False Flag

There is an insidious false flag operation going on in our nation.

There are people and organizations who are trying to convince you that having more guns solves the problem of gun violence.

Don't believe them.

They perpetuate the falsehood that having a gun keeps you safe. They cite how many gun owners are not the victims of crimes, failing to mention most are never involved in the perpetration of crimes.

They perpetuate the falsehood that having a gun in your home keeps you safe, failing to mention the continual rise in the number of people murdered with a gun kept in their home and the number of times the trigger is pulled by children finding unsecured weapons.

They perpetuate the falsehood that the duly-elected government cannot be trusted with information about gun ownership because it will come for their weapons, when nothing of the sort has ever happened.

They perpetuate the falsehood that "good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns," even though in many States with open carry and concealed carry, no one with a gun ever seems to step up to stop the commission of a crime before it occurs.

They perpetuate the falsehood that those who are routinely shot by others were malcontents who had it coming, especially where those people are people of color or "foreigners."

They perpetuate the falsehood that they need to be able to protect themselves from the government, even though they have filled the government with hand-picked shills who knock down every piece of legislation designed to regulate guns or gun ownership.

They perpetuate the falsehood that the Second Amendment is inviolate, even though the framers of the Constitution made sure any Amendment could be amended as time passed and society changed, and nowhere does it say anything outlined in the Constitution cannot be regulated.

They perpetuate the falsehood that guns solve the problem of crime, when they clearly only exacerbate the level of death any individual can mete out in blind fury against real or imagined slights.

They perpetuate the falsehood that only the mentally ill and the criminal use guns for ill purposes, when many who have perpetrated crimes of mass killing have not been mentally ill or criminal, and were easily able to obtain weapons to carry out their plans.

There is a well-known public facing organization that is mouthpiece for much of this, which constantly blows the horn of warning to the paranoid, delusional, and bigoted, warning them that decent Americans are their enemy, that anyone who wants to see guns properly controlled and registered is unworthy of respect. They will work to ensure that not a single step is taken to rein in the proliferation of weapons of mass death, wrapping their cause in the flag and the Constitution, both things they have desecrated with their petulant rancor and obstinacy.

Behind it all, are those who manufacture these horrid weapons, and their only motivation is greed. Bathed in the money that comes from stoking the cycle of violence, they work only to ensure the safety of their ill-gotten gains, and not the people of the nation. They know that every massacre will simply flood their coffers with more blood-soaked dollars, as the paranoia they have sown causes people to buy more guns and work harder to stem their regulation, in the name of "safety."

When anyone tells you there is a conspiracy revolving around guns, tell them you know, and tell them that the sooner gun manufacturers and their mouthpieces are dismantled, the sooner the conspiracy will end.

The Only Thing We Have To Fear

I let my daughter get away with a great many things.

Chocolate bars for breakfast. Endless hours on her iPad. I don't ask her to dress herself or feed the cats or any of myriad things someone her age could be doing. I take her to school every day, kiss her on the head, tell her I love her, and head off to work.

With a sense of foreboding.

I try very hard not to fight with her, but inevitably, when I put my foot down, there are heated exchanges. I let them cool off, then I apologize profusely.

I do all this for one simple reason: I don't want her last thought of me to be a negative one.

Oh no, it's not that I have cancer, or I'm planning on running off an leaving my family.

No. It's much darker.

74 school shootings in the time since the Sandy Hook Massacre have left me with the foreboding feeling that one day, I will drop her off... and that will be it.

My parents never had this worry. Their parents never did. And so on. But I... I live with the thought, brought more prominently forward in my mind every day. The thought that my nation, the one I am so proud of, has gone so far off the rails that hundreds of thousands of people have access to military-grade weaponry and ammunition, and when the pressure of their torment reaches a fever pitch, they will wander into my daughter's school and kill her.

What does that say about us? What has our nation become that the almost daily reports of people wandering into schools and malls and military bases and shooting themselves and others does nothing to bring our collective blood to a boil? What does it say, that we throw up our hands and continue to let legislators backed by the fear-monger, gun-worshiping groups in this land run the show?

It says we are in trouble. Unless we DO SOMETHING. NOW.

