More bloodshed in France

July 14, 2016.

Location: Nice, France. Bastille Day (a National Holiday) celebration

A man drives a truck (lorry) through the crowd, mowing down civilians. 84 deaths reported so far, with over a hundred injured. A few civilians made efforts to stop the truck, including one cyclist who was run over. The attacker was shot and killed by police.

I feel as if the more resigned, the more desensitized we become to violence, the less we feel the need to help. Empathy deigns us, normally kind and loving people, frozen in place. The more we do not feel in control and the more we feel helpless, the more we defend ourselves by not caring.

We should we shocked, angry, scared, confused, hurt. These are people like us with families, friends, communities, dreams and aspirations. They garden, go to the movies, tell their children bedtime stories. Those who commit mass murder have no such concept of humanity and no respect for human lives.

We cannot stoop so low as to feel the same.

At the same time, emotions can make us numb. We must feel, but not too much as to overwhelm us. Problems are more overwhelming if you take them all in at once, and all seems lost.

Yes, all lives matter. But we don't act like it.

“All lives matter”. It’s a nice thing to say, but it misses the point. Some lives, according to policies, people in power and other citizens, don’t matter as much. They are more easily wasted and forgotten. Compared to your race, another race is being discriminated against and yours isn’t- so we HAVE to make statements like “Black lives matter” to get this point across- black lives matter but we aren’t acting like they do. 

Everyone faces discrimination of some kind at some time in their lives, but some will face more than others.

Discrimination is linked with higher rates of mental illness and disease, and poverty. PTSD is linked with racial discrimination. 

Discriminators are not limited by social class or financial class.

You may walk the streets safe, but others avert their gaze so as not to look “menacing”. You may drive carefully around the cops, but others are more likely to be pulled over or stopped on the streets by police if they are not even breaking the law. Some are afraid of cops. No one should be afraid of authority. That is not leadership or protection, but tyranny.

You are not facing the problems they are. You have your own unique struggles, but yours may also be common to them, plus all of this crap, all for the stupid pigments in their skin.

Black lives matter is a fight for equality, equality to *you*. Equality to all other citizens. The same goes with feminism fighting for equality for women- it is not about being better, nor about putting others beneath you, but about creating equality where there are currently discrepancies.

You want the freedom to walk the streets, or in a crowded building or elevator, feeling safe? You have it. Others don’t. That's a very basic freedom being violated, and that's a problem. 

Police brutality and brutality to police- what's going on here?

I would like to talk about the recent murders of black men, and the horrifying retaliation by one man at an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest.

This all started with a man named Alton Sterling being held to the ground by a police officer, while another officer shot him in the chest. Police claimed he was "grabbing for his gun", a claim that was found to be false. We didn't understand if anything happened between Sterling being held on the ground and being shot, until a second video emerged showing Sterling completely defenseless on the ground, and the officer shooting him to death multiple times.

In a second shooting in Minnesota, during a traffic stop, a man calmly tells an officer that he is licensed to carry. His girlfriend is shooting a video of the stop, as the officer is shouting and there is a four year old child in the back seat. They have a broken taillight. The officer tells the man to get his license out. As the man reaches for his license, the officer shoots his arm off. The girlfriend remains calm as the officer swears repeatedly and says he shouldn't have reached into his pocket. The girlfriend says calmly, "You told him to get his wallet, sir... Oh he better not be dead" as the four year old says she will protect her mom from the back seat. Here is where the girlfriend breaks down and starts sobbing.

These horror stories follow a trend in this country of police brutality towards civilians. The officers, though sometimes claiming "self-defense", sometimes make a mistake that is filled with regret, as in the case of the Minnesota traffic stop in which there was a four year old in the back seat. But sometimes, as we see in the case of unarmed citizens, a larger problem is at hand. Black Americans are fearing police authority, resorting to a "Yes ma'am, Yes sir" attitude for fear of being unfairly treated and unheard.

