I’ve mostly been avoiding the Presidential race, because everything that happens a year before the election is just distraction and a stage show.  The electorate doesn’t remember what happened last month, let alone what happened a year ago.

Until last night, I’d only watched some clips of the debates.  I watched all of last night’s Democratic debate, and formed some opinions about the candidates.

This morning, I read an article by a major network, and formed an opinion about ABC News.  It is not a very favorable opinion.

I’ve retained animosity towards Fox News for a long time.  The thing about Fox News is that they’re so damn obvious with their spin.  When they present news, they are as subtle as a fog horn.  They are successful, because they know their target audience, and they’re playing to it.

Having watched a debate, and having read what ABC News presents of it, I’m startled by the nuance and subtlety.  There is reality, which I observed with my own eyes and ears, and there is ABC’s narrative, where everything hinges on Hillary Clinton.

As I said briefly on Facebook, if any of the three Democrat candidates became President, I would not fear for my country.  I cannot say the same about any of the Republican candidates.

Being an intelligent, literate adult these last few months, I’ve observed the media’s treatment of Donald Trump.  Again, it is not subtle.  There is a sick fascination and curiosity when it comes to Trump, and what he’s going to say next.  He’s using his experience in the WWE to great effect, painting himself as a heal, and getting the crowd on its feet.

There is a narrative surrounding Trump, and that narrative keeps him in the news and the consciousness of the world.  We’re being entertained by his antics.

And now I see that Hillary Clinton is receiving the same sort of treatment, to a lesser extent.  She’s not following the same script as Trump, but the media that enables Trump to stay on the world’s stage is working their magic on Clinton’s behalf.

As I said before, I wouldn’t mind if Clinton became President.  She’s not my favorite in this race, perhaps for silly reasons.  For one, she’s a slick politician, subtle in the ways she shifts position.  She puts on an accent when she visits the South.  I didn’t like her as a candidate in 2008, and I don’t like her much as a candidate now.  I prefer her over Trump or Cruz or any of the rest of the Republican crazies, but that isn’t saying much.

I prefer Bernie this year, but I have some apprehension.  I’m not excited about his Medicare expansion idea.  I agree with the idea of providing medical care as a right, but I don’t think we’re going to get there anytime soon.  I don’t think Medicare is the way.  Also, I’m not very comfortable with unabashed socialism.

Ultimately, it won’t matter which Democrat becomes the next president.  If by some tragedy/miracle it is O’Malley (I had to take a few moments to look up his name), he hasn’t demonstrated the strength or personality to get equal time on a debate stage.  How will he fair against a Congress that has been willing to fight Obama on everything, just on general principles?

Neither Clinton nor Sanders will have much luck pushing legislation.  There is too much money going into Congress from special interests.  The system is broken, and focused in the wrong direction.  Whatever lofty goals Clinton or Sanders may have, they will find Congress minefield.

And that is probably the one reason I favor Sanders this year, because he acknowledges this, and talks about trying to fix it.  I don’t honestly think he’ll have any success, but I’d like to see someone try.

One of the challenges this year will be catching the debates, rather than relying on the media to give me accurate summaries.  CNN did a better job than ABC, but I think the only one I can trust on this matter is myself.  And I encourage everyone voting this year to do the same thing.  Don’t listen to the parrots and spin doctors.  Watch, listen, and make up your own mind.

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2016!  Let’s get some great writing done this year.

Before I get back to working on fiction, I want to take a moment to talk about patriotism.  I don’t want to get too much into politics.  I just want to get some thoughts about America out of my heart and mind before my chest bursts.

For starters, I don’t know if anyone else would consider me patriotic.  I have a few idiosyncrasies which separate me from what comes to mind when imagining an American patriot.  For example, I don’t like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

“But Brian!” exclaimed Strawman Number One. “Why not?  Are you some kind of Communist scum?”

“Is it because of the ‘under God’ part?” asked Strawman Number Two.

