It all started when for some unknown reason I had, "Janie's Got a Gun," in my head. So I'm sitting in the waiting room of the doctor's office humming the tune in my mind and I'm thinking to myself, wow I'm bored!
I mean the news is on and that's always a real upper! All I'm thinking is, hmmm what are the chances there was another school shooting? See I'm gonna be a teacher, maybe even a professor. School shootings are not just a news item for me. Am I gonna think about being shot when I give out failing grades or detentions? I was doing student teaching and I succinctly remember this one kid looked me in the eye, after throwing a desk in my class and said, "It's because of YOU that I'm suspended." He had had several infractions before my classroom incident.
But today it seems the real shootings are happening in another part of the world. Things are happening in Iraq, I don't know what it all means. Why don't I know anything about the world? I want the news people to stop talking so badly, giving the world such a bad name.
You'd think the planet was just full of monsters. If some alien country only got access to our news they would think that we are a bunch of violent idiots. How far away are we from this notion?
I don't actually want to talk about guns, guns are for amateurs. You really want to kill someone's soul, make them watch CNN for twenty four hours straight. In fact besides the comedy news, American news is frankly an embarrassment to our country.
Why isn't the fact that we have enough food in this country to feed everyone, but we choose not to, on the news? Instead we have enough bombs to blow up the world thousands of times over, but the real threat to our country's welfare are those who are on welfare. In fact there are those believe that if we take away money for the poor and make more guns and bombs, we will be safer and better off.
Wow. And these people went to school and stuff. Look I don't want to turn off the one or two conservative readers that I may have, but the 2nd Amendment was written during the time when slaves were considered 3/5's of a person. What exactly does that say about the timelessness of our constitution?
I don't know 'bout you, but I was once in a room with a loaded gun, alone. And I thought to myself, if I got really angry or crazy or I don't know...I was scared of that gun. I thought it was gonna shoot me. It was in my hands and I put it down. I didn't feel right in that room and I had to leave.
The truth: I didn't trust myself with that thing.
Not because I'm crazy or out of control or anything like that. I have never been violent, I can't even watch boxing. But that gun sort of changed the nature of my existence in that room. It changed the game. I have never slit my wrists or anything like that...I'm not a fan of pain... but what if on my worst day, in my worst depression I had a gun like that? I mean a loaded fucking gun.
You know they don't give guns to people like me, I have a Mental Illness. Ummm, hello? That's a good thing, people, I don't consider it a violation of my rights. How sane are you in your angriest and darkest moments, sane enough to have a gun? Are you sure?
They want teachers to have guns, to counteract the kids who have guns. That has to be the funniest thing I've ever heard. Have you been in a high school or middle school classroom lately? There are kids who will dance while you are trying to teach, they will sing, they will not shut the fuck up and you want us to have a gun in this kind of situation? Oh the times I would have killed to have a gun!
I guess there are bunch of people saying that they are so in control of themselves that they would only use the gun to kill the man hiding in the bushes at night. If that were true, maybe gun violence wouldn't be such a big problem. I could give you statistics, but I don't feel like it. You must know that if there were less guns there would be less deaths. Like in England where guns are outlawed and many other countries. It's just a factoid. No in fact, it is a fact.
I don't feel violated because I personally don't have the right to bear arms. What is a violation of my rights is that something so small can obliterate my very existence if I just pull the trigger. What's worse, I could kill someone else...
Ok I did not plan on this blog post being about guns. Did not even have the faintest idea what I was gonna write about. But you watch T.V. and it's about violence. You play a video game and it's about killing the enemy...A kid in my class wrote an Ode to a Gun for his poem at the end of the semester. He was 12. Another wrote an Ode to a Grenade. It's hard to escape guns.
OK let's lighten up a little at the end. At the end of the day, we are animals, animals kill each other. They usually do it for food, we do it for power. Whatever.
As much as the digital age has made us think that we can out-think anything. The one thing we cannot do with technology is make it have a heart. For a second see this with your heart.
