Change Your Mind

I'm on Facebook as much as anyone I know.  I made myself stop posting about politics on FB, because it's annoying.  Although I think I've been successful, I obviously have no problem offering up off-the-cuff opinions about the issues of the day.

With this, though, not only can't I...

I can barely even type about it.  Sitting here right now, promising that I'd try to write something down about it, and having been successful writing about love and loss and everything else...

It comes down to this.  I've never had a political issue that I've lost friends over, and in my mind, I still don't, because guns aren't a political issue.  And if you want to pretend that guns aren't at all an issue, we can't be cool.  We probably can't be friends any more.

We can argue about how much guns are responsible.

I'm not taking away your right to hunt.  Shit, I'll eat every piece of venison you put in front of me.

We can say other things matter more.

But if you're against any and all new regulations, you're worse than the people in 1491 who said the world was flat.  You saw, with your own eyes, that it isn't.  We have 20 dead elementary school children because a gun made them that way.

I type all this with no joy whatsoever, nor any of the emotions that I usually feel when I'm right about a political argument.  I'm not 23, and I don't start Internet beefs.  I'm sad, sad because some very good people are posting about guns not being a problem, and I can't just sit by and pretend that this shit is ok.  In the face of 20 dead kids, all other arguments fall away.

So, yeah, debate is entirely over for me.  If you respond to this blog post with something inviting dialogue, I won't respond, because I'm just too exhausted and sad to handle it, and because I can't talk with you until you do some really deep introspecting.  And if you keep sharing NRA pictures, you're getting blocked.  I wish it weren't this way, but it is.  I just can't handle it.