No, it’s neither of those things.  It’s actually much simpler than that.  There are two main reasons I don’t care to recite it.

1. I don’t like pledging allegiance to a flag.
2. A person of integrity shouldn’t have to pledge their allegiance more than once.

That’s it.  There are a couple of other reasons, but those are the main two.  Let’s break them down.

Why should anyone pledge their allegiance to a flag?  If it were stated, “I pledge allegiance to the United States of America,” then I’d probably be okay with it.  But the flag?  What does that even mean?  If someone were to run down the street with Old Glory snapping and waiving on a stick above them, are those that pledged allegiance obligated to run behind?  It doesn’t make any sense to me.

It makes me question the use of flags.  As I see it, the practical uses of a flag are to mark property or to distinguish armies from one another.  Everything beyond that is semi-mystical fiddle-faddle.

As to the second reason, I joined the Air Force.  When I joined, I took an oath of enlistment.  Here are the words:

“I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

When I swore that oath, I did so without reservations, and without an expiration date.  As far as I’m concerned, I’m still under oath to support and defend the Constitution, and will be until either I’m dead, or there is nothing left to defend.

So why should I pledge allegiance again?

I don’t care for mindless rituals.  I’m very uncomfortable with the notion of mixing patriotism and faith or religion.

As to the “under God” part?  I honestly don’t care.  In my opinion, if someone has a problem with that part of the pledge of the allegiance, they can just omit that part, or replace it with the name of their deity.

But since I’ve spent so much time talking about the pledge of allegiance, let’s focus on a part of it that should make people concerned.  There is another word in the pledge that people should take much more seriously.  Here is the full pledge, with the word I’m talking about bolded for emphasis.

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Indivisible.  That is, “unable to be divided or separated.”

Looking around our nation, we are divided or separated on everything.  Partisanship is so prevalent that people aren’t listening to each other.  We are divided on matters of political affiliation, gender, race, sexual preference, geographical location, economic status… you name it, we are polarized about it.  And from my perspective, it’s getting worse.

I don’t know what to do about it.  I’ve spent a great deal of time in this post describing how I might not be considered a patriot, but here’s the simple truth: I love my country.  It’s my home.  I want to see it prosper.  I want everyone that chooses to live here to have life, liberty, health, and happiness.

How can we make this a better place?  For starters, I think we should listen more than we talk.  When our president announced his plans for tightening gun laws, I think our first response should have been to listen carefully, and not immediately flee to social media to post misinformed memes.

We need more intelligent conversations, and less parroting of propaganda.  We need calm assertiveness more than we need frantic aggressiveness.  We need maturity and a willingness to compromise, not name calling and blind stubbornness.

This is an election year.  Maybe the first step is to become informed.  Let’s look at what each candidate is actually saying, and what they’re doing, and not make quick decisions based on their gender, race, or socioeconomic status.

And then, once we’re informed, let’s be true patriots and vote our conscience.

I’ve been sick most of the week.  While I was working from home one of the days, I messaged my boss with the idea that the whole department should go and see Star Wars: The Force Awakens as a team building excursion.  He thought it a great idea, and bought 20 tickets for today’s 11AM showing.

As I write this, it’s been hours since I watched the movie.  I’m still buzzing.  I need to talk about Star Wars, and let out some of these emotions.

I’m not going to go into spoilers.  I’m not going to talk about the plot, or give anything away.  I’m mostly going to talk about what Star Wars means to me, and how I felt about the latest installment.

I can remember seeing the original Star Wars, a little bit.  I think it was in a drive-in, and as young as I was, I slept through parts of it.  The only thing I really remember is that I thought the stormtroopers were scary.

Later, I saw Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in the theater.  I remember those experiences well.  I remember playing with the toys, and wanting to be Luke Skywalker.  When I was young, I honestly didn’t have a lot of respect for Han Solo.  He was the guy that was in it for the money.  Luke’s ambitions were more noble.

