The Weapons Cache: Guns and Gun Control

Howdy folks!  Before I get into the gun toting action of this blog too far, I wanted to share with you about A Round of Words in Eighty Days.  Some of you know that I participate in this event and on Wednesdays with my Mashup you can find a list of my goals for the week with the event.  Well... just to let you know the second round started today!  Woo hoo!  So if you are looking for a writing community to help you to reach your potential this is a great place to stop.  We have several published and unpublished authors who want to support you and help you to reach your dreams.  So give it a shot.  Now that we've finished that, it is on to the guns!



Even though I've been a soldier for the past twelve years I never really got into guns.  Now I know there are folks out there who are thinking that this is some sort of crazy sacrilege, but it is the truth.  I've always thought they were neat, that they were powerful, but I'd take a sword any day over a gun.  Swords in my book are just cooler.

That is probably how a lot of folks feel about guns, because I remember when I was younger seeing the character to the left in a video game called Final Fantasy 7.  A great game and a great story, but some of the science they had in the game was dead wrong.  Like Barret here.  Notice the chain gun on his right arm.  That isn't something that could ever be attached to a person because it wouldn't ever work.  It is a nice idea, but it wouldn't function in real life.  The reason that comes to mind most immediately is that the recoil on such a weapon is incredible.  He would be thrown back every time he tried to fire such a weapon.  There is a reason why police officers hold guns in two hands and a person with a rifle puts it up to their shoulder.  You can't fire accurately when you can't control the weapon properly.

For example, I'm sure all of you have seen this: the sidehold.  Kay, this doesn't work because one, the gun is pointed down.  Two, he doesn't have the proper support to actually aim his fire.  And three because he's put it on its side he can't aim it because the weapon is designed to be aimed when  everything is horizontal rather than vertical.  This is not cool, nor is it neat.  The way this man is holding this weapon shows his disrespect for the weapon and carelessness for human life.

Through my training in the military I've developed a moral sense of how a weapon should be handled, and I think if everyone followed these rules we would have no need of gun control laws.  I'm going to share with you a version of these rules from the Marines and then I'm going to break it down in the style of the OG.

The four rules of safety for a firearm are as follows:

1. Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
     This means that you should treat it as if it were loaded at all times.  I've seen folks who have pointed guns at other people because they think its funny.  I'm sorry, its not.  Please don't point a gun at me, because I don't know if it is loaded or unloaded.  And you should only point a weapon at someone or something you intend on killing.
2. Keep your finger straight and off the trigger, until you intend to fire.
     This is such an important rule.  Triggers do not take a lot of pressure to pull.  Consider it only takes a little strength in one finger to pull most triggers.  And if you have your finger in the trigger well and someone surprises you, guess what, your gun just went off.  This is even worse when you consider a hairline trigger, that takes hardly any pressure to cause the hammer to drop.
3. Never point your weapon at anything you don't intend to shoot.
     When you point your weapon at someone you don't intend on shooting, you start a habit of being careless with a firearm.  You should NEVER be careless with a firearm.  Consider the purpose of a gun for most folks is to kill.  Do you want to make anyone feel like you are out to kill them?  I certainly hope not.  This might seem a little repetitive.  Did I mention this above?  Yeah, I did.  Put a star next to rules one and three.
4. Keep your weapon on safe until you intend to fire.
     You know what this really means?  Be familiar enough with your weapon to know when it is on safe and on fire.  This means you might need to find out what all the parts are and what they do.  The diagram to the left is a good start to understanding a gun a lot better.  But I'm certain if you Google it, you can find much better examples.

Now honestly if we actually had most folks follow those rules, we would have little need for gun laws.  If we actually would spend time learning the correct principles behind how to use these we wouldn't have the government dictating who and who can't purchase a weapon as much as they do.  Say what you want about Obama and Democrats wanting stricter gun laws, I believe that we have a great amount of say in the laws we have in our country.  And when we don't take responsibility for our actions, others will do so for us, because they want to protect their families from those who might hurt them because they do not have the good sense to be responsible.

Government has the purpose of guiding and protecting us as people.  And just like a gun when we choose to ignore the proper use of the government, or abuse its power, we deny ourselves the freedoms that we would otherwise blessed to enjoy.  That's part of the reason that I've chosen to be a soldier, it is because I care about the freedoms that I have and I'm willing to kill, and even die to protect those freedoms.

Most people have guns for similar reasons to that.  They have them to protect their homes, nothing more.  The gangsters from Los Angeles and New York we see have them to protect their families too.  Misguided though they are, they want to protect what they feel is theirs.  Hunters use them to provide for their families.  So even though this weapon has the purpose of killing, it can provide through its proper use several blessings.

Do you own a gun or a rifle?  I didn't until recently.  My adopted Dad, purchased me a Mosin Nagant for Christmas.  It is a beautiful weapon with a maximum effective range of 2000 yards.  I'm really looking forward to getting out to a range to learn better how to use it.  Because I refuse to be an uneducated gun owner.  When you hold the power of life or death in your hands, it is crucial that you understand how to use it, and even more important that you can use it properly.

