, however, those gun user's don't make up the bulk of that 42% of guns in America.  Hunting for sport can be very expensive if you aren't also a fairly good butcher who can process a carcass down to its functionally edible parts and not too many Americans can afford to make up that 42% of guns in America.

Those who hunt for sport typically find a couple of really good killing guns and they keep them until they upgrade to something better.  Unless you are an wealthy, avid collector of guns, there is no sense having 14 different "very expensive" animal killing guns with no way to carry or shoot them all unless you hunt so many variety of wild animals that you are probably some rich dentist who killed Cecil the Lion.

Stock piling weapons for that eventual day of doom that seems destined in a world so full of guns is somewhat normal behavior in America, yet few of my social media gun nuts share pictures of 14 guns. Doesn't this form of gun stock piling point to the mind of a person who is not intent on sport hunting, but on someone preparing to kill before they are killed themselves.

The point is, guns are made for killing.  Killing gang rivals- as so many black and brown boys do to each other during their violent 20's-  or for killing arrested gang members who get out of line, as well as an occasional innocent person who just so happens to resemble a gang member or God forbid, runs away from police.

Guns are also for killing combatants on the battlefield or innocent students and teachers in a classroom, and maybe even for killing yourself when times get tough or your killing spree at a school gets halted by law enforcement.

Gun free zones were familiar and expected follow ups to the drug free zones that schools adopted to add strong punishments for average Dick and Jane's that would dare think of threatening the health and safety of an area in which our school kids go to be safe and to learn.

Come to think of it, how come we never have had a female lunatic shoot up places that make us feel afraid and vulnerable?  We also rarely have adults over 30 years of age that go into psychotic rages of terror.  We have had a couple of teenage killers, but teens don't have easy access to the kind of weapons that killers typically need for these kind of rampages.

Minus a couple of exceptions to this rule, mostly we are dealing with twenty-something white young men with a love for guns and a mentally disturbed level of hate for society.  Even Black Lives Matters isn't fighting to resolve that black on black crime issue, so neither will I other than to say that their skin color doesn't invalidate the other aspects of this murderous pattern. Most of our killers are twenty something men.

We know that most of these young men acquired their weapons legally and lawfully, which is no solace to the families that lose loved ones.  It's not even sufficient enough for Ian Mercer the father of the Umpqua Community College killer.  Mercer was shocked and confused at how his son could get so many guns without impediment or red flag.

Determined to comfort the pain of all the victims, including himself, Ian Mercer has bonded his energy with that of Andy Parker the father of slain television journalist Alison Parker, who, alongside other gun restriction advocates, refuse to stop until something finally gives on this issue.

And as I mentioned in the lead, something finally gave a little. The opposition hasn't backed all of the way up, but they moved an inch- which is all that was needed for the clarifying questions to begin.

I will repeat.  

Saying that there is nothing we CAN do doesn't actually go to the extreme that Jeb Bush went when he said that there is nothing we SHOULD do about this, insinuating that doing something could make for more problems.

If you are among the Jeb crowd that says doing something will make things worse, then I won't try hard to persuade you of anything since you will probably be working hard to insure that nothing does get done, and your gun stays at your hip and not just hidden in your sock, back or glove box.

Those of you who've backed up an inch from Jeb and them, but still believe strongly that we SHOULD do nothing, are now more apt to say, there's nothing we CAN do to fix this problem, basically conceding that you are not personally hopeful for the potential of mankind to address its issues, or to collectively work together- or both.

Ye who are downtrodden, despondent and doubtful that anything CAN be done about this- even though statistics in other civilized countries contradicts this point- have taken a posture that demands I ask the really important question that I've been leading up to all along, and here it goes.

If you simply don't believe anything CAN be done, can you get the heck out of the way and allow the rest of us to deliberate and decide on a direction of hope that doesn't include sending our kids off to school complete with directions on how to play dead or pull off a head shot (domestic terrorist wear body armor) in the event of a mass shooting?

Stuff does happen Jeb, but when that stuff disrupts the sanctity of our schools and the kids that fill them, stuff grows to become more than just stuff.  This is a nasty case of  mold which grows like all mold- whenever and wherever there is darkness. Teaching our teachers and students to pull off a head shot under stress alongside Common Core math (I repeat, domestic terrorist wear body armor) is not exactly shining a light.

Do we only hear our athletes when they are explaining away
a crime or a misdeed?  Our answer is not as far as it seems.