I eventually became a huge Star Wars fan.  The seeds were planted in my youth, which grew into a greater and greater appreciation over time.  In my mid twenties, my interest reached its pique.  That’s when I started playing on Star Wars MUSH.  I stayed active there for most of a decade.  I spent years developing my writing by collaborating in Star Wars fan fiction.

I remained a steady fan until The Phantom Menace.  I went in with all of the excitement.  Honestly, I enjoyed the movie, because my enthusiasm overrode my critical thinking.  I remember leaving the theater smiling, with only a shadow of disappointment in what I’d just watched.

At this point, I could start tearing the prequels apart.  I won’t, this time.  I will just say that as a huge fan, and someone that brings a lot of forgiveness to the movies, the prequels exhausted me.  My passion for Star Wars diminished.  I starting describing myself as someone that used to be a Star Wars fan.

When I heard that Disney was going to make Episode VII, I suppressed my hope.  When I heard that J.J. Abrams was going to direct it, I became apprehensive.  I thought the new Star Trek movies were fun, but in my opinion, they weren’t true to the spirit of the originals.  Did I really want J.J. giving Star Wars the same treatment, and splattering it with lens flares?

As the opening drew closer and closer, I stayed as far away from spoilers as I could.  I only watched the first trailer.  I avoided articles and YouTube videos that talked about the upcoming movie.  I wanted to go in with fresh eyes, and try to enjoy the movie on its own merits.

To be honest, I may have done too good a job stamping down my hope.  Several friends kept commenting about counting down the date, and I kept finding myself surprised at how close it was getting.  I didn’t keep a countdown.  I put the movie out of my mind, and the release date snuck up on me.

The day finally arrived.  I went with my coworkers.  We found decent seats.  And for the first time in a long time, I watched a Star Wars movie for the first time.

When I realized that what I was watching was an actual Star Wars movie, I grew a little teary eyed.  This was the kind of experience I’d hoped for with the prequels.  This was a movie that felt like Star Wars.  A movie that fit with the stories that had inspired me.  This new Star Wars movie did not demand justification or apologies from me.

The movie finished, and I sat still for several moments, satisfied.  Then I got up and went back to work, my head buzzing with what I’d just seen.

The Force Awakens was not flawless.  I think it should have ended about 5 minutes sooner than it did.  But it did made me feel something I hadn’t felt in over twenty years.  It was not a perfect movie, but it was a Star Wars movie.  And I can’t wait to see it again.

My writing has stalled.  The last few weeks, I’ve been busier with band than I’ve been since High School.  We put on a successful Pancake Breakfast with Santa this weekend, and the concert band had an outstanding concert at the church where we’ve been practicing.  We’ve had some great successes, and my time has been well spent.

But the event that made it all worth it took place last night, at the Camden Springs retirement home in Elk Grove.

Normally, RC Swing practices on Tuesday nights, but last night, we went to Camden Springs and performed.  We set up in a foyer, cramped together tighter than normal.  We kept the tiled area in front of us clear, in case the residents wanted to dance.  On the other side of the small dance floor sat several sofas in a semi circle.  A balcony stood above us, allowing more residents to look down and listen to us play.

As we set up our equipment, people came to watch, eager for our performance.  One man approached me.  He used a walker, and his hands were painfully twisted with arthritis.  He told me he played bass.  I knew that our bass player was going to be late, so I invited him to join us, without really giving it much thought.

His name was Ed, and he did great!  When Geno, our regular bass player arrived in the middle of the first set, Geno took a seat and enjoyed the show.  Ed wound up playing both sets with us, and had a blast doing it.

He wasn’t the only one that enjoyed the show.  People told us, with tears in their eyes, how the music we played took them back.  One man talked to me after the performance about his time playing coronet with the British Army.  Another woman told us how it was a perfect end to her 81st birthday.

This is why we play music.  To touch lives, and make people happy for a little while.

My hope is that someday, my writing will touch people’s lives the way my music did Tuesday evening.  Even if it’s just one person, like Ed on the bass.  It’s that kind of joy that makes all the difference in the world.