Well another month has come and gone.  I'm sad to see March gone, but April looks like it is going to be a beautiful month to be honest with you.  I feel like I'm going to get a lot of writing done and that's always a good thing.  Another good thing is that we have a winner for our giveaway last month.  And that is: Carmen Esposito.  Congratulations!

Unfortunately, I need to be responsible.  My family has fallen on some hard times financially, so I cannot do this for the month of April.  Perhaps in May things will be better and I'll feel like we can afford it, but not this month.  My apologies.  But I'm sure if you look around my blog you'll always find a good book to read, cause I like to recommend books.

Well that's all I have for now.  This is Jayrod Garrett, the First OG keeping it real with a few questions for you.  For those of you who are gun nuts out there: What would you recommend for a good pistol?  And for those of you who barely know anything about guns: How do you think gun safety education would benefit us as a society?

Yesterday you said Tomorrow.

Late.  That is exactly what I am.  I’m late for my blogging this week.  I’m late on reaching my goals seeing as I am two days behind in my writing.  I’m late in finding work to be able to support my family.  I’m late in doing what I need to take care of my career in the military.  I’m getting to sleep late and getting to my part time job late. Everything boils down to this for me this week.  I am late.

And then I saw a nike sponsored quote that gave me a little bit of hope this week: Yesterday you said Tomorrow.  Now that might sound weird, because I really haven’t been keeping up with my goals to reach my dream, but it made me feel good because I realize I haven’t put off my dreams till tomorrow.  I am working on them today.

I have met too many people who are I would refer to as broken quills.  In the grand scheme of things they are not trying to live up to their potential, they stopped chasing after what they really want in life, or it just becomes too much work to chase what they really want.  Now these people entirely could still chase after their dreams, because they still have the ability just like a broken quill can still write, but they get caught up too much in their failings and how far they have drifted away from what they should be doing to make their life what they always wanted as a young adult.

Art and our dreams sometimes equates to sacrifice.  And that sacrifice sometimes hurts or scares us.  My sacrifices of late have been full time work and sleep.  If you didn’t know I recently came back from Iraq.  This completely scared me because I couldn’t jump back into school without having a semester that I would have failed.  I know my limits and immediately before and after a deployment my grades in school are terrible.  So to go back and receive my GI Bill would have not helped me in the long run, so I chose not to return to school as of yet.  However I still work up at school in my dream job.  I work for the Nontraditional Students Center as one of their Peer Advisors which means I help students who are coming to school with families figure out the crazy animal known as college.  It is tremendously fulfilling and I enjoy working with the students a great deal.  This job came with an opportunity to run a literary journal that is run by the center.  I love managing this literary journal because I’ve learned so much about writing, and become much more courageous in the things I’m willing to write and feel.  I don’t think I would be writing the story that I’m currently working on if I didn’t work there.

But here’s where the sacrifice comes in.  I need more hours at my work.  But they can’t afford to pay me more.  I’m capped out.  So I need to seek out a second job.  So far I’ve gotten a lot of rejections, which is par for the course for Americans.  However this is only because I’ve been trying to preserve the job that I currently possess.  If I went and looked for full time work I would be able to easily get a job and my life and the schedule I’m living on would stabilize immediately.  But I can’t give up a job that is helping me to get experience in my field of writing and also in the field of working with families.  I’m going to school to get a degree in working in both fields.  So do I give in or seek after my dream?

As for my writing I’ve been working on it so much that I’ve sacrificed sleep instead of organizing my days so that I can fit writing and my religious studies in at the beginning of my day.  And now I’ve just gotten to the point that I’m burning the candle at both ends and it requires that I change something because I can’t keep up this pace.  So tonight I called a family meeting and shared with everyone my concerns and set a reasonable bedtime for myself and now I’m going to be in bed between 11PM and Midnight.  This will enable me to get up early in the morning to get my writing done before everyone in my home is awake.  Mind you this is still a sacrifice because I personally am a night owl.  I function much better at night, but I need the quiet hours in our home to be able to accomplish the work that I love.

Folks become broken quills because they aren’t willing to make sacrifices to achieve the dreams they seek after.  But sometimes you have to do something to put food on the table and keep a roof overhead.   So we as people and artists are left with decisions that can possibly break our hearts and rend us at our heartstrings.  But that tells more about the caliber of people that we hope to be.  People who sacrifice achieve their dreams, and people who settle complain for a lifetime of missed opportunities.  This isn’t to say that either one is wrong, but to say as much as not providing for my family scares me I’m not ready yet to give up my dreams to support them.  I live by faith day to day, and I believe that I am where I am in my life right now because I’ve worked hard and through the providence of God.  So to support my family I have to stretch a bit further and seek out the right job more diligently this month.  To accomplish my writing I have to get up a lot earlier.  And to achieve my dreams I have to remember: Yesterday you said Tomorrow.