Even the smallest bit of light that we occasionally shine on this thing has all but isolated 20 something white males into a corner that finds them  uncomfortable and highly agitated as a particular subset of American society. Whether angry white men who don't believe in mental health assistance are breeding angry white boys who kill us is somewhat of a simplistic question. But maybe the answer to most thing sits so simply close to our faces that WE often miss it.

http://thebrandonmarshall.com/landscape.html

The problem with Women's Liberation is women didn't have the problem in the first place.

Maybe the real need for the Women's Movement was the presence of mentally ill macho men who should have been a key part of the focus of women's equality all along?

Men don't talk about mental illness and are not naturally pre-disposed to share their pain  and weakness.  The unfortunate aspect of any person who lives too long without being able to properly vent themselves is that they are always on the edge of screaming out loud, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere.

Some men scream through misogyny or date rape drugs even though you are Bill Cosby and shouldn't need drugs to get sex, while others play video games and troll people a lot.

These murderous acts of terror are a different kind of scream from young men in pain, yet we keep hearing them yell through the mouths of the other victims that they include in their deadly acts.

The killers, like it or not, are our kids too, and thus our problem too.  Much like the Women's Movement might have created more angry women than it did sensitive men, there is a potential to do too much of what feels like the right thing and not exactly fix the problem.

Sure we can address the data that says 4.4% of the world should never possess close to half of the world's guns. But at the end of the day, if we spend more time on the guns that need people to make, want and use them instead of the broken people who keep wanting and eventually using guns, then the gun folks will win an argument that they won't even be a part of anymore (since I just dismissed them all), as more deranged, 20 something, probably white boys, kill a bunch of people with a few bombs (no guns) in the middle of a marathon in Boston.

Too late?

Sounds like the gun people already get to say they told US so.




 

Katrina Reminds Us That Rising Tides Also Kill People

The recovery of New Orleans is clearly proving that rising tides do raise all boats- so long as you had a reliable one when those levies broke.

I've never been fond of celebrating or commemorating death and loss, but I understand that it's important to look back and determine where you've come from to understand where you are going.

Yes, republicans! Once again, the nation is engaging in another conversation about the lack of your concern for disadvantaged people in moments of crisis. Even before the smoke of the WDBJ7 killing had cleared, gun restriction proponents screamed foul... .......again, and cried for a fix.  

Was Valvano talking about a good day or
the essence of mental health?

The fix? 
We all should be crying for this FIX because its right before our eyes.

Coach Jim Valvano was really on to something when he declared that a full day means to think, to laugh and to cry.   The more I think about those words, they make me laugh and cry regularly.  I laugh at the struggle we endure to uncover solutions that lie at the tip of our nose, while I cry at the pain we experience from enduring life without solutions.  Whether you agree with what represents the fullness of a day, it is certainly mentally  healthy to think (rationally) to laugh (heartily) and to cry (from empathetic tears preferably) as often as you can.

MORE GUNS CAN FIX THIS PROBLEM?
(IS THAT A PROVEN THEORY?)

I'm not sure if anyone is giving the news a fair view or review, but the most recent story of vigilantism against terrorism is the fabulous story of those American boys in France.

If you didn't set out to be heroes then polo shirts and khaki's
are exactly the correct attire for being awarded.  Suits or uniforms
would make everyday folks forget their role in keeping us all safe from terror.
(read Robin Givhan's article on this subject)

Not one of these men had a gun in hand when they accomplished their victory over the man with all of the weapons.  The NRA and those who insist we must arm ourselves for the challenge before us have to recognize that George Zimmerman remains the poster child for this failed approach, and until someone- not in law enforcement or hired for security duties- pulls the trigger on terror, this peculiar theory remains just that, a theory.



The brutal, live recorded murder of the television journalist Alison Parker and her cameraman  Adam Ward has, once again, stretched the theoretical potential of terrors reach, adding to the imagination of the kind of people who mimic these types of behaviors.

If Dylann Roof indirectly pulled down that Confederate flag,  seeing Parker and Ward die this way should somehow begin the process of some reasonable gun restrictions.

Shouldn't it?

I will go down this road once again with my strong opinion on gun restrictions only because I can't let Andy Parker (Alison Parker's father) fight this fight alone.  He understands that each of US who really decides to get serious about this fight might need to arm ourselves and add to the gun industry in the short term just to prepare for the risk of fighting guns with words.