Holy cow!  I wrote something for someone else!

Here is a link: Leasspell – The WordWright Guild

Jennifer Carson invited me to write a guest blog post.  It was the first time I’ve ever been invited to do something like that, and I felt honored and privileged.  Seeing something I wrote in someone else’s space… this feels almost as good as getting published.

The title of the post is Pride of the Writer, which is a follow up to Fears of the Writer.

Jennifer is one of those people you need in your life when you’re a writer.  She is experienced and knowledgeable in the field, both in editing and writing.  She is genuinely kind without being saccharine.  She provides praise when its earned.  She’s also unafraid to tell you when you’ve gone astray, being firm without being cruel.  She is more interested in helping a writer tell their story, rather then inject her own.

I know these things about Jennifer, because she was one of the pros at the last writer’s workshop I attended.  She’s maintained contact, expressing interest in the progress of The Repossessed Ghost.

Please visit her blog.  She has a number of interesting and entertaining posts.  Also, she had some really nice things to say about me, and the only way you’ll get to see what she said is to visit.

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate birds flying in unison together.  Here are a couple of videos.

Here’s another one.

Isn’t that nice and relaxing?

Now let’s talk about how people are just like those birds, moving in flocks together via the tweets and twerps of social media.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let us consider how birds and other animals manage to move together as they do.  I perused this lengthy article, which talked about several different theories that have cropped up over the years.  Here is another article that is a bit more succinct.

Since you’re probably not going to click either of those links, I’ll give you a quick summary.  The birds on the edge of the flock react to something, such as the appearance of food or a predator, which initiates an action.  The first bird’s neighbors mimic the action, and the rest of the flock, always anticipating changes, reacts quickly.  A wave of reaction rolls over the entire flock, giving the appearance of a dance in the sky, like a feathered chorus line.

It only takes one bird to initiate the action.  And usually, that bird is on the edge of the flock.  Keep these ideas in mind.

Now let’s look at people.  Specifically, let’s look at something I’m sure you’re as sick of hearing about as I am: Starbuck’s red cups.

Do you know anyone that actually cared about the cups at Starbucks before the supposed controversy began?  I’m sure a few people have opinions now that our news and social feeds are full of trivial news articles and memes.  But who cared before Ellen or Bristol Palin weighed in on the matter?

Why are we so distracted by something so trivial?

Because we anticipated something like this.  Before the red cups were in the news, people began posting memes about Christmas being celebrated too early.  We posted memes about the evils of Christmas decorations and music before Halloween.  And we posted memes about the war on Christmas, and the virtues of people saying Merry Christmas to each other.

The pump was primed for a manufactured controversy.  And so now we have it, in all of its pointless, cardboard glory.

The reality is that most people don’t look at the cup containing their decaf soy latte.  And when they do, the cardboard sleeve is probably blocking most of the cup, anyway.  And also, no one cares, except a few people on the edge of the flock.

I, for one, will drink my overpriced coffee with peace in my heart, happy to be blessed with good health and a loving family.

But for just a moment, I took a step back and looked at all of us, flailing about, following our neighbors in a complicated social media dance.  Like ten thousand starlings at sunset, we reacted and moved as a single flock.

Unlike watching the birds, I find very little beauty or peace in the way we are moving together.  I just find it tiring, and a little bit depressing.

I’ve been busy lately.  I have new responsibilities with the Rancho Cordova River City Concert Band.  I still have projects to complete at work, and due to unfortunate illness, I have one less person to help me complete those projects.  There’s fundraisers to shepherd.  There’s music to learn.  And throughout all of that, I should probably stay in touch with my family.

So, I willingly gave up on Blog-tober.  I had a good head of steam going there for a couple of days, where I was writing on subject matters that meant something to me.  And, to my surprise, people responded.  It felt strange, because people I didn’t think were reading my posts were approaching me about them.  It was satisfying, and humbling, and a bit frightening.

