Showing posts with label gun violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gun violence. Show all posts

Monday, February 17, 2020

Is your Wife Helpless - or Dangerous?




Hearst’s Magazine

Is Your Wife Helpless – or Dangerous –

in these times when more idlers make more brutes and more thugs?

These times make more idlers. More idlers mean more brutes and thugs. Brutes and thugs break your house; shock your wife into permanent hysteria and mark your children with a horrible fear for life.

Give your wife the solid assurance of a Savage Protector that she knows she can aim as easy as pointing her finger. That checks the vicious degenerate and heartless criminal.

Fathers, it is your serious duty in these times to arm your home by day and by night with a Savage Automatic – the one arm which every brute and thug fears. They fear its ten lightning shots vs. the 6 or 8 of other makes; they fear the novice’s power to aim it as easy as pointing your finger. Therefore, take pains that you get the Savage – the one the brutes and thugs fear.

As harmless as a kitten around the house, because it is the only automatic that tells by a glance or touch whether loaded or empty.

Take home a Savage today. Or at least send to us for information.

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Monday, February 19, 2018

"Some nut with a gun": mass shootings as everyday reality





































When will the insanity end? Anarchy, a blood-bath? But then today I had a sort of silly but not-so-silly thought pop into my head. Maybe SOMETHING had to pop into my head to keep me out of this depression that wants to roll over and kill me. Remember the "Y2K virus/millennium bug" that was supposed to bring the world to a screechng halt? Nothing happened, I mean nothing. We all had a happy new year. In Canada, we had the ludicrous notion that taking away pennies would bring the economy crashing down. Nothing happened except greater convenience for consumers and commerce. 






My point, if I do have a point, or maybe I'm just treading mud here, is that "the worst" often does not happen. We and they fear that if the country cracks down on guns, there will be World War III - total anarchy - a bloodbath. There might not be. Australia did it very successfully, and after tightening gun laws, mass shootings STOPPED. It is within the realm of human capability to do this. Swaggering idiots, dinosaurs without a brain in their head, are really very cowardly people. They'd be scared back into their caves.






Or not? So how is it going right now? Is it "OK" to just hunker down and wait for the next disaster because we/they fear repercussions from the Second Amendment rabid dogs? Change is possible. Change is needed. Change is likely, with courage and the ability to take decisive action for the good of the people. It can happen.

 





Objections jump up, suddenly and loudly; "YES, BUT. . . ", followed by a lot of yammering about WHY this is all impossible. So it's OK for kids to be randomly slaughtered, OK to say, hey, it's just a nut with a gun, a nut with a gun, a nut with a gun. . . ? Change is possible. Change is life. Change is inevitable. Change is how a people move forward in the face of fear and intimidation. It's NOT impossible.




 

Do not ask me to go in there and do it all myself, to fix the problem, to shut up unless I have a way to implement everything I am saying. I am saying what I am saying, trying to be heard. I am SICK AND TIRED of harrowing scenes and bloodbaths that are so much a way of life that we ignore them, brush them off as "normal". I could say "I don't know what the answer is", but the truth is, I DO know what the answer is. The only thing lacking is the courage to make it happen.

 

(Post-script. I haven't written about "heavy issues" for quite a long time. I'm not sure why, but it may have something to do with my mental health. I can't exactly walk a path full of sinkholes without peril.




I haven't written extensively about my bipolar disorder because I know that's perilous, too (though why I worry about "losing readers" is anybody's guess). But today I saw the meme, or whatever-it-is (I am not even sure what a meme is, any more than I am sure about an app, which means my contribution to the internet will soon come to a close). It shook something loose, and I began to write.



This piece, what turned out to be an essay, was just a comment in response to a Facebook post. I know what I write may seem insane or unconnected to what is going on in the States. My point is: making changes don't necessarily bring the world crashing down. The Second Amendment fanatics are cowards, bullies who swagger and insist that each and every bloodbath is caused by "some nut with a gun". I don't know how long that can go on, but it does seem like forever sometimes. Trump will never do anything because he is a complete bozo and does not know what he is doing. 





But someone has to do something to disarm these people so that you can't casually buy a gun at the corner store with a ludicrous, non-existent "background check". As someone with bipolar disorder, I am tired of the "nut with the gun", "psycho", "nut-bar", "whack job" mentality that not only removes responsibility for gun violence from "normal" people (i. e. the Second Amendment crowd who hang Confederate flags outside their homes), but dismisses mental illness itself as less than human, something that needs to be confined in some societal human zoo to protect society from rampant, lethal violence.