The fact that gun sales rise every time opponents fight too hard to limit them is a distorted behavior all by itself. The very inclination to reach for a gun with so little evidence of vigilantism's success is a sign of our own mental illness or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), probably caused by the unsettling violence of the world in which we now live.

 Regardless of which end of the lens you are viewing from, the story of mental illness offers enough  context clues for us to follow the pattern and at least lay down the first few blocks on the trail we should follow. How we ultimately fix this will be solved by collective resolve, stubborn resilience and powered by an agreement that we must do something to dig our way out of this mess, and it probably should begin where the soil is softest. 

How we impose restrictions on free American citizens just because they've shown signs of mental illness is a complex question with no easy answer, but so is democracy; so is the challenge of breaking down the powerful obstacle that political lobbyist have become towards fixing problems.


Nothing seems tougher than getting people to act for the greater good before a crisis hits, but ten years later, New Orleans used a corp of engineers and a brand new billion dollar levy system to finally repair the failed one.

Given the televised death of two local news figures and the impact its having on the media fraternity, can we now encourage one of those engineers and a few other really smart people to sit down with the research and the data and uncover the question:

Are more guns really the answer?
_____________________________________________________________________________

       Gun Deaths        Total deaths Homicide   Suicide Accident  Undetermined

    per 100,00 people   (combined)

United Kingdom	0.26 (2010)	0.05 (2010)	0.17 (2010)	0.01 (2010)	0.02 (2010)	Guns in the United Kingdom[67]
United States	10.64 (2013)	3.55 (2013)	6.70 (2013)	0.16 (2013)	0.09 (2013)	Guns in United States[68]

____________________________________________________________________________

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/2/214.full.pdf

What's more expensive than buying that gun is spending the money it will take to learn how to properly shoot it since a short little course will only do so much for you.  Eventually you have to pay to master the art of shooting, especially under stressful conditions, or you yourself become an accident waiting to happen and not the weapon of defense you intended.

As we start to get ahead of this problem, we might discover a value for both mental health care and free gun education for all of the mentally ill being bred in our violent society. instead of absorbing the cost of restoring those lives when environmental hazards move and clarify social divisions.

In reality, it was always going to cost too much and take too much time to fix the future of the poor families in New Orleans.  What I inspire in my children today might finally take root in my grandchildren or in their children because, before we become parents ourselves, most of us endure parenting rather than embrace it.

Stop Blaming Katrina

Katrina washed over one of America's greatest cities and uncovered what the folks in Louisiana wish we'd stop blaming on Katrina.

Stop blaming the revelation of a problem on the water that revealed it.  Children who live in areas with lots of death and violence grow to suffer mentally, creating a barrier between the good choices they would love to make and the hopelessness that makes it hard to remember why choices matter.

Katrina victims NEVER needed Governor Bobby Jindal to be a proponent of the frivolous lock up of  drug addicts and mentally ill people who only became more ill after the trauma they experienced; they needed mental health care to combine with that gumbo of resilience they brewed out of the remaining bits and pieces of  their storm tattered lives.

 Residents of New Orleans had seen plenty of storms and never failed to fix up and move on. In reality, the worst of Katrina mostly missed and should have left New Orleans in water up to their ankles.

If only those levies did not break.

This was and always will be a failure of infrastructure, one that we will likely repeat if congress continues to block the jobs bill that would fix bridges and roads and other weak areas of infrastructure that will also falter sooner or later, as will the excuses for why we waited to respond to this well known potential crisis.

New Orleans is a microcosm of an upcoming crisis.  Like our tattered roads and bridges, we have mistook standing for sturdy. The people of New Orleans are the reason for the success of this story, and with no great thanks to their resilience.  In fact, some residence feel that the appearance of sturdy resilience is often the excuse we use to avoid fixing the problems of roads and bridges or social disparity in New Orleans and across America.

Had the folks in New Orleans rolled over and coward themselves, would WE have been more aggressive with help?

Resilience is certainly the excuse we keep using for how WE the People are to endure another terror shooting, seeking to drown our lack of wisdom in a double dose of resilience.

Doesn't resilience mean I am enduring something abnormal?  When do WE stop applauding the resilience of New Orleans and start applauding our commitment to remove their need for it.

Fixing levies and economies is the easy part.  Mostly these take a lot of money and a little math.  Fixing disparity and terror caused by mental illness is tough because "How" is typically the start and end point of this conversation.

