Balanced Gun Control

This week I had lunch with a bunch of coworkers, all of whom happen to be in the US on work visas.  The topic of Syria came up with the questions about whether or not the US was going to go "guns a blazing" into Syria like they did in Iraq.  The conversation was around whether or not the American people could really stomach more war.  These coworkers really have only been in areas of the US that are relatively liberal and not the gun-toting American west.  So, I tried in some way to explain the gun obsessed culture where negotiations are seen as weak and bullies are idolized.

The reality is that the US is really in a tough spot.  We don't have unlimited capabilities to fight in so many places but we act like we are the police officers of the world and the only ones who can accomplish any good.    Our president had to go and talk about red lines and now not only is he going to be seen as weak if he doesn't do anything but the conservative contingent is going to claim that America will look weak if we don't do anything.  No one is going to think; "Oh, Syria is an impossible situation for America to get into we should just stay out of it."

A few months ago, I was appalled at some of the posts that I saw on Facebook after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings.  From my perspective, it seems that my very own friends and family were more concerned about the government taking away their guns than they were about this tragedy that had just happened.  It was as if they were saying "This is horrible, now the government has another excuse to take away our guns" instead of "This is horrible, those poor children and their heartbroken families".

I recognized that I was so angry about this response to the tragedy that I needed to take my thoughts elsewhere before I posted something that would be hurtful to those I love.  Without really intending for it to happen, I've let some time pass and the anger has subsided.  This is a good thing because problems don't get solved when people are angry.  Not to say that I have any magic bullet to solve anything but I recognize that with my anger subsiding my reason and ability to understand other perspectives have returned.

With regards to the gun control issue, I would really like to see a balanced approach and there has to be a basic understand of a few things.
1. Laws are in place to define what is acceptable in a society; regulation and enforcement of the laws is the responsibility of the government.  If we as a society want the protection afforded by good laws we have to allow the government to enforce and regulate.
2. Freedom is not the absence of laws but is the ability to choose the laws that will govern us.  We make choices about the laws by voting for our representatives and in some cases voting for certain laws.  We will not lose our freedom so long as we do not give up our right to vote and use that right wisely.  In other words, know what you are voting for, educate yourself and those around you and vote in every election.
3. Democracy is compromise.  For all of us to live together in this society in peace, we have to compromise. Sometimes the laws I support will be accepted and sometimes the laws you support will be accepted and even though we disagree we both have to live by the laws which are put into place.

I would like to see laws enacted around who can buy and sell guns.  Buyers should have background checks, no exceptions.  A small inconvenience to law abiding citizens but a larger hurtle to those who have shown that they can't be trusted with guns in the first place.  This would also require that only licensed dealers can sell guns and they have to keep good records of their inventory.  The analogous set of laws would be those that govern prescription drugs.  We know that prescription drugs can be abused and so they can only be sold by pharmacies and a prescription from a doctor helps to ensure that only those who need the drugs get them.

I would also like to see additional requirements of gun owners.  I think they should have to get licensed and to do so they have to take a gun safety course and demonstrate their understanding of how to handle guns appropriately.  There should also be age restrictions on who can get licensed and handle a gun.  Children are not mature enough to understand the consequences of mishandling a gun and it is up to their parents to give them time to learn that before putting a gun in their hands.  This would be analogous to the requirements that we have in order to drive a car.  Both a car and a gun can be deadly in the wrong or untrained hands so why wouldn't they have similar requirements.

I honestly think the above would be acceptable to all sides of this issue but I don't know that we'll ever get there because people are unwilling to compromise.

This Thanksgiving I'm grateful for...