Something had to give, though.  I pulled the plug, took a step back, and tried to catch my breath.  I stated at the beginning of the month that if I couldn’t complete Blog-tober, I didn’t stand a chance of completing NaNoWriMo.  So is that it, then?  Do I give up?

Honestly, I don’t know.  I still have more editing to do.  Maybe I should focus on editing the second draft of The Repossessed Ghost, and not worry about starting a new novel this year.  I already have two other unfinished first drafts weighing on my conscience.  Do I really need a third?

But then again, I’ve been thinking about a science fiction story.  Something involving life on the moon in a big spinning drum.  A story with nearly sentient robots and virtual reality.  A story about an improbable crime, and a man caught in the middle.  He has to figure out what happened before someone else gets hurt.

I don’t know what the right thing to do is.  I have so much on my plate already.  What would I get from trying to write another story in November?  At best, I’d have another first draft that would need editing, and the right to buy another “I won at NaNoWriMo” t-shirt.  At worst, I’d have another start of a story, and all the feelings of failure that come with that.

I enjoy the Sacramento NaNoWriMo community.  I like going to the write-ins, and joining the word wars, and chatting with folks in IRC.  Will I have time for any of that, with everything else that’s going on?

October still has a few days left.  I can think on it a little bit longer.  While I think about it, I should consider the following:

• I won’t be able to write at all on Mondays and Tuesdays.  Those days are simply too full.
• I won’t have time to edit The Repossessed Ghost, so that will languish for a month.  I really want to have the next draft finished before the end of the year.
• The story idea I have in mind is a third person story, and I don’t write in third person very quickly.
• Assuming Thursdays and Fridays are also too full for writing, I would have 13 days (Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays) to write 50,000 words.  That’s nearly 4,000 words every time I sit down to write in the month of November.

It sounds like a challenge.  But it also sounds like pointless self torture.  How masochistic am I?

The last couple of days have been exciting, but I need to take a break from the super serious topics for a couple of days.  I have a lot of work to do.  So instead, let’s talk about how people are kind of terrible.

In less than 2 weeks, Marty McFly and Doc Brown will arrive in their modified DeLorean in order to help Marty’s kids. I know this, because I watched the documentary from the 1989, Back to the Future II. It painted a clear picture of what the future would be like. So, we have a few days to put our cars in the air like we just don’t care, to preserve the accuracy of that fine film.

Seriously, though, we don’t have flying cars. We’re probably never going to have flying cars, and we should probably consider that a blessing.

There are a few reasons why flying cars are problematic, but I think I only need to focus on one: people can’t be trusted with them.

While looking into gun violence the last couple of days, I read a few interesting statistics on how we kill each other daily. According to this site, nearly 1.3 million people die each year in car accidents. 20 to 50 million are injured or disabled each year.

Those are vehicles on the ground. They’re not falling out of the sky, crushing whatever is caught underneath. They’re driving on roads, earthbound, typically under 100mph. Cruising velocity for long range flights is over 500mph.

After a long day, you probably go home and relax. It probably never crosses your mind that a vehicle might jump the curb and come crashing into your living room. That kind of accident happens from time to time, but it’s rare. What if the cars weren’t confined to the roads?

The next time you’re negotiating traffic, imagine the people around you suddenly responsible for piloting over residential areas. That guy that can’t be bothered to use his turn signal? Or that person that is too busy looking at their phone to pay attention to traffic? Or how about the impatient jerk that tailgates you, or the timid turtle that insists on driving 10mph below the speed limit? Imagine those folks in flying cars. Over your house.

I love people, but I don’t trust us. We are not enlightened enough.

All I’ve eluded to so far is incompetence.  I haven’t even mentioned malice.  How much intentional damage could a person do with a flying vehicle?  People wouldn’t bother taking guns to schools to kill children.  They’d just use their flying car.

I think we all want to be freed from the bonds of gravity and allowed to take to the sky.  The only way I can see it happening is if you take control out of people’s hands, and completely automate flight.  How well is that going so far with earthbound cars?  I know great strides have been made.  How do you feel about giving up driving, putting the responsibility in the hands of computers?  How would you feel about letting a computer fly you and your family, without allowing you any sort of control?