Republicans believe that no gun law would have stopped Vester Lee Flanagan from losing his mind and murdering Parker and Ward on camera that day. Its right to wonder how we can easily limit law abiding crazed people from getting and using guns; or how can we finally end this hurricane and remake New Orleans with both the flavor and spice from pre-Katrina?

These are real challenges, yet not tougher than the promise of democracy which could not have started before women had the right to vote (1920), and may never begin if voting restrictions persist and strong lobbyist keep controlling our power over reasonable change. 

Mental Illness Is a Sign Of The Times

Ironically, mental health care will provide the answers to fixing New Orleans as well since so many disadvantaged people also have histories littered with drugs and violence within the home and in their neighborhoods.  Violence begot violence, thus the only cure for the PTSD and mental instability that produces generations of bad decision makers is recognizing the signs of the time.  

5 years ago, the folks rescued on that train in France might have all died because none of us readily recognized this new revelation of mental illness and its schizophrenic effect on society as a whole.  Today we are more comfortably paranoid, yet no better at seeing the signs and symptoms of psychosis that produce terror, or social disparities teetering a broken levy away from disaster. 

New Orleans will always be uniquely hot, though it might not ever get back it's old spicy flavor.  Some folks are pleased with this change of recipe feeling that downtrodden places like the 9th Ward had been too bad a blemish on the community anyway, and fixing them too costly in more ways than one. 

Pain & Providence

Maybe we will laugh when we realize how crazy
we were before our mental health care initiative.

Ferguson was but a straw to the back of an old weary camel 

The founder of Black Lives Matter actually credits the Katrina crisis for inspiring this new camel currently carrying the burden of change. As we reminisce on the good, bad and ugly of Katrina, some have theorized that without Katrina, there would have probably been no Barack Obama who was a major beneficiary of post-Katrina anger that found its voice in the ballot box. 

Will the empathetic tears we are crying from the deaths of Parker and Ward be enough inspiration to get us thinking of a fix?  Some of us are hoping beyond hope that this is that moment for gun control and mental health care to converge and change America for the better.

No laughter. 

Another Theater Shooting But With Only One Death

29 year old Vincente David Montano.

paranoid schizophrenia

29 year old Vincente David Montano

I was wiping my tears from the tragedy of the Emmanuel 9 including a few that I find myself shedding for the families that breed these menaces to our society when I heard that arraigning judge in South Carolina ask for sympathy and prayers for all of the families in this tragedy, including Roof's. I came eerily close to blogging the same sentiment of that insensitive judge who needed to understand that it was simply too soon, but I got saved by the outrage he had to endure all by himself.

While living with the pain of losing a loved one from a horrific murder is difficult, I often imagine to myself what it must be like to be the parents of the Columbine killers, Klebold and Harris, or Cho, the Virginia Tech terrorist.  These young men died along with those they killed leaving all of the questions of why to be cast at the people we expect to have those answers.

Their parents.

As a parent, I imagine myself in that position so that I might never find myself in that position, but what can a parent really do in the end.  If I think my young adult child needs to get some therapy for the same reason that we all need a little therapy- our parents- they are likely to blame me for the need and potentially move further from help because of my suggestion.  On both counts they would be correct because most of our adult problems stem from childhood issues that "good parents" are supposed to be able to curtail and us bad parents should be ashamed for even pointing out.

With the massive energy that I placed into the hopes and future of my children, I also invested a fair amount of time in the lives of other peoples children, and still do. At some point in the process of parenting I came to recognize that all children were limited by the weak links in their midst, so for both altruistic and selfish reasons, I work on the links too.  Will that be a catalyst for anger and resentment in my adult children that grows into displaced reactions when they are feeling unstable?  I remain prayerful for the best outcomes that a parent can dream of with each of my offspring, but I am also more and more cognizant of the immense necessity for prayer and the utter futility in hoping to track or navigate the lives of adult people.  Good or bad, most of our work really is completed by age 5 exactly like they say.

If my kids became unstable and wished to hurt themselves or (God forbid)others, I am hopeful that I would see the signs in time enough to do something about it.  On that issue I am glad that my kids are black women who lead the list of least likely to do domestic terrorism, yet I don't move to the seat of judgement when I think about the parents of  the kind of young adults who fit the likely profile for this kind of crime.

