There’s Gotta Be More… – [11/08/2018]

Call me blind but I didn’t see it coming
And everyone was running
And I couldn’t hear nothing
Except gun blast
It happened so fast

Maybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for one moment he forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be heard
Whatever it was, I know it’s because
We are we are the youth of an Nation… ~ P.O.D

I don’t think we will ever learn. Or perhaps, I just don’t think that some people will ever learn. I’m lost as to whether or not some people don’t want to, or if we have simply become just that blind….

The world has become a terrifying place. I’m lucky enough to live in a country that is peaceful, that – for the most part – gets a lot of stuff right. We are not perfect, and Canada has a lot of work to do on not being too smug. But I look at the rest of the world? I look at what’s happening out there, and I shrink back behind our mountains and grizzly bears and socialist health care and I hide.

And when I wake up in the morning, I find that there is yet another person who has tried to solve yet another rage with yet another gun. And now there has been a call to arm churches, and teachers are being told to carry…because the best way to defend against violence is with more violence…because that apparently is supposed to make sense.

Why do people not get it? How is this okay? How is this still okay.

Attitudes are catching, they spread and spread like some strange infection, and right now hatred and violence is infecting the world, and it is running rampant and we are doing nothing to stop it. And those of us who try, are shouted down and called petty and fragile, and perhaps some of us are…but many of us are not, many of us are just flat out terrified.

I understand the history behind the “right to bear arms”, I understand its historical significance and yes I understand it’s importance. No one is clamouring to disarm the States. Such a thing is impractical and impossible. But asking for control, for an outdate law to be updated and shifted so that people stop solving problems with an automatic military grade rifle is not the same thing as “they’re coming to take my guns”. Instead of that, what are people doing? Demanding more guns, more violence, to stop the violence. Does no one see that this is sick? That this is broken? That there is something drastically terribly wrong here, and that something needs to change.

There are those that try to tell me that well, these people are crazy and they would “do it anyway”. But does that mean we have to keep making it easier for them? That we have to keep tacitly saying that it’s a fine way of dealing with things? Because that’s what we do. Every time this happens, there is outrage, there are calls to action, and nothing comes of those calls, nothing changes…nothing shifts, nothing is repaired…until the next time when it all starts again. By not altering anything, we are telling the world that it is all right to violence through your problems, because it’s not like it will actually meet with any major consequences, nothing will change because of it.

We are being bathed in blood, and fear, and we are feeding it.

We are coming up on Armistice Day – the day that was originally the celebration for the war to end all wars…

Is this what they died for? Is this what they would have wanted? Did people sacrifice themselves on the alter of the glory of war so that people could go out and slaughter each other, slaughter kids, whenever they feel they have a grievance? Did they die for our right to kill?

The world is broken, and even in my little corner of it, as I walk through it, I feel like I am cutting the soles of my feet open on the wreckage.

Please, please stop …just…please make it stop. Someone make it stop.