Damn, that was kind of depressing.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll talk about politics, or abortion. You know, to lighten things up a little.

We had some more shootings today.  Two of the six top stories in my Google news feed right now are about the recent shootings.  This comes right on top of my post yesterday, where I said that guns aren’t the real problem.  I used figures from the FBI and the CDC, and I built an argument based on facts and rationality, rather than emotions.

But now I’m looking at my news feed, and I’m looking at things people are posting in social media, and I have to wonder if I got it wrong after all.  I want to keep an open mind, and use rational thinking.  But I can feel the pull of the herd, and right now the herd wants to get rid of all the guns, because people are dying.

I’m not the only one that has doubt.  Here’s a link to someone that grew up with guns, that has decided that its his responsibility to destroy the gun he has.  It’s a man that has been responsible with his firearm, keeping it dismantled and locked up so that no one in his household would accidentally hurt themselves.  But he feels that’s not enough, and the only real solution is to destroy the gun completely, and encourage other people to do the same.

That is an emotional response.  Rationally, if he was keeping the weapon dismantled and locked up as he said, that gun wasn’t going to hurt anyone.  The detergent near his washer and dryer was probably a greater danger than the weapon.  The vehicle parked in his driveway has more chance of killing someone.  So destroying that gun isn’t a rational act, it’s an emotional reaction.

Where does this reaction come from?  From what we’re seeing in the news.  From what we’re seeing from our social network, which is picking up the story and amplifying it.  Driving the herd.

This makes me think of Jon Stewart, and what he did for so many years on The Daily Show.  He showed us flaws in the news system, where the story we were seeing wasn’t always grounded in reality or rationality.  It wasn’t just Fox, either, though Fox is the worst culprit.

Right now, we’re focused on tragedy, which is riling our emotions, and emboldening some to take action.  We would be monsters not to feel something.  People are dying.  Innocent kids are being shot, and we need to do something.

What I don’t want to see are more emotional reactions, especially if they are wide-sweeping.  Whatever we do, it needs to be appropriate and thoughtful, and not simply justifiable.

What I wrote yesterday might be wrong.  I haven’t seen anything yet that refutes the facts or reasoning.  I believe I used good sources for my data, and I did not overreach in my assertions.  But I’m willing to have my mind changed, via rational discourse.  Showing me dead college kids is not rational discourse.  All that will do is make me sad.

I have to wonder what other terrible things are going on that we’re not seeing, because we’re focused on gun violence.

I wonder what would happen if we reported every car crash fatality with the same vigor as we report every shooting.  We’d be exhausted very quickly.  A quick Google search tells me that there are 3,287 deaths from car crashes every day, and more than half of those deaths occur to people between the ages 15 to 44.  Another google search tells me that 274 people are shot every day, leading to 86 deaths each day from gun violence.

But let’s not get distracted.  Right now, we’re focused on these kids that have been shot at college.  That’s what everyone’s talking about.  That’s what’s driving the conversation.

So what do we do about it?  What do we do that is actually effective, and not simply reactionary?

Alright, folks.  Buckles your seat belts.  I’m about to talk about gun control.

This is a good follow-up to yesterdays post about mindless memes, and how easy it is to spread ignorance and misinformation through social media.  I mentioned that we don’t do sufficient fact checking, and I mentioned in passing that sometimes it’s because we don’t want our illusions destroyed.  Gun control is one of those subjects where people like to maintain their illusions, so we tend to close our minds as soon as the subject comes up.

I’m not going to reveal my opinion yet.  I will later.  First, I want some facts, so that my opinion can be informed by reality.

According to the FBI, violent crime declined steadily between 2009 and 2013.

Here is a link to the FBI site where I grabbed this graph.

There are some other statistics on the site that aren’t shown in the graph.  62.3% of the violent crimes in 2013 were assault.  Murder accounted for 1.2%.  Firearms were used in 69% of the murders, and 21.6% of the assaults.