 In fact, my heart truly goes out to them all.  Fortunately, the  family of the most recent domestic theater terrorist only have to mourn the loss of their own family member and not the added guilt of the others who often get killed as well during these incidents.  Fortunately for this family, we can actually find sympathy or empathy right away for them instead of sticking a thermometer into public opinion to find that right moment to finally go there.

Of course, the low head count in this tragedy will make it even less of a story than the others are becoming since domestic terror is now a normal part of our life expectancy formulas, kind of like catching a virus that you don't take seriously and dying as a result.  Actually, domestic terror is exactly that virus that we don't take seriously until it kills us or someone dear to us.  Even then we tend to spend most of our energy on mourning the victims instead of delecately uncovering the root of the disease and offering support, understanding and maybe an antibiotic if you will. These families are victims of the crime along with the rest of humanity, but they are also sources for answers that need more love and tender interrogation than they ever tend to get.


The Gun Was Fake?!

With all of the accidental killing of black men, I can only
use this gun in my back yard...during the day time.  Did
they need to make it look so real?

Montano pursued his terror with a machete knife, pepper spray and an airsoft pellet pistol.
 Maybe he was one of the disturbed individuals who wasn't raised to be comfortable around guns and only got the nerve to buy a fake one (kind of like me) and we can actually credit these parents for his not having a real gun.  I've gotten really good at using my fake gun, unfortunately for the neighborhood squirrels, but I often wonder why it had to be so real looking for it to work well.  As a black man, I often think about painting the darn thing orange for my own safety, while I also wonder if we are so gun crazed that we even want our fake guns to appear real and our crazed folks to have the same access to real guns as the rest of us?

Lots of questions, so few answers. God bless the victims that were injured and terrorized and to the family of Montano.  At least this time we get to actually think about them and can avoid the  important conversation of reasonable gun restrictions for people who are unstable. That conversation never goes anywhere anyway.

Michael Dunn is not a murderer even if he made his best attempt.

Michael Dunn was charged with attempted murder regarding the lives of the three young men who survived his shooting rampage.  Dunn received a mistrial on the more heinous crime of first degree murder for the killing of Jordan Davis who Dunn claims had a shotgun pointed at him.

For there to be a mistrial on the most important point of murder says a lot about the nature of the deliberation of that jury room.  It says a lot more about the reality of Stand Your Ground Laws (SYG) and how they are impacting some of our perceptions of justice in America.

What is not congruent in this decision is the impression of the shooting scene that eased the jury into a fairly quick decision regarding attempted murder but an uncertain conclusion regarding murder.  Their inability to convict on every count means that they believed some aspect of the Dunn defense.  Not only did they believe his story to be plausible, they arbitrarily decided to ignore the crime scene and focus on the testimony of the accused.

You see, to assume that he is clearly guilty of attempted murder and not murder means that he is shooting bullets with artificial intelligence.  If the bullets shot in self defense had killed more people than he would have had less sentencing because all of the dead would have been covered by the SYG explanation that created a mistrial on murder.  The bullets that he shot at the rear of the car as it drove away from the scene are likely the bullets that produced this conviction.  Essentially, these bullets and only these bullets were seen as murderous bullets, while all of the others had the potential to be justified bullets.

This jury has essentially said that the guy who shot at the side of the car could have been defending himself but the guy who shot at the  back of the car was attempting a murder.  To believe this you have to think that Dunn had a personality transformation that shifted him from a free American with the right to feel safe from outside attack into one who was looking to rid this land of a few of its rap loving scum.

Take a moment and imagine the first gun shot and how many seconds it would take to get the hell out of there. Maybe I am simply not clear enough about life and death gun battles.  I just can't relate to the evolution from fear to self preservation to attack and destroy within a 15 second gun battle, especially one where every bullet was fired in one direction.

Anyone who understands the use of deadly force understands that it comes with a shoot to kill expectation.  You do not wound your enemy and allow him to kill you in response.  There are really only two options in this story.  Either Dunn saw this car load as a threat to his life or a threat to his freedom.

In 15 seconds of gun fire and escape by the teens in the car, Dunn did not go from a self defender (who never receive return fire) into a world avenger (who never received return fire).  He was the same shooter during the side panel shots as he was at the rear of the car.  He had the same disregard for who lived or died in that car with every shot he fired.  His purpose and intent did not switch itself in the 10 seconds of  heavy gun fire at side of the car versus the 5 seconds at the back of it.

