Category Archives: Guns

Tears For a Hopeless Case.

Posted by MaskedSanity on

When I first started thinking about what I was going to write about in this entry, I thought about some of the conversations that I’ve had over the last few weeks. I was going to talk about the incredibly kind things that have been said about me or done for me recently. I was going to talk about a conversation with someone that I knew from high school and how I thought she was one the “popular kids” but she described herself as “very depressed” during that time. I was going to talk about how many of friends are doing so many good things and how happy that makes me, but as I sit here trying to figure out what to say in this entry, it’s very difficult to look around at the world and not feel sad. While I am personally (still) doing very well (mentally), there are just so many reminders of things that are wrong and how the “powers that be” don’t seem to want to attempt to fix anything.

As of the time that I’m writing this, the Uvalde, Texas mass-shooting is the most recent mass-shooting of note to happen in the United States. By the time that you read this, it could be pretty far down the list of recent ones. There is no humor in my last sentence and I take no pleasure in typing that sentence, since it’s probably going to be accurate.

Every single time a mass-shooting happens in this country, ther same conversations start. One side says it’s time for action to prevent more of these events. The other side says “now is not the time to politicize it.” And as they argue those two things back and forth, the conversation gets lost in the shuffle until another mass-shooting happens. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Another constant discussion when any sort of gun violence happens is how we should address mental health concerns and not worry about the guns. Well, yes, we should address mental health concerns. We should always address that. But, the fact that mental health issues are worldwide and mass-shootings are not also gets lost in the shuffle. A society that has access to the abundance of weapons of mass destruction (guns) will have significantly more mass destruction than a society without them. It’s a pretty simple fact.

Usually, the blog entries that I have the most difficulty writing are the ones about my own personal stories. In particular, the stories that are hidden deep in the back of my mind. The ones that I say that I’m starting to “scratch the surface” of and that I’ll “re-visit at a later time.” But, I’m really struggling writing with this entry. I was going to say that I’m not sure why, since gun related deaths have not impacted my close friends or family, but I think part of what has me so emotional about this topic is how easily this could impact the people that I care about. Not just my friends and family have kids or are teachers. But, anyone, since the American epidemic of mass shootings is not relegated to just schools.

Accidents happen all of the time. Some accidents have tragic results. We may be powerless to prevent those tragedies. Mass murders are tragic, but they’re not accidents. They can be prevented. In order to prevent them, action must be taken. Laws and regulations need to be passed and changed. We’re in the 21st Century and it’s time for society to evolve past the senselessness that doesn’t help anyone.

I don’t want there to be any more stories about Americans being shot to death in malls, places of worship, movie theaters, concerts, schools, or wherever. I didn’t specify “Americans” just now to proclaim any sense of patriotism for America, I did it because as the facts show, over and over again, America is the only place where this happens, over and over again.

Our indifference to human beings getting killed for no reason whatsoever is, quite honestly pathetic. Change has to happen. For the sake of humanity.

An Archaic Way of Thinking, So Monstrous and Absurd.

Posted by MaskedSanity on

If I publish an entry that is blatantly political, I know that a vast majority of my few regular readers will just skip over the post. This entry is going to deal with some issues that are in the news and are linked to politics. I’m going to do my best to stay away from directly referencing political aspects of it, while attempting to make sense of things that, to me, don’t make sense. I’m also going to try to explain how I got to the point that I’m at with my own beliefs.

I’m a middle-aged white male. That means that there’s a lot of things that I don’t need to worry about. I don’t need to be concerned with whether or not I have access to birth control (pills, abortion, etc). I don’t need to worry about not being paid equally because of who I am. I don’t need to worry about being profiled and harassed based on the color of my skin. I am someone that has White Privilege.

White Privilege does not mean that I don’t need to work hard to advance in life. And it doesn’t mean that non-whites get by with hand-outs. It just means that I have a head start, based on who I am. White Privilege doesn’t mean that I won’t get pulled over for speeding. It means that I’m more likely to not be harassed for doing it. But, this post is not about my White Privilege.

Throughout the 40+ years that I’ve been alive, I’ve been picked on, made fun of, insulted, harassed, and even beaten up. I deserved none of that, but often I thought that I must have deserved it. Sometimes I felt scared to go to school. I didn’t want to tell my parents or my teachers about what was happening to me because I was afraid of retaliation. I never acted out or really fought back, because I was always afraid of consequences.

