Friday, May 27, 2022
My dream last night was a mess, reminiscent of pre-Galantamine dreaming. I was fishing for salmon on a party boat, a run-down one. I hooked up with a salmon and was bringing it in (salmon, for the inexperienced, do not fight when hooked, they give up and the fisherman’s job is to get the fish quickly to the surface where it may be netted and boated) I was bringing the animal up when suddenly it began to fight. I fought back and finally got, not a salmon but a shark, to the surface. It dived back down (I have caught sharks and they fight like this) and in the battle, everyone else fishing on the boat got hooked up. There was minor chaos. Lines tangled, poles crossed, and the captain couldn’t control the boat, it was dragged close to a dock, a very dirty floating bait dock, under which lurked a giant shark. Someone on the dock yelled, “shoot it, shoot it” I replied, I don’t have a gun. This produced stares of amazement from everyone else and this brings me to what I really wanted to write about this morning; Gun Control.
The murders in Uvalde Texas have me upset (along with millions of other people here and abroad). I have lost a child, to suicide, and I know what parents feel when fronted with the cruel fact of a child’s sudden death by murder, (suicide is self-murder). My heart was ripped out of my chest. That wound was reopened in Uvalde, and those who facilitate these murders by their craven attachment to an actual fraudulent interpretation of the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution, have emerged from my bleeding chest crying their black tears, “Do not infringe on the people’s right to bear arms.” I heard the now deceased conservative Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger, say on a video recording that the people have no Right to Bear Arms, only a “Well Regulated Militia” has that right (not sick eighteen-year-old boys). He, Burger, called this a fraud. Who perpetrates this fraud? Answer: Sharks! Politicians, manipulating for power and control, and Business interests, also manipulating for money (that’s also power and control). That’s who. Sharks!
To be honest, I like guns. They feel good in my hands. Heavy, precision machines. Balanced, handsome, and an extension of my fear. Yes, that’s what I said, an extension of my sense of helplessness. An antidote to all of our existential meaninglessness. Yes?
Well, no!
Let me tell you a story: About two decades ago, I was cruising with my family on one of those two thousand passenger cruise ships, destination Hawaii. In the middle of the night, around two AM, a young man, drunken, burst into our stateroom (How? He may have had a key. We never found out.) yelling and cursing. I was instantly awake, and without a thought, jumped out of bed, and literally threw the boy out of the room. My wife, in terror, had telephoned for help, and we heard the scuffle in the hall, where security had encountered the boy.
Oh, there were apologies, and offers of discounts on our next cruise (it would be a decade before we took another) and a meeting on the deck the following day with the boy and his family. They were contrite alright. All of them, including the patriarch who was an important government official. We accepted their apologies. When I returned home, I removed the loaded gun I kept in my nightstand, locked it up, and within weeks disposed of the four guns I owned. What would I do with them? Had the incident occurred at home, the young man breaking into our bedroom at two AM. I would have shot him with my nine-shot semi-automatic pistol. He would have been very dead. And an easily handled incident would have escalated into a tragedy, for all of us.
No! Not for me, and not for this nation. No longer. The senseless murders of nineteen more children must stop!
Over three hundred people a day. Three hundred each and everyday shot. Here in the good ole US of A. Why?
We have more guns than people in this country. 40+ murders, 60+ suicides, and another 200+ wounded, every day. Why? Because these machines, killing machines, feel good in our hands? Make us feel safe? And why do we feel so unsafe?
The answer to that question is not written in the wind. Or it is, the bloviating wind of politicians and business interests, fanning the fires of our existential fear.
So you, will you, kill the intruder, mostly likely some drug or alcohol-addled kid? (Data suggests you are much more likely to get killed than the intruder!) You are going to stand up against an invading Russian Army. Yeah, right, you are going to do that!
Give them up people. Stop the slaughter of innocents. Vote out the craven sell out’s. Turn in your guns. Support laws that only allow guns to the “Well Regulated Militias” (as the constitution mandates). Have some respect for the lives, the morals, the values, that our founding documents enumerate, and which we all, (all except those fear-mongering politicians who have sold out for money, power, and control) hold dear, if only deep, deep down in our hearts.
Lastly: We all know that our teenagers struggle. We struggled ourselves when we were teens. Let’s support them. Let’s give them more in the way of sports, social clubs, smarter and inspiring teachers, and counselors. Let’s teach Values, American Values, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, in their schools, their churches, and their popular media. Let’s teach them to reach out to help their peers who struggle more, and for God’s sake, let’s do more to provide real mental health services to them and their families.
We need more than common-sense gun laws. We need an end to the gun culture.
Thank you, Dr. Bob
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