Thanksgiving 2012, I had planned a Thanksgiving dinner for my oversized extended family and spent too much money on flights to be with said family.  Being an organization freak, I spent my time during dinner making sure things were running on time so that we weren't keeping the kids up too late.  I had even planned some time for family members to express their gratitude.  As this was going on, I stood off to the side, feet hurting and hungry because I hadn't been able to eat yet.  Too busy making sure the people expressing their gratitude stuck to their allotted time and everyone who wanted a chance got a chance.  I was also replenishing food on the serving tables when needed.  The brother who had abused me for most of my childhood took his turn and mid way through he apologized to everyone for the "things he'd done wrong" when he was young.  I was pissed.  I'm certain that my mother had put him up to apologizing because the last time my mom and I had spoken about my inability to get a testimony of the church (Mormon) I had reference the way my brother had treated me growing up.  She had followed up on the conversation with a letter telling me I needed for forgive and forget like she had done.  So, I'm sure my mother was thinking that if my brother apologized I would have no excuse for not forgiving him.  Of course, my brother didn't even have the balls to face me and apologize he did it publicly so that everyone can say what a good man he is but his statements are so generic that they really don't mean anything at all.

For me, this was the beginning of the end.  I realized that I could not keep trying to please my family because all they wanted was to turn me into a soulless automaton who did exactly as I was told by them and the church.  They had no understanding of the effect that my childhood had on me and how damaged I felt.  How the persistent anxiety and guilt had destroyed my health.  I was not a person to them, I was a thing to be controlled.  It wasn't long after that when I had a similar experience at church and the realization that almost everyone who joined this church became like Stepford wives.  I had controlled my son's experience at church by volunteering to be his teacher but soon he was moving to a different class and I wouldn't be his teacher.  After sending him to this new class a couple of times, it became very clear to me that I couldn't subject him to this.  He'd be an automaton by the end of the year.  I stopped attending.  I got involved in some exmormon groups and learned even more about this so called religion.  I've heard all my life that that "The truth shall set you free" ... It sure does.

So, this Thanksgiving it seems appropriate to honor the event that literally changed my life.  I'm grateful for being able to finally see my family's true intentions and begin distancing myself from that destructive behavior.  I'm grateful for learning the truth about a deceptive organization that feeds off the guilt of millions.  I'm grateful to be going through life with less baggage and hope to lighten the load even more in the future.  I'm grateful that I can appreciate all that I have and not feel like God will take it away from me as a learning experience, or punishment or to humble me.  I'm grateful for true friends who accept me for who I am and not for who they think I should be.  I'm grateful for friends who have put up with my weirdness as I tried to sort through my feelings.  I'm grateful for a husband who put up with my attempts at being religious for years even though it really wasn't his thing.  I'm grateful that he even tried to be more religious at times to make me happy and I'm grateful that he was wise enough to know that pretending wouldn't make either of us happy.  I'm grateful that I was able to turn some shitty events in my childhood into motivation to better myself in such a way that I can now support my family in comfort.  I'm grateful that I am finally OK taking credit for the hard work and persistence that was required to create a better life for myself.  I'm grateful for ....

Really, I could keep going but I think I've made my point.  Interestingly enough, this year I feel more sincerely grateful than I ever have.  I think it is a result of not being afraid of losing what I have and not feeling obligated to be grateful (to God specifically).  As I've been writing, I've been trying to think of how to explain this but I just don't have an explanation.  However, I don't need an explanation to know that it feels great!

Living with almost...

When I was a child, I was sexually abused by my brothers or as I used to think for years, almost sexually abused.  They did not actually have sex with me and that has left me in a kind of limbo where I'm not really sure how to feel about what happened to me.  One brother didn't touch me sexually, he would watch me bath or undress when he got the opportunity and he would hold me down and try out different techniques for torturing me.  The other brother would "tickle" me and "accidentally" touch my breasts.  The last time he did it, I actually felt him get a hard-on which seemed to embarrass him and he let me go.  For years, I would tell myself that I was lucky that they didn't do any more than what they did.  I couldn't understand why I struggled so much with my experiences when they "weren't that bad".

