Happy New Year’s Eve everyone!
After a blockbuster 2014 where we wrote around 50 blog
posts, we drastically dropped off this year with this being only our 9th
post of the entire year. It was a very dismal year for our little project here,
but hopefully the New Year will see a reinvigorated effort on our part, only
time will tell.
But as today is New Year’s Eve, I’d like to look back at the
year that was while enjoying a nice Apple Crown that I decided to have before
my old man stole it all!
As a country I would have to say that we did not have an
overall good year. We saw more senseless shootings of individuals, by
individuals, terrorist groups, and even some of our different factions of law
enforcement. These shootings have become so common place in our society that we
once again are seeing the idea of gun control enter into the national
conversation. The best part about that is that the second someone mentions the
term “gun control” the NRA and every other extreme individual or group goes
right to the idea that the President is going to try and take back all of our
guns…which is a disappointing thought process considering we are supposed to be
an educated populace.
I recently spoke with a friend who is serving in the armed
forces. He’s just getting going and he was telling me that most of the
accidents that occur have to do with firearms and I told him that it was
understandable because despite the fact that these kids are all at least 18
years old, they’re still pretty much kids and are given a lot of responsibility
with arms that I will probably never shoot…then I got thinking about when I got
my firearm certificate. I was 12 years old and this little piece of paper I
received after a few hours of class time and one session shooting down at our
local range, allowed me to pretty much wield any firearm…at 12! Now (in
Minnesota at least) we allow kids to go hunting with their parents starting at
10 years old. My friend is 19 and in the armed forces and the most accidents
they have (serious ones) are with firearms. They literally spend a huge portion
of their day learning how to use these and know the weapons essentially as well
as themselves and it’s still the biggest source of accidents.
The press conference I watched with President Obama talking
about gun control made it sound like that he didn’t want individuals who were
on the “No Fly” list to be able to purchase firearms, and he also proposed
making the purchase of firearms more difficult with ideas such as having to be
a registered member of a local gun club or shooting range…none of that seemed
so drastic to me.
Reading the above you may already be saying to yourself that
this guy must not be a hunter, he just doesn’t get it. Well, you’d be wrong. I
enjoy hunting immensely. I love being able to go out during deer season and sit
and watch the wild life and hopefully find myself a big buck to add to my
trophy’s (it’s more like one nice deer in 20 years!), I also purchased my dog
because she was supposed to be a great bird dog (hip dysplasia ended her career
early, but still a great companion). I’ve been hunting in places like Wyoming,
and Kansas as well as Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota and I’d truly love
to go Elk hunting someday as well. I love hunting, I grew up doing it and I’d
be very saddened if someday I was no longer able to do it. But I have a hard
time believing that individuals such as me are the ones that the government and
other agencies are worried about when they talk about gun control.
But we’ve become a country of one thing or the other…no
in-betweens. A black person is shot by a police officer, and we deem every
police officer to be bad. And when an individual retaliates and murders a
police officer then we determine that all members of that particular skin tone
are to blame.
We, in the majority, see ourselves as either Republican or
Democrat and when it comes time to vote we generally stick with our party line.
Not sure who’s running for this particular office? Oh well, this guy says
democrat after his name so I’ll just vote for them.
Is it any wonder why groups like ISIS can gain traction by
attacking a country such as ours? We’re already divided and prone to racism,
sexism, ageism, or whatever else we can use to divide ourselves, so when a
group is attempting for countries to alienate the Muslim factions of a
population, we’re an easy target. The best part is; we absolutely know that
ISIS is attempting to drive Muslims to their cause by showing them that the
rest of the world hates them…and we put buffoons like Donald Trump up in front
of world news stations as a possible head of our country! We know that they
love having someone as narcissistic and naïve as Trump who also happens to have
this following in the US where people just like that he says what he’s
thinking, even if it’s racist, bigoted bullshit.
So we have a jack ass who very likely may end up being our
next president and a population who takes the second amendment as a law that
states that each individual should be allowed to have enough guns to start
their very own militia, and forget that the law that their using as backing, is
by definition something that has been written into something else which changes
the original…do you see the irony? It’s already changed something else…it
certainly could be changed again. On top of that, when the last mass shooting
took place in San Bernardino, news stations around the world reported it as, “Just
another day in the United States.”
Let’s go back to the whole “gun control” phrase. There’s a
scene from the Adam Sandler movie, Big Daddy which talks about when he
allows his son to become the “stinky kid” in class. He decides it’s time for a
change and I think if you can remember back when you were going through high
school you may remember the first time you decided to start using deodorant,
because quite frankly…you were becoming that stinky kid. So when we realize
that we’re becoming something we don’t want, in this case stinky…we use
something some may call, odor control…see where I’m going?
As a country, with our mass shootings and overall violence
we have now become one of the world’s stinky kids. An educated population
should begin to realize that there are other options of gun control other than
just taking all guns away from everyone. Say what you will about President
Obama, but I wouldn’t mind having to be a registered member of my local
Sportsman’s Club (I already am, as are most citizens who hunt around me) in
order to purchase a fire arm. Is this going to stop mass shootings? More than
likely not on its own, but by getting more people to pay dues to their local
gun clubs, they may be afforded greater education and that’s certainly not
going to hurt anything.
Christ, I just took up most of your time blabbing on about
gun control and racism…but this is a year in review and I’d say we as a country
spent a good portion of the year dealing with these issues and as 2016 is the
big election year…grab a seat because we’ll continue to deal with it throughout
next year, and until we get a grasp on it, we’ll be dealing with it for quite a
bit longer than that.
2015 made me a little sad to be a member of a country that
can turn on itself so easily, especially when I think back to how we were
founded and how we didn’t want oppression because of our choice of religion and
the founding fathers didn’t even think we should have political parties because
they knew they would be a source of division. Quite frankly, they’d be pretty
disappointed in America today as well.
The good news is that despite all of these bad things that occurred
in 2015, for the most part they still make up a minority of the individuals
that make up our country. There are still a million people out there that are
making the world a better place every year. It’s important for us to look for
the good in these bad times. Luckily it’s not that hard to find. Be it with
your good friends, loving family, or just a random person that for some reason,
made your day.
SoulPancake is a web
site I turn to a lot when I’m feeling down. They have some very uplifting
videos, poetry, and a hundred other things that are designed to show you the
good in the world when it appears you’re surrounded by the bad.
I also hope to reinvigorate BD&LL in the New Year. I
recently began watching the show, Mozart in the Jungle, on Amazon and have
found it a bit inspiring as it deals with musician, artists, and dancers who
have said (as my dad would say) “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead” to
chasing their dreams. It’s refreshing to see, and inspiring to boot. So 2016
should hopefully bring with it more posts from this author and I will actually
get to hang out with Mike on Saturday so I’ll see if I can’t persuade him to be
more active in 2016 as well! Some of the other writers are in-between kids right
now as well, so hopefully we can come back together as a group and start
putting forth our positive footprint back on the interweb!
There was a lot of bitching in this post, I’m well aware of
it, but I recently saw something that said that the things we think about most
are the ones we talk about least…I’ve spent a good portion of 2015 overthinking
and not getting my thoughts out in the open…I don’t plan on spending 2016 the
same way. I don’t generally make New Year’s Resolutions…but writing more this
year would definitely fall into that category!
I hope you all have a fantastic New Year’s Eve and 2016! Enjoy
the celebration and all the wonderful opportunities that are brought forth by
each New Year…and day!
