Kids and Guns!
Unfortunately, this poster is no longer funny (if it ever really was), especially with the tragedies of recent weeks and months.
My husband Don, a Master Teacher who retired after a teaching career that spanned more than fifty years, has been saying for a long time that most of the problems in our schools are caused by problems in society. In his book, Set Our Teachers FREE! Don spells out solutions for working with youngsters to help them excel in school AND learn to cope with unhappy emotions and situations. His plan offers a complete revamping of public schools, not just a bandaid. I’ve witnessed his successes with troubled youngsters and I am proud of his efforts to share those winning techniques.
But right now, our national psyche is traumatized by the shocking outbreak of violence across the country, especially the widely publicized slayings at Northern Illinois University at Dekalb. Just as during the period of time following the Virginia Tech rampage, the arguments for and against gun control are erupting everywhere. The ease with which criminals, deranged individuals and children have access to guns is a matter of great concern to every thinking American, no matter whether you are in favor of gun control or opposed to it.
First, let me say that I am NOT a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), although I have been invited to join. I’m not much of a joiner, but as a Certified Hospice Nurse (RN), I do have a concealed weapons permit. I own a gun and I am very responsible in my care and carrying of it. I am a staunch believer in the Second Amendment and the rights of citizens to “keep and bear arms”. I have a colorful history that has made me feel strongly about this. Above everything else, I am a law-abiding citizen who feels strongly that I need to help make the world a better place.
Just so you know, I have been a victim of crime more times than the average person. Because I started working at my family’s business at an early age, I had the unique opportunity to be held up at gunpoint three times before my 18th birthday. Carrying and handling large amounts of cash made me a perfect target. During that same period of time, I was kidnapped and held hostage to force my father to turn over a very large sum of money to a group of criminals. My father, who has since passed-on, rescued me with his bravery and his gun. All total, I have been held-up at gunpoint six times, kidnapped and held hostage once, and car-jacked once by a man who was killed in a shoot-out with police, less than two weeks later.
More recently, I faced down a group of dog fighters who were attempting to steal the rescues in our no-kill animal sanctuary for ‘bait’, to increase the “blood lust” in their fighting dogs. I went after them with a yard rake. I know, it was stupid, especially since they made several more attempts to steal from “that crazy dog lady with the rake”. Amazingly, the attempts stopped when I informed a man that I knew was associated with the dog fighters, that I had a gun and that I would shoot to kill. He said, incredulously, “You’ll go to jail”. I responded, “Yes, I’ll be in jail, but the thieves will be DEAD!” Suddenly, no more attempts on our animals! (This was, of course, after the police told me there was nothing they could do to help me.) And, you’ll notice that just the THREAT of force worked!
It was my career as a Hospice Nurse that finally prompted me to get my Concealed Weapons Permit. As a Hospice Nurse, I had to drive into unsavory areas, often in the middle of the night, to offer care and comfort to a dying person and their family. Gunshots in the back of a house where I was taking care of a dying woman made me fully realize the risks of my job. It turns out there was a meth lab in the garage in back of the house where my poor patient lay dying. I’d had enough and I was determined to stop being a victim.
Please understand, I have no intention of taking the law into my own hands. Just like you, I don’t want criminals to have guns, automatic weapons, knives, machetes, or any other item they can coerce or kill with. I don’t want children to have access to guns, knives and the rest. But we must find a solution that will allow law-abiding citizens to protect their homes and families.
Just recently, there has been an outbreak of what is being labeled “home invasions”. Many homeowners, single or married, usually elderly, have been attacked, robbed and killed in their homes by well-armed criminals. These people were helpless and they were butchered. What would have happened if those husbands and wives had been able to protect themselves? As we’ve learned, from instances where homeowners had weapons, criminals would have fled, been wounded or killed.