In college, when I started getting serious with my now husband, I started having panic attacks when things would get a bit hot and heavy.  I ended up seeing a counselor about it and she was the first person to validate my feelings that I had been sexually abused.  Though there was some suspicion that there might be some repressed memories which were preventing me from healing.  I went through age regression hypnosis and the event that I "remembered", I had never really forgotten.  One day the brother who liked to torture me, decided he wanted to find out what would happen if he suffocated me.  He held me down and covered both my mouth and nose with his hand.  I was probably 11 or 12 and he was 5 years older than me.  His hand easily prevented me from getting any air and I was completely helpless to get him off of me.  What I had forgotten was how terrifying this had been for me.  I'd made jokes about it and minimized it for so many years that I had suppressed not the memory but the emotions.  During this hypnosis session, I remembered how I tried to push him off of me, using all the tricks I had learned from previous incidents to get away from him and did not succeed.  I remembered how I stopped fighting because I didn't have the energy.  I remember my eyesight and hearing fading as my brain started to shut down.  Then I saw the blurry image of another brother's face peering over the shoulder of the brother suffocating me.  He said something but it just sounded like mumbling.  Then my brother let me go.  I ran.  I found myself outside the house sitting on the ground with my back against the house sobbing.  A police car drove past and as I watched it go by I thought about running to the car and telling the police officer what had just happened.  Maybe my brother would get arrested and I'd be free from his torture.  But I didn't think the police officer would believe me.  My own mother didn't believe me when I told her about the abuse when it started a year or two earlier.  I just sat there crying while I watched the police car drive down the street and felt so alone, so helpless, so resigned to my situation.  Sometimes I've wondered if the counselor was a bit disappointed that there wasn't more to it.  But the acknowledgement of how traumatic that experience had been was the first step for me to deal with the panic attacks.  It was suddenly clear that the panic attacks were triggered when I was physically put in a similar position to how I had been when my brother tried to suffocate me.  My counselor taught me how to calm myself down when I panicked.  It basically involved repeatedly reminding myself that I was no longer a child, I was a woman.  I was with the man I loved, not my hated brother and I was safe.  This simple solution worked and getting intimate with my husband hasn't triggered panic attacks since then but it doesn't really help keep the nightmares away.

Some years ago, I started reading more about sexual abuse and how to prevent it.  When I happened upon a website that included a listing of all the different kinds of sexual abuse, I felt amazingly vindicated when I read about voyeurism.  What I had been through had a name and it was considered sexual abuse.  Yes, my counselor from years ago had confirmed that I had been sexually abused but somehow because what I had experienced had not been as severe as it could have been it still felt like almost abused.  I would even tell myself that I was lucky it had not been worse; I could have been molested; I could have been raped.  However, pointing out how fortunate I had been that the abuse had not been worse only left me feeling guilty for continuing to struggle with nightmares, anxiety and other symptoms.

The site that I had happened upon was Darkness 2 Light (d2l.org) and it had so much information that I found helpful.  There was an explanation how there were a number of different factors that contributed to how traumatic sexual abuse was to a particular child.  I had been focused on the fact that I had not been molested and didn't understand why I couldn't just "get over it".  I came to understand that there are a number of factors that play into the amount of trauma experienced.  I had been raised in a very conservative Mormon home where viewing pornography was just as bad as fornication itself and the only thing worse than fornication was murder.  I was essentially my brother's pornography and that made me just as filthy.  It didn't matter that he was watching me without my consent and inspite of my varied attempts to keep him from seeing me.  When I went to my mother about what my brother was doing, she told me of ways I could keep my brother from seeing into my room but didn't do anything to my brother.  I was 10 and it was very clear that it was my responsibility to keep my 15 year-old brother away from me. Over the next 8 years with a 2 year reprieve while my brother served a mission for the Mormon church, I lived constantly looking over my shoulder, learning to dress without showing any skin, checking my walls for new peep holes, covering the ones I'd already found, fixing torn curtains, etc.  In that time, I also heard my dad make statements that it would be better for me to lose my life than give up my virtue (I attempted suicide twice) and that he didn't understand how a woman could get raped when she could run faster with her dress up than a man could run with his pants down (it was supposed to be a joke).  There was also the physical abuse.  My brother was so angry all the time.  It was like he blamed me as well for his inability to control his sexual desires and somehow torturing me made him feel better.  He was smart about it though and made sure that the things he did wouldn't leave a mark.  There was one time when he lost his temper and kicked me hard enough that I could barely walk.  Even then my parents didn't even ask what was wrong with my leg even though my friends at school did.  Maybe they knew and didn't want to have to deal with it.  I certainly wasn't going to say anything.  I knew that they wouldn't do anything about it and the next time I was alone with my brother I'd get it even worse.  Looking at what I went through in it's totality there is no other word for it... it was abuse.  It doesn't matter that others have been abused more or that I was not actually molested.  These were horrible experiences and I have every right to call it what it is... abuse; not almost abuse.

