http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/26/20000-sign-petition-allow-guns-republican-national-convention/82289342/  What do you think about this?  Is this a good idea or a bad one?  Of course it’s a bad idea.  Trump wing-nuts are all set to stage a riot, so a gun would come in handy for all those guys.  It would only follow classic gun logic that as a matter of self defense people in the anti-Trump camp won’t feel comfortable unless they are all toting a firearm as well and properly equipped to fire back.  Who can blame them?  This has all the makings of a modern day shoot-out at the OK Corral, only on a much grander scale.

Only thing is, it turns out this petition is something along the lines of a hoax. It was likely drafted by some unknown gun control proponent as a way to force Republican presidential candidates to put their money where their mouths are.  However, during the period of time that this “petition” was considered credible, none of them were willing to dip into their bankroll of personal principles and actually say they support such a crazy idea.  I wonder what kind of grade the NRA will be handing out to these hypocrites this semester.

Self preservation is a core basic instinct.  Though none of the Republican presidential hopefuls will admit it, they would be scared shitless to walk into a way overcrowded room full of jittery , gun-waving revelers.  That is inviting disaster at a convention during a normal political year, and this year is the complete polar opposite of normal.  The Republican Party has an atomic wedgie up their butt crack over a Trump candidacy, and if there is one thing the Republicans are good at it’s preventing stuff from happening.  I have a feeling they’ll make up some new rules at the convention that will guarantee the Trump scenario does not occur.  The shit will really hit the fan then my friends,

The Republican candidates would in no way be willing to go out on a limb and say open carry is a good idea at their convention because they understand full well how gunpowder could ignite into chaos in an overcharged political climate.  Just in case some of you don’t understand how reflexively reactive gun culture can be, I thought I would break it down it in scientific terms. Let’s just say for the fun of it this “petition” actually bore fruit.  Here is a brief physiological description of what people would have to be prepared for on the convention floor:

Any loud, startling sound is apt to trigger a sense of panic that will induce the brain to muster up and send a bunch of nervous electrons along the nerve chain directly to the asshole, where they will attempt to paralyze the anal sphincter of Trump and anti-Trump supporters alike.  That is job number one for our electron armies.  Their initial task is to clamp all those muscles down tight so there is no shitting of the pants.  Sometimes they are able to take care of business, sometimes not so much.  It’s stinky down there, so often times they can only take so much and then  they high-tail it to our fingers in order to get as far away as possible.   It’s all part of our natural flight/fight reflex.  Look it up if you don’t believe me.  So if there are a bunch of acutely anxious people at the Republican convention, expect some index fingers to get over-stimulated.  And should  a bunch of people have a bunch of guns, what’s your guess all those index fingers will want to do?  Remember, we’re talking electrons here.  Electrical shit has a natural affinity for anything metal.  And keep in mind electrons aren’t just taking an evening stroll along the beach.  They move really fast.- like Usain Bolt fast if Usain Bolt was allowed to compete in the 100 meter dash by driving a Helios II spacecraft that has been given an extra shove by a supernova blast.  So now that you have been reintroduced to  human neurology and understand how fast things can go wrong, I think you have to agree this is a bad idea, unless you don’t particularly care for Republicans.

ABOVE:  Image of an electron nucleus at rest multiplied by 10 to the eight hundred forty six quad trillionth power.

Read this.  http://www.rollingstone.com/music/live-reviews/rolling-stones-thrill-huge-crowd-at-historic-havana-show-20160326   This leads up to my good idea of the week.   A half million people attended this concert.  Holy shit!  You know what I think?  If we could somehow get the Stones to sneak into Syria and start playing, it would lead to peace in the entire region.  Such a simple solution at little cost.  Give the people what they want for a change.   Just look at Cuba.  Those poor people were starved for Mick and Keith.  “You  can’t always get what you want ” should become the world’s anthem.  If you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.  Stones for World Peace!