And this as a time when there is a lot of talk about "hey, let's try to reduce the stigma around mental illness! Aren't we swell to try to do that? But let's not hope for too much. These are nut bars, after all. Whack jobs." That is what I see. I have not edited this at all. It is an outpouring, and I assume it will garner my usual 17 views (not that I care) because in spite of all my best efforts I am perpetually obscure, and will remain that way. Not to mention a certified "nut bar" (but, at least, without a gun).



Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Orlando: a total disconnect






I am trying to get my mind off this, because I just got home from a terrific Little League game in which my grandson's team SMOKED the competition and won the trophy. I guess I shouldn't have watched the Dateline I recorded from last night, because the scheduled show had been pre-empted by coverage of what happened in Orlando. 

The show had been thrown together in a hurry and the seams showed, but what really irritated me was the utter, total bafflement and bewilderment everyone expressed at the "causes" of all these mass shootings (not just terrorist-related ones, but ALL of them - the whole litany of them, they kept going over and over them, even showing little flags stuck on maps).






Everyone talked around and around the issue, and there was a lot of hand-wringing as well as a lot of bombast about holding our heads high and not being afraid of evil, etc. etc. (and subtle, though denied fingerpointing at Muslims), but NOT ONCE did ANYONE mention gun control and the fact weapons are so unregulated and ridiculously easy to attain in the USA. They kept droning on and on about America's atrocious record regarding mass shootings, but STILL did not make the connection to lack of regulation of firearms and a "gun mentality" based on the ludicrous notion of a "second amendment". In fact it was a complete and total disconnect. 





What do mass shootings have to do with gun control? Those concerns are for the PBS crowd - rarefied intellectuals who don't know enough to keep a gun in their bureau drawer (and another one in the closet, and another one in the refrigerator, and a few out in the garage and in the basement) for "home defense" and "security". Those concerns are for people who are basically out of touch with reality. The only way to fight gunfire is with gunfire! If all those people in the nightclub had been armed, by God. . . 





I don't know how it is for the average American, if there is such a thing, but I have to tell you that I don't think I have ever seen a gun, not in person. I've certainly never touched one, and the only person I've ever known who owned guns collected antique rifles that he never fired. Thus, to me, a Canadian, guns should be relatively invisible. 

But it's the other way around.





By the end of the Dateline special my head was spinning around and around. Their mentality existed across a very deep, wide gulf of misunderstanding - in fact, a yawning chasm - and these were *news* people, seasoned reporters like Keith Morrison and Tom Brokaw, and terrorism experts who have even written books about the subject (and thus know everything about it). I swear to you, they looked directly at the problem, stared it right in the face, and didn't see it.





Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Baby, get your gun!



Toddler shooting tragedies could be prevented by arming 2 year-olds, insist NRA



http://newsthump.com/2014/12/31/toddler-shooting-tragedies-could-be-prevented-by-arming-2-year-olds-insist-nra-2/

After a two-year old tragically shot his mother using her legally concealed weapon, the NRA have insisted such tragedies could be prevented if all two-year olds were given their own guns.

The incident took place in Idaho in the US, where children are forced to wait until their 8th or 9th birthday before being given a gun of their own.

The NRA have been quick to offer a solution to such tragic incidents, insisting there is only one way to prevent them in future.

NRA spokesperson Wayne LaPierre explained, “It might have been an accident, but would this toddler have reached into his mother’s bag for a gun if he had already been holding his own gun? Almost certainly not.”

“If the toddler had pointed his own gun at his mother, she would still have had her own gun at hand and would have been able to defend herself, saving an American life right there.”




“Some in the liberal media would say targeting a small handgun called ‘My First handgun’ at children as young as two is dangerous, but I would say the only danger is not targeting them younger.”

“Once again a disarmed American is killed in an incident that could have been prevented had there been more guns available.”

NRA shooting solution

Idaho residents have called the dangerous lack of guns in their young child’s livesan ‘accident waiting to happen’, whilst gun manufacturers have announced a new toddler line being added to their range this summer.

Gun salesman Chuck Williams told us, “You know, ‘My First Handgun’ is great product for the first grader, but it’s too big and bulky for your average kindergarten attendee.”

“We’re working on a new design that comes in baby pink that fits nicely in the palm of your average baby.”

“You don’t even need to be able to walk in order to be able to use it.”

“God bless America!”




BLOGGER'S NOTE. This is yet another example of my stealing an article, but it's too important not to steal, satire or not. Hey, I'm a Canadian and have neither seen nor heard a gun in my entire life. The only person I have ever known who owned guns had an antique rifle collection, and he never fired them. Maybe the majority of Americans are the same. Aren't they? God, how I hope so.

