got gun?

I never make an effort to listen to the local news unless I want to find out about the weather.  Sometimes however, I catch the first few minutes of it late at night while washing the last of the dishes and setting out midnight snacks for the cats before I go to bed. And so it came to pass that I caught the first story on the local TV news yesterday night.

I was going to start today’s blog with “the local news is a piece of crap” before launching into another diatribe.  But then I started analyzing the reasons why I think that.  It’s funny how both local and global news can be depressing, but they are so with very different flavors.  Global news refers to events that can be abstracted; local news just rubs local humanity in your face. I always feel a lot dirtier listening to local news. 

Yesterday, since we were not getting snowed in again, the first item on the news was not about the weather and its paralyzing effects on the south but consisted of a the story of a 14-year old shooting his family with a 22 caliber rifle that he had recently received from his father as a birthday gift.  Neighbors said the boy liked to play with the gun all day in the yard and carried it with him all over the place. Mother and father are dead, while Grandmother is in the hospital.  .

Somebody please explain the second amendment to me again....

the news fuels me, one more letter to "it"

Oh hell, I have better things to do, so why not procrastinate doing them by writing one more letter to All Things Considered:  

So who’s responsible for Giffords’ shooting? 

For the past few days I’ve heard discussions about all kinds of factors that might or not have contributed to the tragedy in Arizona.  You’ve discussed heated political rhetoric, which probably had nothing to do with it since Jared Lee Loughner seems to be just one more deranged lonely young person acting out irrationally.  You’ve discussed lax gun laws as a possible contributing factor; and although I totally agree that we have used our 2^nd amendment rights to justify our buying and selling of weaponry the forefathers probably would never have dreamed of putting in the hands of your average citizen, there are many (and I paraphrase my husband’s reading of a blog he was perusing) angry conservatives out there who all own tons of guns, and how come they haven’t gone out and shot anybody yet?  I most definitely think easy access to guns is problematic; and yes, if Loughner had not been able to buy that gun so easily, maybe none of this would have happened.  But the fact is that guns in the hands of law abiding rational people was not the problem here either....  And lastly, I  have heard some media pussyfooting around the responsibilities of society with regards to deranged people; but as with guns, no serious discussion of that has been broached either...

My question (and I really do have a question) is: What about the parents?  What I never hear in these cases where dangerous and deranged kids go out and actually commit a heinous crime is discussion of the lack of parental oversight?  Where were these parents when their kid was obviously having serious issues of control in school; and how come they never had him committed, or, ok, given psychiatric care?  Ultimately, it is NOT, and can’t be the responsibility of schools to deal with the ultimate care of these individuals, it is that of the parents/family. Where were the Loughner parents?  Being sorry after the fact just doesn’t cut it.  I’m just curious about when it is that parents relinquish all responsibility of their children these days.

Sincerely,

Katya Cohen (a teacher in South Carolina) 

irony, guns, and bombs in bed

...Listening to the news while deciding whether or not to get out of bed:  
Gabrielle Giffords is portrayed to be a nice woman who really cares about doing what she thinks is the right thing and of honestly representing her constituency.  She is a blue dog democrat: one of those oxymorons whose voting record contradicts principles held by both major political parties; something that can be good or bad depending on what side of a particular issue one stands.  Blue dog democrats always strike me as wanting to have their cake and eat it too.  They don't stand in the middle ground on principle, they just seem to arbitrarily pick one issue or another from either side.

As I weighed the pros and cons of getting out of a warm bed into the cold world, the news was punctuated with different reports about Ms. Giffords' shooting, and about her character, history, and service to the country.  The reports informed me of her political positions.  She is pro-abortion, which puts her in the democratic camp and pisses off the religious nuts.  She voted with the democrats for the health care bill, which sends republicans into apoplectic fits.  She then did a turn around and voted against Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house, thus going against the democratic majority, but making no sense since Pelosi was instrumental in passing the health care bill which she did indeed vote for.  And finally, Ms. Giffords is a supporter of the 2^nd amendment, which endears her to republicans, but not so much to democrats.

Whether or not to support the 2^nd amendment seems to be more a question of form than content these days.  Supporting it or not is a political tool used to win votes with no real consequences.  There are just too many guns out there.  There's no putting the cap back on that genie bottle.  Having lived here more than 30 years, I've noticed that no serious discussion about the easy availability of guns is ever broached in this country.  It's possible that  more stringent restrictions and controls of fire arms would help us track the things better; but that discussion can't even begin to be broached since the supporters of the 2^nd amendment will not hear of it, ever.  I am pretty sure that as smart as the forefathers were, they never foresaw this future when they wrote that amendment into the constitution. The irony here is that it is this very amendment, supported by Ms. Giffords, that made it oh so very easy for some nut to get a gun, shoot her, and take the lives of 6 others, including that of a 9 year old.

Another snippet of news that struck me as ironic this morning was that in Afghanistan five NATO troops were killed in five days on this nine-day-old year.  They were all killed by road-side bombs that seem to be getting more powerful.  That in itself is not ironic.  These bombs are made using chemical fertilizers; and the irony is that it is highly probable that the fertilizers used to make these bombs intended for the killing of westerners were donated by the West itself in the misguided belief that they will be used in the production of non-narcotic agricultural goods; and that their use in agriculture will lift Afghanistan from the Middle Ages and into Civilized Times, where the occasional politician (together with innocent bystanders) gets shot by legally and profitably manufactured guns and not blown up by makeshift bombs produced with donated materials that kill haphazardly.

Good morning cold floor...