Are we doing anything about it?

Yes, in fact, social justice is in the making. A peaceful "Black Lives Matter" protest bears witness to this. Except this protest turned into a bloodbath when a black man shot 5 white officers and harmed 7 other people in cold blood. Civilians were injured- one woman shielded her children from the attacker and was hurt.

People in society take matters into their own hands if they believe that current efforts aren't quick enough. Change is slow and in the meantime, people are hurting. This is why we have countries divided against themselves, communities divided by race and religion.

If you want to change the way things are, speak with your community and present your case to local policy makers. The mayor, governor, sheriff, police. Come with intentions to make peace, and present all of the ways your communities are hurting. Speak about your children, your families. Bring facts and figures, really testimony. And speak to bigger and bigger policymakers and rulemakers if you feel like you are not being heard. Make a voice for yourself and others where there is none. Only then can you be a part of real, lasting change. Only by uniting together can we solve our problems.

In response to Conan O' Brien speaking about about the Orlando shooting

What happened in Orlando, one of the deadliest shootings in US history, is part of a larger trend of fear and anger that has no immediate solutions. But when these tragedies happen again and again, we need to look at the world we live in today and accept that 1.) These things will happen, but 2.) we do not have to make it easier for them to happen, by turning our grief stricken cheeks to cold slaps of ignorance.

Everyone has a right to hunting guns, hand guns, and concealed weapons. This freedom has been caught in a chokehold by Lady Liberty since our country was first established. How comfortable you are with your friends and neighbors buying a shiny new pistol has to do with where you were raised and how comfortable you are around guns. These simple hand guns are not what this article will focus on. What I would like to consider tonight is assault rifles.

I will never, ever believe that civilians should have easy, legal access to semi-automatic weapons. Yet somehow, the Orlando shooter and Sandy Hook shooter had legal access. The Sandy Hook shooter pressured his mother to purchase guns for him. The more recent Orlando shooter legally purchased his weapon of choice a day before breaking it in. You and I probably both know individuals who have the right to a gun, but should NOT (for their own sake and that of others) own an assault rifle. In the society we live in, we are currently not able to differentiate from the psychopath next door and the good Samaritan. We gave a Florida citizen, who had frequent fits of anger and used to beat his (ex) wife, who pledged alliance during the shooting to groups who despise one another (effectively nulling any real allegiance) a semi-automatic weapon.

Take mental illness out of the picture. Mental illness is so common yet so rarely spoken about in a professional manner that it is misunderstood, and often feared. But the masses of people diagnosed with mental disorders are now suffering increased stigma, thanks to a half-hearted attempt to blame mental illness for mass shootings. Let me make this clear to you- mental illness can cloud the mind beyond rational, expected behavior. Those facilitating mass shootings, cold and calculated, should not be treated as mentally ill. They should be treated as criminals, terrorists (domestic and international) and mass murderers.

The answer is not simply this, but this may help: the answer to preventing bomb threats is not to arm innocent civilians with their own bombs (shutter at the thought of your idiot neighbor blowing up his own home by accident)- so why do we continue to supply to the general public a weapon of mass destruction, and encourage sale of such an item to protect ourselves? We make it so easy for the bad guy to get their weapon that before we could draw the same or different guns to protect ourselves, too many lives would be wasted (in seconds!) to justify the equal access. And we can't keep an eye on every person, everywhere, all the time, although new security measures in crowded public places may help protect us. The Orlando shooter was under two prior investigations, both of which were dropped. To start with, after having potential terrorist connections, he should not have been allowed to purchase a semi-automatic weapon. The store he bought them at was not at fault, because they legally supplied a weapon that could kill almost 50 people and wound just as many. But the laws surrounding gun ownership are so loose- if this guy had been put on local police radar, and the shop was allowed to take more time to question the purchase and get legal clearance, maybe this catastrophe might have been prevented. Even so, it's time to look hard at our strange, overly attached relationship to any and all firearms in this country.