IT'S A FIVE O'CLOCK WORLD...

            I’ve been getting up early the past few weeks because of work. I don’t want to. I enjoy waking up to daylight. It feels more natural than waking up in darkness. Let me explain “early:” my alarm goes off at 4am. Otis usually wakes me around 3:30. Your brain isn’t quite functioning, the synapses are flickering like shorted light bulbs, your eyes are twitching because they don’t want to be open yet, all your joints are creaking…

    And nothing is happening.

    Nothing. No traffic. No cars passing. No kids playing. No people walking their dog. Just dark silence. During the week, you can almost feel the anticipation as The Day prepared to pop and wind out, that silent drumroll before everything gets moving. Wake up at 4am on a Saturday to go to work and feel the difference.

    There’s nothing open by the time you get on the road. No Dunkin Donuts. No McDonald’s. No Quick Stop. Even a couple of the stores at the rest stop on 95 South are dead: Sbarro’s and Panda Express and Moe’s are shut down and dark, but who would want a burrito or chow mein at 4am anyhow? The Dunkin being closed surprised me. Where would you get your coffee? Granted, most of the gas stations are 24-hours now, at least the ones around here. The Forbes Station by my house sells Green Mountain, which is pretty damn good. I’ll make a cup once I get to work, otherwise the stuff they have at Pilot is OK, and in a crunch there’s always the Newman’s Own at Mickey’s.

    But what if you’re hungry? Food choices are extremely limited. The time between 3am and 5am is a limbo period for most 24-hour eateries. I have stopped at the mcDonald’s on Route 80 on several occasions on the way home from when I worked nights, only to find they had very little or no food for me to bring home for myself and my wife. “Whaddaya mean you’re out of burgers? How can you have no nuggets? YOU’RE NOT MAKING BREAKFAST YET?!?” A lot of places are like that. I’m supposed to be at work for 5am until further notice. Occasionally, I will stop at the Wendy’s inside the Pilot truck Stop for breakfast. Wendy’s has some awesome breakfast choices… if you get there after 5am. No breakfast or burgers until after 5am, so anything you get either has to be chicken or meat-free. Spicy Chicken Sandwich for breakfast. Yum.

    You can’t even stop by 7-11 and grab a buttered bagel. Before 5am, the guy is still making them. I’ve asked him to put a couple aside and been told he can’t do that, he has to finish them all before he can earmark them for sale. That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard. Through the Saran Wrap around the bagel and take my $1.15. Are you kidding?

    So, here we find ourselves at 4:35am inside the Pilot Truck Stop, Spicy Chicken Sandwich in one hand and trying to decide on a 20oz coffee refill or a 64oz soda refill, mentally debating whether or not to grab one of the overcooked quickly-hardening Bacon-egg-cheese croissants in the little heater cabinet by the hot dogs. You try and ignore the guy conked out in one of the booths inside the Wendy’s but his snoring is distracting. You try not to notice the State Trooper conked out in his car in the corner of the parking lot or the hookers grabbing a smoke outside the hotel next door. Traffic lights are still flashing in rhythm, no cars on the road and the only vehicles on the highway are construction vehicles and tractor-trailers. You can hear the highway from my backyard ay 4am, you know. Kinda weird and eerie.

        There’s not even anybody really broadcasting at 4am. Throw on the news and you get the weird, awkward Early Morning shows like America This Morning with the gawky preppy guy and the hot racktacular Latina making jokes about movies and trying to be serious while discussing whatever disaster has recently occurred. Howard Stern doesn’t even come on the radio until 6am, and that’s only three days a week these days. The terrestrial stations play the same dozen songs over and over until the regular DJ comes on between 5-6. Hell, even the Army doesn’t get up until 0530.

    Sometimes, the quiet is appreciable. No stress, to anxiety, no panic, nothing but the wind and the dark and you. If you’re well-rested and wake up on the right side of the bed, it can be a good thing. Solitude isn’t always bad. The good things about getting up early and going into the world before everyone else: you have the time to stop, stretch, take a deep breath, and appreciate the cool calm before the chaos sets in at 5am.

WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND?

