law, politics, wingnuts

Some people really don’t think guns are a problem…

In the wake of last week’s heartbreaking school shootings, I’ve been seeing a lot of people opining about why there’s so much gun related violence in the United States. Many people, myself included, think that there are way too many guns available, they are too powerful, and they are much too easy to acquire. There are also a lot of very angry, disillusioned, mentally ill people in the United States. And since it’s easier to buy a gun than access competent mental health services, there’s a lot of violence. Too many people are being killed. Too many CHILDREN are being killed, or permanently affected, by angry young men with guns. That’s what I think, anyway.

A screenshot of The Second Amendment…

But there’s another side to this issue. There are so many other people who don’t think guns are a problem. They love to spout off that old trite saying, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” And they say things like, “People have been killing each other forever.” They hold the Second Amendment near and dear to their hearts, as if the right to keep and bear arms is the most important thing in our Constitution. Many of these folks actually believe that owning guns will keep them free.

I grew up near Yorktown, Virginia, which is where victory was declared in the American Revolution. I know the origin of the Second Amendment, which was ratified December 15, 1791, along with the other nine articles of The Bill of Rights. In those days, for many reasons, owning guns made more sense. But the right to bear arms has gotten out of hand. A whole lot of innocent people are being killed, not just because there are enraged, unhinged people who go crazy and spray bullets everywhere, but because people get careless. I’ve read many heartbreaking stories about children killing or hurting themselves, or other people, because they’ve had access to someone else’s improperly stored weapon. Somehow, we never seem to learn from those stories. Americans are still crazy about their guns.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of apologists coming out against gun control. They all seem to say the same thing. The reason why people are being killed isn’t because of easy access to guns. It’s because of poor parenting. It sounds crazy as I hear it in my head, and it looks crazy as I type out those words. But there are apparently a lot of people who believe that if people would just be better parents, there would be less violence.

About twelve years ago, Bill and I lived in rural Fayetteville, Georgia. We liked living there, especially since we found a house in a remote area, where we had a lot of privacy. Not surprisingly, a lot of people near where we lived were staunch Republicans who loved their guns. I minded conservatives less in those days, so it didn’t bother me much. That was before so many other children had died, although Wikipedia tells me that even in 2010 and 2011, a whole lot of kids were killed at school by gun toting “ammosexuals”. But, the truth is, I probably just didn’t think about gun violence as much back then.

While we were living in Fayetteville, I subscribed to the local newspaper. I still get emails from that paper every week, even though we moved to Sanford, North Carolina, a similar community, in April 2011. Yesterday, I got the latest issue of The Citizen out of Georgia, and I noticed a letter to the editor written by a man who asks, “Instead of fewer guns, how about better parents?” When I saw that headline, I inwardly groaned. Yet again, just like the “Q guy” I wrote about the other day, this guy was actually blaming “bad parenting” and “lack of respect” on the extreme gun violence in the United States.

The author of the letter to the editor fears “big government”. He begins his screed by lamenting about how Democrats want to take away his guns in the name of “safety”, and fears that if he loses his guns, he will be “vulnerable” to government overreach. Once again, I have to shake my head. Does this man actually believe that the government can’t and won’t take away his guns now? Does he really think he can outgun the government? I don’t see it.

A gun might be useful to have if a wild animal invades your home. It might also be a great thing to have a gun if someone breaks into your house. But guns cannot and will not protect anyone from government overreach. If guns could do that, maybe women who don’t want to be pregnant wouldn’t have to worry about being forced to gestate, and potentially prosecuted if they miscarry. If you get caught breaking the law, and your crime is serious enough, the police will come and arrest you. Your guns won’t save you in that situation. And if the United States is successfully invaded, say, by Russia, China, or North Korea, it’s not likely that your arsenal of guns will prevent that from happening, either. Maybe you can pick off a few people, but eventually, you’ll probably run out of ammo and you’ll be saying goodbye to your guns.

Shared by a Facebook friend, some of the ludicrous issues we’re arguing about in the United States. One of my right wing former relatives shared the Clint Eastwood meme.

Against my better judgment, I kept reading this man’s rationale as to why he must be allowed to keep his guns, even though so many innocent children have been killed by them. And I have to say, I found his reasons why gun violence is such a huge problem to be pretty offensive. He says that “liberals” who are “woke” and obsessed with inflicting “socialism” on the United States are the reason why people are killing each other. He thinks religion– specifically Christianity– and strict parenting can solve this problem. I wonder how the parents of the dead children in Uvalde would feel reading this letter, which basically blames THEM, for the fact that an 18 year old kid was able to buy a rifle on his birthday and shoot up their school.

