Bad Day In Washington

Well, today was certainly not our finest hour. Once again, gun control has been defeated.  Amazing. One of my favorite slogans is “Evolution is a slow process” but come on!  Isn’t it time we made some sane, adult decisions about this? How many more people have to die? The slaughter in Orlando happened partly because a mentally unbalanced individual was able to buy an assault weapon.  Perhaps he would have found another way if he couldn’t get his hands on a gun. Perhaps he would have chosen another target if he couldn’t carry out his rampage at PULSE. There are many if/thens and none of them matters.  The fact is these weapons are made for one thing only and that is to kill human beings. They are not hunting weapons. You shoot a deer with one and you have deer dust. They are weapons of human destruction. Why are civilians allowed to buy them? You can’t by bazookas or rocket launchers. You can’t go out and purchase hand grenades. It doesn’t make sense, until you consider the strangle-hold the NRA has over seemingly all of Washington. Who are these people? Are they running our country? Why are our senators and congressmen listening to the NRA and ignoring the general public?Some claim their Second Amendment rights. The people who wrote the Second Amendment had no idea there would ever be such a thing as an automatic rifle.  By blindly adhering to something written over 200 years ago we deny ourselves the capacity for growth and change. I believe we are more flexible than that. I believe we have the power to recognize and make the changes necessary to promote our evolution.  Maybe banning the sale of automatic weapons  won’t stop these mass shootings but at least it would remove one element from a complex and terrifying problem and I can't see any reason not to do it  I beg everyone to consider this in November. Please. 

The Power of Hate

                Can someone explain to me the value of being able to buy automatic assault weapons?  I don’t get it. These are guns designed for absolutely nothing except killing human beings.  So why should anyone be able to walk into a gun store and buy one? Whose rights are we violating by not allowing the sale of these weapons?  What exactly is the argument?

                Last weekend someone used one of these weapons to massacre 49 people. Okay, maybe if he hadn’t been able to purchase an assault rifle he would have found another way to act out the rage that had been building in him for so many years. Probably that’s true. And I know that if you can’t get a gun legally, there are plenty of choices on the street, but it seems to me removing one of the choices can’t be a bad thing, even if it’s not the whole solution to that particular situation.  As long as people have access to assault weapons, we are all at risk.

                I am gay, and the events of last weekend tore at my heart.  To be reminded that things haven’t changed as much as we thought they had, to know there are still people out there who hate us and think we are the worst kind of human beings hurts deeply. To listen to the words of a father who would rather have his son labeled an international terrorist than gay, and to see the hideous results of that kind of thinking is so very sad to me. I don’t think of the people who died in that club in Orlando as my gay brothers and sisters. I think of them as my fellow human beings, ruthlessly cut down when all they were seeking was a good time. 

     It wasn’t drugs or booze that caused this. It wasn’t some far away terrorist organization. It was pure, home grown hatred, one of the most powerful of human emotions, one that kills as surely as any assault weapon sold. 

Safety?

Like most people, I was saddened and angry to learn of the events at the Cincinnati Zoo last week. The death of Harambe, a mature silverback gorilla is horrifying, just as seeing a four-year-old child being dragged through the water and slammed against rocks is horrifying. Thanks to the press, social media and the ability to take videos with a cell phone we were privy to all the brutal details, but I must question how those details were presented. I was appalled to find the child’s mother being persecuted on social media as someone who wasn’t taking proper care of her offspring, resulting in the death of an endangered animal.  No. The zoo, when it accepts your entrance fee, promises safety. Did everyone see the fence around the gorilla enclosure? A full-grown adult could probably have gotten through, never mind a four-year-old. Yet, within all the coverage, I only saw one picture of that fence. We were all too busy blaming the mother, so, in addition to watching her son nearly get killed, she has to endure the harsh judgment of people who may not have thought the thing through, to put it kindly. In my opinion the entire unhappy event is wholly the fault of the zoo.  Does anyone take their kid to the zoo without an expectation of safety? Of course not. We are not in the habit of putting our children in the path of danger, as far as I know.  That woman had every right to expect proper confinement of the exhibited animals. It was not there. The zoo failed the gorilla, that child, and his mother . Today I hear she isn’t going to sue, because the zoo has promised to improve the situation, for which I applaud her. She is taking the high road. I hope the Cincinnati Zoo does the same. Rest in peace, Harambe.