            In this advent of social media, it’s interesting to observe how social interaction has changed. So much has been removed from actually being social in the past few years and the funny thing is that the younger generation does not and will not even know it.

    Remember the days when you picked up a rotary phone to make plans with your friends, or when you had to go up to the door of a house and ask someone’s mom if they could come outside? The days when you the streetlights were your playtime timer and you could camp outside without fear of someone coming to steal you or your friends or your kids?

    We go on dates and have dinner without talking now. We don’t get those little paper invites with a phone number to RSVP any more, except for weddings. There’s no face-to-face communication anymore. Even with work, you’re asked to email or text everything, no more verbal communication, it all has to be electronic. The one thing that has changed the most, the one thing that is actually sort of frightening, is the concept of friendship.

    In the olden days we made friends the hard way: by meeting people. Sometimes you got along, sometimes you didn’t, sometimes it was forced on you, other times it just sorta happened. We grew up with people, we became close, we became family. You met people through other people, a constant domino-effect of social interaction. I was always fascinated by the way a society builds itself, the way circles and spheres of influence are born and spread, widening and shrinking, ebbing and flowing like a tide. Sometimes, friendships would end, usually over a lack of communication, miscommunication, or even too much communication. Relationships died over infidelity exposed by perfume or cologne on clothing, mysterious stains, letters hidden in dresser drawers. Friendships ended over petty things and complex things alike.

    Not any more.

    Now, friendships are made by who knows who on Facebook. Oh, you have sixty-seven friends in common with someone else? Well then, WE must be friends too! It doesn’t matter if we’ve met or not, if we’ve hung out or not, if we even have any common interests or humors, we know four dozen of the same people so we have to be friends! Oh, but wait, you have a different political view? You don’t like TWILIGHT? Well then, we CAN’T be friends. You’re UNFRIENDED. Relationships are killed by emails and text messages and Tweets and Status Updates and who responded to whose Event Invitations. You have to worry about who is looking at what pictures on whose profile and what you say about what you’re doing because God Forbid some ex you still talk to see that you have a life.

    We put our entire existence online for the whole world to see, and there’s no way to get rid of it. You can’t burn the letters, you can’t bleach the laundry, it’s out there FOREVER. This is an innate thing for the younger generation, but for people my age and older, maybe even a little bit younger, it’s difficult to grasp some of these changes. Well, for some. As with all generations, there are always those for whom adaptation and evolution comes easily. My grandfather was one of those, a WWII vet who easily accepted and learned new technology as it came. I think he was even becoming familiar with HTML in his final days. Pop taught other seniors how to use basic computer applications and the Internet. Compare that with my father, who has difficulty even sending a text message or taking a picture with his phone. Doesn’t stop him from picking up his land-line and calling someone.

    I find it somewhat amusing to look at my Friends List on my Facebook profile and think about how many people with whom I actually interact on a regular basis. Surprisingly few. Out of more than 2000 “friends,” I can count fewer than 100 that I speak to, hang with, interact with on a daily or even weekly basis, and sadly that includes family, immediate or otherwise. They call it a Friends List, but I look at it as more of an Accumulation, a digital Rolodex (there’s an oldie for you) of people whom you’ve met, associated with, learned with, played with, slept with, drank with, cried with… I have people on mine I haven’t seen in years, even decades. I have teachers I haven’t seen since I left their classrooms. I have bunkmates from summer camp I haven’t seen since my parents picked me up. I have friends from college I haven’t seen since that party that one time at that place… you get the point. How many of us are like that? How many of us have hundreds, even thousands of “friends” that we never see? Isn’t that the whole definition of “friends?”  I have a small handful of people I have regular activities with. I have a slightly wider circle of people I consider close friends or chosen family. The circle again widens with people who comment or talk to me fairly often on facebook and with whom I return the favor. Other than that…