I’m reminded of what I used to hear when I was a small child, and hated wearing seatbelts in the car. I still hate seatbelts, mind you, but I do wear them. If I don’t, Bill turns into Pat Boone. 😉 But anyway, my childlike logic back then was that I knew my parents were “safe drivers”. After all, they always wore their seatbelts, even if they didn’t often make me wear one. I don’t remember my mom ever being in an accident. My dad was in a car accident, back in 1979, but he never was again after that. So, being a kid with so much vast life experience, I figured I had nothing to fear. But later, when I married Bill, he said “I could be the safest and best driver on the road, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a nut out there on the road who could ruin our day.”

Seems to me, the same logic applies to “good guys with guns”. You could be the safest and most conscientious person in the whole world, when it comes to firearms. You could be the best and most attentive parent, too, and teach your child to always be respectful, courteous, and kind. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be nuts out there who could ruin your day, because THEY aren’t safe, conscientious, or attentive.

Speaking of cars… I see on the above letter to the editor, people have left comments. One person wrote this:

Do you know what the common denominator to any shooting is? Guns.

And sure enough, someone argued that people kill people. They wrote:

Do you know what else is a common denominator? An idiot or idiots who make the choice to take out their anger in a horrible way and take human lives. That denominator is also the reason for the Wisconsin car massacre where a deranged black man drove through a mostly white parade crowd and killed multiple people. Should we take cars away to prevent this from happening again?

Ah yes… the “people kill each other with cars” argument. Well, let’s analyze that for a moment, shall we? In order to be legally allowed to drive a car, one has to be properly licensed. Getting a license requires training and testing, being old enough, and registering with one’s local Department of Motor Vehicles (there’s that darned government overreach again). Why do we have those rules? Because they promote safety and accountability. Automobile manufacturers are also required to install safety features in their cars. Drivers are required to have liability insurance, in case of an accident or negligence that hurts someone else. And if you get caught driving under the influence of a substance, even if you don’t actually hurt or kill anyone, you can get in serious trouble.

It’s true that people can be killed in creative ways, such as the one described in the above comment. Hell, twenty-one years ago, thousands of people were killed when lunatics took over four airplanes and deliberately crashed them into buildings. And you know what? After 9/11, laws changed worldwide, so that such a tragedy might never happen again. So why can’t we do something about the gun violence in the United States? Why should almost any “idiot” over age 18, who can’t even legally buy a beer or a pack of cigarettes, have the ability to buy a gun? Especially guns that can kill twenty-one people– nineteen of them, innocent children– in a matter of minutes?

I love this man’s work, but wouldn’t it be much better if he could use his talents on something else? Children should NOT BE DYING in the numbers they currently are, all because of our “right to keep and bear arms”.

I would imagine that most of the parents of the children killed in Uvalde, Texas, last week, were good parents, doing the best they could. But being good parents didn’t save their children from a gun toting madman. Maybe Salvador Ramos should have had better parents, but he didn’t. Besides, plenty of people have had “bad parents” and not gone on shooting sprees. Simply having had bad parenting is NOT why people kill. I seem to remember Sue Klebold, Dylan Klebold’s mother, being, by all accounts, a good parent. I even saw her interviewed in a documentary, during which she described what it’s like to be the mother of a school shooter. She came across as a warm, caring, conscientious woman. But her son still teamed up with Eric Harris at Columbine High School in April 1999 to shoot and kill 15 people and injure 21 others. They certainly didn’t resort to that kind of horrific violence simply because their parents failed to raise them properly.

I have been living in Germany now for almost eight years. It was never our intention to live here for so long. In some ways, I miss “home”. I haven’t seen my family in a very long time. But I have to admit, I am very grateful that I can live in a safe country with “socialist” laws (eyeroll). Why? Because I never feel the need to worry about people like Salvador Ramos killing me while I’m out and about at the weekend market. I like that Europeans have more respect for communities as a whole, and I don’t agree that having the right to carry a gun makes me “freer”. I certainly don’t think that owning a pistol will save me from “government overreach”. Dammit, I’m really tired of reading the bullshit “thoughts and prayers” apologetics from ignorant conservative people who don’t see the forest for the trees. Guns are a huge problem. We really need to fix it.

And telling people they just need to be “better parents” is about as effective as pissing in the wind.

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ethics, healthcare, law, modern problems, poor judgment

Medical freedom… or medical freedumb?

Today I reposted a 2017 era article from my original Blogspot version of The Overeducated Housewife blog. That post was written in a time of blissful ignorance of what awaited the world just three years later. In 2017, I was inspired by reading about young people who were critically ill and forced to accept medical care decisions thrust upon them by older people. Most of the cases of the youngsters in that post suffered from cancers of some kind, but a couple of them had other medical problems.