Either Dunn was attempting to murder them all, or was responding in self defense and nothing more.  If even one juror agreed to convict Dunn of attempt but not murder, than that person is not responding to the crime scene but is stretching the definition of justice to fit the parameters of this SYG law.

Any SYG killing can be justified by intent so long as the killer is not around to speak for themselves.  That is what Dunn was attempting to accomplish with his final shots at the back of that car, but he failed.  Since he did not fail at killing Jordan Davis and was NOT convicted of it, I think I get the message.

Michael Dunn is not a capable murderer, he is just capable of attempting it.
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Square Biz Feedback (Michael Dunn Trial): This Was Murder.....and the trial will bear that out

I disagree.  (with my original post)


This is clearly an example of 

murder and I believe the trial will bear that

 out.  One thing that is clearly missing from

 the discussion is that statistically speaking, a

 person who legally owns a gun or a conceal

carry permit, is far less likely to commit a 

criminal act than any demographic.  

I am not saying crimes are not committed, 

but as a whole, they are the most law abiding 

of all citizens.  I don't know many "Stand 

your ground" supporters that are holding this 

guy up as a poster boy.  He, at least from the 

coverage, shot an un-armed person, who was 

not a threat to him.  



Zimmerman case is a bit different in that eye 

witness testimony, along  with other evidence 

showed Zimmerman was at least taking a 

beating.

Florida Must Protect Michael Dunn In Order To Preserve It's Law

If you go to Colorado and you are an adult, you can now legally smoke marijuana.  If you travel to Washington, the same is true.  Head out to Vegas and there is legal gambling a plenty.  The prostitution is not technically legal in Vegas like it is in neighboring Reno, Nevada, but no one seems to care that prostitutes advertise openly in the phone book.

There are states you move to when you wish to have lower taxes on your income and states that have plentiful wild game, along with the freedom to bag a few.  If for some reason you are a gun advocate and are sick of crime taking over our streets, you could live in a few states that might cater to your qualms, but none better than Florida. Sunny skies, plush beaches, beautiful people and the kind of stand your ground laws that make you excited to be carrying a weapon.

Did you ever get the feeling that the Keystone pipeline is an inevitable that is getting jammed up for as long as environmentalist can?  Guns make me feel the same way.  The more people scream about banning guns, the higher sales rise in response.  Guns are more than a protected constitutional right, they are a big time business and the line of shoppers seems to never disappear.  Anything that inspires big money can only be defeated by bigger money.

Moreover, the voice of those who use guns has made it perfectly clear that we need more guns in the hands of the good guys just to keep pace with the bad guys.  We have to stop relying on law enforcement and make everyone a potential enforcer of the law.  We must encourage criminals to stop and think about the risk of encountering a person who is prepared to shoot first and ask questions later.

What that means in the end is that we must put our laws where our mouth is  by creating an environment that tests the theories.  If Florida is going to create a state that starts teaching these thugs to be afraid, Florida must preserve the rights of the vigilante, rights that Florida forged into law.  Many rats die in the science lab, but not because no one tried to keep them alive.  Florida has to keep this lab rat alive for the sake of the experiment and for the sake of the argument.



Michael Dunn has the weight of a social ideology behind him on this killing.  Zimmerman did too, but Zimmerman silenced the only voice that could send him to jail.  Dunn has voices to the contrary of his recollection, but they are not fighting for the right to bear arms or the right to use them like Florida lawmakers intended in the making of state gun use laws.

If I had only been so clever as a young man, I would have told mom that I shot my brother with the BB gun because he was walking near me with that same look on his face that he had the last time he beat me up.  What does she want me to do?  Take the first strike, or protect myself and explain my motives later?

Since the choice involved a gun, mom probably charges Dunn with manslaughter (in accordance with Florida law) and I lose my gun for the summer, or until she forgets she is punishing me.  Both punishments will hardly fit the crime....(sorry mom).

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Michael Dunn, George Zimmerman and Florida Proving More Gun Theory Before Our Eyes

Michael Dunn, George Zimmerman and Florida Proving "More Gun" Theory Before Our Eyes

Whenever you create laws that protect your use of guns, you run the risk of indisputable vigilantism.

The real surprise is not that we have yet another teen killing in Florida, the surprise is that we don't have more.  'When Michael Dunn gets off for the murder of 17 year old Jordan Davis, we all will get to argue over some peculiar facts.  Dunn will get acquitted for rolling down his window and asking the car load of black youth, "are you talking to me?".  It appears that they were guilty of playing that "rap crap" a bit too loudly for Dunn's liking.  But it was the shot gun that they just so happened to be riding down the street with, which they proceeded to aim at Dunn, causing him to shoot back in self defense.  No shotgun was found so Dunn surmises that they got rid of it before they tried to save the life of their friend.

