I am like a stuck record lately.  I just can’t let it go.

What counts as mental illness? Rage? Hate? Racism? The inability to tell the truth? Thinking you’re right and everyone else is nuts not to agree with you?

The Oregon State Hospital is about a mile from here. Everyone in there is a criminal who was deemed unfit to stand trial because of mental illness. Criminally insane.

Sometimes it takes years to get people declared insane. Do we have that much time regarding gun ownership?

There’s a man a block away who flies a bunch of flags in front of his house. American. Confederate. Make America Great Again. Defend the Second Amendment. He’s usually sitting on his front steps in a wife-beater shirt and camo pants, watching his grass grow and smoking.

You can be a nut job without being mentally ill. Is he dangerous? I sure wouldn’t cross him.

When I was a little girl in Oklahoma, my daddy took me out in the country once to show me how to fire a 22 rifle.  He set up a Post Toasties box s few yards away and told me to aim for the O’s.   As nearly as I can remember, that is the only time I ever touched a firearm.

Boys on my dirt street got BB guns for Christmas.  Then 22’s and shotguns. Girls were given dolls and toy stoves.  It was a different time.

I have always said if someone were hurting one of my children, I wouldn’t need a weapon.  I could kill him with my bare hands.  It never came to that.

I live way out west, but it is not the wild west in the way Oklahoma and Texas are, my home states.

Here in Oregon, “Wyden calls for emergency session after mass shootings.”
I so admire our senator.

Nevertheless, here in this small capital city, three people were shot dead this past weekend.  The simple arithmetic would reveal that the ratios would be equivalent to the massacre in El Paso last weekend where an assassin traveled 600 miles to when and where he calculated he could slaughter the most Latinos in the least amount of time.

As you can imagine Oregon its mostly wide-open country. Out there, registered gun owners actually need shot guns and pistols for legitimate reasons.

Still, at least once a year, crazies in combat clothes, carrying semi-automatics and confederate flags converge and protest on the capitol steps a few blocks from my house. I often engage. They answer my questions by saying they are there to protect their Second Amendment rights. Ask them to explain what they think the Second Amendment actually means and they are immediately enraged . You really ought not to engage with angry, armed nut jobs.

My only invocation remains: In our time, Lord.

Another mass murderer, with an AK-47-style assault rifle, opened fire in an El Paso shopping mall yesterday.  It was a Saturday morning  Families were there buying school clothes and classroom supplies.

Prayers and thoughts are pointless. Actions by politicians who are not in the pocket of big lobbies like the NRA are what is needed. The NRA will say that a shopper-hero with a concealed weapon could have saved many lives.

I don’t even get it about concealed weapons. If you’re packing, I want to see it in a holster on your hip.

I know what our Second Amendment says and I know what it means. I am not opposed to the safe possession of a six-shooter or a double-barreled shotgun owned by a sane, registered hunter, a target shooter, or a home owner. Hunting with semi-automatic, military-type guns is not what a sporting hunter uses. Or a home owner.  Or a target shooter.

My only prayer is, “In our time Lord, I beg you for courageous leaders.”