“Guns don’t kill people, I kill people.”
Do you remember that? It was in Happy Gilmore on the guy’s shirt with the nail in his head…SPOILER ALERT: I agree with that statement.

I woke up this morning to my clock radio reporting news of the movie theater shooting in Colorado. In my half-asleep brain, once I’d woken up a little more, I was sure that I’d dreamed it all. How ridiculous?! Some guy dressing up like a SWAT member with bullet vest and gas mask, appearing in the middle of a packed theater, tossing tear gas and spraying the trapped crowd with bullets…who does that? What a weird dream; must have been the wine.

And then, as I was getting dressed, the news story came on again. I was shocked it wasn’t a dream. How awful?! The most disturbing part to me was that children were hurt. Shot with bullets hurt. There are witness reports circulating about an 8 or 9 year old girl being carried from the theater, unresponsive, by a police officer. She had visible bullet holes in her back. When I hear that, I see my oldest daughter. She’s 7. She weighs about 50 pounds and is around 3 feet tall. In another year she’ll grow an inch or two and gain a few more pounds. The compact little body of a child is no match for one bullet, let alone two or three.

Skip ahead a few hours when people wake up and start posting their thoughts about the shooting on Facebook. A college friend of mine posted something and I initially responded with agreement to her comment and voiced plans to look into a conceal and carry permit. {Ohio allows concealed firearms with a permit, except in government buildings.} Someone that I didn’t know responded with a passive, “I find it INTERESTING that we respond to events like this by buying more guns.” I would be interested to see how you’d protect yourself against a gunman with your bare hands, lady. Maybe a hand bag? This was my response:
“As a single mother of three, if someone came at us with a gun, I would have no way to protect them OTHER than a gun.
My parents are card-carrying members of the NRA. When I divorced my husband almost two years ago, they BEGGED me to get a gun for protection. Living alone, they were worried about someone breaking into my home. I have resisted because I didn’t want my children hurting themselves or someone else playing with it or showing it to friends. More friends encouraged me to get a handgun and gave me all sorts of resources to safely store it so that my children can’t get at it (the best option being a finger-print scanning gun safe.)
The problem is not the amount of guns “on the street;” my father has been a collector of vintage firearms his whole adult life. He’s not a hunter. He doesn’t kill things. He likes old Western movies and goes to the shooting range. The problem is people who want to hurt other people for no other reason than they can. The weapon is unimportant…bomb, knife, gun, fists, baseball bat…as a citizen of a free country and a mother, I will protect my babies any way I can.”

Guns aren’t the problem. If there was some magical way to take away all the guns in the world, people would find other means to accomplish the same goal. Before there were guns, countries waged wars rather effectively with bows and arrows, swords, rocks, hot oil, burning fire balls on catapults, etc. In today’s world, without guns, you’d still have bombs, which it seems can be easily made in your parent’s basement. You’d still have chemicals. You’d have technological attacks.

People are the problem. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to look inside people’s brains and see who would shoot 71 innocent people, including children, at a superhero movie and who is horrified at the thought. All you can do is protect yourself. If you know someone who seems to be having a hard time with life and is angry, get them some help. Because senseless violence is so prevalent in our society, if you have a real concern and you report it to the police, school officials, etc people will take you seriously. Perhaps headlines like this can be avoided if we start to look out for each other and DO SOMETHING about our concerns.

What am I gonna do? I’m gonna hug my babies more. Life is an uncertain gift; cherish every second of it!

XxOo