    It’s also amusing the way relationships die because of social media. If you text the wrong person the wrong things, if you email the wrong person the wrong things… these are the digital equivalent of lipstick on the collar. What’s interesting is how much smaller things, much more petty things, contribute to the death of a friendship. All it takes is the click of a button, and not only are you eliminated from a digital registry of acquaintances, this person will never again speak to you face to face, in Real reality. Maybe you differ on your opinion of the President. Maybe you stand on different sides of Gun Control. Or Gay Marriage. Or Syria. Or Israel. Maybe you’re just tired of someone’s constant Tweets or Status Posts or Game Requests. POOF. No more friend. I remember when you had to steal someone’s favorite Star Wars figure or make a nasty comment about their mom to lose a friend, now all you have to do is ignore the invitation to a cookout or birthday party. Blow somebody off that’s invited you to play Candy Crush and suddenly BOOM, they see you on the street and completely ignore you as if you had something to do with killing their dog.

    Of course, that’s if they recognize you on the street anyhow. Ever notice that, how we can be friends with someone on Facebook, be sitting right next to them at a bar, and have to look four times because we KNOW we recognize them from someplace? That’s why I’m very careful about who I “Friend” on Facebook (and who ever thought that Friend would ever be a verb?). I don’t send someone a request unless we’ve either bonded very quickly or have spent actual time together. If I meet you once, I’m not gonna send you a request and I find it disturbing if I get one from you. We need to hang out, get to know each other, find out if we actually ARE friends before I make that call. I’m not one of these people who accepts just anyone. If I were famous and thousands knew who I was and liked my work, yes, that’s different. But I’m just a guy. I’m just a regular everyday schlub who works for a living and relishes my down time. So, if a friend introduces us at a party, just in passing, no I’m not gonna Facebook you. I believe in actually being FRIENDS with my Friends, and that’s one of the good things about BEING FRIENDS: even if years have gone by, even if you haven’t spoken live or seen each other in person for years on end, if you SMILE when you finally DO see that person IN PERSON:

                                                                                YOU’RE FRIENDS. 

The Oldest Profession, The Newest Media

    Because men are men, there will always be demand for flesh- and sex-related entertainment and jobs: exotic dancers, peep shows, dominatrices, pornography... and hookers.
    Doesn't matter what you call it. Hookers. Prostitutes. Call girls. Escorts. Whatever. It amounts to the same thing: "dates" for money. These dates don't ALWAYS involve sex... but usually they do. It's funny how often you hear a woman say "not if you paid me" when referring to various men, suitors, what have you. And then you hear a commercial on the radio or see it on TV: bidding for dates.
    I laughed the first time I heard it. The first one I heard was whatsyourprice.com. It advertised that ANY guy could guarantee a date with a "hot woman" simply by "bidding" for her affections. The site was advertised as "a site for generous men to find and date attractive women, guaranteed." It doesn't get any more blatant than that, and they were advertising on satellite radio.
    There were a couple more I have heard over the past few months, which means that the success rate of one must have been high, and the demand had increased enough to warrant the creation of multiple site by enterprising young folk.
    I find this amusing. Not only are guys hiring hookers online, they're VYING for them. Competing. WOW.
Are guys really that desperate? Have we become so far removed from interacting with each other that this has become the way to go for so many people? Kinda sad, but kinda funny all at the same time.

