What you feel is life, what you live is another story.

Tag: murder

Gun Control is an Act of Love

Remorse.  Sadness.  Grief.  Disbelief.

And anger.  I can’t forget about the anger regardless of how much I want to.

Those are just some of the very human emotions that overwhelmed me as listened to the news about the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.  Just some of them.  To list them all would create something unreadable.

As I sat on I-95 near Philadelphia heading home from a long day at the office, I wept openly.  Visions of my own children danced in my head.  Visions of children everywhere flooded my mind.  Those smiling faces, those wondering minds, those innocent souls.  I could hear the banter flowing through those classrooms on what should have been just another Friday as children transformed into students eagerly anticipating a holiday season.  I could imagine parents not unlike myself rushing around that morning, trying to get their children ready for a school day while trying to get themselves ready for a busy day at work.  I could imagine parents who, had they known this would be the last time they would see their babies, may have forsaken all worldly endeavors for those final few moments of complete  presence in lives they had a large part in creating.

Yes, our worldly endeavors seem a bit silly in those moments when we are faced with the loss of innocence and the finality of death.  The Eagles losing yet another game is forgotten.  The need to make end-of-year sales numbers seems meaningless when the idea of a tiny casket flashes across your mind.  The arguments between lovers becomes very unimportant when the knowledge that one day you will not be with her and that one day physical and intellectual separation will be permanent.  In truth, very little seems important when faced with mortality, particularly when it is the mortality of our children, our innocence, our posterity.

We fear permanence even more than we fear impermanence.  The only thing that is permanent in our human experience is death, and we seem to fear that more than we fear anything else.  It rattles us, not only because we don’t know what is coming afterward, but because it is so final.  We not only fear our own deaths, we fear the death of our loved ones.  Yet, it wasn’t death that found me weeping on a busy highway during rush hour, it was the death of innocence and of promise.  It was knowing that each and every one of those children senselessly killed likely had no idea of what death was.  It was knowing that each and every one of those sweet angels was left relatively unprotected despite deserving our fiercest shelter.  It was knowing the fear they must have felt, and it was in feeling the ultimate betrayal as the shooter did the Devil’s work.  How utterly devoid of compassion he must have been; how much hatred he must have held on to.  It is quite unimaginable to, fortunately, the vast majority of us.

Now, I’d rather not focus on the man who destroyed so much in such a small period of time.  Instead, I want to focus on the reaction many of us had to his horrifying actions.  Many of us found love overflowing from our eyes.  We found compassion pouring out of us.  We found empathy, sympathy, and new-found purpose in each tiny droplet of salty water that made its way into air.  We found that piece of ourselves that sometimes gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the illusion in which we “live”.  We discovered a piece of truth in the lie, and will hold on to that truth at least for a little while.  We will hug our lovers tighter tonight.  We will be more present with our children.  We will be more present with ourselves.

So, when I am asked “why?” I know what to say.  I have no idea why a 20-year old man would lose his grip on his own humanity and divinity.  Yet, those children did not die in vain if we, even for one second, pause to be more present in our lives and in our loves.  Those children did not die in vain if the final words I say to my own loves is “I love you”.  This understanding gives the very thing I can’t understand some understanding.  It gives the senseless some meaning.  It gives those of us who are doubting some sense of hope.  That’s “why” my friends.  So, get to it and don’t let those beautiful souls leave our consciousness while we have a chance to make good on the very thing that makes us who we are.

Make love like you have never made love before.  Embrace each other like it is the last time you will feel those arms around you.  Absorb the “daddy” and “mommy” moments fully as if they will be the last.  Don’t live in fear of the end, embrace it and make it meaningful in your daily experience.  Don’t go to bed angry with those you love.  Don’t do anything that will sour your epithet.  Don’t hug anger, hug love and don’t let go.  Fight for it.  Feel it.  And cherish every moment you get to share it.

Love, laugh and live fully.  Help others love, laugh and live fully.  Let’s get rid of the need for instruments of death in our lives.  Let’s cherish life and the living more than we cherish material things.  Start saying “no” to your boss and “yes” to your family.  Get high if you want.  Whatever.  Just start fucking living.

This is not an admonition to you.  This is an admonition to me that I simply want to share with you.  You are free to do as you please.  Me, I want to have no regrets at the end of the last day I share with someone.  I want to know I lived it all fully, even the bitter moments, and that in the end I’ve loved more fully than I’ve feared.