But the question is how to stop violence in schools. I can understand that some people believe that stricter gun laws will cause a decrease in crime. From what I have seen, it just makes it more difficult for responsible individuals to obtain self-protection. Criminals ALWAYS manage to find a weapon if they have evil intent, whether it’s a gun or a steak knife. Shall we make steak knives illegal?
What we need is to help our children learn to become strong, self-sufficient and stable-minded. We need to have a system in place to monitor and help children who are troubled. We need to be teaching self-worth and concern for others to our students NOT who is the “meanest Mutha”. We need to help our children learn what true strength is, how to cope with the upsets that every human will experience to one degree or another, and to become problem solvers, not problems.
You may think it is hopeless and overwhelming to fix the problems in our society. You may call me a Pollyanna (a Pistol-Packing Pollyanna, if you please). But I know we can make the needed changes if we will unite and take responsibility for a better future. I’ve seen it work.
Americans have always united when we’ve faced times of peril, whether it was a World War, tornados, a devastating earthquake, or terrorist attacks like 9/11. The violence in our country is something we have allowed to grow by our indifference or our fears. We are in a time of peril of our own making. This country is at war from within. We must unite!
Brennan Kingsland
Filed under: Education News
Hi Brennan,
You may be interested in the following article:
http://www.naturalnews.com/022656.html
It starts out:
It comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been following school shootings all the way back to the Colombine High massacre in Colorado: Every young, male shooter that has gone on a killing spree in the United States also has a history of treatment with psychotropic drugs — typically SSRI antidepressants. These shootings have three things in common: 1) The shooters are young males. 2) The shooters exhibit a mind-numbed disconnect with reality. 3) The shooters have a history of taking psychiatric drugs.
This latest shooting by 27-year-old Stephen Kazmierczak shares the same three factors. Stephen was considered a “normal, undistressed person,” according to press reports. He was considered “an outstanding student” and even received a Dean’s Award for outstanding work in sociology. So what happened to Stephen’s brain that caused him to snap and open fire on students in a college classroom?
(Ignore the rant at the end. It’s a good article up to that point.)
The use of these psychotropic drugs on children and teenagers has been banned in Europe. But it continues in the United States. It’s amazing how the news media is overlooking this.
We need to stop doping our kids up. This is the real answer to school shootings.
BYW, I agree with everything you said about guns. If even one person at the U of I had been carrying a gun and used it in self-defense, lives would have been saved. My dad taught me how to shoot when I was a kid, and my hubby and I do a lot of target practice. I hope I never have to use a gun in self-defense, but if I have to, I will!
It’s so refreshing to see a sparkle of common sense in the ocean of craziness. Thanks Brennan, I can probably sign under very word of this post…
Misha
Notwithstanding the apt point on doping our kids, the myth of the “gun free zone” cannot be allowed to continue. Personally, I think the parents of the victims of these atrocities should sue the schools for failing to deliver on the promise to protect those that they deliberately denied the ability to defend themselves.
The state has no affirmative duty to protect the citizenry; I don’t believe the private sector has the same immunity.
I’m with Brennan. My Dad taught me to shoot early in life, but it wasn’t for self defense in the beginning, it was to hunt. In this day and time it’s for self defense. I
also have a concealed weapon license and will keep
one as long as I can handle a gun properly and be a
responsible gun owner, it’s my right!
It’s interesting to read about why you have a gun in your possession. Unfortunately, not many people are like you, who are responsible and will only use for self defence purposes. In the hands of criminals, guns are weapons of destruction.
I come from an Asian country, where gun laws are strict. The punishment is severe, if we are caught in possession of one. You may say that we have little freedom in human rights but at least, we do not see the type of school violence that is happening in America, over here.
Then again, I am not in a position to propose or suggest anything because the culture, history and background of every country is different; and in your position, a gun may just be very necessary for protection.
However, most definitely, I second the proposal to look into what’s happening with the young kids nowadays. They must learn to address their negative emotions and to release them in healthier ways.
