Content note: This post contains discussion of violence, government abuse of power, and intense emotional responses to current events. This is not a polished political essay; it is grief, anger, and fear written in real time. Please take care of yourself while reading.

Why aren’t you madder? Or maybe you are. Maybe you’re in a place where the anger feels tangible and unmanageable. Where your body has started reacting to the grief instead of the anger.

Why are we letting this happen?

I didn’t start this post to teach about the Constitution or its amendments. I started it because I am terrified, I am irate, I am so incredibly sad. I have used this blog as a place where I let those feelings out. And that is what I intended this one to be. It will still be mostly that, but there will also be some learning moments. Probably, maybe, depends on how angry I get while writing.

All those who have been fighting for your Second Amendment rights? Where are you? That right exists SPECIFICALLY to fight what is happening in our government at this moment. The Second Amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The people who worked to make the United States a country knew, from experience, that the government can not always be trusted, and that the countrymen might need to rise up one day and take their country back.

That went quickly into the teaching realm, but it isn’t where my mind needs to be right now. I need to say some things, get them out of my head, so that I can move on to DOING instead of just complaining.

Even if you are incapable of connecting the dots to our past, for whatever reason, you should be able to see how wrong things are right now.

We are watching government-sanctioned murder, assault, abduction, and kidnapping happen every single fucking day. And too many of us are standing around not doing anything. But worse than that are the people who are advocating for it, the ones praising the murderers, the ones saying vile shit like “…deserve to be shot and put out of their misery.”

I know some people think I only care because it was a white woman, followed by a white man. Those people are wrong. I’ve been devastated, angry, and doing something about it since before this man was elected, and every chance I’ve had since. However, it is getting more coverage because they were white. Why? Not because they matter more than the POC that came before them, but because we have let this get so far that they are finally killing their own. We haven’t been loud enough, angry enough, visible, or physical enough.

What about the children who are being kidnapped? Are you paying attention to them? The four-year-old was used as bait for his parents. The kid who was chased down the street. The two-year-old who was “detained.” You want to blatantly ignore the murder happening on our streets. The murder that is being perpetrated by “federal agents?” That is a choice, one I don’t agree with, but it is a choice. But what about the kids? ICE is supposedly out there to “protect” us from the “dangerous criminals.” Can you please tell me what the fuck a two-year-old did that made him a criminal I need to be protected from?

How about the concentration camps being set up all over our country, and foreign ones? Sorry, they aren’t concentration camps, they are detention centers – at least that is what they tell us. That it is all on the up and up. People aren’t going in and never coming out. Why would you think that? Oh, and they are definitely being given their day in court and the ability to see their lawyers. It is all bullshit. Every word out of their mouths is a blatant lie that we have caught them in, but we (society, not you or me specifically) still let them run their mouths and pretend we believe the shit they spew. We sit and pretend like we couldn’t possibly become the next victims of today’s Hitler. But we are.

How many times have you heard someone ask, “How could they just sit back and let that happen to them?” Well, that is exactly what is happening now. The only difference is that we had a warning. We had history to teach us. We have social media to share our experiences. Yet, history is repeating itself. We are sitting back and letting the government, or the person in charge of it, turn us against each other, round up all the “undesirables,” and ship them to who knows where.

If you think that we’re just going to get through his term in office and then everything will go back to normal, think again. He made it clear he has no intention of giving up the office. He has made himself king, and unless nature does its thing and takes him out, he isn’t going anywhere. Some of us knew this and tried to warn those who didn’t. Death is the only way out of this.

Before moving on, I will point out that the shit that is going down on our streets is the type of thing our country has stepped in to stop in other countries. Let that sink in. We have sent our troops to other countries because their leaders were sanctioning the killing of people who didn’t look like, act like, worship like, or agree with them. We have taken out leaders of foreign countries for less than what is happening on our streets, while too many turn a blind eye to it. Our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and children have gone to war and DIED to bring freedom to others.

The Second Amendment

I will say again that the Second Amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Many of the people in this country remember duck and cover drills from their school days. Like hiding under the desk would prevent the fallout of a nuclear bomb. I’m too young to have done this, but my dad and his brothers are not. My dad died almost a year ago, so I can’t ask him for more than the few stories he told me. I have asked my uncles for some stories or insight from that time, and I will share them if they get back to me before I post this.

I was in 11th grade in Boulder, CO, when the Columbine school shooting happened. We didn’t have social media back then. We relied on the news, which wasn’t available on our phones, if we even had them. I was walking home, passing a friend’s place, when she called me over to ask me if I knew what happened. She had been home for a while and had seen the breaking news. We sat together and watched it unfold. We learned of the dead, of the ones that tried to stop it, of the heartbreak and horror. We cried a lot.

At the time, I attended a small high school. Around 200 students in the entire school. The school was on the campus of a trade school, but even adding those students only brought the total on campus to about 400, maybe. We had an SRO before that, but he visited the school every once in a while. He wasn’t stationed there. Wednesday, April 21st, went just like any other day. Except we had several officers on campus, and the students were much quieter, subdued.

