Enough is too Much!

I have had it! People and even defenseless kids shot and killed and today a sheriff snuffed in W Virginia--if only he had had a gun...
Meantime we do NOTHING!
Everything that is proposed violates someone's rights.
I am more worried about saving kids than rights.
We have a pile of wrongs-- a huge pile of dead PEOPLE.
Why not try something?

I usually delete a topic when 10 people read it and do not respond.
I am going to leave this one and see how apathetic people are.

Dear Alice,

I have not heard anything about this. I will look at the 'news'. I hope you know that I am against the willy nilly possession of arms and wonder why people consider that crazy people have the right to have them. I will read more.

Love,

Betty

I have always been against the possession of weapons by citizens. Those who wish to hunt may belong to hunting clubs and store their weapons there to check out for hunting. Those who wish to shoot may belong to shooting clubs and store their weapons there to check out for skeet shooting.

No citizen needs to posess a gun. We no longer live in the Wild West. We are a civilized nation of laws and courts where contested matters are to be settled.

The gun manufacturers are the sole reason for the outcry for gun ownership just as the Tobacco manufacturers keep cigarettes on the market. We are sucked in by their lobbying and advertising.

My goodness, Alice, the campaign funds for lots of representatives and senators are dependent on gun manufacturers and their lobbyists. We don't have a representative democracy, we have a democracy funded by special interests - their oligarchy and our suffering. Not until mothers march in the streets of every city in the U.S. crying for their dead children and loved ones will something be done.

All this "rights" business is malarky! We had guns on our sailboat - and a lot of good they did because customs in every port collected them! They didn't want guns in their countries in the hands of idiots like us.

My former husband was a former cop. He had a safe full of loaded weapons. When he was served divorce papers he came storming into the house heading straight for the safe - and I had turned over the guns to the sheriff for "safe keeping" during "unsettled domestic conflicts in the home" which you can do in most communities. It was a good thing; if he had been able to get to the guns I would be dead.

He had seldom approached that safe or even checked those guns. Enraged by a divorce he precipitated but wanted to control, his rage sent him for a man's manhood - his gun.

It sickens me the cry for the rights to dead children. We can't build bombs in our homes. We can't speed on the highway. Why? Public Safety.

DK, That is very touching and telling. I wish you would copy and paste that on my Facebook page. People need to think.
Betty, I know you are for children and their safety.

Don't look at me. I just got here.

I don't think it's about apathy. Frustration, maybe.

We are going through changing times.

Some individuals are feeling powerless - to the point they have to go out and prove they are still in control. They apparently think violence is all they have left.

The thing is, in the moment, we are powerless, and that's very scary.

People are still too divided, and too polarized to come together to find a solution.

I have been reading most of the day - a book on Jungian psychology. I learned something new. That word that Jung and Campbell have both used that intrigues me? The word enantiodromia? Which means running back and forth between extremes? I just found out that it goes all the way back to Heraclitus.

We have been dealing with this problem of extreme polarization for a long time, apparently. There just isn't an easy answer, and the only thing we can do in this moment is to do what you are doing in spreading the word that it has happened again. Eventually we will reach that critical mass and enough people will be fed upwith the extremes will work back toward the center so that laws can be passed.

The laws, of course, will only be a stop-gap. What must really happen is a change in people's hearts. And that is happening. Law enforcement officers have been getting shot and killed by mindless bad guys for a very long time, but today, when it does, even in a small southern town, it's making national news and people are getting upset over it. That in itself is a sign that things are in the process of change.

Thank you, Ann.
I wish it would change a bit faster.

Me too.

4/3/2013
Alice..
Yes it's scary ! How's about those prosecutors in Texas
being shot to death, they say it's a white supremist group
out for revenge, I wouldn't be surprised...People don't need
hundreds of rounds of ammunition to shoot Bambi ( I'm against!)
We have supermarkets, hello...How do we keep weapons out of the
hands of nut jobs ? I say Check, double check, photos, fingerprints,
medical records to see if the person is mentally unstable...In 1986 I
had a brother who died at 31 in a tragic gun accident, that's why I'm
against weapons and besides I have a " ATTACK CAT "

Cheers..Joe...

