Day: June 14, 2016

Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/O4O7TFe32N0

Barely a day

On June 14, 2016

Barely a day goes by without a mass shooting.

It’s terrifying. It’s exhausting. It’s a problem native to the United States. It’s a mentally unhealthy population that knows no way to express their feelings other than violence.

It’s a country where you can buy an AR-15 in 7 minutes. With that kind of speed, any impulse to murder can be acted on and carried out without any time to cool off and have your cooler head appeal to your better self.

Guns are accessible. That’s a fact that won’t quickly change. Most guns used in mass shootings are purchased legally. It’s so easy to buy them legally, why go through the extra trouble of illegal sales?

But why are so many people purchasing them and acting on their emotions in mass violence? What makes someone wake up and decide to shoot up a school, night club, movie theater or church?

I wish more of these shooters were captured alive so we could ask them.

Recipe for a shooting

By Carl

On June 14, 2016

In Observations

Men are unable to deal with their emotions. We’re taught from an early age to man up and be tough. No one is going to see you cry.

And it’s garbage. Men are emotional people too. We cry. We hurt. We have emotions but it’s not allowed for us to display them.

So we pick up guns.

We go online and scream at people to make ourselves feel better. We form hate groups. We harass women and minorities. We act out violently towards anything we don’t understand or disagree with.

We don’t know any better. We were never taught any better.

Chuck Wendig wrote what I wanted to say so go read his words.

It begins with men. Young men, usually.

(This is a recipe that simmers a long time on the stove.)

>You teach them that the world was made for them. That they own it and can do what they want and take what they desire. You also teach them that they are not allowed to express themselves. Doing that is to be like a woman, and men are told that they are very explicitly not women. Men own everything, remember. It is their right to own and to want and to take. Women are lesser, for they do not own the world. So to be like a woman — to cry and to manifest other feelings — is to be lesser. It’s not that they don’t have feelings. It is that they are taught to keep them inside. In boxes and bottles. In lead-lined trunks locked tight lest they ever escape.