Sandy Hook and Stupid People

So, this garbage comes skittering across my Facebook newsfeed yesterday.  A story about how Sandy Hook was staged by President Obama in order to inspire a gigantic gun grab by our government.  I'd hoped that the person posting it had done so to show just how stupid some Americans (and a few Irish, I'm told) can be.

Sadly, that wasn't the case.  In fact, it was a case of "Oh, my GOSH, has anyone researched this?  Is this TRUE?"

I went to school with the Cottle and Parker families.  I attended the same high school as little Emilie Parker's parents, and I attended at the same time as her aunts and uncles.  They are not actors.  They are not employees of the United States Government, pretending, for pay or otherwise, to be bereaved parents for the purpose of inspiring a gigantic gun grab by Obama and his evil henchmen.

Holy cow, seriously?  Is there anyone out there THAT crazy?  Anyone out there so stupid and out of touch that their first thought upon witnessing a slaughter like this is to say "It's a plot, it's a CONSPIRACY by that FASCIST COMMIE (the words are interchangeable in the nutjob crowd) to steal our guns!"

If you're that stupid, that crazy, you're EXACTLY who shouldn't have guns.  Seriously.

Be reasonable.  Be smart.  Understand that the Cottle and Parker families aren't sleepers, hanging out in Ogden, Utah for decades, blending in, pretending to be regular, decent folks.  They haven't been passing as "normal," waiting for the call from the evil feds to put on their mourning clothes and turn on the waterworks in their REAL avocation as super-secret actors and actresses in some grand, gun-grabbing production.

Are you familiar with the concept of Occam's Razor?  Sometimes called the Principle of Parsimony?  You might know it better as KISS, or "Keep It Simple, Stupid?"  In a nutshell, it tells us that, all things being equal, the simplest, least twisty explanation tends to be the correct one.  Which is more likely?  Which makes more sense?  That one deranged, screwed up kid who had access to weapons he never should have had access to went nuts and blasted apart a classroom, or that a great, complicated, covert plan has been in place for years, involving men and women pretending to be parents and families for the purpose of pulling one over on us all so that our President can take away our guns?

If you went with the latter, get thee to a shrink.  Quickly.

Here's a story from my old home's local newspaper.  That would be the newspaper published in the same town the Cottles and Parkers are from.  The town that's home to the high school we all attended:

Conspiracy theories claim Newtown shootings were a hoax

For goodness' sake.  Have a brain, huh?  I know most of you do, but if you buy into this crap, what's wrong with you?  The little girl wasn't magically alive again days later--that was her little sister!  The attack wasn't announced days in advance, that's just how the web organizes news stories after a few days!  Come on!

Come on.

Read this.  And then read this

And then cry.  Hurt for these people.  And stop trying to turn it into something crazy and idiotic that makes you mad instead of sad.  Stop trying to make it something fake so you don't have to deal with the reality of 20 little children blown to bits.  Stop clinging to lies and wild fantasies and face reality.  This wasn't a sham, it wasn't an act, it wasn't some grand conspiracy.

It was murder.  And your stupid, near-schizophrenic delusions may make you feel better, but they make the rest of us want to PUKE.

I was going to include a photo of sweet Emilie or handsome Noah, but that doesn't seem appropriate somehow.  If you're one of the conspiracy kooks, YOU should go find pictures of them.  And look.  Hard.

Stupid things people say

I may need to step back for a while.  I am having a hard time dealing with how incredibly thoughtless some folks can be.  How little mental energy they put into the things they then spit out of their mouths (or keyboards). 

Just tangled with someone.  We've tangled before.  And I am determined to calm down and live to tangle another day.  With him, even.  Because he's not all stupid, but sometimes he really doesn't think before he talks.

Today, it was guns.  He said, "There are already laws in place, but what's the point?  People break them so there's no point in even passing them"

Okay, Z?  There are also laws in place to prevent child molestation.   People break them. There are laws about speeding and drinking before you drive and raping and murdering and committing armed robbery.  Shall we ditch those laws, too?  Shall we just throw our hands in the air and say, "Oooh, NO, screw it, away with the laws!  People just break them, so what's the point?" 