The Case Against The Second Amendment

There is one, and only one, flaw in all attempts at the imposition of normal control on guns & gun ownership: the Second Amendment. It is the fly in the ointment that degrades any reasonable discussion into shouting pedantry and veiled threats. It is at once the crux of the issue and the thing that bars any movement in any direction. Its semantics have been decompiled, deconstructed, dismissed, and devalued, and in the end, its shadow still lies endlessly across the peace of our nation.

I am reticent to touch it; it is like a clinging, clutching vine that no amount of cutting and trimming may successfully dislodge. As part of our Constitution, I am honor-bound to defend it, but so am I also required to see that its precepts are properly followed. That's where the problem lies: the intersection of the then, from whence it was spawned, and the now, wherein we must live with it two centuries later, in a world radically different from the one the Founding Fathers lived in at the time of its conception.

You and I may speak of clauses and commas, intent and introspection, but at the end of it, the Second Amendment is an enigma, both plain to see but bounded in mystery, a monolith that rises among us and programs us to fear and to fight. The amendment itself is plain enough, despite what we take to be a crude & confusing wording. At its simplest, it means that government may not take away all rights for citizens to maintain arms; the caveat is -- and this part is often glossed over -- that the reason for this particular allowance, above any other, is that States must be allowed to maintain the necessary strength to form militias.

Look at the world and the circumstance that led to it. The United States was a swaddled, newborn nation, had just fought a war of independence, and was heavily indebted to others to supply the necessary firepower for us to gain that independence. Having so gained it, those who agitated for revolution were now faced with a difficult task: pry that independence from under the thumbs of any potential adversary. At the moment, with no large standing naval forces, land forces that were demobilizing to a greater degree after the war's conclusion, and a nation still not fully constructed in law, The United States was in a precarious and vulnerable position, should Great Britain or any other sovereign nation choose to make a play for it.

This leads, inevitably, to finding ways to secure a nation from foreign threat that allowed for quick mobilization of forces in the advent of attack, and placing such forces in close proximity to every possible entry point on a significant landmass. And doing so, possibly without a strong central government to coordinate defense. The answer was obvious: State militias, built up of citizen soldiers brandishing their own weapons, fighting for their own ground, concentrated in cities and town near possible invasion points. When rallied, such militias would be the first line of defense, hopefully able to hold an invading force at bay long enough, for Federal government to coordinate the fight and bring larger forces to bear.

So when the Bill of Rights was crafted, it seemed appropriate to codify this necessity. After all, the British were not keen on an armed citizenry in their midst, and were wont to strip the average Colonial of weapons if they thought that would protect them from exposure to attack. Having just lived through that war, and having seen how hard it was to gather sufficient forces quickly to counter British thrusts, it made sense to the Founding Fathers to enshrine the principle of home defense in the newly-minted Constitution, not simply as an organizing principle, but as a warning to other nations: we will defend ourselves and if you seek a fight, you shall have it.

As men of The Enlightenment, the Founding Fathers knew that their work, like the world, would not remain static, but would need to be reshaped to meet the challenges of new times and new technologies. The Constitution was meant to be altered as circumstance warranted, when conditions called for a new approach to the organization and functioning of the country. Secretly, they must have sensed that by not dealing with the issue of slavery, that alteration would have to come sooner rather than later, to make up for their lack of courage at the time. So, the document was formed, it was built to be amendable, and the very first amendments were made as a first set of guiding principles to be shaped. That freedom of speech, press, and worship should be the first guiding principle should come as no surprise; in line with that, the second being the right to maintain arms should not shock us either. Having established freedom and liberty for all, it was important to ensure its defense.

Now, we look upstream from the 1780's and 1790's to the start of the 21st Century, and we see that a necessity of the previous era is no longer such at our current point in time. The United States of America is the sole, preeminent superpower on Earth. Our arsenal of weapons, our standing ground,  sea, and air forces, our bases strewn across the face of the globe, make us unrivaled and unmatched. What was true in Lincoln's time, for he foresaw it even then, is clearly true now: no foreign power could take a drink from any river in our nation, nor trod one foot upon it, save where they could eliminate every single American at a stroke, a formidable and seemingly insurmountable task.