 

Let’s look at another site.  The CDC has some quick stats on causes of death.  In 2013, about 192,945 people died from injury related deaths.  48,545 deaths were caused by poison.  33,804 deaths involved a motor vehicle.  And 33,636 deaths involved firearms.

The CDC has another page dedicated to stats on homicides.  In 2013, there were 16,121 total homicides, and 11,208 involved firearms.

 

That’s the data I’m going to use.  I’ve seen some images floating around about Australia.  There are comparisons made between the US and other countries.  I don’t have reliable source information for that, and I’m not even sure it’s applicable.  The culture is different in the US, so what may have worked in Australia might not work here.

 

What does the data we have from the FBI and the CDC tell us?  First, their numbers don’t quite match, so they’re probably using different sources, different definitions, or both.  The numbers not matching from the two sites is a tempting distraction.  Let’s not get wrapped up in that.

The second thing we notice is the difference in numbers between assault and murder.  Multiplying out the FBI numbers, there were 724,640 assaults in 2013.  In the same year, there were 13,958 murders.  156,522 of the assaults involved firearms.  9,631 of the murders involved firearms.

 

Now that we have some actual numbers, let’s start thinking about the problem with unrealistic fantasy.  Let’s assume that we pass effective gun control legislation, and the end result is that ALL of the firearm related assaults and murders are eliminated.  We’ll still be looking at 568,118 assaults, and 4,327 murders.  Looking at the CDC numbers, we’d have reduced the total number of injury deaths from 192,945 to 159,309.

Did we solve the problem?  Remember, we’re applying fantasy to real numbers.  This fantasy has removed ALL guns from the equation, even though the reality would be that there would still be guns in the US.  Both legal and illegal.

The reality is that if you manage to take away all of the guns, some of those assaults and murders would still happen, only with fists or knives.  We can’t know how many, and I’m not going to make up numbers on that.  But I think it’s a reasonable assumption that someone angry enough to inflict bodily harm on another will find a way, with or without a firearm.

 

I saw some posts floating around, proposing that guns should be regulated the same way that cars are.  Then I saw some other people refuting that, saying that right now, guns are more regulated than cars.  I don’t have any data to support either side.  But I do have an opinion.

Changing the way guns are regulated would not have saved that little girl that was killed by a boy, when they were arguing over a puppy.  The boy shouldn’t have had access to the shotgun.  And I wouldn’t blame the government, or the NRA, or anyone else, except the parents of that little boy.

Hell, if I was a cold sonofoabitch, I might even point a finger at the little girl’s parents, too.  I don’t have all of the details of what happened, but it seems like two kids were unattended long enough that they could argue, leading to the boy retrieving a shotgun and bringing it to bear on the girl.  If either child had been under more supervision, then the disaster could have been prevented.

But I’m not that cold.  I feel bad for the parents, of both kids.  One is dead, and the other’s life is ruined.

This event, and the shooting in Oregon, and the shootings before that, bring out emotions and emotional responses.  And with the immediacy of these events, right in our faces, in our news feeds and in our social feeds, we would be monsters not to respond.  If there is something that can be done to prevent this from happening in the future, we should do it.

The argument is whether or not removing guns from the equation will solve the problem.  In the instances that are clear and present in front of us… maybe.  Removing the guns may have helped.

But looking at the numbers, it isn’t the full answer.  I would argue that it isn’t even the answering the right question.  It answers, “How do we stop people from shooting each other?” What we should be asking is, “How do we stop people from hurting each other?”

I don’t know.  According to the five year trend from the FBI data, the number of violent crimes is decreasing.  What did we do to start that trend?  Is the trend continuing?

I’m not saying we should do nothing, and wait it out.  I’m saying that we should do the right thing, and I’m not convinced that guns are the main problem.

How do I feel about guns?  The same way I feel about abortions.  I encourage people not to get them, but if you need one, I think it should be legal.