The Little Ways It Gets You...

Sometimes I have this little fluttering in my womb area. I say "area" because really its probably my intestines and its most likely gas! But man does it feel like a baby kicking and tickling and every time, every fucking time! against all reason, I have that one moment, one millisecond, as fast as thought, where I think theres a baby in there. And then as fast as thought I remember that thats nearly impossible. And I feel the loss all over again.

Why You're Wrong

This post is going to piss off a lot of people. A lot of people I like and care about. But you know what, thats ok, because they're pissing me off. My Facebook feed for the last week has been full of this: (------------------------------------------>)

And I've just about had enough.  Please stop using the arguments 

"when there is a drunk driver we don't blame the car", or  

"when there is a terrorist we don't blame the bomb" etc. because... we do. 

We have lots and lots and lots of laws and safety precautions in place to prevent these things from happening because at some point in the past shit happened and people said - 

"Hey, we can prevent that from happening again if we all agree to do X". 

• Seatbelt laws, 
• airbags, 
• cars that can sense when you've had too much too drink and won't turn on! 

We regulated them (re: we blame them) 

• Police checkpoints on highly celebratory nights. 
• And if you don't follow the rules, 
• if you don't have a license, 
• if your vehicle doesn't pass the permit test, 
• if you don't have insurance, 

You don't get to drive!

We've regulated it. We've enacted laws. We've done our best to make it safer.

Can you drive a tank on the street - NO! Its a fucking weapon! You have to have a 6 foot fence around your pool because a little kid might fall in and drown - thats us regulating the pool. We get nearly strip searched to go on a plane and have our bags checked at amusement parks. I had my breast pump taken apart in Portland for goodness sakes! What the fuck ever happens in Portland besides food poisoning from bad lobster! Suspiciously traveling without a baby - If I had the baby with me I wouldn't have needed the breast pump!!! But I digress... 

The average citizen is not allowed to have a bomb and for obvious reasons. We can get in trouble for even downloading the instructions or buying the ingredients to make a bomb because those things are also not allowed. We regulate that shit. We keep an eye on who does it. (re: we "blame" them) 

To injure or kill yourself or others while drunk driving is horrible but it is an accident. Regardless of what charges they may get brought up on (which have grown more serious over the years in our attempt to curb drunk driving - see, laws and regulations!) The driver didn't intend to cause harm. They did not intend to use their vehicle as a weapon. They're just a fucking idiot. That cannot be said for guns. Guns are weapons. Sure you could say its for sport, or for protection. 

How about I keep a hyena in my living room. I like to race them. Its for sport. Besides  I sleep better at night knowing its there protecting my family. What? Its a dangerous killing machine? I need a permit? I can only play with it at the zoo? You're infringing on my rights!

You may say I'm being hyperbolic but you see I must. Because going to that extreme is the only way to give you an idea of how insane your arguments sound to the rest of us. A gun's sole purpose (re: intention) is to put holes in things! (and make you feel all powerful and like your shlong is a lot bigger than it actually is) When an attack happens we take measures to find the holes in our defenses and fix them so it won't happen (that way) again. 


It takes a permit, a background check, and a waiting period to get :

• marriage licenses, 
• to own certain dogs, 
• or farm animals, 
• to go fishing in a PUBLIC waterway, 
• to put a damned deck on your OWN house, 

and hundreds of other innocuous things and we all just accept and deal with the process. But oh no, not for a gun. When you want something that could be used to slaughter as many people as possible in as short a time as possible you need to have it immediately with no questions asked. 

Whats crazy is I used to be completely on your side. I really was. I didn't get it, the whole gun thing. I didn't like them and wished people didn't have them but I also don't like seafood and wish people didn't have mirrors on the ceilings in their bedrooms. I fight for personal freedoms all the time. I will fight for your freedom to have and do even things I loathe in my very core and I certainly don't want anyone infringing on my own. But you see, like any rational, compassionate person would be, I have been deeply affected by the insane number of mass shootings that occur in our country and your bizarre arguments against ANY laws, or bans, or even just a discussion as to what might work. All you do is reframe weak arguments about how no matte what "its not the gun's fault" trying to make it seem like we're crazy for "blaming" an inanimate object. But its also 

• not the car's fault
• or the pool's fault
• or the deadly chemical's fault
• or the plane's fault
• or the drug's fault
• or the carseat/stroller/playpen/crib's fault

or any number of other potentially deadly inanimate object's fault and yet we have rules, regulations, and precautions, in place to handle them and when those fail we examine what works in other places and we try new ones!

So congrats! your religious fanaticism about guns has disgusted me to such an incredible degree that it has pushed me to the other side. I've never seen so many otherwise intelligent and reasonable people go so black and white on an issue, become so belligerent in their opinion that they ignore everything else.  Reasonable gun laws have and do work in other countries similar to ours. They can work here. There is and has been a blackout on any actual research in this country , the NRA is interested in only one thing and it is NOT your rights And their governments did not immediately turn around and enslave the unarmed populace. And you can still go shoot at the range, or shoot skeet - whatever the hell that is, or shoot some deer, with a permit, in a safe place, and you can still keep your little gun under your bed that makes you feel all safe from the bad guys who are coming to steel your stuff! 


But hear me now; if any of these proposed reasonable measures that have been shot down (pun intended) by gun lovers (heretofore known as sport-slaughter enthusiasts) have the potential to stop EVEN ONE mass shooting, save JUST ONE life it will have been worth it. If you want to argue with that there is no padding it - you ARE saying that your fucked up desire, NOT YOUR RIGHT - NO ONE IS ARGUING ABOUT YOUR RIGHTS, YOUR DESIRE to have free and easy access to weapons that can massacre a room full of people in seconds is more important than that one life. And for you I pull out my favorite meme, you selfish narcissist.

I don't know what the answer is either. But I know for certain that pretending our problem has nothing to do with our nation's obscene love affair with guns - is not just playing dumb, its actively helping to make the problem worse. So until you sport-slaughter enthusiasts  have something to offer besides non-fact based memes about the pure innocence of guns STFU!