How many times have we heard stories about a high school kid that shoots his classmates? How many times have we heard stories about a high school kid that dies by suicide? In many cases, both of those horrible actions are the result of someone being treated like I was in school.

Beaten down. Figuratively, literally, emotionally, mentally. How much can one person take before there’s a breaking point? Imagine yourself in my shoes in high school. It wasn’t pleasant for me.

I was one person. I was afraid. I felt that I was nothing. I didn’t know what to do. I had a few bad experiences with some teachers and counselors. They made me feel that I was at fault. I was told that I was lazy. I was told that I didn’t work hard enough. They failed to address what my real problems were. They didn’t do anything to solve or even help me get past those problems and they certainly never held anyone accountable for what was done to me, even if they witnessed it.

Now imagine that an entire community of people that go through the same thing. Imagine that community is treated like they don’t belong with “the rest of us.” Imagine that people in that community are constantly threatened and harassed by the people in charge. Imagine that people that are supposed to protect that community are seen as threats instead of help. Imagine that when something goes wrong for that community that nobody assists them, and instead they’re constantly told that they’re at fault and deserve what’s happened to them.

What I vaguely described in the paragraph above is how I see issues facing the Black Community in the United States. It’s also why I empathize with them. I’ve been the person that’s felt how they feel. Just so it’s clear, I am by no means trying to make the comparison of my personal struggles with Blacks in America. I would diminishing them if I did that. I’m just trying to say that I understand.

In the past few months, we’ve seen more and more stories about Black Americans being shot, beaten, and harassed by authority figures. We’ve seen others in positions of power not step up to help, and in many cases, criticize them for being upset about what’s happened to them, and how they’re handling it.

Like the scenarios that I described earlier about the high school kids that snap and do somethings drastic, that’s where the Black Community in America is now. They’re that beaten down person that has had enough and is lashing out.

When your pleas for help are constantly ignored, you lash out. When you’ve always been treated like you don’t matter, you may not know what to do. When you have no way to improve your situation because there isn’t a system in place to help you, what can do you do?

I already know how some people will react to this post. I know how some people may criticize me for making the comparison that I’ve made. I know how some people believe that one side of the political aisle has done more damage (or more to help) to blacks than the other. To be honest, none of that really matters right now. To me, the issue is simple. The issue that we can say that all people have the same chances and opportunities in the United States, but that’s not true. It’s never been true. White males have always had an advantage and have made the rules. Those rules don’t benefit everyone else as much as they benefit themselves.

I’m doing my best to not turn this into an us vs. them post. I don’t want to get into politics here, but I know that what I’m going to say in the next few sentences is going to spark a certain response from some.

There was a time that I wouldn’t say “Black Lives Matter.” I felt it was silly to say that people are equal and then separate anyone, so I wrote someone on one of my social media pages about how we should all say “All Lives Matter.” I saw who was agreeing with me, and who wasn’t. The “Black Lives Matter” people were people whose opinions that I usually agree with and I thought I was agreeing them in my reasoning, but it looks like I didn’t get it yet.

Without publicly stating it, I did change my views on that. But it wasn’t until the George Floyd story happened when I first started publicly stating “Black Lives Matter.” I even wrote a retraction of my original post from a few years earlier. I really have no concept of time in 2020, so I don’t know exactly when I came to the realizations that I did, based on the comparisons that I spoke of in this entry, but I’m glad that I did.

I am an advocate for Mental Health Awareness. My experiences in that area over the past few years, and from what I’ve learned about myself and others, really has made me much more empathetic. I don’t want anyone to feel as bad about themselves as I have at times.

This entry isn’t as cohesive as maybe it should be. To be honest, even though this is something that I’ve given a lot of thought to, I didn’t plan to write this today. I didn’t come up with an outline for it. I actually had another entry half written before I even started this.

In my entries, I’ve often said that we need to do better. And we really do. “We” means all of us. Society continues to leave people behind. WE have to stop that. The people that believe and proudly say “All Lives Matter” need to do more to make that true. Because until Black Lives Matter, not All Lives Do.

How Many Have to Drop Before it Stops?

Posted by MaskedSanity on

There was not a school shooting in my hometown. But, there was reason to believe there could have been. The other day, a student in the high school that I attended made a threat to “shoot up” the school. Another student reported the threat, police and other law enforcement agencies came in, the student was arrested. No shots were fired, although a gun was found at his house during an investigation. This happened about two weeks after the latest mass shooting at a school that got national attention.