Where does that leave the Second Amendment? Dying. It dies of necessity, decaying through the inevitable shift of our nation from shaky confederation to powerful unity. Two world wars armed us, and every conflict since has honed us. Thus, an amendment born of necessity for defense, now lies withering on the vine of liberty. It is kept feebly alive by a faction among us who still believe in inevitable tyranny, though they believe it preparing to strike from within and not from without. They are certain that their government will soon be battering down their doors and marching in to strip them of their only defense. These are not the hunters and sportsmen we are talking about; these are people who see shadows on every street and eyes peering around every corner.

Our nation is supreme in its ability to defend itself; for that purpose, the Second Amendment is now obsolete. Does that of necessity mean we should not be able to bear arms? No. What it does mean is that unfettered, unregulated access to weapons is now a greater threat to us than all our "enemies." Like a seemingly mighty tree, our outward appearance is of strength, but the core is slowly rotting away, chewed up by the increasing frequency and devastation caused by the carnage of military grade weapons in the hands of people who have no business having them. They have these weapons, because the Second Amendment has been elevated to the status of a Commandment by a minority of Americans who feel threatened by their own government. Tapping the power of their sycophantic paranoia to wield legislative power on a national scale, unchecked and unopposed by rational Americans, they leave us all vulnerable to the vagaries of those unwilling or unable to control their rage.

Now, however, perhaps the slumbering mass of Americans awoke, stirred from its torpor by the horror of one person slaughtering innocent children in a school. We may be forgiven for momentary skepticism, because why should it have taken this horrific moment to finally change the direction of the narrative, given the number of such horrible events before now? We cannot belabor that point, though; we must now work on focusing the outrage and ire of the American citizenry over this into a laser-like beam, scouring our nation of the forces that would continue to plant the seeds of slaughter in our midst while turning their back on the carnage such a crop reaps.

The Second Amendment no longer does what it was intended to do. We must now have the courage to fix it.

In The Shadow Of One Gunman

28 people are dead. One gunman, the gunman's mother, six staff members and twenty children from an elementary school in a quieter part of Connecticut, a town that many of us might drive through or past on our way to anywhere else in New England.

This event is nothing new, not even in recent memory. It joins a litany of such events that have happened in many parts of the nation, in many publicly accessible places, and to many types of people. Every time it has happened, every time the wailing of frightened victims has mixed with the flat crack of high-velocity projectiles and the attempts of some to stop or prevent greater carnage, a nation gasps, horrified, shakes it's head, mutters "never again," before casting its glance back down to rectangular screens, where they read stories of young, black men gunned down on street corners by white men who were "standing their ground."

Only now, there is a barely subsumed rage at work, a primal enmity that for most years floated below the surface of economic woes, Presidential elections, real estate crashes, foreign wars, falling buildings, celebrity breakups, and cable television, barely managing a ripple. It breaches the surface, shouldering aside all other thoughts and cares, resplendent in the bright of day, a stately leviathan whose mass is undeniable in its presence. All it took was the death of white suburban six- and seven-year-olds.

It may seem coarse to break that moment in Newtown, Connecticut down this way, and I, like many others, am tinged with a pain that will not seem to ebb, but it must be little consolation to the parents of all those massacred before or the families of those murdered on streets and in homes every day to share their grief with so many new families. The common denominator, here as with all that came before is simple: guns. Circumstances, time of day, place, mental health, upbringing... all these things may be different, but there is the commonality of readily and easily available weapons to those who perpetrated the crimes which so shocked us at the time. At some point, in some manner, people who have lost a connection -- or may never have had it -- with human society take these devices for dealing death and spray their unhappiness, their despondency, their rage, their phobias, their hatred over a broad swath of the rest of us. People, who rose that morning to another new day, do not live to see the sun set again.

One is left to ask: when were we going to act? What about the murder of Abraham Lincoln did not change our society? Or John F. Kennedy? Or Martin Luther King, Jr.? Or Medgar Evers? Or the attack on President Ronald Reagan? The rampage at Columbine? Virginia Tech? The attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords? The death of Trayvon Martin? What among these events did not say to us: "That is not our way. This is not acceptable."?

