Dear Diary 2-15-23: The “Roses ‘n Guns” edition

First, I should admit that when it came to Valentine’s Day gifts yesterday, I caved and bought my wife some roses and a couple of steaks for me to grill so she didn’t have to cook. She was pretty happy with that and I received a hug and a kiss for my troubles. Better than a poke in the eye, I guess.

I caved and bought some peach-colored roses for the wife on Valentine’s Day. Made her happy.

After a satisfying dinner, I spent the evening adding some passable background vocals to the song i’ve been working on for Sue from our creative group, which meets again tonight. Can’t wait to play it for them. I think they’ll be pretty “chuffed” as the Brits like to say.

My Logic session for Sue’s song “I Believed”. The greyed-out tracks have been muted because they’re no longer needed right now or they’re in another key.

So that’s the end of normal business for this post. I’m giving you a warning because i’m about to delve into a long diatribe about gun politics so you may choose to vacate here.

No? Ok, you’ve been warned.

Suffering the “End Of Our Free-Dumbs!”…yet again.

This morning, when I walked into work, the first thing my coworker launched into was how the recent shooting at Michigan State University (4 dead, 5 injured) was all the excuse Governor Jennifer Whitmer and the Democrats will need to “…take away our gun rights!”

Here we go again. Every time there’s a new gun law proposal, however lame or ineffectual, my co-worker threatens to move out of state.

“I can’t live here anymore!” he moaned.

Buh-bye, I think, borrowing something he likes to say when liberals complain about the actual loss of their rights, like with Roe, or same-sex marriage, or The Voting Rights Act, or…

Under proposed legislation, the magazines for my semi-automatic Glock, which all have a capacity greater than ten rounds, would require registration. Um, ok. What’s that supposed to do exactly? I mean besides collecting yet another fee from users as opposed to manufacturers?

Apparently there’s a proposal before the Michigan House (which actually was in the works before the MSU shooting acc. to WaPo) which would limit the size of semi-automatic magazines to 10 rounds and require registration for any magazines over that, which means the magazines that were included with my gun purchase last year would be covered by the new law.

Whatever. I’m fine with that. It’s hardly an inconvenience, like maybe wearing a f’n mask so you don’t get other people sick. But I digress…

Two Michigan State University students who are clearly upset about the proposal to register semi-automatic gun magazines. “But it’s…it’s inconvenient!”
(that’s satire, in case it needs to be pointed out. My condolences on the loss of their classmates and their sense of safety, and their confidence in their future and their leaders) 😏

If you’ve spent any time with right-wing ammosexuals, you know that ANY gun-related legislation designed to stem the tide of bloodshed across the country is anathema and the beginning of the end of our “FREE-DUMB!” {{{groan}}}

Apparently there’s no limit to the carnage they can stomach as long as they can be fantasy-prepared to do battle with a tyrannical U.S. government at some undetermined point in the indefinite future – DARPA robotic-attack-dogs, predator-drones, and smart-bombs notwithstanding. 🙄

Anyway, did I bother to argue with my co-workers? No, of course not. I value my peace of mind far too much to bother trying to change right-wing minds anymore. If bloody piles of dead children scattered across the country won’t change their mind, I certainly won’t.

And, of course, there are ZERO proposals from the Republicans clown-show to do anything about the carnage at all. They’re too busy controlling your body-choices and protecting your children by threatening school-boards and banning books that might have the audacity to mention actual history or the fact that other kinds of people beside WASPs exist in this country and are even {{{{gasp}}}} quite happy with themselves. That’s the part that really seems to gitt’em riled up.

You can’t outlaw despair

And I don’t really believe we’re going to legislate our way out of the bloodshed anyway. What we have isn’t a just a gun-access problem, but a despair problem.

Despair is what drives people to commit acts of violence, imop. It’s an acquired emotional disability that produces an inability to see a way out. It causes are myriad and compounded; they can be economic, religious, media-related (a big problem imop), relationship-driven, family-driven, biologically-mental-health issues, or all of the above.

And trying to outlaw despair is about as useful as outlawing terrorism or homelessness, because they’re just symptoms of the system that created them. Our problems are much bigger than guns, but we can’t even begin to muster the political will to do anything about limiting access to them so we can frickin’ go to WalMart or school without thinking about getting shot (you think about it now, don’t you? I do.).

And chaos caused by bad actors exacerbate all of those symptoms (and I specifically mean people in positions of power, many of whom have law degrees from Ivy League schools, who pretend to be as dumb as the people who listen to their crazy bullshit). Their goal is to make the system as unreliable and unpredictable as possible so they can get away with whatever they’re trying to get away with (usually just access to your tax dollars or your vote) and so regular people won’t or can’t rely on the system to help them through tough times. Despair and violence is just an unfortunate side-effect that in turn sows more chaos which in turn further serves their intere$t$. These people put the vicious in “vicious cycle”.

So I expect that, in the same way we deal with climate-change, we’ll just muddle along with the gun debate like we hasve, pretending we can do what we’ve always done and the problems will magically disappear with the next news cycle. And if the next cycle is unrelenting and more blood is spilled in the commons (as expected by literally everybody), well “that’s just proof they’re trying to take away our guns so they can control us!”

Puhleeze, fool!

“They” can cause you to stampede your neighbors with something as simple as a fucking sale on wide-screen TVs at the Big Box store! And as proven by that example, the threat of liability may be the only thing that prevents it.

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