ROW80 Goals for this week:

1. Finishing a single scene of “Crimes of the Umbramancer” each day.
This week I've only finished a scene and a half. I still have Saturday and Sunday to catch up though so I am annoyed, but not unable.
2. Comment on 10 different blogs in ROW80.
I haven't been to any blogs this week. That will change tomorrow morning while I'm in my writing time! Visited ten blogs Friday Morning! And a few more Thursday night! Woo!
3. Video games for only twelve hours for the week.
I only played for nine hours this week. I am gaining better control and I don't intend on playing for a couple weeks at the moment. We'll see how this develops.
4. Bedtime between 11PM and Midnight to wake up at six or seven in the morning to take advantage of the early hours to get my writing all finished each day.
This goal will begin tomorrow morning and we'll see how it goes.
5. Walking at least a mile, five days a week.
 I'm a scoutmaster and I wanted to help some of the boys who are a little less active reach for some goals. So I'm going to be doing a goal that gets me walking so I can keep him accountable cause I'm doing the same work I've asked of him.
6. Finding the perfect job within the next month.
 This will be the journey I make to finding the work that will enable me to move into the next phase of my life. It will likely require some prayer and a lot of work, but I believe that there is a reason why I'm where I'm at right now. So we'll see what happens.

Please tell me about your dreams folks. Why you dream them and what you are willing to give up to achieve them? Or even why you didn't achieve your dreams. We all have some valuable experience to share with one another and I hope this blog is a place where you might find that. Happy dream hunting all! 

Freedom: Do we actually know what it is anymore?

I often find myself asking people, what is freedom.  The responses to this question are interesting and range from: being able to do whatever I want, to being able to live however I want.  And it really is true.  In our republic today we have people who have taken freedom to concepts that thirty years ago we would never have been able to imagine.  The fight for LGBT rights, gun control, and healthcare have been incredible to watch.  But why are we fighting for anything if we are truly free?

So in any question I ask I turn to the dictionary to get definitions.  According to Merriam Webster freedom is defined as:

A: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.

B: liberation from slavery or restraint or from power of another: independence.

C: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous (freedom from care)

H: unrestricted use (gave him the freedom of their home)

I’ve always found this definition to be lacking because in the dictionary you find the technical meaning, but you miss the spiritual meaning of the word.  Freedom cannot be separated from responsibility and anytime they are parted you have no freedom, instead you have suffering.

For instance if there were the dictionary’s definition of freedom in gun control then the only person who would have “freedom” is the person who had the best gun and gun skills around.  They would make the law according as they saw fit for they would have the power necessary to do so.

So freedom for one equals slavery for others.  This is otherwise known as lawlessness.  We have laws in place to protect our individual rights so that we are not taken over by the man with the big gun.

Well what happens when the society themselves adopts the guns for themselves for protection to the point that nobody can really do anything with the gun?  They barely can protect themselves or their rights?  Or they simply elect that nobody can have the guns anymore?  This is known as slavery.  

Slavery and lawlessness are two heads of the same coin of unrestricted freedom.  And as a result these forces tend to destroy not just people, but societies, and worst of all worlds.  We can see it in the very struggles for freedom within America.  Gay rights are not about a woman marrying a woman or a man marrying a man, but being treated as every other citizen is to be respectfully treated.  Gun control shouldn’t be about disarming the people who want to protect themselves, but about teaching people about how to thoughtfully handle a weapon.  And we need a healthcare system in place so that we may have peace of mind about our families.

Liberty without Security is lawlessness,

Security without liberty is slavery,

Only when both are balanced and in harmony can there be freedom.

So please ask yourselves as you read this, what do you really want for freedom?  Are you trying to create the world you want to live in, or a world for all of us to live in?  I for one want a world with as much diversity and beauty as there can be.  A world where freedom is unrestricted because the people care too much about each other to live without law or enslave another.  Is that too much to ask?  Probably, but if we don’t ask for it, how can we ever achieve it?

You might wonder why I’m writing this when I’m reporting about my writing goals.  It has to do with an addiction I have to video games.  If I start playing the right one I have a very hard time stopping even to do things that I want to do, such as write.  I’ve spent most of this week playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and it has been awesome.  But my writing has suffered to the point of having written nothing for goals since Wednesday.  So in order to free myself from the self imposed bondage I’ve put myself into, I’m staying away from playing it for the duration of today and making a new ROW80 goal.  I will only play video games up to twelve hours a week from now on.  Perhaps this doesn’t seem like it is working for that goal of the world I want, but that world begins inside of me.  If I am not unfettered of what powers I allow to enslave me, how can my writing ever help anyone to free themselves?

My other goal is to catch up on what I have missed out on writing by the time of the next check in.  Which is not only possible, but exactly what will happen.  That I promise.

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave your comments below.  I love reading them and enjoy the opportunity to communicate with our community.  Peace.