I watched an old Dateline last night in which one man shot another in a Walgreen's parking lot, because he found out the guy was diddling his wife. When he explained the whole thing to police, he said something like, "No, I never meant to shoot anyone. I saw this guy coming for me so I pulled out my gun, and then he pulled out HIS gun. . . "




Like pulling out "my wallet", or "my keys". "My gun". "His gun." The thing I carry around with me all the time. . . for self-defense, of course.

Because this guy was carrying around His Gun as a regular accessory, he had a deadly weapon instantly at hand, so his rival lay dead a couple of seconds later. If neither of these guys had been armed - if they had been dumb old Canadians meeting in a Tim Hortons parking lot to have it out over a love triangle -  this deadly incident would have amounted to a whole lot of  sweater-pulling and missed head-punches, like in an NHL game where the blows don't connect because of the ice. (Come to that, there probably WOULD be ice.) 

We're not "better", but this attitude of arming everyone to "stop gun violence" - I've never heard of it around here. Ever. We feel sadness about all this, along with a lot of distaste. And fear. We fear being swallowed up, as we always have.




Canadians are often denigrated and our nation labelled third-rate. But look at the dynamics here. Canada is almost 100 years younger than the United States. Where was the States in 1876? Not exactly where they are now, at least in cultural sophistication. Canada's population is roughly 1/10 of the States - you heard that right, it's 10%, spread over a much wider geographical area, with a limited number of concentrated areas of population. It's a different setup altogether. Our history is vastly different, and vastly boring, with virtually no bloodshed, at least not among civilians. One of our greatest writers, Robertson Davies, was famously quoted as saying, "Historically, a Canadian is an American who rejected the Revolution". Not wishing to fight, these Loyalists and crazy Quakerish types just pulled up stakes and left. Headed North, like a lot of people do.

Thus, celebrities are already planning their escape to Canada if Trump becomes President. It could happen. Escaped slaves from the American South found safe haven in Canada (though I never learned my own city was a hub of such sanctuary until years and years later: the school system seemed to think there was something shameful about it). And what about the draft dodgers? I know people who are still living here who escaped the draft in the 1960s. "Hey-hey-hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"




We're culturally different, and though (of course) there is violence, there are gangs (who get their hands on guns no matter what), murders, and so on, people are more apt to use clumsy methods like knives and clubs. Not exactly civilized, but a bullet is a bullet: when aimed just right, it is instantaneous death.

Don't arm the kids. Don't arm the men, or the women. Put down your weapons, beat your swords into ploughshares. Listen to us before it's too late. Dorky, powerless, boring old Canada, the nation without an ego, might just be on to something after all.

POST-BLOG REVELATIONS: Yes, there IS violence in Canada! But this is all I could find, one short article that was repeated over and over again. Somehow, "fighting for his life" had morphed into "serious but stable condition" by the end of the article. As far as I know, both men were OK, eh?, but boy were they pissed at each other until the cops got them to make up, and one guy bought the other guy a "donut" and a double-double.





KINGSTON, Ont. — One man is charged with attempted murder and another is fighting for his life in hospital after an early morning knife fight at a Tim Hortons on Tuesday.

Police were called to the coffee shop just after 5 a.m.

They arrested a 30-year-man near the scene with a slew of charges, including attempted murder, weapons dangerous and two counts of breach of weapons prohibition order.

The 39-year-old man taken to hospital with stab wounds is in serious but stable condition, police said.

Police have not released names or what they thought was behind the early-morning coffee shop brawl.





BONUS STORY! No guns in this story at all! (Promise!)

JIM MOODIE, QMI AGENCY

May 22, 2014, Last Updated: 3:06 PM ET

It's the kind of story as Canadian as maple syrup - a northern Ontario man found a two-day-old baby moose on the side of the highway, picked it up and took it to Tim Hortons.

"She still had the umbilical cord and was still wet when I found her," Stephan Michel Desgroseillers of Copper Cliff, Ont., told Shirley Erkila, who posted a video of her petting the calf outside the coffee shop near Sudbury, Ont., on Monday.

"The wolves would have got to her," Desgroseillers said.

In a posting on the radio station Q92 Rocks Facebook page, Desgroseillers said he was the one who picked up the small calf and took it to the Wild at Heart Animal Shelter in Lively, Ont., but not before having to keep it for the night.

On his own Facebook page, he said the moose calf was "the sweetest thing ever except for the crying."

(I think I know how she feels.)



  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Friday, December 11, 2015

The best thing I have ever seen about gun violence





Zonk Deck:  Might have to change this meme, eh?

