The Heartbeat of Gun Control

......incited by none other, than yours truly, otherwise known as Stay at Home Mom to three little monsters, ahem....I mean superheroes.

So it all started sort of innocently.

Firstly, I listened to this interesting video by a level-headed anti-gun-turned not anti-gun, gal. See HERE.

And then, my spunky and quite liberal friend, Rachel tuned in and said......what, you don't even own a gun!

To which I replied and showed her a photo of me (posted on FB-whoops!) firmly grasping our shotgun that my husband just got as a Christmas present, from myself and my parents. The photo has incited a bit of buzz but really it has become more about gun control.

So let's tackle this issue head on shall we?

I'm going to try to summarize the different points made and then add my closing thoughts. These are just comments made by regular folks out there who have beliefs and values for certain reasons. I'm not going to talking about a bunch of polls and data and stats....I'm just going to talk about people and their beliefs as a result of the photo of me, a little ole, grace-breathing, bible-verse Facebook posting mama....and her shotgun. Ahem. Oh and then I'll get to the real point of this post.

The first valid question brought up in response to the video I posted was the question of how far should we go with gun freedom? Should we allow common citizens to wield grenades or nuclear weapons was the gist of the question posed by one commenter in response to the video. To me that, idea seemed a bit over the top and just as bad as the idea why don't we just take all guns away period. Both are irrelevant because none are ever going to happen.

Then another commenter shared some of the points of the Presidents gun control plan and included a LOT of sarcasm (you know who you are, CaSandra).

Later the photo then took a life of it's own when my liberal friend Rachel demanded proof that the gun was in fact registered to me. At that point, I was like, what the heck?! Are you serious!!! I have three toddlers in my house, 5 and under.......I haven't even had time to register my last kid with the state, much less our frikkin rifle!!! So that went on for an hour, back and forth, of who really owns the gun?


From there the comments went all over the board from welfare to third world countries to the government becoming power mongers and so forth.

But what does this discussion really come down to?

What is at the heart of this issue.

What caused this to come about?

Wasn't it the calculated murder of 20 innocent children?

In my humble little opinion, you guys, this isn't about guns. It never has been and it never will be.

You can legislate and regulate and mandate the heck outa those puppies. It won't change this hard and cold, brutal fact: people will keep on killing.

Now I'm curious. And I will be the first to admit that I don't have facts and studies and figures for you. I'm just curious. How many people were killed by assault weapons last year in our country? And this is just my guess here.....go and fact check the crap out of me here if you want, but I bet you that assault rifles kill fewer people in this country as compared to handguns. Again, I'm not sure on the facts so if you are so inclined, go check that one out.

But let's assume for arguments sake that handguns kill the most people. Well....what the heck are we doing banning assault rifles?  That would be a really idiotic thing to do. Let's ban guns. But what if it turns out that knives kill more people, than assault rifles....well, sorry Wolfgang Puck...but the U.S. Government has just put your amazing knives out of business. Ok, well, maybe it's not that kind of knife, but you get the point.

But, let's step in a bit deeper in the mud and muck of this debate.

If we want to ban the cause and we are studying and fact checking the crap out of this tool versus that tool than we have lost sight of a hard to swallow reality.

And really, maybe none of us want to look at the reality part.

Maybe it's just easier to blame this and that and ban this and that. Slap down this change to the written law and we have fixed the problem.

Instead of looking at the heart of the issue.

What is the heart of the issue?

Speaking of the heart.......

what sets one heartbeat apart from another heartbeat?

Did the little heartbeats that were callously murdered on Dec 14th beat any differently than the little heartbeats of the victims that just experienced the stopping of their heartbeats this week Wednesday, right here in our town. And the Wednesday before this one and the Wednesday before that one?

About 25 of them to be exact. Every Wednesday.

Every week.

25 little future kindergartners.

Snuffed out.

Heartbeats beating, probably, if they were anything like any of my three sweet peanuts at that age, about 140-160 beats a minute. A wives tail tells us if the heartbeat sounds like a washing machine, it might be a girl...if it's a horse galloping...it's a boy. If that's the case, there have been a lot of horse races in my womb. Considering I have three boys.