I'm not proposing that guns be illegal, that might be nice, but it won't happen. What I want to say is that we are creating people who want to kill each other and themselves. It's takes a village to make a murderer or a school shooter or a terrorist.
As a society what are we doing not to make guns, but to make shooters? What's wrong with us?
nina
But today it seems the real shootings are happening in another part of the world. Things are happening in Iraq, I don't know what it all means. Why don't I know anything about the world? I want the news people to stop talking so badly, giving the world such a bad name.
You'd think the planet was just full of monsters. If some alien country only got access to our news they would think that we are a bunch of violent idiots. How far away are we from this notion?
I don't actually want to talk about guns, guns are for amateurs. You really want to kill someone's soul, make them watch CNN for twenty four hours straight. In fact besides the comedy news, American news is frankly an embarrassment to our country.
Why isn't the fact that we have enough food in this country to feed everyone, but we choose not to, on the news? Instead we have enough bombs to blow up the world thousands of times over, but the real threat to our country's welfare are those who are on welfare. In fact there are those believe that if we take away money for the poor and make more guns and bombs, we will be safer and better off.
Wow. And these people went to school and stuff. Look I don't want to turn off the one or two conservative readers that I may have, but the 2nd Amendment was written during the time when slaves were considered 3/5's of a person. What exactly does that say about the timelessness of our constitution?
I don't know 'bout you, but I was once in a room with a loaded gun, alone. And I thought to myself, if I got really angry or crazy or I don't know...I was scared of that gun. I thought it was gonna shoot me. It was in my hands and I put it down. I didn't feel right in that room and I had to leave.
The truth: I didn't trust myself with that thing.
Not because I'm crazy or out of control or anything like that. I have never been violent, I can't even watch boxing. But that gun sort of changed the nature of my existence in that room. It changed the game. I have never slit my wrists or anything like that...I'm not a fan of pain... but what if on my worst day, in my worst depression I had a gun like that? I mean a loaded fucking gun.
You know they don't give guns to people like me, I have a Mental Illness. Ummm, hello? That's a good thing, people, I don't consider it a violation of my rights. How sane are you in your angriest and darkest moments, sane enough to have a gun? Are you sure?
They want teachers to have guns, to counteract the kids who have guns. That has to be the funniest thing I've ever heard. Have you been in a high school or middle school classroom lately? There are kids who will dance while you are trying to teach, they will sing, they will not shut the fuck up and you want us to have a gun in this kind of situation? Oh the times I would have killed to have a gun!
I guess there are bunch of people saying that they are so in control of themselves that they would only use the gun to kill the man hiding in the bushes at night. If that were true, maybe gun violence wouldn't be such a big problem. I could give you statistics, but I don't feel like it. You must know that if there were less guns there would be less deaths. Like in England where guns are outlawed and many other countries. It's just a factoid. No in fact, it is a fact.
I don't feel violated because I personally don't have the right to bear arms. What is a violation of my rights is that something so small can obliterate my very existence if I just pull the trigger. What's worse, I could kill someone else...
Ok I did not plan on this blog post being about guns. Did not even have the faintest idea what I was gonna write about. But you watch T.V. and it's about violence. You play a video game and it's about killing the enemy...A kid in my class wrote an Ode to a Gun for his poem at the end of the semester. He was 12. Another wrote an Ode to a Grenade. It's hard to escape guns.
OK let's lighten up a little at the end. At the end of the day, we are animals, animals kill each other. They usually do it for food, we do it for power. Whatever.
As much as the digital age has made us think that we can out-think anything. The one thing we cannot do with technology is make it have a heart. For a second see this with your heart.
I'm not proposing that guns be illegal, that might be nice, but it won't happen. What I want to say is that we are creating people who want to kill each other and themselves. It's takes a village to make a murderer or a school shooter or a terrorist.
As a society what are we doing not to make guns, but to make shooters? What's wrong with us?
nina
Awesome...should be published in the New Yorker under 'Thoughts and Murmurs'
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