In several cases, the young patients’ parents were religious or wanted to try a more “natural” approach to healthcare. The parents were taken to task by medical professionals who wanted to override their decisions. In one case, the patient was a 17 year old young man who was deemed mature. He didn’t like the chemotherapy that was prescribed to treat his Hodgkin’s Disease, so he tried to refuse it. Doctors sought to force submission by legal means. In the end, the young man’s case was the inspiration for “Abraham’s Law” in Virginia, which allows older teenagers and their parents to refuse medical care or choose alternative therapies.

It amazes me now to read about these controversial cases involving young people, especially given that COVID-19 wasn’t on the radar at the time. Nowadays, the term “medical freedom” is a hot topic, as people fight over whether or not vaccinations against the coronavirus should be mandatory for all who can safely take it. On one hand, there’s a group of people who want to be able to make all medical and healthcare choices for themselves, although a lot of the people in the anti-vaccine group curiously draw the line at abortions for other people. On the other hand, there’s a large group of people who fear the rapidly spreading COVID virus that has, so far, killed over 650,000 Americans and well over four million people worldwide. That group believes that people should be required to get vaccinated.

Although I am all for vaccination and I do believe that the vaccines are saving lives, there is a part of me that empathizes with those who don’t want to be forced to take it. I don’t think it’s smart to skip the vaccines. Many of the arguments I’ve heard against the vaccines seem to be mostly based on misinformation and conspiracy theories. A lot of people worry that there will be terrible side effects to the vaccines. Or they know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy whose balls shriveled up and fell off after the first shot. Personally, I think those arguments are pretty lame. But I also genuinely don’t like the idea of forcing people to do things. I wish those kinds of rules weren’t necessary, and more people would cooperate simply because it’s the right thing to do.

I’ve read many stories of people who took a “wait and see” approach to COVID-19 and are now dead. Some of the saddest stories involve people who had young children or newborn babies. I’ve read at least three tragic stories about parents who have left large broods orphaned because of COVID. I’ve also read a lot of sad stories about people who are sorry they didn’t get vaccinated.

And I’ve also read about many conservative radio talk show hosts who have either gotten very sick from COVID or have actually died. There was a news story just this morning about a conservative talk show host named Bob Enyart, who had spread false information about COVID-19. He got sick and died. Enyart was vehemently against vaccine and mask mandates, and last year, he successfully sued the state of Colorado over mask mandates and capacity limits in churches. Enyart was all about making choices for his own health, but as a very vocal opponent of abortion, he apparently didn’t mind making healthcare choices for other people.

Curiously enough, Enyart was a Christian pastor, and he once gleefully read the names and obituaries of people who had died of AIDS while he played “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen. What a charming man… huh? As Mr. Enyart was the 5th conservative radio talk show host to die of COVID in the past six weeks, perhaps the Queen song is appropriate theme for him and his ilk.

This morning, I ran across an interesting thread in the Duggar Family News Group. Someone, yet again, compared the COVID vaccine and mask mandates to seatbelt laws.

I disagree with this comparison. I also am old enough to remember when the seatbelt laws went into effect. At the time, I was pissed off about them. Don’t be too hard on me, though. I was a teenager.

I have mentioned before that I don’t think the COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates are the same as seatbelt laws. I mean, yes, I can see how people would make the comparison, but I don’t think it’s a very accurate one. When I was a child, I hated seatbelts and would only wear them if I was forced to… and generally that only happened when my dad was feeling controlling. In those days, a lot of people didn’t wear seatbelts. They weren’t as comfortable as they are today. Thankfully, as time has passed, the technology behind them has improved. I doubt we will ever be rid of the damned things. In any case, seatbelts are kind of different from masks and vaccines, as they don’t involve being injected into someone’s body, nor do they impact normal living and communicating as much as face masks do. You only wear them in the car. They don’t interfere with speaking, hearing, seeing, eating, or breathing.

And before anyone tries to tell me that masks don’t impede breathing, let me just stop you right there. I know they don’t. But some people do find wearing them oppressive, and the anxiety that comes from that might impede breathing. There are some people who can’t wear them for whatever reason… not too many, I will admit, but there are some. Likewise, some people can’t wear seatbelts for whatever reason. A lot of times, the reason has to do with being very obese, but sometimes it’s because of an injury or an occupation.

The point is, I don’t think seatbelts will ever go away. However, many of us hope the masks will go away, if and when the pandemic ends. Personally, I don’t see the pandemic ending happening unless a lot more people get vaccinated. But even though I think vaccines are an excellent idea and I would strongly encourage people to get the shot(s), I also feel uncomfortable with government mandates on things like medical care. Because, there are people who can’t or shouldn’t get vaccinations, for whatever reason. I also understand that some people are genuinely concerned about government overreach. Their concern isn’t entirely unfounded, although some of the arguments I’ve read are pretty ridiculous.