Of course not.  That's just silly.  If we just said "screw it!" and did away with laws that people break, we'd have no laws. 

Then he said, "We have a RIGHT!"  Oh, goodness.  I've gone over this before, so I won't delve too deeply into the "dragging out a 225 year old document to determine laws concerning weapons UNDREAMED of when it was written" argument.  It's not a holy tome, and Thomas Jefferson would puke at the idolatry.  Besides, everyone seems to forget the "well-regulated" part of that Amendment.

After that?  He gave me the "If the teachers had been armed!" argument.  Spoken like a man who has no practical experience with firearms and watches way too many movies.  ABC did a great piece on folks with Concealed Carry permits, and, no surprise, the people were absolutely unhelpful in a pinch.  In fact, all they really would have managed in a crisis was to get themselves shot and kill the folks around them trying to run for safety.  There's a reason cops train, not just in the beginning, but ongoing.  Because life isn't a movie, that shooter isn't going to stand still for you while you dig your gun out, disentangle it from your shirt, then stand up, right in front of him, and struggle to take aim while your hands shake so badly you can barely grasp the gun.  He's going to blow your face off before you even clear that holster.  It's happened again and again.  Now, I'm not arguing against CCP, but rather arguing for PROFICIENCY and TRAINING.  We make people take driver's ed, for goodness' sake, but we let practically any idjit off the street carry a firearm.

Then?  Well, then we slid into the tired, "It's not the time, stop politicizing the tragedy!"  Seriously?  Funny, when a plane falls out of the air, we're ALL over how to improve safety and prevent the next tragedy.  When an overpass collapses, we have Congressional committees dedicated to discovering the cause and making sure it doesn't happen again.  Tell me this, Z.--if 20 children managed to get their heads caught between the railings on their cribs and DIE today, would it be "too soon?"  Would it be "politicizing" to call for investigation, regulation, improved safety, new laws?  Would it? 

Of course not.  You'd be howling for it.  Well, guess what?  298,000 (yes, that's two hundred and ninety-eight THOUSAND) people died from gunshots in the United States between 2000 and 2009.  If that doesn't merit at LEAST as much attention and intervention as faulty cribs and bad brakes on Toyotas, I don't know what does. 

And then?  The kicker.  He said, "Gun control criers on BOTH sides make me want to go out and buy a gun." 

And there it is, you know?  What do you say to that?  What do you say when someone has, in effect, just said, "You make me want to shoot you?"

I asked him how on earth anyone could mistake the "No, don't examine, don't fix it, don't talk about it, AMERICA!" crowd with the "Don't let this happen again, what can we do, we must change, what have other countries done to fix this?" folks?  How can you possibly confuse them?

We Americans are just going to let this slide.  Again.  The NRA will spend its big bucks to defeat any attempt to prevent this from happening again (even though most NRA MEMBERS support most recommended measures).  And you know what?  It's going to happen again.

And again.

I leave you with this.  I'm going to do my best to back away from the issue on my blog.  Too bad the parents of the victims can't walk away so easily. 

Oh, and the Christmas lights kapoofed out front.  Happened last year, too.  Moisture gets in the outlet, I guess, and it trips the doohickey downstairs.  But this time it won't stay on--each time we reset, it just trips again.  Bummer, but doesn't feel all that important, really.  Not right now.

My Heart is Sick for Connecticut

So, when the news hit this morning about a school shooting in Connecticut, the reports said that three adults had been killed, including the shooter.  As awful as this is going to sound, I breathed a sigh of relief.  Only three, and all adults, and one is the shooter--wow, that could have been SO much worse.  Isn't that awful, that we've come to a place where we consider that a "good" outcome?

When I signed on later to find that the numbers had changed dramatically?  Wrenchingly?  Devastatingly? 

Well, I cried.  Bawled.  My poor son tearing up next to me, grasping my hand, unsure what to do.

What to do?