The scary thing is, with the recent school shootings, the shooters have no value of their own life or of their victims. To tell a shooter “You’ll face serious consequences, possibly even the death penalty, if you carry a weapon and kill with it,” would be a waste of energy. They fear no consequences. And so, taking weapons away from those who choose to carry for protection would only mean we are forcing an advantage for those who are mentally instable.
This mentality is parallel to what makes our war in the Middle East difficult, as the opposition finds more value in dying for their cause than the fact they are no longer living (or any other consequence there may be for fighting their fight).
It seems to be in every circumstance: someone drinks
too much, gets behind the wheel of a car and kills someone; your taking a test that you didn’t study for, you guess at the answer to a question, oops it was
wrong; some child gets his hand on a gun, another kid
has picked on him and degraded him in front of their
peers, he is mad and kills him. We all need to wake up
and be very decisive on what our decisions will to do
us and people around us. Any one persons stupid
mistake can cause misery to themselves and a lot of
people around them and it does not always have a gun
in the picture. The second ammendment is my right,
it’s the idiots that can’t control themselves that make it
hard on all of us, no matter what it entails.
Evil will always be with us, among us and part of us. Shun it. Avoid it. Move away from it. Confront it only if you must.
Vote for law and order conservatives. Raise your children to obey your rules and those of God.
I myself have only had a gun pointed at me once. That is enough. I have taken steps to shield myself and my family from the likelihood of this reoccruring.
I read your comment on Sheila Frush’s blog “one eighty” on Townhall.com.
Don’t get me wrong. I am fully armed with a .357 Magnum, loaded with hollow point ammo. Please don’t think you can come into my home uninvited and survive.
Living in urban areas where crime is rampant is simply inviting disaster and woe upon you and your loved ones. Leave at once. If you can’t, strive towards this goal as soon as possible. You can’t help change anything there in the short run, in a futile attempt as a bulwark against evil. You will lose in the short run.
Vote Republican. Conservative Republican. We can win in the long run.
Doc Steech
I enjoyed your article a lot and feel very sorry for what has happened to you. I have a few resignations with it though. You blame the up bringing of children for the creation of criminals, but I have never seen a criminal that can buy a car from legal cash. Almost all people would choose not to commit crimes unless they are forced into the situation. The government needs to recognize this and help criminals before they become criminals with community programs and services.
If I had been in the same situation as you I would have done the same.
But I don’t see that as a valid argument for arming the citizenry as a matter of “right”. In a society in which everyone is allowed to have a gun, it only makes sense to arm yourself against the crazies and the criminals. But wouldn’t it be better if gun ownership was more restricted, guns were not readily available on every street corner, people were not encouraged to arm themselves because it is their right to do so, and gun related violence was seen as a serious crime rather than just something that happens in the back shed on a regular, routine basis?
Just asking… I am a Canadian and as far as I can tell we do not have (yet) the problem to the same degree as in the U.S.
It is interesting that one of the first things a new government tries to do after a civil war is to try to disarm the citizenry. How else can they try to restore “peace, order and good government”?
Dear Rick,
Thank you for your comment!
The only argument for the “right” of our citizens to own guns is that our Constitution specifically states that it is a right, written into the law of our country. When our Founding Fathers were writing our Constitution (laws) they specifically took into consideration all of the unfairness and inequities that our country was enduring as a colony, with no rights other than those England chose to give us.
One of the things they were fighting against was a state-run church system. Another was the restrictions on bearing arms to protect ourselves and our families in what was basically a wild frontier. We have a new type of “wild frontier” today that we must protect ourselves from.
Be grateful if you don’t have the same problems in Canada.
Brennan
A really good article. I too have a CCW and I feel a little safer knowing that I can defend myself if the situation comes about. I hope I never need it, but ….
Take a look at what has happened to Canada and England. England’s crime rate has gone up since they outlawed gun ownership. I think the number is about 54%.