There is a lot of shit going on lately that pisses me off.  So much blog fodder.  You probably figured out what is coming here if you’ve been watching the news.  It’s  gun issues again.   I can’t help myself.  I just don’t get why sensible steps to control gun violence are met with so much resistance.  I really feel the sale of guns should have the same, local, state, and federal supervision that is required for drug sales.  Unrestricted internet and gun show sales should not be allowed.  Objection to common sense proposals just incense me.  So once again I wrote another blog that deals with guns, one that is way too long and is adorned with way too many links.  This isn’t it.  My lengthy one is so long I decided to break off a small segment and post it here.  I will finish up the other one and post it next week.  The subject I am posting here is so insulting I just have to get it off my chest now.

Fox news. Andrea Tantaros and Meghan McCain. Where do they get these people?  They, among others at Fox news, accused President Obama of displaying tears of the crocodile strain as he recollected the slaughter of first graders at Sandy Hook https://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/fox-host-president-obama-put-a-raw-onion-in-his-podium-so-he-could-cry-fake-tears-for-kids-killed-by-guns/

Holy shit even I was tearing up when the president mentioned that harrowing incident. In fact, you mention any kind of death of a seven year old and I get choked up. You have to expect this kind of bullshit from Sean Hannity, but these are women, I believe. Generally that gender produces our more sensitive and caring types. WTF is wrong with these stupid bitches. It’s clear from their statements these women can’t possibly have children of their own. I guess that’s the one positive thing we can conclude from their insensitive remarks. Andrea and Meghan. Please don’t let your birth control prescriptions lapse. As souless as you are, extracting any parenting skills, let alone any emotion except enmity, out of your cold, black hearts would seem to be such an impossibility you would pose a danger to your prodigy.

If you recall, when I left off my friend and neighbor Farhad and I were both absorbed in the task of solving one of our country’s most perplexing problems- how not to get shot. We decided we need some nice gun-restricted space.  See my previous blog “San Bernardino” if you are interested.  We have progressed through initial planning and haven’t worked out all the details quite yet, but we think we are getting a handle on things.  Starting us off in the right direction is the name for our program.  We think it’s pretty catchy.  It is called Second Amendment Sanity.  SAS is the logical acronym, which should not be confused with ASA, the chemical abbreviation for aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid in case your are confused) which works pretty well for headaches but won’t give you a lot of pain relief if you get shot.

Here are the basic steps we think will be required to provide us with an environment of gun-restricted space.  The list is kind of long, but if you pay attention, no doubt you will realize our logic is unflawed.

The first thing is a petition.  We need to get that going.  I’m not sure how you go about that, but I will google it.  Can’t be too hard.  That google business.  I wish I would have thought that up.  Everybody’s using it, but I thought I heard somewhere it’s not going to be called google anymore.  That might fuck me up.

The next thing we need is the space.  Farhad’s original thought was a city ordinance in Omaha.  No guns in Omaha.  That’s the way he would really like to go.  Check your guns as soon as you cross into city limits, like you saw in the movie “Unforgiven.” Gene Hackman really laid a beat down on Richard Harris and Clint Eastwood for noncompliance of that statute.  We don’t want shit like that to go down.   I had to tell Farhad he was off the beam here, but not because Gene Hackman might show up and go ballistic   It was because Farhad wasn’t seeing the big picture.  Omaha is all filled up.  There is no doubt in my mind this thing is really going to catch on and we are going to need a much bigger space, for new housing and such.  I finally convinced Farhad we might as well go long and zone the entire state of Nebraska.  There are a couple of logical reasons to do so.

