Society Needs to Be Shot

Good grief, I'm tired! Makes it a little hard to think of something to write. Between the rain (I'm a ridiculously light sleeper), the hot flashes (which aren't hot for near as long as they are clammy), and the number of projects I'm trying to get done before chaperoning the 8th grade trip to Florida this month....did I mention being tired?


So I'm trying to write a blog this morning, and I thought...and thought...and thought...what do I want to focus on....


But then the news mentioned a shooting at a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh...


Now before I get gun owners all in an uproar, I'm typing this in a room with guns. I'm as Southern as they come, and with that came the target practice as a youth, the guns in every house I visited, the men talkin' hunting. I thought pickup trucks came with a gun rack just like they did with mud flaps. In fact we made the mistake of scheduling our wedding on the opening day of deer season in Tennessee. Quite a few men who did not make the wedding showed up for the reception, thankfully freshly showered. 


What strikes me about every shooting we hear of is - how did we become a society that thinks we can solve our problems by murder? People piss me off every day. If you've ever heard me talk about carrying the kids to school or been with me in the car lane at school, you've gotten to see it first hand. But, it's never occurred to me to shoot the people who take all day to drop their kid off or text in the car pool line.


Why are we failing so miserably at conflict resolution, at helping those who need it? What can we do differently? It's not just teenagers...it's society...there's a Southern saying - "just oughta be shot" - I heard this all the time growing up. It was a comment on how stupid or ridiculous something was. But nobody ever did it...unless you were a deer...