We Tell Childen to "Use Your Words" but We Seem to Think Guns Are Better

OK, so Target decided to ask its customers not to carry loaded guns into its stores. Ostensibly, the reason was not because 400,00 people signed a petition in a very short time. It was because one of the idiot activists left behind (forgot?) a loaded gun in the toy section resting on a toy box on the floor.

Can any sane person not shudder and almost lose her lunch at the thought of what could have happened in that store? I can't even go there. Guns are made to kill. What other purpose could they possibly have? I have come to think that only fearful, cowardly people rely on guns. Have you seen the artillery some men take into the woods to hunt (and kill dear?) Have you heard to boasting some men do about their ability to hit targets? or have bigger, better guns stashed in cabinets around their houses?

The first time I came from Boston to Oregon in 1964 was the first time I saw a real gun in my life. The style then was for intrepid hunters to drive around in pick up trucks with gun racks in the back. I thought it was pretty strange. Were they going to shoot deer in the grocery parking lot? Looking back, that was a cake walk compared to what you can see today in the USA. Ugly, stupid, cowardly, hateful stuff in the name of a Christian religion. This is fucked up.

I no longer blame TV or Jesus or the Second Amendment for this epidemic. I blame cowardly impotent ignorant men who are taken in by the glamor of being the tough guy while hiding behind locked doors and camouflage outfits. These are not conciliatory words. These are the words of a good Jew obeying the Ten Commandments, a good Christian heading Christ's words the turn the other cheek and do unto others. These are the words of a woman born in WW11 where 18,000,000 or some such number of people died. These are the words of a woman who is asked in every country she visits what is wrong in the USA that we murder each other all the time. No one anywhere can figure out how we have gotten so perverted and violent.

We have merged Stone Age mentality with 21st Century technology and become the murderers that we fear. Even the NRA distanced itself from the Target gun activists. You tell enough powerless people that they can take control and you get some deranged person leaving a loaded gun in the toy department.Guns are made to kill. People who have guns have them so they are ready to kill when they decide to. Our Presidents now have very public "kill lists".  People cheer when we murder Bin Laden. Things have gone wrong here. This is not freedom and human rights. This is anarchy and today's version of the Wild West and Manifest Destiny. I am very confused by this all.  Toy departments should be magical imaginative places where children can dream.

We need people of courage. We need Gandhi and the Salt Protest. We need Mother Theresa collecting children from the hospital in Beirut.  We need courage.