First of all, there’s that tricky legal business.  We need some laws passed, and since our U.S. congress can’t seem to get its shit together on gun control, we need the accommodation of a state legislature, and we need a state legislature that has the balls to tell the NRA leadership to stick all their guns up their asses.  It’s a long shot in a conservative state like Nebraska I know, but Nebraska has something not going for it that all the other states do- two legislative bodies.  Nebraska has a unicameral.  There’s no shifting responsibly back and forth between a senate and a house.  All the bickering gets done in one place so they can’t pass the buck off to another school of spineless jellyfish.  Another possibility is Hawaii. Hardly anyone in that state owns a gun anyway, so overcoming 2nd amendment paranoia would be less problematic. If worse comes to worse, Farhad and I would have no problem relocating to Hawaii. That move would certainly have a sweet side to it. Sandy beaches and hula girls. Whoa baby!  My kids are all grown up and on their own, so my wife and I have been downsizing anyway. Farhad has two teenagers that are a little sensitive about all the school site harassment they get over their religion, so he figures the move might be advantageous. So we might get a petition drive going over there too.

———-GOOD————-                                         ——BETTER——-

Then we have to secure our borders.  I don’t think we have to go nuts on this and build a gigantic wall around the entire state of Nebraska or anything.  Farhad and I have both seen how slick state patrol monitoring operates on our western border.  We are pretty sure regular policing with that agency will work out nicely.  That seems to be the case with marijuana possession anyway.   You ought to see all the cars frantically pulling off to the shoulder of Interstate 80 when their drivers are suddenly confronted by the big “Canine Patrol Ahead” sign that greets Nebraska visitors coming across the Colorado/Nebraska state line.

A Day in a Park                                                           A Night in a Jail

But Farhad and I really don’t care about restricting marijuana.  The intent of our plan is to make sure what you don’t posses in our gun-restricted space is a hand gun or assault rifle.  So here we go with the trickiest part of the whole deal.

I am sorry, but the second amendment needs a serious revisit.  That thing has been collecting cobwebs for over two centuries.  There is no doubt in my mind that if our founding fathers, during the process of drafting the second amendment,  had been able to foresee the savage mayhem created by the current gun culture of this country, they would have utilized all of their collective wisdom and devoted a significantly more number of words, paragraphs, and attention to detail to it than that which exists in its original twenty seven word, one sentence form.  When that first session of congress threw the second amendment down on paper it was as if they were in a big hurry to leave the city of New York and get home.  Actually, they kind of were.  New York was  a shit hole at the time I guess.  I think if they were around today they would admit they should have spent a little more time on it.  In fact, had James Madison seen this coming when he first proposed the Bill of Rights, he would have made sure the only future ambiguity involved in the second amendment would be the sorting out of all the specifics of its entangled legalese.

If our founding fathers were around today, here are some specifics of our gun-restricted space that they would not only consider constitutional, but that probably would convince most to pack their bags and relocate to our space.

Hand guns and assault rifles- sorry, but if you have one or ten of these, tough shit.  You have to give them up.  What our founding fathers would make clear in no uncertain terms is any firearm manufactured for the sole intent of killing people will be a  prohibited possession of the general civilian population.  In the case of a hand gun, that intent may not have been something original, but that is the intent to which it has evolved. Look up the crime statistics yourself if you don’t believe me.  And I know what you’re thinking.  What about self defense?  It’s always nice to be able to shoot somebody if he breaks into your house.  Well that’s the beauty of our gun-restricted space.  You can’t have a hand gun, but neither can the intruder. You should be able to take care of him with a Louisville Slugger.  Go  to the park and hit a few fungos.  You’ll get the hang of it.

In the case of an assault rifle, killing people is its original intent, period.   Therefore, hand guns and assault rifles shall be retained by trained, enrolled law enforcement and military personnel only.  Shooting people is part of their job description, not yours.  And you should know blatant, unrestrained use of firearms by law enforcement will not be tolerated in our gun-restricted space.  But you should also know  that if you point a hand gun or assault rifle at a police officer, expect the worst.  In the interest of fairness, should you own these types of firearms,  we will have a buy-back program in place.  We aren’t total assholes.

Then we have to deal with hunting rifles.  It’s a large gray area we have to narrow down.  They are supposed to be used for hunting game.  I have lost interest, but at one time I even liked to hunt.  I understand the attraction.   But sometimes hunting rifles are used to shoot people.   That is a very sadistically twisted intent of their use.  Once again I defer to our founding fathers.  By way of helping everyone understand why our founding fathers left so much ambiguity within the second amendment when it was transcribed, take a look at the examples below.