Recently, I read the following blog post on the Not Rape Epidemic and found the experiences described eerily familiar.  Although my brother never came out and threatened to rape me, it was very clear that he had the ability to do it.  Reading this article made me think about how many times I have thought I was lucky that the abuse wasn't worse and prompted me to write about how I have lived with almost abused and how I have felt guilty about being so screwed up by these events when they may seem as "not that bad" considering what others have gone through.  http://www.thegreatfitnessexperiment.com/2009/01/not-rape-epidemic.html

Here's the thing... while I'm grateful that my experiences were not worse than they were, I'm not lucky.  I was incredibly unlucky to have been born into a family that was more concerned about appearances than the well being of the children in the family.  I was unlucky to have two brothers who felt that they had a right to use my body for their own pleasures.  I am unlucky to live in a society where abuse in all levels of severity is so prevalent.  As the author of the Not Rape Epidemic article wonders how many women have not been raped, I wonder how many have almost been abused.

Exit - No Reentry

I've left the Mormon church for good this time...Yes, I've left before but not with any real conviction to stay out.  The first time was in college and I stopped going to church because I wanted to sin (the number one reason why other Mormons think you would leave the Mormon church).  Actually, I was sinning, enjoying it and wanted to continue sinning.  After college, I moved across the country to live with my boyfriend and enjoyed living in sin for about 5 years.  It wasn't exactly easy because I did feel a bit guilty about sinning.  But just a bit.  I had come to the realization while I was in college that I really didn't know for sure if the Mormon church was true or not which is really important if you are Mormon.  Since I didn't have that testimony, keeping the other rules didn't really seem as important.  What really bothered me more was that I was lying about my life to my entire family.  That's right, they did not know I was living in sin.  They probably could have figured it out but I don't think they wanted to know the truth so they just didn't bother to look.  For some reason, I value my own honesty very highly and I really didn't like being dishonest.  Perhaps because I've had to keep dirty little secrets all my life and I hate it.  So, I didn't go so far as telling my parents that I was living in sin but I did tell them I wasn't going to church.  Based on their very poor reaction to that revelation they will not ever get the rest of the story.

My love and I finally got married (it was our own choice) and with the stigma of sin removed, there wasn't really any reason for us to not attend church which would mean so much to our families.  We'd really caught some flack for not getting married in the Mormon temple so going back to church was one way to appease the parents.  For a while, it was OK because we'd moved again to where the rumours of our past sins did not follow us and found a very friendly congregation.  We liked it so much that we actually looked for a house to buy that would keep us within the boundaries so that we could keep attending that congregation.

Unfortunately, about every six years or so in Mormon congregations the leadership changes.  Since all Mormon leadership are lay ministers it's kind of hit or miss whether or not you get a good set.  The next set was not as good and we quickly started to see the "personality" of the congregation change.  Because of our lack of a temple marriage, we became the charitable cause for people to try and get us to the temple.  We also didn't have children and soon I was asked to work with the nursery aged children (as if that would convince me to have children).  Then my husband got laid off and choose not to go back to work for awhile.  He didn't have to, I was making enough.  However, he was constantly pestered with people trying to find him a job.  He stopped going to church.  I know that none of this sounds really bad, it's almost something that you had to experience to know how demeaning it was.  No one bothered to ask how you were doing.  They all assumed you must be so unhappy because your life wasn't what it was supposed to be in their eyes.  We constantly felt looked down upon.