The Suck

            I lost another friend today. Not in the traditional we-don't-speak-anymore kind of way, but actually GONE. As in dead.
    Alex has been sick for quite some time. Almost since I've known him, actually. It didn't start out that bad. Not really. You remain optimistic about things, regardless of what you hear, at least I do. You want to believe the world is an inherently good place regardless of what you see and hear. The thing to remember is that we're all somebody else to Somebody Else.
    I met Alex in the summer of 2009 when I started working at Abatement Industries Group, running the warehouse in West Haven. Alex was one of two guys who were supposed to work for me. He had pretty much been running things as far as supply line and obtaining material and equipment, so he was a tad salty when I took over the position. Over a few weeks, though, he softened up a bit and gave the me the help I needed to get the hang of things. Once he realized the kind of person I was and the kind of supervisor I was attempting to be, things got much easier, and when I chose him to be my #2, everything was sealed.
    In late fall 2009, Alex was concerned about a bump at the base of his skull, so he went to the walk-in to have it checked. The doctor wanted to do a full body scan, and found a tumor on one of his kidneys. They made arrangements for the surgery, and Alex was down. I went to visit him a couple times, and when Lucia first was admitted into the hospital, I would go see him while I visited her. Once he was able to move around, he would come see her, as well. She was appreciative, having met him when he was first diagnosed. We had gone out to dinner at Chili's and invited Alex and his girlfriend, Cindy, out with us.
    When Alex came back to work, he covered for me when I would go to the hospital to see Lucia. He made sure the right people knew what was going on and where I was. He always had my back and defended me to the people who had issue with how much time I was spending away from the warehouse.
    Alex didn't like where he was living in West Haven. Someone had died in the house and it was full of mold and other problems, and he was looking for a way out of there. A friend who had been living at our house had moved out, and I asked Lucia if we could help out Alex. She said yes, and Alex moved in. It was May 2010.
    As Lucia deteriorated, Alex always tried to talk me up and keep me strong and positive. When I had my weak and dark moments, he gave me comfort and told me to stay strong, for her if not for myself. When she passed, he was home waiting, and he went and bought a new suit to wear for her service.
    He helped me clean the house. He helped fix things. When the grief would hit hard, he'd lift me back up again. As with many other friends, he helped me work my way back to society and finding a way to continue with my life. When I met Erika, he encouraged me to pursue her, and he became very fond of her.
    In late 2010, Alex became positive that my job was in jeopardy and that cuts would come into effect, so he took a voluntary lay-off to save my job. He started working for a friend, doing handy-man work and office work. As time went on and his illness becmae more and more apparent, Alex had less energy to work and was spending more time in bed.
    He qualified for an experimental chmo study which lasted a little less than a year, and when they pulled him from the study he was brought back onto the older chemo. His strength began to deteriorate. He was weak and in pain, and was having a great deal of trouble breathing. In 2012, they put him on oxygen and he was declared Legally Completely Disabled. On a routine follow-up, the scans came back worse than expected. The doctors said it was "a matter of time."
    He fought for months. Each hospital stay was longer, until a month or so ago when I received a panicked phone call from Cindy informing me they had taken Alex to the hospital by ambulance. Neither of them were optimistic about him leaving, and when I went to visit him, he was in fairly good spirits. They moved him out of ICU a few days later, and Erika and I went to see him. A few days after that, he was back home.
    They gave him information about Hospice and sent a nurse over to get his info and explain things to him. He was home for a little less than a week as he grew weaker. Wednesday morning, he asked me to help him call Hospice to come and pick him up. He had to know his time was short. Over the weekend, they stopped his chemo treatments. They upped the dosage on his pain meds. This morning, Cindy called me and said he was on the way out. I left work, hopped in my car and headed up there, but by the time I arrived, it was too late.
    He was gone.
    He was pale. It looked as if he were sleeping. I held his hand. It was still warm. I spoke to him. I closed my eyes and thought to him. I thanked him.
    I've been in this place before. It was different that time. I feel for Cindy, who has to go through now what I went through 3 years ago. The slow realization of what has occurred, trying to wrap your head around the reality. It's difficult, even years later. You can accept something and still not believe it. You can believe and not accept. That's where I am, again. It doesn't seem real. Another empty room, another person my boys will never see again. I feel for them. I feel for Bailey, who has already lost his sister recently and now must cope with this. Mostly I feel for Cindy. The newt few months will be very difficult for her, but she won't be dealing alone. This has affected more people than even I can know or account for. sadly, death has a way of bringing people together...and splitting them apart. You never know how people will react to a death, or what the coming days, weeks, months, and years may hold. All I do know is that everyone affected needs to be strong and look to each other for that strength and support. Even me.

One More Time...

