It’s Time Somebody Did Something About That

There are a lot of things wrong in this world. Bad people do bad things. Every day. It’s pretty terrible.

You can turn on the news, locally, nationally or internationally and find out about all the bad things people do. Or, you can find out about how bad the weather is in a lot of places, or where mother nature wreaks unthinkable destruction on millions.

Alternatively, you can look for problems with “the system.” There are plenty of those too, so you won’t have to spend too much time looking.

You can read about how bad our schools are doing, or how corrupt government officials are (locally, nationally or internationally), or corporate greed, then again maybe you’re more interested the latest massacre, road side bombing, or other thing going on in your neck of the woods.

And always, when these terrible things happen, we are asked again and again to DO something about it. Or we’re told SOMEBODY should do something about it.

YES! we all cry – somebody should do something about this.

Immediately, if not sooner!

It’s an outrage no one has done anything about this before now. There are so many to blame because nothing has happened.

Global Warming is terrible! Glaciers are melting and the seas are rising. This puts hundreds of millions of people at risk.

I personally do believe global warming is happening, and I agree, many people are at risk. Okay!

Now DO something about it!

Hmmm.

I don’t want to stop taking hot showers every morning… and yeah, sometimes I stay in a while.

Well, I fixed my faucet that had been dripping… that’s something right? I’m saving water by not having it drip.

I wonder if the amount of water I use in the shower cancels out the amount I saved on the faucet?

Let’s see… there must be something else. <looking around my house…> Um…

I’ll just give myself credit on the global warming thing for the faucet, and I’ll ignore my carbon footprint thingie because I’m on a plane a lot for work.

Crap, that’s a lot of carbon too.

Is there something a little easier, please?

How about gun control?

YES! I believe in gun control. I don’t own a gun and I don’t think assault weapons should be available in this country.

Okay, whew.

Yes, let’s pass an assault weapons ban. That way, we can prevent crazy people from getting access to these guns that kill so many people.

But wait… the gun used in the latest incident was purchased by the mother of the shooter, and she passed a background check. And uh oh, there IS an assault weapons ban in the state where the incident took place and the gun she owned was NOT COVERED by that ban.

Well, crap, that’s no good.

Okay, but we can pass a new, more stringent law to ban any kind of assault weapon, including the one used in that incident.

Yeah! Let’s do it now!

But wait… the gun of choice on the street for the majority of gun crimes isn’t an assault weapon. It’s a handgun, because they’re easy to conceal and easy to buy on the street on the black market (where background checks don’t go.)

Oh, that’s really bad.

Now what?

Well, somebody has to DO SOMETHING about this right now!

We’ve got to…..

.

I don’t know about you, but I feel helpless.

.

I feel horrible about all those adults and children who were killed. It’s beyond comprehension that a human being, obviously a person with serious psychosis, did this… but he did. It’s caused pain and grief and a gaping hole in a community that will not heal for generations.

I wish I knew what to do about it, but I don’t.

I do think banning assault weapons is a good idea, and I think making background checks mandatory is a great idea, and I think banning the sale of all guns in this country is the best idea. (Tough luck hunters, and militia men, that’s what I think!)

But can I personally affect the outcome of what actually happens?

Hell no.

Maybe you think you do, but I have no illusions about that. I have nothing to do with that one way or the other.

I’m hoping some sawed off NRA type comes on my blog to tell me why doing these things is a bad idea, or some lefty liberal (who I’d sympathize with) tells me it’s a good idea, or an independent tells me the pros and cons and we’ll all be a little wiser, or pissed off, or informed with statistics, or lied to with statistics, and then the lobbyists will go to Capital Hill and help write the legislation along with the Congress and the President, or whatever is going to happen with this issue and you know what?

I’ll have nothing to do with it.

Not really, anyway.

Except for this blog post, clearly stating my views that global warming is bad, genocide is bad, glacier melt is bad, landmines are bad, corrupt dictators are bad, and oh yeah, assault weapons are bad too.

So, have I done my part?

I doubt it.

.

Maybe I should donate money to a cause, then I’d feel better, right?

Not really.

After Hurricane Katrina I donated a little money, and I felt worse because I understood that no amount of money I could provide would truly help those people who lost so much, family members, homes, everything. What was my twenty bucks gonna do?

But…last year I went to New Orleans and spent as much as I could afford locally on tourism, and talked to people there about surviving the hurricane, and talked to them about how they felt the recovery was going, or not going, and generally did “what I could” that way.

I don’t know if that counts because I really enjoyed myself and fell in love with NoLa, but I think it does. (But there is that carbon footprint plane trip hovering over my silver cloud…)

Well, anyway… somebody should just do something about all the bad stuff in this world.

And there’s no time to waste, so hurry up people.

Do it now.