Also, during this time the lessons that were being taught in church seemed to be changing.  Instead, of lessons that were well thought out and inspired one to do better with their lives using teachings from Jesus and other scriptures, they were propaganda-style recitations of why everyone should go to the temple and avoid sin.  Then the politics came in.  It felt like we were being told in church who we should vote for.  One person even said over the pulpit that we should all vote the same way that the president of the church votes and he's a registered Republican.  Most of the other comments were only slightly more veiled.  Like, the church does not support abortion so you shouldn't vote for anyone who isn't pro-life.  The Mormon church's support of banning gay marriage in California was another big problem for me.  I wanted to just scream "Separation of Church and State is there for a reason!"  Then there was the invasion of Iraq, I kind of understood Afghanistan but there really was not a good reason for Iraq and it really bothered me that Mormons were so supportive of the invasion of Iraq.  It felt like a betrayal to Christian ideals to be so damned blood thirsty.  Besides the scriptures in their own Book of Mormon that seemed to caution against this war...of course, everyone else interpreted those scriptures differently.

This was about the time that I started this blog because I needed a way to vent and I really didn't have anyone in my real life who would understand.  Either they were fully Mormon and wouldn't understand my doubts and problems with the church or they were never Mormon and couldn't understand why this religion had such a hold on me.  I also started reading about some of Mormon history focusing on topics to support my feminist leanings.  I was looking for anything that would reassure me that women had hope that eventually they would be treated better than they were currently in the church.  Instead of finding hope, I just found even more abusive and demeaning treatment of women in the church's history and I stopped looking.  Besides, life was getting better for me at work and at home and who wants to spend time obsessing about something depressing when you can be enjoying life.

So, with the birth of my first child I had another excellent excuse to stop going to church... It was a difficult pregnancy, I had an autoimmune disease and I was just too blasted tired for church! Looking back on it now, I'm surprised that I actually spent 9 years back in the church.  At the time, I never really felt fully part of the church.  Always a bit outside by asking the controversial questions and calling male leaders on sexists behaviors.  It just didn't seem like that long until I did the math and then I thought "No wonder I'm tired,  fighting against that culture for 9 years is exhausting!"

However, because I didn't leave at that time thinking I'd had enough but instead just thinking that I need some time to adjust to my new normal, I went back.  Again, we'd moved and I had the hope that this new congregation wouldn't have the same issues as the old (re: politics, sexism, etc.).  I couldn't bring myself to attend all the meetings so I just went to the nursery with my son.  Pretty soon, they asked me to teach in the nursery and I thought "why not" if I was going to be there anyway.  They had a new nursery manual but after my previous experience of teaching in the nursery I really only needed to know the title of the lesson to be able to deliver it.  These were 3-year-olds after all.  However, some of the lessons had changed and I was appalled to see lessons about how God loves us replaced with lessons that said God loves us when we go to the temple or pay our tithing or some other such thing.  They were basically teaching these kids that God's love is conditional.  The more lessons I saw like this really troubled me.  Probably the kicker was Mitt Romney as presidential candidate and seeing everyone go all goo-goo eyed over him.  Nevermind whether or not he was a good candidate he was Mormon and Republican.  I first came to accept that all the things that I didn't like about church were things that were inherently ingrained in the church.  I had accepted them as a child because I didn't know any better.  That first congregation which started off as a good experience was likely just an extended "honeymoon" because we liked the people and appreciated having a ready-made community (makes moving easier).  So, we overlooked the things we didn't like because there were things we did like.  Now, the curtain had been pulled back and I couldn't pretend anymore that the problems were going to go away.  The church leadership certainly showed no signs of reform or even a desire to acknowledge any problem.  I also realized that if I continued to take my son to church I was inadvertently telling him that this Mormon culture is OK.  My attendance was a form of acceptance.  I was not OK with my son learning to be a misogynist and I was not willing to let him believe that he had to do all these ridiculous things to be loved by God... or by me.  Soon I was going to church less and less and finally told the church leadership they'd have to find someone else to teach the nursery.  It was kind of anti-climatic, I just disappeared.