        I know I've said this before. I KNOW I have. I hate being grouped in with people. Singers. Actors. Jews. Fat people. Democrats. Liberals.
    One of the issues that really got under my skin while Lucia was sick was the way the "care" staff treated her. It was like they had a rigid set of guidelines that was universal to all patients regardless of their life, lifestyle, or situation, and it bugged the living hell out of me when they tried to treat her like a cookie-cutter case.
    EVERYONE is different. The ways may be subtle, but we all have our nuances. So, when people make comments about a specific group, it bothers me. Last year's election split the country in a way not seen since the Civil War. We're in another right now, although it's a Cold War. Since the shooting in Newtown in December, the issue of gun control has once again polarized the country. The decisions of the administration have polarized the country. Everything that is said or done splits us right down the middle, and people have a tendency to group everything in black and white. That's it. Black and white. Right and left. Right and wrong. WHAT. THE. FUCK.
    I'm a liberal. I believe women have the right to control their own bodies. I believe a person in love should be able to spend their life with the object of their affection, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. I believe in legalizing marijuana. I believe ANYONE should be allowed to serve their country, regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
    HOWEVER.
    There are foggier issues. I don't have an answer to them, but I don't think that either liberal OR conservative sides are giving good responses, either.

GUN CONTROL: there is something wrong. I don't believe we should ban all weapons, as the conservatives believe the liberals are trying to do. The problem is not the guns that are available, although that's part of it. The issue is the guns that are already OUT there, the ones the bad guys already have and CAN get. The conservatives are right, regulating legally obtained weapons is not the issue, it's defending against the ILLEGALLY obtained ones. But how? Neither side has given an answer that to me is satisfactory.

OIL: Again, something is wrong. yes, we need to protect the environment, but we need to make it so we can afford to get to work, as well. $5 a gallon for gas is rigoddamndiculous. There's no reason for it. If we have it in this country, we need to be able to obtain it. Make it safe, make it friendly, and get it. You want to protect the people of this country? Prevent Big Oil from putting us into another Great Depression. ExxonMobil can buy Europe and North America four times over, but Joe Paycheck needs to sell a kidney to put 15 gallons in his tank. NOT. FUCKING. RIGHT.

TAXES: It's never gonna be right. Somewhere along the line between Washington and... I don't even know when, something got fucked up. Don't blame Obama, don't blame Bush, this shit was fuzzuckled before either of them. We're spending too much, but there are things we need to spend on: providing for our children AND our elderly, providing for our sick and disabled, education, defense... do I think everything should be free? of course not. I believe in working for a living and earning your keep. However, for those who are UNABLE to provide for themselves, or for those who NEED HELP, help must be provided. The elderly, children, veterans, those who have been injured or disabled in an accident, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO DESERVE HELP. Addicts, lazes, people who keep pumping out kids because they're too stupid to do otherwise, THESE PEOPLE DO NOT DESERVE HELP, those who take advantage of the system. However, NOT EVERYONE WHO APPLIES FOR ASSISTANCE IS A SLACK-OFF DEADBEAT SCUMBAG. A lot of truly needy people apply for help every year, and because of a slimy minority number of bad apples, everyone suffers. THIS IS WRONG. Focus the money where it needs to go, not where the special interests, corporations, an those wealthy enough to fund an election campaign want it to go.

    This is what I feel. This is what I believe. I don't have answers. I don't pretend to. I don't like some of the answers I'm hearing. Everything sounds too extreme, there's too much far left and far right. there need to be decisions made in the middle, but nobody is willing to talk, or more importantly, LISTEN. People need to stop saying NO to an idea simply because the other side said it. "Wow, the Red Sox played a good game tonight." "I don't care, THEY FUCKING SUCK." "Yeah, but they fought hard, their offense was flawless, and their defense was stalwart." "I don't care how many home runs they hit and how many batter sthey struck out, THEY FUCKING SUCK." Welcome to today's politics.
    People need to learn to listen. listen to BOTH SIDES. Don't like what you hear? Tell me what works better. Explain it clearly and logically. When I ask why you disagree with something, give me facts and a logical reason why you disagree, not an answer like "because he's an asshole" or "he's an idiot." Explain to me why you disagree with it, and then give me a logical, thought out alternative. Be informed. Don't give me "They're trying to make it so nobody can legally buy a gun and then only the criminals will be armed and we'll have to rely on slow-responding police for defense" and when I ask what you would do tell me "put militias outside our schools, arm all the teachers, and allow citizens to carry M-60's in their SUVs." Know the proposed legislation and give me an alternative if you don't agree. Same with your opinions of other issues. Against same-sex marriage? Why? How does it directly affect you? Don't like the proposed budget cuts and spending measures? What would you do in the situation if it were your call?
    Think. Listen. But know that not everyone is going to be the same on all the issues. Just because someone is liberal doesn't mean they agree blindly with everything being posed by one side. Just because someone is a conservative doesn't mean they're going to be all militant and hard-nosed.
    LISTEN.
    KNOW.
    Generalizing is BAD. Grouping is BAD. We're different. All of us. MELTING POT. Remember that.