Guns are a problem. I’m not going to sugarcoat my opinion on that. Some of you may stop reading this after that last sentence.

Mental illness is a problem. Do I still have your attention?

Are we allowed to discuss both issues in conjunction with one another? Or are the abundance of mass shootings in America only due to mentally ill people that happen to have illegal guns? The gun used in the Florida shooting was legally purchased. What now? How can we debate that? Oh right, the shooter was sick in the head, and that was the only issue. Let’s offer “thoughts and prayers” and go about business as usual.

The United States of America is THE ONLY COUNTRY in the “developed world” that has a gun violence issue like this. We continue to ignore the issue and claim that the 2nd Amendment is under attack if changes to gun laws are proposed. Well, how about we think about things this way. We are allowing people to be killed because we’ve done NOTHING TO STOP IT.

Metal detectors at schools are not going to solve this. Armed guards at schools is not the answer. Giving guns to teachers is not the answer. To be honest, I don’t know what the answer is. I just know that whatever we’ve done so far, which is nothing, isn’t working.

Last year there was a mass shooting in Las Vegas. It was from a window or a hotel. People were gunned down while they were enjoying an outdoor concert. If more people had guns there, do you really think it would have solved anything? No, it wouldn’t have. It would have been more chaotic and more deadly. That, I’m sure of.
What action did we take with this incident? I know, we offered more “thoughts and prayers.”

We need help. We need help from Congress. We need help.
We need access to mental health care.
We need less access to guns. I’m not arguing pistols and hunting rifles. That’s a different topic for a different time. There is no reason for any person at all to own a machine gun caliber weapon. Nothing anybody ever says to attempt to justify that one will work.

We hear the slogans “America First,” “Americans First,” and “Make America Great Again” from the President. I don’t like him. I never will. I think he’s going have disastrous long-term effects on the economy, race relations, diplomatic relations with other countries, and so many other issues. However, if decent gun regulations are put into place that make it more difficult to buy a gun while he’s in office, I will not only support the move, I will praise him (if he is indeed a part of the process), and I will say that he’s put “American First” and taken a step to “Make America Great Again.”

I’m not looking for the removal of guns from law-abiding citizens. That’s not what this debate is about. And first of all, if you’re a law-abiding citizen, what are you worried about? Continue to abide by the law and you’ll be fine. But, buying a gun should not be so simple. There NEEDS TO BE more tests to determine if someone can handle it. This needs to be universal.

This is not about race or religion. Although, it’s obvious that some pundits try to turn it a discussion about that. I’ve heard people bring up inner-city violence. I’ve heard them talk about “black on black” crime as evidence that minorities are more likely to use guns. That’s a load of garbage. It’s a distraction method used by people that don’t want to discuss what the real issues are.

I can go on and on about how this isn’t just about an abundance of guns, it’s not just about a mental health issue, how (in some cases) it’s about economics, but what am I doing other than ranting? What good will come of it? Well, that depends on you. It depends on me. What are we going to do about it to make sure the mass shootings stop?

We talk about protection. How about we focus on prevention. No more empty talk. No more “thoughts and prayers.” It’s time for action. It’s time for us to realize causes. It’s time for us to realize that there’s more than one factor. It’s time for us to do something. Innocent people, sometimes children, are being killed. They’re being killed by people that society has failed. They’re being killed by outcasts that have been pushed too far without getting help. Instead of saying that someone is acting out because he or she “just wants attention,” how about we GIVE THEM SOME ATTENTION. Just sitting with someone for a few minutes and listening to what they have to say can make a world of difference.

Yes, I know this entry has gone in various directions. And I know that what I’ve written in a bit of a ramble. I was going to write about this topic a few days ago, but I wanted to clear my head and not be too emotional when I wrote it. That concept didn’t work. I’m full of emotions as I’m writing this. This is a serious topic. Actually, it’s various serious topics. We’re not doing enough to talk about them. And we’re definitely not doing enough to address them.

If you think it’s only a mental health issue, there’s nothing I can do to change your mind. But, I do implore you to do something about it. Do whatever you can to make healthcare more available and affordable to those that need it.

If you think it’s only a gun issue, then doing something about it.

If you think it’s both, do something about it.

“Thoughts and prayers” are meaningless without action.

And no actual action is killing us…

in mass.

Because, the next time something happens in my town (or yours), maybe we won’t be so lucky.