Don't Panic! Don't Panic! (But I can't help but panic...)

If you ever watched the classic British BBC comedy, ‘Dad’s Army’, you will remember Cpl Jones running around shouting ‘Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic’ every time there was an air raid siren, or any other problem for that matter, being the very definition of panic.

Outwardly, these last few months I have not been any different to usual, but inwardly, I have been very much like Jones of the Home Guard.  The world is changing, and right now, it is becoming an increasingly scary place, not for me as a person, but for me as a parent.

Screw Afghanistan, Iran, Libya and the like (though North Korea scares the crap out of me sometimes for sure), my biggest fear is the good old US of A.

Now I was born and bred in the UK, and I now live in Canada, so why would I be bothered about the USA?  They are our neighbours and friends, right?  Well, yes, they are…. And that is why I am scared….

I would love to take my kids on vacation to the USA, but right now, as a UK citizen, living in Canada, I am worried about getting through border control either way without a barrage of questions, delays and tears (some from the kids, but mainly from me).

But if I get over the border, what then?  My chances of dying increase simply by stepping foot into the United States.  Why?  GUNS!!!

This last year has seen a run of shooting incidents, a mall, a movie theatre, and most terrible, an elementary school.  When I heard about the shootings at the movie theatre and the mall, I was horrified.  So many innocent lives taken from people just going about their daily business just didn’t seem possible, but at the same time a thought goes through your head, “well that is the US for you, free access to guns and a shoot now, talk later mentality”.  There was a certain level of desensitisation, because this has happened before, in other malls, in colleges, in high schools.

But then, just a few days before Christmas, came Sandy Hook….. Elementary school kids, aged 6 and 7, the same age as my eldest girl, shot down in class by a young man who had serious mental health issues, but whose mother had been a survivalist, owning several guns, which she kept at home, where he lived with her.  She died that day, so did her son, all victims in their own ways of a society that has become accepting of gun crime almost as the norm.  This was a quiet town, a town with a friendly neighbourhood, low crime.  This wasn’t big city, gang crime.

It seemed like people all over the USA woke up that day, started to speak up, started to say that enough was enough, and the President, Barack Obama was one of those speaking out.  He was speaking, I believe, more as a father of young girls, than as the President.  He was imagining, as I and countless other parents were, “what if that had been my children”…

Changes were in the air, a new, safer USA was seen in the near future, but here we are, 3 months later, and unbelievably, it seems that the talking is quietening down.  The only people still talking loudly seem to be the NRA.  For those who have been living in a cave or an ashram somewhere, the NRA is the ‘National Rifle Association’, an organisation for those who love all things gun related.  They believe that every American should uphold their “right to bear arms” as the Constitution says.

So why did it take me three months to comment?  Well, Sandy Hook rocked me to my core.  For days I cried at news reports, at Facebook posts, at blog posts, but kept quiet.  I wanted to scream, and I did inwardly.  I cried when I looked at my daughter and her school friends and saw those beautiful children that had been ripped from their families.  I cried when my children opened their gifts on Christmas Day, and thought of those gifts in Sandy Hook that were sitting unopened, the parents who would be trying to hold it together for the siblings of the kids they had lost.  I cried at night when I couldn’t sleep, thinking of the empty beds in those houses, the toys discarded on the floors of those rooms by children rushing out to school that morning.

Why did I comment today? Several things have sparked this in my head again this weekend.  Yesterday, as I sat playing a board game with my eldest girl and my youngest was napping, I had the TV on in the background for a political debate by the contenders for the leadership of the Liberal Party here in Canada.  As I am soon applying for citizenship, I am trying to become more politically aware.  We were enjoying our game and hadn’t noticed the debate end and the news begin.  I looked up from the game while shuffling the cards and saw a news story about a young woman who had been mugged by a boy last week.  The boy appeared to be about 15 years old, and was with another younger boy that she assumed was his brother.  The boy had pulled out what she believed to be a fake gun.  The boy shot at her, grazing her head with a bullet, and shot and killed her young child, a toddler, not much younger than my baby girl.