Like    Reply    5 hours

Matt Bille:  I agree with tighter nationwide regulations, but so many guns are in circulation that I don't know about the impact. I don't fear the guns so much as the people who use them.

Like    Reply    5 hours

Dick Ostrander:  Actually fear cars, cars killed more Americans than guns. Let's ban cars...

Like   Reply - 1    4 hours

Dawn Kresan: Cars are needed, guns are not.

Like    Reply    4 hours

Thomas Behnke: That's why you have to pass two tests to get a license to drive one, you have to register the vehicle, and have liability insurance, you can only drive a certain speed in certain places, and car manufacturers are REQUIRED to include features that are designed to ensure public safety, like seat belts, and mirrors, and there are certain features that are not legal on public roads, unlike guns that have none of these restrictions, even though a car is a tool whose primary purpose is to transport people and things faster and more efficiently than horses, where a gun is a tool whose primary purpose is to kill things faster and more efficiently than a cross bow. Because America and logic have never been the best of friends.






Blogger's Response. This, whether it's strictly allowed or not, is a transcript of a bit of dialogue on my Facebook page about gun violence. While I have a very hard time believing that Isis killed only four Americans in a year, and while I assume the rest of the statistics are pulled out of someone's ass for sake of a dramatic internet meme, it's nevertheless making a good point. But that last comment is something we need to think about. The flip remark "Actually fear cars, cars killed more Americans than guns. Let's ban cars. . . " is dismissive and even mocking, and either supports gun culture or is downright contemptuous of any attempt to condemn it. The next couple of comments put it all into perspective. 


Friday, December 4, 2015

"Sometimes these things just happen"





NEWS IN BRIEF  December 3, 2015

VOL 51 ISSUE 48 News · Guns · Violence

SAN BERNARDINO, CA—In the hours following a violent rampage in southern California in which two attackers killed 14 individuals and seriously injured 17 others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Michigan resident Emily Harrington, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep these individuals from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past six and a half years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”






BLOGGER's LAMENT. I haven't said a lot about the almost-daily bloodbaths in the United States of late. Nor can I comment about the frantic spewing-out of statistics insisting that gun violence is now at an all-time low. The message seems to be that we're just overreacting and should settle down and feel grateful that we're so much safer than we used to be.

I have no idea what to say. When this horror happens AGAIN, I do the same weeping and fuming and turning away that a lot of people do (I won't say "most" or "everyone", because those are idiotic assumptions). 

Nearly every time this happens, the blame goes to "the Muslims", which makes me quake with terror (not to mention outrage). Soon it will be open season on people who are as anguished as everyone else about the situation.

I get flipped into a mix of powerless anxiety/rage by the strangest things. There was an item on the news yesterday about poisonous rat traps set around city parks in Vancouver, and about how people were finding dead rats lying around who had eaten the poison. Someone actually had the idea their dog might get sick from eating one of these, and that it wasn't a good idea to leave poisoned rats out where small children might find them and pick them up.

The inevitable authority figure/parks board guy came on and blandly said, "We have never had a complaint about these traps hurting pets or children." And that was the end of the story.

What does this have to do with bloodbaths in schools and at Christmas parties, and with people saying, don't worry about it because gun violence is actually down?

Nothing, directly.





It's that idiotic "we haven't had any complaints," a statement which makes people say, "Oh," and walk away, because this is an Authority Figure and they've just had the last word.

Because we've swallowed the bait.

"We haven't had any complaints" means "you shouldn't be complaining now because nobody else has. What's wrong with you?"

"We haven't had any complaints" means "it's OK, folks, there's no danger. And if you think there is, you're a screwball."

And of course, it means there can never BE a complaint in the future. It's against the laws of physics.

It's the same kind of reassurance which is meant to make you shut up, walk away, and not do anything more to try to change the situation.

Nobody complains. There's not much point, because we don't really have a problem here. Do we?

(I confess the article appeared in The Onion. But these days, it's hard to tell the difference.)


Saturday, October 10, 2015

Stunning? I'd say so!





Top Psychiatrist’s Stunning Announcement About Gun Violence


By PAULA J. CAPLAN, PHD
Featured Blogs October 9, 2015

After each highly publicized gun violence incident, some lawmakers—whether with good intention, for political gain, or both—declare that we must have laws to keep guns out of the hands of people with mental illness. It is therefore stunning and profoundly important to note Sunday's blog post from the American Psychiatric Association's president, Dr. Renee Binder.