Did Dunn just so happen to have his gun cocked and ready when he saw the shotgun, or did he swiftly respond to the sight of a shotgun by reaching to get his own gun and opening fire before getting one bullet in return fire; especially from a shooter who already had their hand on the trigger of the gun Dunn claims to have stared down the barrel at.

Much like George Zimmerman, he only has sensibility working against him, none of which resides in Florida.  Well, to be fair, there might be a lot of sensible people living in Florida.  Some might even be on the jury in this trial, but the law that they allowed through intention or neglect has offered an easy way to ease an itchy trigger finger.

You don't have to own guns as an adult to remember your journey with guns.  For boys and girls all over the land, our love affair with guns began long long ago, after fulfilling some birthday or Christmas wish.

Your first piece was one of those noise making kind that look pretty fake, but made you feel like a cowboy.  These guns are wrought with positives and negatives.  The positive is that a kid with a pretty good imagination could spend hours with that noisy crap and never make you worry about damage to anything but your nerves.

The down side is that kids grow up pointing safe guns at the face of one another, which is not a habit that works well when the trigger finally releases more than a noise.  Our safe guns became like candy cigarettes;  probably okay to have, but an odd behavior to promote.

When I first got a BB gun, I couldn't wait to go outside each morning and try to take out a squirrel or a bird in my area.  I tried to be a safe user of the toy, as did my friends, but most of us remember hitting someone in the face with a pellet, or taking one ourselves.

Firing ranges are probably fun, but don't you ever drive around with your legal gun, or walk in an ugly side of town with your permit to carry and think; "I really hope some idiot gives me a reason today"?

No?

Never?

Well, if you never get the urge to wake up early and clean your new assault rifle and stand with it in your front room and imagine that burglar you bought it for, you are better than me. I had to get rid of all thoughts of video games because I get obsessive over new toys.  An actual gun would have me dreaming of making one of those internet videos, 'murder of a watermelon'. My first watermelon was a poor squirrel that got the unfortunate luck of my sling shot and a strong wind when it fell from the power line to the ground. (Head trauma.....didn't end well).

I am certain that this has something to do with my aversion to weapons of all kind, yet the depravity did not end there.

That dead squirrel that I accidentally killed on purpose did not cure me.  Someone, probably not me, had to finish that squirrel with a shovel and dump it in the dumpster because I made excuses when confronted with what had happened, and I ran from the responsibility in the end.  I wasn't quite 7 yet, but I knew better even though killing that squirrel was the reason for making the sling shot.  If I got caught hitting a person I would not get to use them anymore, so I practiced on bottles until I thought I could hit an animal.

I missed every animal, until I didn't.

Guns are so dangerous that most states put harsh penalties around the misuse of them.  Florida has made it easier to consider the option more readily.  Florida has said what all gun rights activist seem to believe, that our problem is not too many guns, its not enough guns in the hands of good people. What that statement declares is that good people, whoever and wherever you are, must start packing a piece and LOOK for an opportunity to do good for your country.  If you do not feel safe to act, the very concept of citizens with guns loses its value and purpose.

You see, the theory is that criminals need to start getting shocked when they discover that people will defend themselves and pop a cap in your ass.  Once again, this demands the willingness and freedom to shoot first and ask questions later....and not go to prison.  You can't claim the power of a gun in the hands of normal people and not make it easier for normal people to use them without hesitation.  The people who write these laws are the normal people with guns imagining what they might need from the law when they are forced to pop a cap in your ass.

They are absolutely right in regards to the demands of a law that says shooting people is the way to get bad folks to worry about who has a gun.  If you make a mistake in the process, you need only the defense of motive to gain the protection of the law.  Even if their theory happens to one day coincide with reduced crime in Florida, the connection to the killing of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, and others before them, and more to come will be coincidental at best.

If Michael Dunn gets convicted to anything, it won't be hard time like some are hoping for.  Such a conviction and sentence would shoot a bullet into the intent of this Florida law.  A soft sentence like probation and anger management training will preserve the sanctity of this stand your ground law.......and will piss off those looking for justice to high heaven.

Next Post:  The Future of Stand Your Ground Laws