These deaths of innocent children are but the tip of a very long spear that America carries because the Founding Fathers could not conceive of weapons with torrential rates of fire and bullets designed to rend and tear and ruin. They wrote the Second Amendment at a time when the nation was young, ill-formed, nascent, vulnerable, and they wanted every American who wanted to, to be able to have a gun, with the express purpose of being able to raise state militias in the face of invasion by a foreign power. The War of 1812 was an example of the necessity: America was not yet strong enough to repel an invasion  and it was only through the judicious use of militia forces that battle could be tipped in America's favor.

While it may be that the Founders had the forethought to equip America with the ability to fight battles upon its own shores as the nation slowly rose in strength, they did not have the precognitive ability or personal will to place limitations on what the Second Amendment implied. Thus it was left, its language making perfect sense in the 18th or 19th Century, but inconceivable in the face of the 20th Century and the Tommy gun. And no doubt, it was this insurance that well-armed militias could be raised at a moment's notice that allowed The Civil War to be fought, as Southern militias rose from the fields to take on a U.S. Army welded to the Union. Even when that was over, General Ulysses Grant and Abraham Lincoln were loathe to take the arms of every Southerner, for their now deposed nation was so ravaged that hunting would be necessary to feed families.

The gun has gone from liberator to protector to terror. Now, the tip of the spear has wounded our nation's heart, by slaying 20 of our most innocent. We must hold a personal amount of shame, each one of us, that none of the earlier tragedies pushed us toward action, but to fail now, fail to let this pain slough off the shell of inaction that prevented us from seeing clearly, would be criminal. Whatever else must come from this, there must be a final recognition that the unfettered access to guns is not the solution to the further protection of a nation, but is too much a path of destruction. Abraham Lincoln noted it, that the chances were very small that our nation would be crushed by a trans-Atlantic foe, but that we would commit suicide as a nation. He said this, even as the United States was embroiled in a war whose outcome seemed none too certain.

The Second Amendment was tailored toward the protection of the nation as a whole; it was never meant to establish the right of personal protection beyond that ownership of arms for national protection. That is the construction of those who see guns, not in their proper context as weapons, but as dollar signs. An industry that feeds on war cannot live by war, and so it must sow its deadly seeds where peace was meant to reign. To do this, has required a vast and complex interlinking of factors: the disenfranchisement of minorities, the lowering of educational standards, an increase in poverty, the creation of the idea that young, black men are a "dangerous" group in and of themselves, the spreading of abject fear through outright lies and petty obfuscations, and so on. By the gun lobby wrapping itself in the Second Amendment, the American flag, branding themselves as patriots, co-opting the National Rifle Association to be their confidence men, and allying themselves with the Republican Party mainly, the arms industry has planted seeds of self-destruction that people like the shooter in Newtown were all too happy to reap.

If there is any silver lining to such a virulent tragedy, it is that perhaps now the public is finally galvanized to action. Combine that with the hard fought Presidential election, and perhaps in the air now wafts the scent of organization and action required for Americans to take back control of their country from the special interests and parties that seek to turn it into their own personal fiefdom. Maybe now, a healthy dose of common sense can be taken in by a deep inhalation of that scent. and finally, after the drowsy slumbers of past decades, we can awaken the United States of America to the threat in its midst.

If we do nothing -- again! -- then we set a steady course for the dissolution of our nation in a hail of bullets, a self-inflicted wound that will bleed away individual freedom and liberty here for all time. We stand in the shadow that gunman and it is time to come back into the light.

They Were No More

A big hand holds a little hand
As smaller legs pump to keep up
Walking to the bus stop
On the cool Autumn morn

The little yellow bus arrives
To the squeal of brakes
The squeak of doors
And the sounds of bubbling voices

Small legs pump up stairs
As backpack crumples jacket
Then at the top a turn, a smile
A wave and "Goodbye, Mommy!"

And then they were no more.

Shot For The Crime Of Being Black

Trayvon Martin died by the hand of George Zimmerman. This is not in dispute. Zimmerman claimed self defense, which is a tacit admission that he killed the boy.

