Gun Control, Racism...and other things that made up 2015

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 9^th 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!