Something has to Change. It just Has to.

This is the second draft of a blog post I wrote in October of 2017, right after the horrific shooting in Las Vegas.  If you want to read that one, it's here.  It's rambly, because when I'm mad I get rambly.  It's from back when Joe Donnelly was my US Senator.  When I thought I might have to step up and run against the Indiana House Representative from our District - thank goodness someone else did, because you know I don't have the heart or constitution for such a doomed, soul-scarring  endeavor.  This morning, after reading the news from El Paso, Dayton and even my own little town, where there was a shooting right outside the frozen yogurt store last night, I am a mess.  My stomach hurts.  My thoughts are a tangle.  My prayers are all dried up.  I know, I should probably take a shower and go to Mass, but I decided to write/re-write instead.  

Listen.  

I am really sorry for all of you who love to trap shoot or shoot cans off of 

fence posts at your neighbor's farm.  I've done that -- it's fun.  

But you're going to have to find something else fun to do. 

I am really sorry for those of you who hunt to eat.  

But you're going to have to start buying 

your meat at the grocery store like the rest of us.  

Better yet, think about becoming a vegetarian.  

I am sorry for those of you who feel safer carrying
a handgun at your side on in your purse. 

But you're going to have to take some classes in Jackie Chan-style martial arts or even better, 

take a yoga class, meditate and get right with the universe.

I am really sorry for all of you who get a huge hard-on from owning and 

shooting semi-automatic (or illegally-modified automatic) weapons.  

No scratch that.  

I don't really feel sorry for you at all. 

Something has to change.  Something has to change.  Something has to change.

I wish in my little Pollyanna-shaped heart that the change could be that the Second Amendment is lovingly, peacefully and humanely rescinded* and we go door-to-door in every neighborhood, apartment complex and hotel room in the country and collect guns in canvas bags and smash them to bits with big hammers and then bury them deep, deep in the ground in the middle of the Grand Canyon where no one is allowed to go ever again. I know in my regular old slightly-cynical heart that that is not going to happen.  But I ask you, call your Senators and Representatives  ask them to please, please, please for the love of children, the country's future, children, all that is holy and children, to please just say "no" to NRA money and pass some reasonable, rational, life-affirming (let's just say it, because isn't it just this? Pro-Life?) legislation and will keep people (let's just say it - angry white guys) from killing children and other humans with guns that no one really needs to ever-in-a-million-years own.  

Dear Senators/Congresspeople/Friends/Enemies, let's just say this all together: 

LIVES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GUNS

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

It is more important that people can attend a concert, go to a movie or dance their asses off at a club without fear of being killed by a gun than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that people can go shop at WalMart and come home alive than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that synagogues, churches, and mosques remain places of peace and not of carnage than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that young people in troubled neighborhoods can walk safely home than it is for me to own a gun.  

It is more important that women in difficult or violent relationships are not killed by guns than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that police officers not be shot, or even fear being shot, in the course of a routine traffic stop than it is for me to own a gun. 

It is more important that people can go to work in a factory, shop or office and be safe and come home to supper every night and be safe and gripe about their work and then sleep with their partner and be safe and get up and do it all again the next day than it is for me to own a gun.  

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

It is more important that children are not killed in their classrooms than it is for me to own a gun.

If you cannot speak (loudly) and believe these words -- 
LIVES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GUNS 
 -- then I just don't know about you.  
You make me furious.  
And I hate to be furious, because I work really hard at being a woman of peace.  

Peace dammit. Peacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeacepeace

 *and if you want to get all pissy with me about the Constitution, I understand the complex and nearly impossible chance that the Second Amendment will be rescinded.  I'm not a Constitutional expert; I just read a lot (and vote and drink - thanks, 19th and 21st Amendments to the Constitution.)  But I dream a lot, too, and in my dreams, James Madison is shaking his head at us and saying, "That's not what I meant at all, you doofuses." Or maybe he would have said "stupid fuckers." Because if we continue to let innocent people - children, moms, grandpas, teachers, children, politicians, artists, children, babies - be killed by white men and boys with anger issues and easy access to guns, that's exactly what we are.