And then we hear the cliche: "Guns don't kill, people do." If it wasn't for people, who would shoot the gun? People pull the trigger, therefore it is people that is our concern. Take away their killing tool. Except for hunting, and that is no longer a needed source for food, guns are not required. Cowards flaunt their weapons.

I had a thought this morning (fancy that!!)


I finished reading that book on Jung, and was reflecting.

I remembered a conversation I had with my therapist during one of our sessions, over twenty years ago. I was feeling upset over that fact that, as my struggles with my "family of origin" were becoming resolved, my relationship with my children was becoming more tense.

My therapist pointed out to me that I had changed. She went on to say that, in changing, I had created a vacuum, and the other people in my life were being sucked into it, whether they were ready for it, or wanted me to change, or not.

So, what struck me was the realization that the same thing is happening today on a grand scale. Our world is changing - has changed, in fact, and we are all being sucked into that vacuum, whether we want to or not.

Some of us are accepting the changes, a few are even relishing in them. But there are many others who do not like being pulled into this new paradigm, and are resisting with everything they have available to fight it.

You put that together with Alvin Toffler's revelation in Future Shock about the three sources of power: violence, wealth, and knowledge, and remember that those who lack knowledge and wealth have no recouse other than violence, and we can see where the chaos is coming from.

One of the things I read in that book, Digesting Jung by Daryl Sharp, was that there are still many people in this world who choose to "remain unconscious." That is to say, they simply go along with whatever the group thinks, rather than looking into themselves, finding out who they are, what their purpose here is, and developing an independent life and personality.

I have found my self, lately, recalling Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and the references to the Roman "mob," and to George Orwell's 1984 concept of "groupthink." It's like the media control over what we read, and so, what we thing. Fortunately, I have also read that Fox News is losing its audience; its ratings are falling.

Now that is a good sign. However, the change in consciousness is leaving behind those who resist, and that increases their sense of powerlessness, and is temporarily increasing their acts of violence.

It won't stand long, though, as Ruby Thiews would say.

Abe F. March wrote:

Cowards flaunt their weapons.

I guess that makes me a coward! But I am not a sheep, blindly following and looking for someone else to protect me and mine and I WILL NOT be a victim!

Nor will I debate it, that's the wonderfulness of this country you are free to make your own choices within the law! Although I do sometimes question the intelligence of our lawmakers, that all believe they are more intelligent that the rest of the population and want to make all life's decisions mandated by law. Lawmakers that are worried about kids drinking a 20oz soda or me carrying a weapon to protect myself from gangbangers while some twenty-eight year old psychopath has his finger on a nuclear weapon and threatening to use it on us!!!!!

RANT OVER!!

Don, you don't flaunt your weapons. I think you care for and respect your weapons. I respect you and your views.

Rant away, Don. That is the beauty of this forum most of the time. We can have strong, different opinions and express them with respect for each other.

DK, Ain't life grand! Stay Sweet.

If all gun owners were like Don, there would be no problem.
Times change and people change. Maybe only elders--people 60 and over should have guns.

Alice,
According to the new UN Arms Treaty, people over 55 would not be allowed weapons of any kind!!!!! They do not believe we have the mental capacity to handle them, funny since the average age in Congress is probably 70 and they think they have the mental where with all to run the country.

Very scary and strange thinking, or no thinking.

Now Texas is at it. I am not pleased --something must be done.

The Texas thing started several days ago, Alice, in a small East Texas county southeast of Dallas. Rick Perry has offered a $100,00 reward for the killer/s, saying that we live in a "law & order" state so they will be tracked down and punished.

Using more guns and violence to supposedly stop the earlier violence.