Example Number 1                                                              Example Number 2

Of the two examples above, which one represents the person best equipped to conduct a   psychotically induced shooting rampage in a busy shopping mall?  Of course.  Number 2.  No brainer.  About all that our founding fathers knew concerning rifles is what you see in example Number 1.  If they would have had any inkling of what would transpire in firearms development they would have shit their capri pants.  So there’s our solution.  You will be able to own a rifle for hunting, but only if it is classified as a muzzle loader.  All that dicking around with a ramrod and wadding is just the safe way to go.  Your aunt Sally could take out almost anyone in the process of reloading a muzzle loader in a shopping mall with a good swing of her purse.  So for game hunting, it’s a muzzle loader. It’s what our founding fathers intended.  That’s it.  No exceptions.  Farhad and I are through pissing around with this.  We both also think this regulation will provide a more level playing field for the hunted.  It makes the whole experience more sporting.

Finally, the punishment for possession of a hand gun will be a 50 year prison sentence plus a gun shot in the hand.  Should you posses an assault rifle, punishment for that will be wherever the bullets end up in you after confiscation.

I know the list of prohibited firearms seems overly restrictive, but that’s just the way it’s got to be.  Just like people who want their firearms, there are people like us who don’t.  We deserve the right to live where there are zero or limited firearms, just like others deserve the right to live where they can get shot.  We aren’t saying you can’t have all those guns.  We are just saying you can’t have all those guns in our gun-restricted space.  You simply need to go away to some other space.  Texas has a bunch of space reserved just for you, and if you are really into getting shot, there is an extremely favorable chance Louisiana and Mississippi will work out nicely for you.http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/06/10/10-states-with-the-most-gun-violence/4/

Well there you have it. That’s our SAS program in a nutshell.  If you are inclined to live your life in a less anxious state, I suggest you support our SAS initiative. Farad is working on our petition at this very moment. He has three computers all networked in his house.  I think I’ll pop over and see how it’s going.  That son of a bitch is a computer genius.

Home of the brave?  Not so sure.  Looks to me like we are becoming the home of the scaredy cats.  I’ll be the first to admit all the mass shootings going on make me a little jumpy.  That San Bernardino business has to make you wonder if those crazy bastards blowing shit up and mowing people down overseas haven’t decided to move their entertainment venues onto  our more ostentatiously fertile shores once again. We are the land of conspicuous consumption and instantaneous gratification after all, and I think that really bothers them.  But contrary to what you hear it’s not because they consider all the superficial materialism abhorrent..  My theory is they are obsessively jealous over it.  Religious extremism has little to do with religion.  It’s about power.   And I think those looney jihadists calling for a reestablishment of a caliphate like to dwell in the past. They want to bring back what they once had, like lots of superficial materialism.  Muslims ruled much of the civilized world during a good portion of the first millennium.  As I understand the Muslim past, an increasing entrenchment in culturally restrictive religious practices resulted in excessively exclusive institutions and sets of laws that ultimately led to the Muslim world’s inability to keep pace in the industrialized world.  I think I did a pretty good job compressing centuries of history into one sentence.  In the end it all came apart for the last caliphate when leadership decided to back the wrong side during World War I.  Goodby Ottoman Empire.

My friend and neighbor Farhad could not give a shit about the Ottoman Empire.  He is a Muslim and loves his Islamic religion, in a regular, religious way.  He goes nuts with all the kneeling down and praying, like a gazillion times a day.  It makes me feel like shit.  I only get around to that once a week, if I’m lucky.  That happens on Sunday, like normal, but usually it’s more of a plea to let the Packers score so they cover the point spread.  And Farhad really likes the Huskers.  He’ll drop over sometimes and watch a football game with me, but only for a short time.  Then he disappears because he has to go home and pray again.