But maybe the heart of the issue is really just that.

The heart.

Aren't hearts just hardened?

How does a barely more than a boy walk into a school of little barely older than babies themselves and unleash power so great that it stops those 20 sweet little beating hearts? Beating hearts that were supposed to go on to recess or spelling or junior high or a college campus or a wedding aisle or a delivery room for the biggest miracle of all.

Isn't is just interesting that this country is celebrating the anniversary of the 40th year of stopping little tiny heartbeats before they go on to their own kindergarten classrooms? The anniversary of our country passing a law that went on to allow 55 million little heartbeats to stop dead in their tracks.

And isn't it interesting that these 20 sweet little Connecticut gone heartbeats have urged us to such action. Such debate. Such intense feelings and emotions brought forth. 20 heartbeats stop and we have an executive order headed down the pipeline.

But the 55 million stopped heartbeats.

Not a whisper.

How about instead of gun control, we start a new idea. It's called Heart Control.

Perhaps a barely older than a boy grew up in a country where it was within the law to stop a beating heart in the name of choice. Perhaps the barely older than a boy grew up in a society where violence is so celebrated, so normal, that the top grossing movies at the box office often glorify blood and guts and evil. Perhaps the boy sat behind the console of a playstation and watched this over and over and over and over.



And learned that killing people equals extra points. Perhaps there was no father. Perhaps it was the mental illness. Perhaps it was this. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps it wasn't just one thing, but many. Perhaps the many things that led him there started at the heart-level.

And perhaps it is crazy that we live in a country where a massacre like this happens and the President has to pass a bill to enact a study that will ask "do violent video games lead to violence?".  Really, country, really? Do we need a study for this? There is only one answer. It doesn't matter what the study says. We don't need a study here. We need common sense and a culture that isn't desensitized. Because only in a desensitized world do we ask such an unbelievable question. Meaning, we have gotten so used to the images that we don't even know anymore if they are bad. Our brains have changed.

And what about our hearts?

How can our hearts mourn the 20 so deeply and demand change when the 55 million go unanswered?

Have our hearts changed yet?

Because if our hearts don't change, neither will theirs.

And the Lanza's and the Holmes and the next and the next.

Their hearts are in our hands. All of them.

It is our choice now how to proceed.

If WE do not change, this will not change.

How can we be of such blatant hypocracy to show these boys that the heartbeat isn't of value unless YOU decide it is, and then ask them not to decide? How can we say, you shall not murder, while we as a country allow and even celebrate the stopping of heartbeats without a whsiper. Not a whisper.

We can label it whatever we want. Choice. Reproductive rights. Rights of women. Rights. Rights. Choice. Rights. What are rights? Who gets them? In the end, no matter what you call it....doesn't the heartbeat just cease? Doesn't it stop?  And the child is no more.

But if it ends as a result of choice and rights, somehow it isn't the same.

Somehow it isn't the same situation as those sweet little babies murdered in CT.

The heartbeat of the 14 week old baby, still inside the safe haven of her mother's womb, who very likely may have walked into that very school where these 20 babies were murdered.

How is that different? Someone please tell me.

Lanza decided. Holmes decided. The ones before them and the ones after. They decided that their own and the others' hearts weren't of value. They choose to go out as celebrities. Chose. They chose.

The 20 CT barely more than babies didn't choose. Just like the 55 million didn't choose.

We need to stop allowing ourselves to be distracted. By the guns.

The Lanza's and the Holmes and the rest of them deserved more from all of us. They were really victims themselves. It almost hurts to type that. But it might just be true.

If we do, allow ourselves to be distracted by the guns,  the 20 will have gone in vain.

The 20 maybe came for this purpose.

Maybe the 20 represent something more than Gun Control. Maybe they represent more than a new video game study, by executive order.

Maybe the 20 came and lost their hearts so we could find ours?

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Ez. 36:26

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.