I think of holiday gifts sitting under trees that will never be gleefully torn open, bitter reminders of a future blasted from this earth.  I think of delighted cries of excitement silenced and cookies for Santa never baked.  I think of parents who kissed their beautiful darlings this morning and never imagined some kid with guns would end them.

I think of 20 little hearts not beating.  20 sweet, perfect dreams gone. 

I'm not sure I can do this.  I keep crying. 

The Onion nailed it today when they posted this (beware of many swears).

How many times?  How many times does something like this have to happen before we stop pretending that it's a fluke, it's nothing to do with US, but rather some reflection of this nut or that "evil" person?  This is everything to do with us.  With the glorification of violence, with the constant barrage of anger and hatred and rudeness, with the ready access to murderous weapons.  It's not an isolated incident, it's not just one evil person, it's US. 

It's US! 

That kid who did this wasn't some demon crawled up from some imagined pit!  He was the child of well-educated, well-off parents who loved him, for goodness' sake!  And that guy in Aurora?  He wasn't Satan's imp, he was just a guy our society produced.  Our gun-toting, violence-embracing, shoot-em-up society where mega-lobbyists tell us that any attempt to be reasonable and intelligent in our laws about WHO GETS TO WALK AROUND WITH WEAPONS CREATED TO KILL OTHER HUMAN BEINGS is an "assault on our rights as Americans."

Spare me that.  Spare us all that.  Finally, please, just spare us.  We can have sane, reasonable, intelligent gun laws that still allow sane, reasonable, intelligent Americans to own guns.  And please, please don't throw out that "Oh, the Constitution!" crap.  We don't use 220+ year-old architectural guides to build modern bridges, we don't use 220+ year-old medical texts to guide modern surgeons, and we don't use 220+ year-old science books to guide our modern researchers.  So why on earth do we persist in pretending that the Second Amendment in any way relates meaningfully to our modern firearm issues?  In Revolutionary times, a particularly skilled shooter might be able to whip off FOUR ROUNDS PER MINUTE.

Four. 

At four rounds per minute, Mr. Adam Lanza might have managed to shoot one person.  Perhaps even one child.

That's 19 children who would have come home tonight.  19 children who would have been here to open presents and bake cookies for Santa.  19 children in their parents' warm embrace instead of cold coffins.

Stop pointing at our many "evil" gunmen and crying about how that has nothing to do with the gun laws argument.  It IS the argument.  Stop throwing your hands in the air and screaming about "THEM" as if they're somehow apart from US. 

Start looking around and realizing it IS us.  Our country, our laws, our culture of violence, our embracing of rudeness, our disdain for reason, our disregard for each other that makes this possible. 

Twenty perfect angels died today (and a slew of amazing, brave adults who tried to save them are also lost).  Twenty sparkling, wide-open futures ended.  Twenty bright, curious, seeking, joyous miracles of the universe stopped. 

And if that isn't enough to inspire us to turn this crazy-assed bus around and find a saner path, I don't know what is.

Oh, and before anyone says anything stupid like "this isn't the time to discuss gun control," tell me, when would be a BETTER time?  When bridges collapse, do we cry, "Not now, now isn't the time to discuss infrastructure!"  When buildings fall down in earthquakes, do we shake our heads and shout, "No, we can't talk about construction guidelines now!"  When children drown because of a downed fence around a pond, do we all scream, "NO!  Now isn't the time to talk about getting that fence fixed!"   Every time there is yet ANOTHER horrendous tragedy like today, certain factions scream that no, no, we can't talk about that now!   Now isn't the time!

And I sort of agree.  The time was at least 13 years ago.  But we dropped that ball, so NOW is the closest thing to a "good" time we have. 

I'm going to end this with a hope.  A hope that healing and comfort and some sense of peace somehow envelope those poor parents.   That they manage to find something here to hold on to.  That their families and community wrap them in love and kindness and understanding.  That we, as a nation, as a society, as a culture, somehow manage to make a difference so that no other parents have to suffer this unimaginable hurt.