————                                                         

Farhad- during his before meal prayer                  Me- during my 4th quarter field goal try prayer

Farhad and I shoot the shit a lot.  I consider him to be a deep thinker, and even though our religious affiliation couldn’t be more dissimilar, I have found he and I have many other things in common.  One of those things is we’d both like to get through the day without getting shot.  Farhad has an extra burden to bear though.  Besides not wanting to get shot, there likely are some people out there who believe Farhad is going to shoot them.  He worries himself sick.  He is certain all of our neighbors are suspicious of him and think he is up to no good.  During the first conversation he and I had after the San Bernardino catastrophe he turned into an emulsified pudding of psychological despondency right before my eyes.  To bolster his psyche, I told him what I always tell him.  I start off by telling him the truth.  People who are intelligent and generally observant at all understand the odds of getting shot by a Muslim are fractional compared to getting shot by a  plain old white American, probably with some distinct but little practiced form of Christianity as a religious background.   I mention that I am certainly not afraid of him, and anyone who knows him is not afraid of him.  Hell, he won’t even let his kids play with water-guns, and in fact he is terrified of anything potentially explosive.  Because he is so deathly afraid of guns, I skip over the fact that I am more concerned about the three white Christians in my neighborhood who go out of their way to brag about the arsenal of weapons they have at their disposal.  One of them lives across the street and proudly professed to me one day this summer that he has a firearm of some sort in every room of his house, all of them lying around unsecured.  He said he always wants to be ready, just in case, and he said this to me while he was eyeing Farhad while Farhad was mowing his lawn.

Is this what we have become in this country, so overwhelmed by fear and paranoia we have to have a gun in every room of our house?   It never ceases to amaze me how worked up we get over what is reported as a terrorist attack and who we associate them with, when all the day to day mayhem caused by firearms is considered normal.  What the fuck is wrong with us?  If you ask me all shootings, mass or otherwise, are terrorist attacks.  The two constant components are the same- guns and dead people.

I feel sorry for Farhad.  But I can console him with the fact that getting shot in this country is totally random.  It doesn’t matter if you are a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, whatever.  If you extrapolate all the data, each and every one of us are lucky enough to have the same odds of being mowed down by gunfire.  It’s democracy in action.  Well shit, I guess I forgot about the black population.  They are getting picked off at a pretty high clip.  I was kind of fixated on religious preference though.  And that’s how I generally approach my discussion with Farhad when the topic of getting shot comes up.  It seems to calm him down a bit.  Geezuz I forgot about Baptists too.  I don’t know this for a fact, but I think most blacks are Baptists.  That might skewer the data a bit.

Anyway Farad and I are in total agreement that something has to be done. Congress has been sitting around with their heads up their asses way too long.  We shouldn’t have to have second thoughts about going to a movie or shopping mall, or ball game, or a church, mosque or synagogue.  Or anyplace.  So he and I are working on our safe place, a place as gun-free as possible.  He’s home in front of his PC sifting through information about gun violence and the second amendment right now.  That son of a bitch is a computer dynamo.  He’s always dicking around with a computer, or worrying, or praying.  He has a really hot wife and to lighten things up sometimes I like to  tell him that instead of all the praying, he might find  some timely corn grinding to be more relaxing.  And she always has a snack for me whenever I go over there.  As a matter of fact that’s where I am headed in a couple of minutes.  I’m going to see how Farhad is doing with his research.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and snag some baba ghanoush.  I don’t know what’s all in that stuff but I will say it is pretty darn tasty.

When I was a kid, during the ages surrounding ten, my friends and I would often engage in our own form of the Civil War.  I almost always ended up as a Confederate, not because I drew the short straw, but because I wanted to.  It had absolutely nothing to do with race and slavery. Growing up in a small town in Wyoming, I had no concrete concept of any of that.  The color gray was simply more appealing to me.  It seemed like a more dominant color, an earthy color that could kick the crap out of blue.  I understood by that time in my life that historically gray came out on the short end of things, but that was not a concern of mine then.  I was ten and playing a game.  It was played with squirt guns and water balloons, and incorporated a version of capture the flag, and I won my share of battles.  By the time I was twelve or so, our neighborhood game of Civil War ended.  Of course there was no official surrender with a signed document or anything.  We all just moved on with our lives.

