Even a 6-year old can understand the futility of gun proliferation in halting crime. I especially admire his use of sarcasm at this age to get his point across.
Somebody was quoted as saying that gun buyback programs are like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a bucket. Yes, this is nuts, and stupid. Most of all, this is the showy crest of a wall of anti-intellectualism that threatens to down our previously mighty country.
People are very excited about gun buyback programs right now. Me, I never owned a gun. Although, some people have told me I should given the dangerous situations I too often turn up in. As I say this, I look down at a scar on the inner aspect of my left elbow. A scar I sustained when a drunk in a northern French emergency room attacked me with a piece of broken glass. It is, of course, paler and harder to find than when a young surgeon colleague came from home to close it with tiny little faerie-like stitches. No guns around, of course. I learned before that scar, early in my French training, that if you owned a gun — and especially if you didn’t feel very secure with it — it was likely to be turned about and used on you. Me. The owner. The “good guy.” Read more on The Cockeyed Logic of Gun Buybacks…
Filed under Government by on Jan 3rd, 2013. Comment. 
Much to the dismay of my very traditional mother of blessed memory, I decided very early in life that I didn’t want to have children. Times have changed and I have a whole civilization to care for. Besides, the genetic soup is so complex in my family that the chances of heartbreak are at least as great as the chance for joy.
So no — I am not raising children. Still, I am exposed to people who do and I have to wonder what the heck is going on with them.
I was one of those rare kids who actually had a copy of some “original” Grimm’s Fairy Tales — the ones with lots and lots of gore.
Perhaps it was a safer and more innocent time then, for the most frightening things I see on television now are not images of an on-going war, but reportings on allegedly legitimate news about shootings within a few miles of where I am watching in San Diego. And not only the atrocities committed by handguns and assault rifles, but even repeated assaults with paintballs within a few streets of where I live. Read more on The Threat Of Disney’s Princesses…
Filed under Role Models by on Jan 27th, 2011. Comment.
I know childhood is not the idyllic thing that reminiscing parents think it is. I remember being afraid I could not open the lock to my gym locker unaided in grade seven. I remember fearing the other girls would think I was too fat or too weird. I think I worried about everything except not being smart enough. I was lucky I had that one nailed.
If I work really hard and think back farther, I can remember being afraid of the dark. I got a teddy bear and a prayer book to deal with that one.
My mother spanked me exactly once, when I plucked a flower from a neighbor’s yard. It was wrong, and she explained to me why I got spanked. She never had to spank me again, as I was a rule respecting child.
I cannot remember and can barely understand, even now with my aggressive use of energy psychology, what it is like for a child to be a victim of assault or sexual or physical abuse, or even to live in fear of such abuse. It takes all my empathy to deal with such children as adults.
Read more on The Violence Epidemic (Against Children)…
Filed under Violence by on Dec 28th, 2009. Comment.