As chief executive of the major lobby group that advocates for the interests of psychiatrists, Binder might have been expected to recommend an increase in psychiatric treatment for the mentally ill as a way to reduce gun violence. Amazingly, she not only did not make that recommendation, but she made the powerful—and well-documented—statement that people diagnosed with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it and that most of the mentally ill will never commit acts of violence against others. Thus, to pass laws to prevent the mentally ill from owning guns is no way to reduce the frequency of murders. In fact, as Binder pointed out, "Stronger indicators of risk include a history of violent behavior, domestic violence, and drug or alcohol abuse."






Politicians on the Sunday morning news shows either failed to read Binder's essay or chose to ignore it and plowed right ahead, pushing for gun laws about the mentally ill. And on Monday morning, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy appeared on CBS, making an impassioned plea to prevent the mentally ill from owning guns and making the bold—and unfounded—assertion that that such a step would have prevented the most recent mass shooting. It will be worth watching to see if over time, Binder's strong statement alters politicians' proposals. Today, Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson made a similar plea.

Two important points shed further light on this matter. One arises from the fact that the primary way that "the mentally ill" are identified is by having been given psychiatric diagnoses, but a vast body of work over three decades has revealed psychiatric diagnostic categories to be constructed and applied with little or no scientific support, so attempts to divide the populace into "the mentally ill" and "everyone else"—and aim to pass laws affecting the former—make no sense.






The other relevant point is that the ballooning numbers of categories and subcategories that are called mental illnesses has led to the psychiatrizing of our society, the tendency of therapists, media people, the public, even some novelists to try to explain every aspect of human behavior as caused by a mental illness. This often takes the form of, "Person X did Y, and the fact that they did Y proves that they are mentally ill, because Y (almost any action or expression) is a mental illness." Defense attorneys operating in a system that is often stacked against the accused, especially if the latter are poor or women or people of color, understandably try to get their clients diagnosed as mentally ill, hoping to argue that the psychiatric disorder is reason for a reduced sentence. As a result, a confounding factor we will increasingly need to consider is that an artificially created correlation between a diagnosis of mental illness and commission of a violent act will result, as anyone charged with an act of violence is increasingly likely to be labeled mentally ill. As that happens, it will unjustifiably become ammunition for those who want to base laws on the notion that "the mentally ill" are more dangerous than the rest of the populace.






POST-BLOG THOUGHTS. I've added a couple of things that might be relevant. Below is one of those cut-and-paste Facebook messages about depression, which are, I guess, better than nothing - but not much. They strike me as paper doll or cookie-cutter responses, don't cost anything, and can give you a false sense of having done your bit (so you can wash your hands of it all). 

These are posted for just one hour, then, I assume, taken down - but why? Why is it considered so dangerous for people to leave a post about depression on their page? Why the necessity of reassuring people with statements like "I did it for a friend and you can too" (which smacks of "well, my friend has this problem. . . )? The whole post seems to be saying, "it's OK to display a message about this completely taboo topic, because no one will ever know".





For many people, even mentioning the subject to offer "a moment of support" is just too great a risk, likely because they fear being exposed as a sympathizer. "If I don't see your name, I'll understand" is a very sad statement: I know you can't risk mentioning your name, because people might think you're "one of them". As I've said before, and I will keep on saying it, mental health issues are where gay issues were in 1970, and cancer issues in 1950. 

I have some things to say about all this (as usual). Below the Facebook quote and my response to it, I've posted a link to something you really need to see, if this subject interests you at all. (Please note: this is what you should NOT wear as a Halloween costume.)






Facebook cut-'n-paste message:

Yes depression is such a bitch and seems relentless. A lot of us have been close to that  edge, and some have lost friends and loved ones. Let's look out for each other and stop sweeping mental illness under the rug. If I don't see your name, I'll understand. May I ask my family and friends wherever you might be, to kindly copy and paste this status for one hour to give a moment of support to all those who have family problems, health struggles, job issues, worries of any kind and just need to know that someone cares. Do it for all of us, for nobody is immune. Hope to see this on the walls of all my family and friends just for moral support. I know some will!!! I did it for a friend and you can too. You have to copy and paste this one, no sharing.

My response to these one-hour-long, "if I don't see your name" messages of support: 


We're starting to see more about depression on Facebook these days, and people are pasting and sharing and doing all manner of things. But do you know what might do even more to help the cause? If you know of someone who is off work with depression, don't avoid them or pretend it isn't happening. Ask them if they're up to a visit at home or in the hospital, and go see them and bring flowers or something else they might like. Depression is disabling and hurts far worse than a heart attack or a broken bone, but there are virtually no flowers sent to psychiatric wards. People's aversion runs very deep. Let's get over it, shall we? THAT would be really helpful.