TRIGGERED: why I hate ignorance about my country

This commentary was originally posted in the comments section of a YouTube video about Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and the whole "Megxit" scandal which I have been doggedly following like a bloodhound on the scent (though I am not sure why). Some ignorant pundit (and if I hear news people say "pundent" ONE more time, I will scream!) stood up and said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (or whatever they call themselves now) need more security in their hideaway on Vancouver Island because Canadians own MORE guns per capita than the U. S. 

This caused my jaw to hit the floor. But tabloid media (and ALL media) are the province of stories that come unsubstantiated, just out of nowhere:  "a source claims" and "Palace officials have stated. . . ", with no proof of ANY of it. 

I seldom post long commentaries any more, not because I have nothing to say but because I don't know where to start. To avoid being overwhelmed, I must sidestep a lot of it. But this one was too outrageous to let pass. I like to break up big  blocks of text, which I did, with what I hope are appropriate images. 

"I'd like to know where he got his stats on Canadians owning guns! We are NOT a gun-oriented culture, and VERY few citizens arm themselves or own an arsenal, as many civilians do in the U. S. 

Yes, we DO have guns: the criminal element, such as gangs, can always get them illegally. Hunters use them, including indigenous peoples who need them for their food source, but in every case their use is tightly regulated. 

To own a gun, you have to jump through so many hoops (including mental health checks) that it bears NO relation to the U. S., where firearms can be bought at the local hardware store along with duct tape and plumbing supplies. 

We have no "second amendment", no Confederate flag, had no civil war, have an extremely boring history with far less bloodshed, never had a glorious Revolution, are seen as passive and somehow a "lesser" nation, just because we are forced to live cheek-by-jowl with what increasingly looks like a lawless Wild West, where people think the solution to school shootings is arming all the teachers (not to mention some of the students). 

Meanwhile, Trump says "it isn't guns that cause mass shootings, it's mental illness." That's just great, Donald, heaping more BS onto the steaming pile of crap about mental health which by now should be obsolete. So mass shootings are caused by "whack jobs" and "nut bars", and people who are "cray-cray" and "forgot their meds". Maybe it's the fact that I have bipolar disorder and have never even SEEN a gun, or known anyone who owns one, which causes me to wince and even despair when I hear made-up statistics like this. 

But please, no more unsubstantiated assumptions about Canadians and guns. We have been casually compared to the U. S. (inevitably, to our detriment) for as long as I can remember. Either we're that charming little backwater where draft dodgers and ex-royals can hide out, safe from the evil papparazzi, or that nutty place with a hipster fruitcake for a Prime Minister. ENOUGH!"

Safety Product Fail

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

No guns, no shootings: are you crazy?

I just posted a Facebook comment, and how I wish I hadn't, in response to another comment, and how I wish I hadn't read it, by a guy who was blustering on and on about the Second Amendment and Constitutional Rights, etc. etc. so you knew where he was coming from without asking, and he says at one point, in all-caps of course, SO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT YOU THINK IF ALL GUN OWNERS SURRENDERED ALL THEIR WEAPONS, THERE WOULD BE NO MORE MASS SHOOTINGS?

I answered, well, uh, sir, um. Uh, YEAH, that's the way it would be; if there were no guns, there'd be no shootings. Eh?

"What, what, what," I can hear him (and others of his ilk) spluttering. "That's - that's impossible. That wouldn't change anything! It would just infringe on our Constitutional rights!"

But it would. It would change everything. 

Even though to many, many people, being without guns is unthinkable, it's thinkable. It is. People just haven't realized it yet.

There was a time when most Americans believed slavery was acceptable, if not desirable and/or an innate right. Then things began to change. Certain people began to speak out, people who saw it as an innate wrong. 

Sometimes, when the time is ripe, history lifts up the right leader. So along came that cat named Abraham Lincoln. And then a funny thing happened.

After a long and incredibly bloody war, during which one whole side wouldn't let go of their entrenched ideology and/or their weaponry, - POOF - or (bang!) - slavery was no longer acceptable.

In fact -

In fact, slavery no longer existed. All the slaves were set free. All of them. At once.

That doesn't mean all the problems were solved, but the problems changed. Those former slaves needed/deserved to build decent lives for themselves, with the same rights and privileges as everyone else. The transition was so rocky that some people think it's still being made to this day.

Am I making my point here? Slavery was acceptable - just a given. Could you do anything about it? Of course not. The commerce of an entire country was built on the backs of slaves, so why would anyone want to?

Then someone wanted to. Then a lot of someones.

Then slavery was unacceptable. Then a war was fought, and when the dust settled, it no longer existed. 

New ideas or good ideas or shit-disturbing/revolutionary/incredibly simple and powerful ideas always start off as impossible/impractical or even insane ideas and have to be shouted down. Hey, we can't do that! YOU can't do that! It's - it's, well - we've just never done it that way! Or: it's immoral, or: God doesn't like it. Or it violates my Constitutional rights.

We can't get rid of all the guns!

Then we'd have no guns. NO GUNS? 

(But that doesn't mean we'd have no shootings. Does it?)

Uhmmmm. 

Yes.

Afterthought. I like to tack on things I couldn't work into the main body of my post. I'm not sure how to say this one, but it's been rolling around in my head all day, and even before that - ever since the latest carnage/atrocity that destroyed dozens of valuable, irreplaceable human lives.

There's a lot of talk about the Constitution and the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms, etc., when the wording of the original statement seems so irrelevant to me that I have to twist it into a pretzel before it means anything at all.

But with all this talk of rights and freedoms, what about my right, your right, OUR right to peace of mind? What about being able to go to school or church or a night club without fear of being shot to death? We're beginning to think of these horrors as a fundamental fact of life, something we can't do anything about.

When that happens, we stop trying for anything better.

I have a right, you have a right, they have a right. WE ALL have a right to not have to worry about our kids and grandkids being killed, their future stopped. I remember a time, and it was not so long ago, when these things simply did not happen, when mass murder was so rare as to be almost unheard-of. There was no familiar pattern of groaning and sighing every few months: "oh God, not another one," and waiting to find out the sickening circumstances.

People are starting to act as if nothing can be done.

If they think nothing can be done, nothing can be done.

A gun can be picked up. A gun can be put down. It can be surrendered; confiscated; thrown away. The ammunition can be pulled out of it forever.

No guns = no shootings. Too simple; it can't be so. But how could it be anything but true?

DISARM

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.