I don’t have a lot going on, so I spend a good portion of the day in reflection about stuff like this.   And so many times my thoughts about the innocent and carefree experiences of my life, both past and present, get completely steamrolled by absurdly cruel and horrific current events.  The massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church is yet another example of the type of craziness that overwhelms what I believe to be my normally adjusted mind, to the point where I begin to question what is real or imaginary.  That this much prejudice and hatred can still exist, especially in this country, is incomprehensible to me.  And don’t get me started on gun control.  Sorry.  What I should say is once again I’m going to get started on gun control.  Certainly the actions of  the person that committed this atrocity wandered beyond racism and into the realm of psychotic delusion.  And that points to the fact we do need better mental health care, not only here but everywhere on the planet.  But right there is your “catch 22,” and the NRA does not understand it to be a catch.  You must be insane to use a gun to kill innocent people, but insane people are allowed to buy guns.  And even if we could lock up all the clinically diagnosed psychotics, there would still be plenty of marginal nut-jobs out there that would make accounting for all impossible.  Sure, maybe we can make some slight progress in helping the unstable, but we can make significant progress in reducing firearm tragedy by implementing very strict laws and practices of control.  We should make the purchase of a hand gun or assault rifle so difficult most will give up trying.  Do what they do in Canada and Australia.  Require a psychological exam and some third party references.  I would take it one step further.  Every prospective buyer should be subjected to a polygraph test, and I suggest one electrode be genitally attached and capable of emitting an electrically charged reminder of the seriousness of the matter should a lie be told.

And to those entrenched in second amendment protection, I say it’s time to seriously debate it’s intension and interpretation.  Times change.  Things evolve.  The four simple words “keep and bear arms” part of this amendment is way too broad of a statement in today’s crazy world if you ask me.  Every president, and practically every presidential candidate, will declare, in one speech or another, that the most important task of the position is to keep us, the citizens, safe, and to uphold the constitution while they are at it.  The second amendment is the only statement in the constitution that mentions weapons specifically.  If the founding fathers had known at the time there would be this much mayhem caused by firearms, I think their wording of it would have been more carefully crafted.  Hunt game all you want.  You are doing all of us that take an evening drive along state highways a huge favor if you bag a deer.  But assault rifles belong in the hands of trained military personnel, and if you feel it is your right to own a handgun for self protection, alright.  But keep the damn thing in your house.  Home invasion and burglary are one thing, but outside of the police force no one should be walking around with a hand gun.  If we get serious about penalties for crimes committed with a handgun, the misplaced paranoia over the need to carry one in public would drastically diminish.  If the underlying purpose of the second amendment is to make us all safe, it is, at present, failing miserably.

And this Confederate battle flag business, come on!  Maybe even worse than South Carolina allowing the thing to fly on it’s capital grounds is Mississippi’s incorporation of it in their official state flag.  It is a symbolic and absolutely offensive reminder of an absolutely embarrassing and inhumane time in our country.  Read the Declaration of Independence.  We are all created equal.  Thomas Jefferson himself, though a slave owner, tried to discourage the practice of slavery in a number of ways.  He and many others of  the Revolutionary War era understood it was wrong.  The ultimate recognition of this fact was a bloody civil war, and ever so slowly most came to acknowledge the injustice of the peculiar practice and as a nation we gradually came to our senses.  There is something terribly wrong with someone that  holds some sort of reverence for an image that symbolizes acts committed by mankind that in many respects parallel those that come to mind when we see the flag of Nazi Germany.   Hopefully those that still embrace this symbol are unmindful of its insulting stigma and are merely trying to naively cling to a simpler time represented by the colors blue and gray.  But it is 2015.   It’s time to put those boyhood fantasies aside and move on.

.