I am sure that soon enough we will see the smiling faces of those beautiful babies flashing across our televisions and computer screens.  We will hear wonderful stories of victims, their families, and their own unique promise.  We will cry again at the sight of young, smiling faces and we will make resolutions to end lunacy and seek love as our shelter.  We will live, even for an instant, in the warm and loving embrace of knowing ourselves as more than money, more than ideology, and more than nationality.  We will find our own promise and potential before settling back into our very human roles of forgetful man as the memory of those smiling faces fades.

I will also remember that the killer himself was once one of those smiling faces, and I will wonder what drove him to such darkness.  I will wonder because I don’t want any other child to lose that part of himself that makes him both human and loving divinity.  We all deserve our own sense of innocence, and it is time we start treating our children like they remind us of our own innocence and freedom.  Children are not afterthoughts, they are not nuisances that keep us from work or our favorite reality shows.  They are not weapons, and they are not punching bags.  They are wonderful creations that we had some part in, and as such deserve not just the best of who we are as individuals, but also the best of who we are as a society.  We owe it to them to pass laws that ensure that it is far less likely that they will be staring down the barrel of a firearm as they cry for a mommy and daddy who aren’t there to protect them.

Yes, I am done being on the fence about gun control.  I’m done seeing the “right to bear arms” as equally important to the right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Those children lost their rights to life.  They lost their rights to liberty.  They lost their rights to happiness as a madman pulled the trigger over and over again of a weapon he had the right to own.  Gun control is not about the erosion of American rights, it is about the guarantee of them.  So, fuck you, fuck your need to own a semi-automatic rifle and multiple handguns.  You only have two hands, and I doubt Nancy Lanza could have shot both handguns while handling a semi-automatic rifle in the process.

Face it, 27 people, including 20 innocent school children, could have been alive today if our government and We the People had the balls to get rid of guns as a “right” and, instead, made it impossible to get them.  End the War on Drugs, that failed social experiment that only ensures more of us spend time in jail than ever before, and begin the War on Guns.  Empty our prisons of drug users and fill them with gun owners who fail to see that they have absolutely no reason to own firearms if no one else does.

See, Nancy Lanza was not going to go hunting.  She obviously did not find protection in the guns she owned as her son gunned her down.  In fact, the guns she owned ended up killing her, so I’m sure if given a Mulligan she’d probably take them back even without a refund.  I’m sure she loved the children in her class, so I doubt she felt the Second Amendment worth the lives of 20 of them as well as 6 of her colleagues.  I doubt as she faced her end she thought of Charlton Heston and his famous “out of my cold, dead fingers” pronouncement.

I will not use the term “rest in peace” for those children and brave adults who died on December 14th in Connecticut.  That’s offensive to the very nature of the crime committed against them.  Rather, we should have been blessing them with a “live in peace” on December 13th.  We should have ensured their safety then, not given it lips service now.  Prayers and love and compassion are meaningless to them now, but how much could it have meant to them Thursday?  Yeah, that’s what I mean.  Tomorrow is too late.  Now is what matters.

And for Pete’s sake let’s stop being married to an ideal written 250 years ago in a document that was meant to be changed when necessary.  It is necessary now, more than ever, to rid ourselves of the scourge of firearms in this nation.  Our children deserve it, and we, as loving, caring, and intelligent adults need to ensure we protect them within a society that demands change.  Yes, our society is demanding change.  That is evident in the gun violence that is destroying us from within.

It is so evident that all we need to is review the gun violence over the last 10 years and ask, “how is that Second Amendment working out for you?”  I’d say not at all.  It’s time to move beyond the ideas that violence is the answer (that isn’t really working out for us either) and toward something a little harder to do but much more rewarding (as Gandhi and the independent India he helped give birth to without firing ONE SINGLE SHOT proved).  I love Gandhi and his example because he was a tiny, diminutive man who successfully rebelled against a world superpower without ever owning a gun.  It’s time we follow that example and bury Charlton Heston’s somewhere far away where we never need look at it again.

For now, I will follow other people who are crying, praying and empathizing with those victims of gun violence who decided to follow the pursuit of happiness rather than the right to bear arms and were shot in the process.  Yet I will not let this fire within me be buried with those victims.  Instead, I will use it to work toward ensuring that we create no other victims for the stupidity of a few who love the power of shooting something so dearly.  It’s time to end the lunacy, and never forget those who died for nothing more than an ideal.