About the same time, another family member went public about his disbelief in the Mormon church.  In his case, he'd studied the history of the church and had shown Joseph Smith to be a fraud.  As he shared with me what he learned, I felt a great sense of relief.  I was leaving the church because it didn't feel right but not because I knew that it wasn't true.  I'd accepted the possibility that if I was wrong and the church was true that I'd rather live true to my beliefs than live miserably trying to make it work.  I would accept the consequences even it that meant going to hell.  Besides, I figured real hell couldn't be as bad as the heaven that Joseph Smith described.  It was a relief to have tangible evidence that the whole Mormon church was nothing but a cooked up scheme by Joseph Smith and his cohorts.  Now, I could essentially throw out anything I'd been taught in that miserable church and start over from a more loving and accepting place.  Yes, I'm quite pissed off about how much I got screwed up by this church.  Nearly half of my life spent feeling guilty about things that were just made up stories.

I'm still sorting through my feelings about the Mormon church and my decision to leave it and I debate on how much I want to reveal to family and friends.  On one hand, I don't really want them getting nosy about my life which they would if they knew.  I'd need "saving" or something.  I tend to lean to "live and let live" and expect the same from others but the chances of getting that from my overly controlling family is slim to none.  On the other hand, I don't like seeing my loved ones get screwed and see younger generations get exposed to the same hurtful teachings that screwed with my head.  I'd really like to stand up for what I believe is right but I question how effective it would be and if the personal ramifications would be too great.  As you can see, I may have exited but now the real journey begins.

What is wrong with us?

We want it to be illegal for some people to express their love for each other by making a commitment in marriage but we want to ensure that guns whose primary purpose is that of violence against humans and animals remain legal.

What do I believe?

It's a question that I'm asking myself a lot lately and I don't know how to answer it.  I've spent the last 20 years as an on-again-off-again Mormon... mostly because I was raised Mormon.  I don't think I would have joined if I hadn't been born into the church.  Over the last few months, I returned because I wanted my son to understand the religion that is such a huge part of his families lives.  Except it's not a huge part of our life and as I spend time going to church, associating with other Mormons and reading liberal Mormon blogs, I am reminded of all the reasons I wouldn't join the church if I weren't already Mormon.  Now, I'm asking myself "What am I doing to my son?"  Teaching him things that I don't really believe myself.  I feel like a huge hypocrite.  The thing is I really want to believe so much of what is taught at church... not just in the Mormon church but in any religion.  I want to believe there is life after death because I am so afraid of losing my family and never seeing them again.  I want to believe that I can pray for them each and every day and know that they will be kept safe.  The problem is there are far too many examples of families who did pray and loved ones were still lost.  I know the whole line that God's answer to a prayer is no and He has a plan that we don't see.  I want a guarantee.  I want to know that if I do certain things that my family will be protected... but instead I know that it doesn't work that way.

Then I ask myself "if my religion can't do for me the one thing I want it to do more than anything else, what is it good for?"  I'm still looking for that answer.  Thinking about things that have brought me comfort and peace in my life and how they relate or don't relate to religion.  I'm wondering now what to do next, where do I go from here.  I know that I can't sell myself out just to bury fears in an ignorant belief that if I follow a religion to the letter it will guarantee that my family will be with me for eternity.  The reality is that would probably split my family apart far sooner.  I would become bitter and miserable putting up with doctrine that minimized me as a woman and laid guilt on me for doing the things that I'm good at.  Then there is the description of heaven which sounds more like hell to me with righteous men rewarded for their good deeds with multiple wives.  The price for this eternal family as offered by the Mormons is too high for me.  But where do I go to get the more reasonable and loving religion that I seek.  I know there are so many to chose from and on occasion I visit some different churches.  I feel a bit like P.J. FunnyBunny in the book "It's not easy being a Bunny".  No one knows a Mormon like another Mormon... even a failed Mormon.

Fear Itself

I didn't consciously recognize that today was the one month anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings until I heard that it was on the way home from work this evening.  However, subconsciously or instinctually, I must have known it this morning.  It started off as any other day with my pushing my son to wake up, eat his breakfast and get ready for school.  We were running late as usual.  Finally, in the car and on our way.  It didn't even feel different when I took him into his classroom and gave him a hug and a kiss as I explained once again that Mommy can't stay Mommy has to go to work. 