Of Cabbages And Kings

            I'm a cynic. This shouldn't be news to anyone. I know the way the world works, I know we're all different and that a great many of us will connive and plot and lie and steal and cheat to get what they want. I also know that some things are inevitable, like love, hate, birth...death.
    With these inevitable things comes what I like to call the Oh Shit Moment. See, sometimes we forget that we're all Somebody Else to somebody else. Some things, regardless of how commonplace and universal they are, seem so distant and impossible to us. Before certain events in our lives, we have that moment where our brains go Oh Shit, This Is Actually Going To Happen. It's that shocked, almost incredulous realization that regardless of how much an individual we are, we're just like everyone else in some aspects.
    I've had several of these. Not as many as I expected, but a decent-sized handful. When I lost my virginity, I had one of those, looking at her body and feeling the excitement and feeling my heart race as she gave herself willingly to me. When I graduated high school, and later college, that feeling of accomplishment and pride as received that parchment. When I looked at my very-soon-to-be-bride at the start of our wedding, looking at the smile on her face and seeing the happiness in her eyes as we stood before family and friends. When that same woman was lying on her deathbed, as I watched the light in her dim and watched the clock tick down the final seconds. When my father walked into my job today and said he had forty-four more days until retirement.
    That's a reality there. A nudge to the reality that time moves on, that people age. There's a reality that my father is NOT a young man anymore. In a way, he is, I'll give him that. He's in his late 60s, hair and beard full gray, the flesh below the fuzz lined and yes, weary. It's a reality that both he and my mother will someday be gone, leaving me the patriarch. I hope that day is decades away, I really do, because it's not a responsibility I want. I don't want to know that one day, my siblings and I will be the elders. I don't want it.
    Reality sucks. It really does. But, it's reality. So what are we going to do about it? What can we do about it? Nothing. Can't change the channel. We just have to deal with it, because it's what we've got.