Is This the Forgotten Side of Aurora? A Firefighter’s Sacrifice

https://www.facebook.com/firerescue1

Photo: Fire Rescue 1

 

Firefighter-EMT died shielding girlfriend in Colo. theater shooting

As a firefighter, I get to work next to some of the most amazing human beings I have ever met. I also get to work to assist some of the most amazing human beings I have ever met. I never met Jonathan Blunk, but I have met hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women just like him. It’s why most of us in Emergency Services shy away from the word “hero”. We know so many of them.

He saved his girlfriend’s life. He shielded her, he protected her, and he died for her. Many of us would do the same thing for someone we love. Yet, how many of us would do this for someone we don’t even know? I know hundreds, if not thousands, who would and some who have. I’ve lost friends and acquaintances; brothers and sisters who simply wanted to help another human being in their greatest time of need.

Jonathan’s girlfriend, Jansen Young, summed it up quite nicely.

Young said Blunk would have taken a bullet for anyone in the theater Friday.

“You know, the nearest person sitting next to him, he would have been like, ‘This person needs my help now,'” she said. “That just who he was and everybody knew it.”

Yes, that is just who he was and everybody knew it. Even those who have never met him.  He’s part of an amazing brotherhood of sinners and saints who want nothing more than to save you; to help you, to be there when you need them the most.

You did us proud, my brother, and may you rest in peace having shown the greatness of Love in the most trying times of fear. May we have the courage, the ability and the discipline to do the same when called upon to act. Be humbled, my friends, because greatness like this doesn’t always shine from the darkness. If it did, we’d all be firefighters, policeman, EMT’s and in the military. I remain in awe of those I serve with, and of those who have paved the way before me.

So, while we get caught up in the mundane but necessary political debate over ways to keep us all safe, simple men and women are doing remarkable things to get us there. In my experience, tragedy happens in order that we may bring the best out of ourselves and in each other. Perhaps we need to focus on that “best of ourselves” in order to best honor those who have shown us the best of themselves. Maybe we need to focus a little more on the hero and a little less on the monster.

Peace.

 

Freedom is Not Free (Gun Control is Still Control)

“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

 

The tragedy in Colorado has surely renewed the debate over gun control and Second Amendment rights.  It is also surely going to further divide a nation already fractured to its core.  As typical on social issues such as this, I am lost in a sea of what I feel/want versus what I know to be true.  Things like this are never easy, and such things often exercise our minds versus our values and should, if we exercise these things carefully and with awareness, leave us with a resolution to adhere to our values.  Character demands nothing less.

As true with my attitude on abortion rights (I am pro-life but believe everyone has the right and should have the freedom to decide for themselves) my views on gun control often inspire a reactionary event in those I know, love and/or discuss with.  I would shrink from the discussion if it were not so important in our national discourse.  My personality and my character simply does not allow me to hide in the shadows.  That being said, I am nothing more than some anonymous blogger who loves people and values life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights bestowed upon us all by our Creator.

I feel a distinct and immutable sadness over the death, suffering and destruction created in Aurora.  Tears well up inside me as I empathize with those who have lost a loved on to such a heinous act.  My heart bleeds for those who were injured.  My soul prays for healing and yes, it even prays for forgiveness for the person who created caused it all.  Yes, I wish him healing and love as surely as I wish it on the victims.  If that offends you, I am sorry.

I am no longer a man prone to violence, and I see it as the lowest frequency of human vibration.  I see violence as fear’s lowest low, the moment when our human minds become their weakest, and our hearts lose their hold on the smaller part of us.  In that light, I cannot react to violence with violence and expect the world to become a better place for my existence.  I must find the strength, resolve and love in my heart not to beat you down but to find a way to lift you up when I feel you have done me wrong.

That is my way.  It may not be yours, and I have found it take great resolve and strength to act in accordance with that vision even in the most benign of circumstance let alone in an event like the tragedy in Aurora.  I struggle with adhering to this vision daily and certainly know the strength it takes to not react in fear’s grip when it is so easy to do so given our societal instruction from birth.  I understand that we are taught “an eye for an eye” from birth, and that “domestication” creates in us a reactionary personality that feels the need to do something when we feel a wrong has been done.  Sometimes stillness should be the answer, but we weren’t raised that way as a collective and certainly were never taught how to exercise that restraint.  That “domestication” often makes hypocrites out of even the most peaceful and well-meaning among us.