As I walked out of the classroom, I paused and intentionally pushed the door closed... more secure than just walking off as it closed on it's own.  That's when my stomach started churning and as I walked to my car I was growing more and more uncertain about leaving my son at school this morning.  But, I had a meeting that I was going to be late for.  I kept walking.  Driving away from the school the knot in my stomach pulled at me to go back, get my son.  I resisted, this isn't logical.  I don't have any real reason to be concerned.  What about my mother who claimed on so many occasions to receive inspiration to take certain actions which lead to ensuring the safety of one family member or another.  Could this be such an inspiration?  I don't know, I was never very good at sorting out what was my own crazy thoughts and what was actually "inspiration".  I resolved to call my husband as soon as I could and tell him to go pick up my son.  I would have called him on the way to work but I'm not good a dialing numbers while I drive.

So, I get to work, postponed that meeting which I was already late for and called my husband.  I didn't immediately tell him to go and get my son.  I explained how I was feeling and how scared and nervous I was about leaving our son at school today.  My husband gave me all the rational explanations about why I shouldn't worry.  The chances of another Sandy Hook happening are so small.  We chose a good school in a good area of town.  It's a small school not very well known... etc.  I explained that I'd already gone through that and what I was feeling was not rational it was completely and utterly an irrational fear.

Talking about it with my husband calmed me down and helped me get back to my day and once I got busy with meetings and other work items, the fear I had experienced was temporarily forgotten.  Then on my way home as I listened to the news and the commentary about this being the one-month anniversary, I realized that what I had experienced was a mini-panic attack.  I've had them before, years ago when I was still coming to terms and recovering from the abuse I'd suffered at the hands of my brother.  I'm not sure why I am affected so much by the Sandy Hook incident.  I didn't even remotely know anyone who was killed on that day.  Perhaps it is affecting me because I know what it is like to have a loaded gun pointed at me with the threat of imminent death.  The thought that plaques me is the fear those children had to endure on that day when a place where they were supposed to be safe was attacked.  I keep thinking that the fear must have been terrible and I cry thinking about those moments before they were released to God.

The parents of the children lost at Sandy Hook are asking that this be a turning point at which this country gets serious about addressing the violence.  I very much agree with this and that there is not a single approach that will solve the problem.  There are many issues which need to be addressed.  For me, because of my experiences I feel strongly that everyone in this country needs to have more respect for guns.  They are not toys to be casually shared with our children (pictures of your toddler holding a gun are not cute).  They are not the ultimate protective device (having one does not make you Clint Eastwood).  The threat of you having one is not going to magically ward of criminals (they have one too so it doesn't make you special).  This is not something that a law can change (though better laws are needed), this is a change of attitude which is much more difficult to change.  I pray that we may find a way to change it otherwise we will have good reason to fear; fear itself.

Tired of the NRA Propoganda

So, I have started making my way to creating a post on this blog several times now but I keep getting distracted.  Primarily, I'm getting distracted by the posts on the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog.  What they have to say is far more interesting than the slop that is on Facebook.  I really don't know why I bother except that my family is on Facebook and each day I check their posts just hoping for some morsel about how their lives are really going.  I have been very much disappointed lately.  Which brings me to the one very simple thing that I want to express...

I find it very offensive that since the Sandy Brook Elementary shootings there are more posts on Facebook about the fear of losing our right to bear arms then about the lives lost in that incident.  Really!  What is more important here?  I really don't mind people having guns (with in reason!) but my reaction to this onslaught of fear mongering regarding gun control can be compared to an exhasperated parent whose child is throwing a fit yet again.  "Just take them all away!  You can't play with them nicely, then you can't have them at all"

So much of this comes from my own family members.  For the most part my family members are good people.  So, what is this world coming to when the good people think more violence (i.e. teachers carrying guns in school) is the solution for the violence we are dealing with.

I've already ruffled a number of feathers over this topic and I'm trying really hard not to get in another argument but it's really, really hard when I see some of these posts that to me are so obviously propoganda from the NRA.  I am a proponent of the 2nd amendment within reason but raffles to give away automatic rifles?  You know the ones that look like a gun a soldier should be carrying.  I think we've gone to the extreme people!