The Right To Arm Bears

        You can have my guns when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

    Ironically, that's the way it usually ends.
        Don't get me wrong. I am NOT anti-gun. I'm also not PRO-gun. As with many subjects, I am pro-choice. I believe you should have the choice to live as you wish, which is one of the greatest things about this country. Religion: you're supposed to be able to worship as you like. Opinion: you should be allowed to think and speak as you like. Abortion: you should be able to choose as you like. Marriage: you should be able to marry the person you love.
    The operate words here are SHOULD and SUPPOSED TO. These are very slippery slopes, as are all things associated with free will. The most frustrating and aggravating thing about free will is also the greatest: EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT.
    2012 was a very polarizing year, all the way to the bitter, heartbreaking end. A rash of shootings through the year brought the issue of gun control, security, personal safety, and school safety into question and into the forefront of national debate and discussion. Shortly after the movie theater shooting in Colorado, a New Haven lawyer was arrested for having a gun in a movie theater. He didn't brandish it, another patron saw it and panicked, calling the police. The lawyer had a permit, the gun was registered, he did nothing wrong. He was merely caught in the panic casued by a random act of violence on the other end of the country.
    Fast forward a few months. Adam Lanza storms Sandy Hook Elementary and takes out a classroom full of first-graders and a handful of teachers and administrators. Again, the weapons used were legal and registered, and Lanza was educated in their use by his mother, who was also one of his victims.
    So how do we stop this? There's a Consitutional amendment more than 230 years old that says we're allowed to own these weapons. One of the hottest debate points is the current validity of this amendment. It's a sign of the times, they say. However, specific amendments had to be made over the years to permit African-Americans to live in equality with caucasians, to allow women the right to vote and own property, to allow us to purchase and consume alcohol... the question that arises (and this is not the first time) is where do we begin and where do we stop? Do we really need to have EVERYTHING in writing? Do we need to have a black and white answer for EVERY possible issue that may arise?If there is a Constitutional issue, does every possible scenario need to be outlined and covered? Do you honestly think Jefferson and Franklin foresaw a young man barging into a school to wipe out a bunch of small children? Did anyone?
    There has been past legislation concerning firearms. This is not a new issue. Every time a shooting makes the news, the debate is renewed. Here's the problem: most current control and legislation only goes back 30 years or so, back to the Brady Bill. There was a time you could walk into a store and buy not just one, but a carload of firearms at the same time. You could bring a gun on a bus, on a plane, anywhere, and not be hassled about it. It wasn't until terrorists started hijacking planes in the 70's that it became a clear issue. After the Reagan shooting, people went nuts saying it was too easy to get guns, that sometrhing needed to be done. It happened again in the late 80's/early 90's when a combination of "gangsta rap" and workplace shootings brought assault weapons into the public eye: you could just walk into the bait and game shop and buy an M-16 or AK-47 the same way you'd pick up a Winchester or a revolver. Questions began to rise, what could you possibly use a military-grade assault rifle for?
    The gun lobby claimed sport and hunting. The liberals literally laughed at that, conjuring images of deer wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying high-powered rifles, cartoons of "Bambo" being published in newspapers. Ever since the inception of the Brady Bill, the gun lobby has tried to convince the public that "the government wants to take away your guns." As I said, it's a slippery slope. Are they trying to take your proprty from you? What is it the government is trying to accomplish?
    What I want to believe is that they're trying to keep harmful things out of the wrong hands. The bigger question is, what constitutes the wrong hands and who decides it? There's new talk about arming teachers and arming pilots and having guards at schools. The first thing that popped into MY head was What's keeping the teachers or pilots or guards from snapping and doing the same thing these other gunmen are doing? Soldiers, marines, sailors, all trained and educated in how to properly use their weapons. Anybody besides me remember shootings on military bases?
    It's a complicated thing. Legally, because of the constitution, you can't take the guns from those who legally obtained and maintain them. The problem is, you cannot foresee who will use a weapon for what. What about the guy who uses his for hunting? Or competition? Or just popping bottles in the backyard? What about the guy who has a collection he has never even fired? How can you differentiate between one of them, and the guy with a collection in his apartment planning on wiping out everyone at the local mall? What if that person, over time, obtained all their weapons LEGALLY, registered every single one of them, maintains permits for every single one of them... and then has a bad day and takes out everyone on the subway? This isn't a guy who went and bought his weapons in a back alley. I'm talking a legal gun owner, the same as Adam Lanza's mother.
    Legislation may make it more difficult to get firearms NOW. What about the ones already out there, the legal and illegal ones? I'll give you an example of something. When I started working nights, my brother-in-law was uncomfortable with the idea of my wife being home alone in our house. He wanted to give her a gun to protect herself, just in case. It would be his, legally obtained, legally registered, legally owned. In HIS name. She refused, simply because she was uncomfortable with a gun in the house, and for good reason. Studies, stats, and records show that a gun is more likely to be used on its owner than on an intruder. Not to say it doesn't happen, but most often a gun owner will accidentally shoot themselves while performing routine cleaning rather than shooting an intruder or an intruder shooting them.
    So what do we do? I don't believe legislation will solve the problem. I don't know what will. The problem is not the guns, the problem is US. It doesn't matter if a gun is "legal" or not. If someone's going to shoot another person, it doesn't matter if the gun is legal or not. It's human nature to destroy each other. Horrible, sad, frightening, but true. Cain killed Abel before there were laws regarding homicide. People have been killing each other since there were people, and I challenge anyone to find me the Sword And Spear Control Laws from medeival Britain. To quote Eddie Izzard, "Guns don't kill people, people do, but I think the gun helps. You're not gonna kill too many people just standing there going BANG!"