The shock of this story, the baby being shot, the ‘gunman’ and his accomplice being only children themselves left me breathless, crying, desperate. My daughter broke me from the spell.  She too had looked up and seen my face, looked to the TV, and while the story itself was done, the ticker still showed the details.  She’s a good reader…

She took the remote and said “I think we need to turn this off now”.  She held me close as I cried, asked why I was so sad for people I didn’t know.  I told her that I was sad because the baby had been killed and it made me fear losing one of my own children.  I told her that I was sad because the people who did it were only children themselves.  I told her I was sad because the world was a scary place and I worried for them and their future.

On my way to work today, another spark lit the fire;  A news report on the radio about the NRA dropping flyers in Sandy Hook homes, encouraging people to fight for their right to bear arms.  Dear God, these people just don’t get it do they!!  Really, believe it if you must, but don’t drop flyers in the town which is still in deep grief for their lost children!!

And then I got into work, and there was the last thing to fire it up.  A blog post from one of the ‘crafty moms’ I follow.  You know the ones.  Cute pictures of kids and clothes they have made for them, quilts, recipes etc.  And today was another piece about sewing.  How can sewing get you angry about guns?  Well, today’s piece was “How to make a gun holster for the inside of your safe”.

I’m not talking about a little holster for a handgun here.  I’m talking about a full on piece of organisational kit, covering the entire door of a gun safe.  The safe in question was pictured, a few hand guns, and several rifles, at least one of them high powered, along with the assorted ammunition required to use them.  Well, at least they have a safe for them you may say. 

My argument would be, why should anyone NEED a gun safe that big, containing that many guns, in their bedroom closet (the picture showed it surrounded by hangers of clothing).  If you are a member of a gun club, can you not keep your guns there?  And why does anyone NEED that many guns?

She went through the details of the how to, with pictures, featuring her handy helper, her baby boy, around the same age as the youngster shot and killed last week.  He was sitting in pictures with the fabric laid out, playing with the scraps etc.  Now usually, my biggest worry is that he may stick himself with some of the numerous pins in the fabric, but then there were pictures of the same fabric, in the same place, pinned in the same way, WITH THE GUNS AND CLIPS IN PLACE!!!!  He wasn’t in those pictures, but when you see them in context it is pretty much a reasonable assumption that he was still in the location where she was working.

Now, I understand, you need to see that they fit, but my first thought is “What the f*** Lady!!”

Guns and the US have a long history.  The right to bear arms was important when the Constitution was written.  You needed to be able to defend yourself against invasion by humans or animals in rural and wild regions of a new land.  You had to be ready to bear arms as part of a militia in case of uprising.  They did not, I am sure, envisage the NRA and its requirement 200 years later for people to be allowed to have their own private arsenals of weapons in their homes capable of taking down a small army (or a class of Elementary School children).

I think what concerned me most about that blog post was the first sentence “First off, if you are not a lover of guns, I don't need to hear it... just skip ahead onto the next post or the next blog. Okay? Thanks!”

And that, in a nut shell, is the biggest issue with America and Guns.  Those who see the issue, see the problem and want to make changes are willing to talk about it; are willing to discuss the subject; are willing to compromise to some degree; are willing to listen to the others point of view even when they do not understand it.  But those who are supporters of gun carrying just “don't need to hear it”.  They don’t want to hear what might happen.  They don’t want to hear that maybe next week it will be their baby that they posted pictures of that is killed in the street by a kid with a gun.  They don’t want to hear that maybe in ten or fifteen years, their kid is the one with their face all over the news for having taken the guns from their parents closet gun safe, and shot random people in a mall or a theatre, or shot up a lunch room full of kids at their high school, or walked to the elementary school down the street and taken the lives of a class of innocents because he believed the world was collapsing and he was saving them.

They don’t want to hear it…. Because it might just be true….. Because they might just be wrong….