The milk is spilled.
Everyone has choices in life, at least those of us who attempt to move forward. On any given day, at any given moment, you may take a path that either leads to regret or thankfulness. Most choices are simple, and being regretful over Chinese vs Mexican or thankful over blue tie vs sweater vest are the kind of sand-in-the shorts things that we typically fret about. On those occasions in which we are faced with big decisions, I, for one, can become paralyzed.
One of the most stressful moment in my life was just a few months ago, receiving a call from Baltimore City, with a job offering big money and big benefits. At the time I had not one but TWO jobs that I really loved and was making almost-enough money. I did what I had to do not for my own comfort but what was best for me and the family.
The choice wasn’t pleasant, but it was easy.
When I was faced with the decision to either turn off my paternal grandmother’s breathing machine or let her go on suffering toward an eventual death . . . again, I did what I had to do.
The choice wasn’t pleasant, but it was easy.
The teachers at Sandy Hook made a decision that (I’d like to believe) anyone would make in the same circumstances. A choice of either attempt to protect the children or save yourself? I’m not even going to talk about it. You know what you would do and we all know what they did.
The choice wasn’t pleasant, but it was easy.
When people talk about “hard choices,” they are usually talking about other people’s sacrifices. When politicians are talking about “hard choices,” they are most certainly using it as an apology for those about to get the shaft. Some choices are hard, not because of comparisons of the two sides but because we fear that we may be wrong, that the decision will lead to being worse off than we were before. Then, especially with politicians, they can be shouted down for their “failed policies.” So, everything we get is wishy-washy, watered down, and hyped up and we are polarized into camps either “Forever For” or “Forever Against.”
Well, now that yet more lives have been taken, now that little kids have been gunned down, if you were faced with the choice of preventing a death of a first grader or holding on to your own long-sustained notions about gun policy, healthcare, or our right-to-know, are you going to make it a “hard choice?” Or will it be easy?
There is NO easy fix. There is no law that can stop a bullet. But, are we going to be willing to open our minds as quickly as we open our hearts to the victims?
My brother just posted that if the president could guarantee his safety, then he would hand over all of his guns. Believe it or not, this is good ground upon which to start. It's a sentiment with which many can identify. After all, if crazies like the one in Sandy Hook are around the corner, how DO we guarantee safety? Now, before I get blasted for being anti-gun, I’m just setting the stage, here. Ya think that maybe, just maybe, not everybody needs access to assault rifles? If it would have saved a life, would you consider it? Do you think that maybe free healthcare or at least a better system for the mentally ill could reduce or prevent the next mass-murder? Consider it. Would you rather prevent the next attack or not?
Another person posted that there have been 31 school shooting since Columbine, but we haven't had a change in gun policy. Well, you on the liberal side, do you think that, perhaps, ARMING some of our more well-adapted citizens could be an option? The police are armed, aren’t they? Why can’t we give training to a larger percentage of our population along with the DUTY to protect others? Say, one-in-twenty? If we did, then out of twenty teachers, one of them could have put the guy down. This goes the same for Virginia Tech, and same with 9/11. Sounds like madness? Good, you’re listening.
Can we, as a nation who HAS to know and has to get the up-to-the-minute report, accept that the media is using scare tactics to get us to tune in? I just read (and it could be bullshit) that the mother who had the guns had them because “she was afraid what would happen in the economy.” If this is true, then it wasn’t guns that caused this, it was the fear that convinced her she needed them to protect herself, a fear propagated to keep you afraid and voting one way. Dare I suggest that our government should regulate the press? Dare I suggest that fear-mongering isn't journalism and should be punished as a capital offense?
Instead of staying in our foxholes, shooting anyone who disagrees, how about being open to real answers that have been proven to work? How about real compromise that makes us all safer? Would you be willing to give something up, or are you going to hold on to your politics despite reason? Are you going to defend the shooters right to have guns? Are you going to look at any kind of prevention as an infringement? Are you going to concede that licenses to carry could actually prevent this kind of thing? And, yes, I mean in schools as well. I work in a school system in which I know of at least one instance where a student was armed and another instance where an armed robbery happened after I watched the intruder walk by me. There is no secure building when you have students willing to open a door from the inside. How about making sure that the mentally ill are treated with the same kind of crisis urgency as someone who is bleeding to death? Even if they are not violent (most aren’t), we are still talking about a human life, a victim that didn’t ask to be diseased.
My point is that until and unless we stop cradling our Us vs Them mentality, until we come together to produce real solutions for these problems and YES with the sacrifice of some of our heavily-defended concepts of what liberty is, what it can be, and what it should be, then it won’t be long before we are clucking our tongues and shaking our heads once more. I'd rather stand on that "slippery slope" and try like hell to keep us from sliding farther into madness. So, climb out from behind your fortresses of righteousness and lets all meet on the ground of concession. Yield, dammit!
The decision won’t be pleasant, but it SHOULD be easy.