Control is Control and Control is Oppression

To me, it is this simple.  The mechanism by which a deranged human being carries out his fantasies is not the issue.  A man bent on killing others will find a way to carry out is will regardless of what weapon we put in his hand.  One such example was at the Happy Land Social Club, where an angry boyfriend used gasoline to kill 87 people.  A difference here is that there is no “right” to gasoline, a gas can, or matches.  The Oklahoma City bombing was caused by fertilizer and fuel oil.  You simply do not need a gun to carry out acts of terror, vengeance or anger on other people.

So, while I personally see no need for anyone to have an assault rifle, I can’t inflict my attitude on those who do.  As a vegetarian, I see no reason for people to kill Bambi at all, let alone with an AK-47.  I read somewhere that about 13,000-14,000 a year, far greater than those who are killed by assault weapons every year.  While speeding is against the law in the United States, I have heard no one propose that we take cars away from those who speed.  They may lose their driver’s license after about umpteen tickets, but they still have their car.  Guess what, there is no “right to own a car” written in the Constitution anywhere either.

While this argument may sound silly to you, the idea of punishing law-abiding citizens whose pursuit of happiness involves owning a Uzi because of the handful of deaths committed every year at the hands of assault weapon owners is just as silly to me.  If they want to own a Uzi, fine, they should be free to own one.  As long as they don’t shoot up innocent people as a result.  People should be free to make choices for themselves.

Attitude is a dangerous thing, especially when some try to force others to adhere to their own.  Gun control is not about controlling guns, it is about controlling others.  It’s about keeping them from doing as they wish and distorting the Constitution to fit that attitude.  The Second Amendment is not about bearing arms as part of a “well-regulated” militia, it is about ensuring that the People can both keep a well-regulated militia as well as ensuring the right to bears arms is not infringed upon by the Federal Government (study Tench Cox and the opinions of the delegates on the Second Amendment).  Both things, the militias and the right to bear arms, were a direct result of real fears of our founding fathers pertaining to tyranny.  They wanted to ensure that the government could not keep the citizenry from both militarizing and protecting itself from a government.

“Another source of power in government is a military force.  But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression.  Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe.  The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.  A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
Noah Webster  (1758-1843) 

This was a predominant fear, particularly of those who fought against the European monarchies and tyrannies.  Understand that many Americans did not want a strong central government just for this reason.  There was a real fear that everything they fought for against England would be lost by creating a government that could usurp the power from the People.  The Second Amendment was considered, debated, and approved under that auspice; the People can fight back whenever the government becomes too tyrannical.

So this isn’t about Bambi, or Aurora, or Columbine.  It is about the real fact that we have a right, liked or not by all, to keep and bear arms in this nation.  That right exists more clearly than the right to abortion, the Separation between Church and state as well as many other “principals” many of us hold dear.

Freedom is Not Free

The price of freedom isn’t always about currency.  It is not always about fighting foreign dictators or evil empires.  It’s not always about liberating the oppressed.  Sometimes the supreme sacrifice made in the honor of freedom is found in movie theaters, in schools, in dark alleys, or on college campuses.  Sometimes those who die for freedom are not part of a well-trained military unit, but our neighbors, friends, husbands, wives, and children.  It sucks to say this, in fact it pains me greatly to say this, but we can’t honor those who have died for freedom by eroding that freedom out of fear just because we don’t happen to like something.

Yes, my attitude may be dramatically different had I lost someone close in Aurora.  Anger does that to a reasoning mind.  Sometimes we have to allow cooler heads to make decisions for us when in the throes of an angry reaction.  I sincerely want the person who did this to be punished for his crimes, but I don’t want to punish everyone for them too.  I don’t want to allow this government to take any freedom away from you, from me, or from anyone else.  I simply don’t trust it enough.

I realize this may create some angry reactions.  Understand that it is very hard for me to not only take this position, but stick to it.  Stick to it I will if only because I am sick of being told what I can and can’t do because of the attitudes of others.  I have to wear my seatbelt (I always wear it anyway, it is the have to I dislike) for instance.  Hey, if I want to drive down the road without my seatbelt and suddenly wear my windshield as a necklace that’s on me.  And for the love of all that’s holy don’t tell me about the monetary costs created by those who don’t wear their seatbelts.  Freedom is not free, and sometimes we pay a monetary price to allow others to exercise their own.

I pray we can have intelligent, wise and controlled public debate on this issue.  To me, freedom is the issue here, and what we are willing to sacrifice in the quest for a false sense of security that will never exist.

Peace.