What is in dispute, thanks to a new body of evidence, including 911 calls and eyewitness testimony, is that there is a case for self defense at all.

Specter Of The Gun

At two events which the President of the United States attended, someone outside in the crowd came armed. In the first instance, at a town hall on health care reform in New Hampshire, it was a man with a loaded sidearm. More recently, in Arizona, at a celebration for veterans, a man came with a sidearm and an AR-15 assault rifle. In both instances, the men were carrying legally registered weapons, and had every right, by state law, to carry them.

They were there to make a point.

Their intended point was to indicate that President Obama is in the process of "taking away the people's rights," that health care reform was just the first step to curtailing the freedoms of all Americans.

Ludicrous, I know.

Their unintended point was to show, unequivocally, that reactionary elements in this country are mobilizing. They have been given life by the election of the first African-American President, and simmering hostility, for years kept behind closed doors, is now out in the open. They have also been given a voice by news outlets, using the opportunity to gain fame for themselves and a TV/radio audience for their platform. They know how to play the game, and have played it well.

Now, the Second Amendment has been analyzed and interpreted since its inception, but the intent of the amendment was clear: the Founding Fathers felt that in order to ensure the safety of the fledgling United States, and to make mobilization in case of invasion by a foreign power easier, that American citizens would be entrusted with the right to keep their arms. It was a warning to other nations, that attempting to attack the United States on its home soil would be folly, given the number of armed citizens capable of forming local militias in short order. George Washington had already proven that militiamen and citizen soldiers could, in time of war, been honed into an effective fighting force.

Two hundred and twenty plus years later, the idea that any nation would attempt a direct land invasion of the United States is considered fantasy, given the strength of our armed forces, the weapons at our disposal, and above all, our nuclear deterrent. The armed citizen militia is the very last line of defense, and if it comes to that, that would tend to indicate that America has suffered a mortal blow.

So now the need for an armed citizenry is less pressing, but still, the right is woven into the fabric of the Constitution, specifically as part of The Bill of Rights. While an amendment can be repealed or even superseded by a new amendment, The Bill of Rights has taken on a stature that makes it seem inviolate, as if the mere suggestion that any of its provisions be struck down is madness. For better or worse, the Second Amendment is here to stay, and it's more important than we learn how to handle it, than to bemoan its existence.

For those who are decent people, who take the use and ownership of weapons seriously, and have taken great pains to handle their weapons with respect, the idea that gun ownership should at least be regulated, should not cause them any great concern. Yet, gun groups, most notably the National Rifle Association, stand staunchly against the idea of registering and regulating firearms, as if it some sort of affront, as if they are being told "we don't trust you." It is a peculiar stance for an organization to take that says it is protecting the right to bear arms, because by doing so, they allow firearms to fall into the hands of those who most decidedly should not have them, weakening their position. Just as there are laws that say yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not free speech (per the First Amendment), it would seem to make sense that saying convicted felons cannot own guns, or that guns are not allowed within city limits, would be just as constitutional, per the Second Amendment.

This fetishizing of firearms, coupled with the idea that the basic rights of Americans are under siege, is leading to an inevitable collision, which will not go well. That these men brought weapons within easy range of the President is disturbing, of itself, but not nearly so anxiety-producing when one remembers that our President is escorted everywhere by one of the most elite paramilitary forces the world knows, the United States Secret Service. No doubt a person carrying an overt weapon was identified as a potential hostile and treated accordingly, and would not be given the chance to create mayhem.

The flip side of that is that while an obvious firearm would be engaging the attention of authorities, an unobtrusive weapon could still be in the crowd. It's never the devil you know, but the one you don't, that inevitably catches you off guard. The presence of those weapons was a clear sign that tensions are escalating, and that someone with ill intent may very well try to assassinate the President, given an opportunity. This ramps up the tension further, to the point that soon, a person carrying a legal firearm to a rally or protest where the President is scheduled to be, may find themselves on the short end of a killing shot for making a gesture that, in a split-second, could be interpreted as brandishing their weapon.

It is fine to make your voice heard, to protest policies you feel are not in the best interests of all Americans. It should not require a gun to make the point.