Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

 image credit.  Shepard Fairy.



This is what I think will make us safer.  Not more locks, not more guns, more connections.  Schools need to be places of real community, with parents, community members, teaching artists, administrators, and visitors coming and going all day.  Conducting business, teaching, visiting, assisting in classrooms, hanging art work, tending plants.  We need more eyes in the buildings, not less, not more locks, not more restrictions, more connections.  More adults to catch the off kilter kid, the kid who needs a friend, or a role model, or a meal.  More chances for one on one mentor ship, formal and informal.  No one falls through the cracks, no one feels like there is nothing to lose.  Thinner lines between us and them. Better safety nets, not better locks. What if there were enough counselors, nurses, and professionals to notice a kid who needs help, a family struggling with violence, or drugs, or shame.  What is there were enough people to reach out before the crisis hits?  To stop antisocial behaviour before it escalates to violence.  What if angry, scared, young, men had trusted adults to turn to?  I think it would make a difference.  Early intervention works for academic success, why wouldn't it work to help disenfranchised folks before they resort to guns.

I firmly believe that we need better gun laws.  More oversight, less political influence, fewer loop holes, and fewer guns.  I grew up with guns, I know what it is like to live with them.  Yes, in my perfect world people would not need to make a fetish of their guns. Common sense and self regulation would tell people they do not need to be able to buy an assault rifle to exercise their basic freedoms.  People would put the safety of the their families and their neighbors above their own desire to own one more high powered gun.  If they were more connected to their communities, if they were the ones walking the halls at school, helping, mentoring, being present in the lives of their community.  Maybe then they would need fewer guns, less machismo, less fear,  more connections.

I think we have broken a lot of people in our communities.  We have retreated to our silos with our opinions and our like minded friends.  We have ignored the hurt, lost, sorrowed, people in our towns and cities.  We need more connections with each other. Not more locks, not more guns.

Our leaders have been bought and sold.  They will not fix this.  They are as disconnected from their constituents as the shooters are from their communities. They do not care.  Their silos are funded by a corrupt and manipulative lobby of gun violence.  This is not my father's NRA.  Don't be fooled.  They are not about gun rights, or the Second Amendment, or the lives of your children. They are about money and influence.  There will be no change from the top.

The best we can do is make sure that no one is left behind, that no one feels desperate and hurt enough to buy a gun and use it on a crowd of unsuspecting people.  WE can make connections.  WE can sit with the weird kid at lunch.  WE can listen carefully when someone seems to be off the rails.  WE can intervene.  WE can change the narrative.  WE can.  Waiting for rescue is hopeless, the government of this country is not interested in cutting off their money pipe.  WE the People can.