One thing I don’t think is helpful, though, is being rude and insulting to those who disagree. I don’t like the dogpile approach to trying to change minds, either. The above photo was shared in the Duggar Family News group, and it did invite contention. One woman posted this:

I remember when this page was about snarking on fundamentalist Christian families on television rather than promoting the divide of human kind based on personal choices they make for what they put in their own bodies.

That comment led to this response…

Even though I understand the frustration behind this response, I don’t think it was helpful.

The original poster was offended by the image. She expressed her dismay that a total stranger would wish death on her. Then, a big, long thread of comments ensued, with the vast majority of people name-calling, hurling insults, being sarcastic, and typing “all knowing” responses at the original poster. Her response, rather than being convinced, was to dig in her heels and respond in kind. Then, she either got booted from the group, or left on her own accord.

The last comment ends with the person telling the OP not to go to the hospital because she doesn’t believe in science. I disagree with that attitude, too. If someone gets sick with COVID, I don’t want them out on the street, infecting others. I’d rather see them getting treatment.

So… what exactly was accomplished by this contentious exchange? Not much, that I can see. I think a more respectful and friendly dialogue might have done more to foster group harmony. Maybe no one’s mind would have changed, but at least there would be listening and constructive communication going on, rather than flaming and hair flip rage exits. No matter what, I don’t think it’s appropriate to wish death on people simply because they disagree with you. On the other hand, I do understand the sentiment and the frustration behind such responses. I will also admit to occasionally being a hypocrite when I get pushed too far. I’m human, after all. I do try not to start out with abuse and insults, though.

I have never liked “nannyism”, especially in laws. However, I understand why “nanny” laws are often necessary. Many people, when left to their own devices, will not do things that are in their own or the public’s best interests. I have always hated wearing seatbelts myself, but I do understand why they’re necessary. I also have a husband who will turn into Pat Boone if I don’t wear one. So I do comply with that rule.

Even though I fucking hate face masks, I comply with that rule, too. However, I hope someday it will no longer be necessary. And I had no issues whatsoever with getting vaccinated against COVID, because as a student of public health, I know the theories behind vaccines and have seen concrete evidence that most of them work. That doesn’t mean I’m not open to learning new information, nor does it mean I’m not aware of potential risks from certain vaccines.

Below is advice given to people during the Spanish Flu pandemic. I agree with most of it, although I don’t think it matters whether or not someone “obeys cheerfully”, as long as they are compliant.

From 2018, when the Spanish Flu was killing people. They used masks then, and the masks eventually went away. I hope the same for COVID-19.

My late beagle, Zane, was a prime example of a dog who didn’t do well with vaccines. He had mast cell cancer (immune system cancer) that eventually progressed to lymphoma. He was allergic to at least one vaccination, and would get tumors when he had others. I actually think some people over-vaccinate their pets, and some of the encouragement to vaccinate is due to the revenue vaccines generate. Dogs with mast cell tumors should not get any unnecessary vaccines. I’m a little concerned about Arran, because he is due for a rabies shot next month, and the rabies shots can stimulate mast cell tumors. Arran has also had mast cell tumors, though not to the same severity Zane had. Because of Zane, I have some sympathy for people who are against vaccines, even though I think their reasoning is wrong in most instances. We don’t vaccinate people like we do pets, anyway. We certainly don’t get as many shots as they do.

Although I do believe in vaccine efficacy, I am not one to run out and demand the latest and greatest shots, nor do I get every vaccine available. For instance, I’ve never in my life had a flu shot. I would get them if I spent more time around other people, though. COVID-19 is different, at least right now. There’s hope that the virus will eventually weaken and become less dangerous, as flu mostly did. But at this point, it’s not getting better. Many people are getting sick and dying, and from what I’ve read, COVID-19 is a pretty nasty way to go.

I do think sometimes we need laws to protect ourselves and each other from those who lack insight, perspective, and wisdom. On the other hand, I agree that people should be free to make choices, whenever possible. Either way, medical freedom doesn’t do a damned bit of good to anyone who is dead. So I do hope that those who are against vaccines will wise up and get with the program. I understand wanting to wait and see how other people do with the shots, but time is running out… I have read too many sad stories about people who waited too long and got sick. There are too many stories about orphaned children, and bereaved spouses, siblings, and parents. And too many people are becoming downright mean and NASTY toward total strangers. I wish we’d all remember that when it comes down to it, we’re in a community. And being in a healthy community requires compassion, responsibility, and solidarity.

That being said… sometimes people DO need protection from crazy beliefs. Case in point, an old Mr. Atheist video I came across yesterday. Religion and politics make people do stupid things, even to their children. So while I am mindful of the so-called slippery slope when it comes to government overreach, I also think some people need to be saved from “freedumb” ideas.

JWs are just one group that have beliefs that can harm others… especially their own followers.
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