Columbine was supposed to be a one-off. Some crazy fucking tragedy that wouldn’t happen again. We were terrified for a while, but started a new normal that came with more vigilance, and a reminder that life can be short. Then, in May of the same year, there was another school shooting. But, hey, no one died, and there were only six injuries, so no biggie, right? Wrong, but that isn’t how it was seen. Then there were two more, one in November, one in December. Maybe we should do something about this?

I wish that were it, don’t you? That all it took to fix what was becoming a serious problem was six deaths and 35 injuries? Unfortunately, the problem grew instead. The shootings happened more often, and they ranged from elementary schools to high schools, and eventually moved on to include colleges. No one is safe. 2000 saw six shootings with no injuries or deaths. That lulled us into a sense of security.

• 1999
  • Four school shootings
    • Deaths: 6
    • Injuries: 35
• 2000
  • Six school shootings
    • Deaths: 0
    • Injuries: 0
• 2001
  • Nine school shootings
    • Deaths: 2
    • Injuries: 21
• 2002
  • Four school shootings
    • Deaths: 0
    • Injuries: 2
• 2003
  • Eight school shootings
    • Deaths: 4
    • Injuries: 5
• 2004
  • Two school shootings
    • Deaths: 1
    • Injuries: 1
• 2005
  • Three school shootings
    • Deaths: 9
    • Injuries: 7
• 2006
  • Eight school shootings
    • Deaths: 7
    • Injuries: 7
• 2007
  • Five school shootings
    • Deaths: 32
    • Injuries: 40
• 2008
  • Two school shootings
    • Deaths: 5
    • Injuries: 16
• 2009
  • One school shooting
    • Deaths: 0
    • Injuries: 0
• 2010
  • Seven school shootings
    • Deaths: 4
    • Injuries: 3

I can’t keep listing them. I can’t. My mental health is already so incredibly fucked. I feel like I made my point. These are JUST the school shootings for 11 years. They do not include the other mass shootings that were/are happening in the country at the same time. I don’t have the bandwidth to go into that at this time.

My kids have never known school without active shooter drills. They have never lived in a world where a large portion of the country didn’t care more about their guns than they did about the kids.

I know that is a vague response and doesn’t cover all the nuances of the argument from either side of it. Consider, for a moment, though, how it feels to be those kids, constantly worried that today could be the day they die. And that, at least in their minds, all that needs to be done is to take guns away from those who aren’t protecting our country at war.

I’ve ridden the line between take them all and stricter gun laws for 25 years. Part of that is the fear from my children, and for all the other children out there. Another part is knowing that the reason the Second Amendment exists is so that if we, the people, realize that the government is no longer doing its job for the people. Tyranny was a real fear for these people because they lived it, and they fought to escape it. They knew that someday, the people of their newly formed country may find themselves in the same position and need to be able to do something about it.

Never, in my lifetime, has the Second Amendment meant as much as it does now. So many people have fought for their right to their guns over anything else. Well, here it is. The reason that the amendment exists. And we’re still fighting about stupid shit instead of rising up.

For S&Gs – Some other amendments that are being ignored or misused.

The right of people to peacefully assemble. And free speech. I mean, really, is any part of this being upheld right now? There is censorship of our media, of our books, of the press, and certainly of our RIGHT to peaceably assemble.

We have untrained, or at least very under-trained, “federal agents” breaking down doors, through windows, dragging people from their homes and vehicles without any warrants. We have these same “agents” murdering, assaulting, abducting, and kidnapping whoever they feel like. Including, but definitely not limited to, Native Americans. You know, the people we stole this country’s land from? Yeah, them. Like they are somehow “illegal” and “criminals”. Seems like that would be an illegal search and seizure, which is against Amendment 4.

THIS! None of these people ICE is taking are being given their rights to any of this. AND that is if you ignore that the “crimes” the majority of them have committed (being in the United States undocumented) is not a crime, it is a civil violation.

I mean. Excessive bail implies that the people being sent to the concentration camps are being given the option of bail. Also, since the “people in charge” keep denying anyone access to the insides of these camps, I’m going to say it’s a safe assumption that cruel and unusual punishment is definitely happening. We’ve had reports of not being fed, of flooding, of not being given health care, of torturous conditions. I feel like that all falls under breaking this particular amendment.

Nothing in this Constitution or the amendments thereof may be used to deny people their other rights, like the right to an attorney.

There are more, so many more. I’ve been writing for a few hours now. I’ve managed to stop the tears and the rage for a while. I have to do some other things, like pick up the kiddos. And. I would really like to post this before I go.

So I’m going to wrap this up by saying this: If you aren’t mad, you’re not paying attention. Good luck out there, stay as safe as you can while standing up and doing something, and FUCK ICE.

TL;DR: I’m angry, grieving, and terrified watching history repeat itself in real time. Our constitutional rights are being ignored, people are being harmed, and silence is helping it happen. If you aren’t paying attention yet, it’s time.

Just about to post when I was given just a little insight from a couple of my uncles about duck & cover drills. I’m just going to screenshot the conversation, edit out names, and post the pictures for y’all to see.