Well, I never mentioned that we might have a day off from the blog today -- being that it's a holiday and New Year's Day (and we went to church). BUT, since I didn't, we'll have a short one to celebrate.
Last night our neighbors on Portage started shooting off some fireworks at around 10:00 p.m. and then at midnight, I awoke to a big boom and thought a tree fell. It must have been an M-80 or something, and that was followed by a bunch of gunshots. That's pretty unnerving. Never a good idea, besides the fact that the property was annexed to the city and now residents there need to abide by Canal Fulton's ordinances (that prohibit shooting a firearm in the city). I'm just glad that no errant ammunition found its way over here.
Years ago a farmhouse on Rt. 93 was hit by a bullet, a big one. It broke out the second floor window and embedded itself in the ceiling. The baby who normally slept in that room was not napping at the time, thank God, otherwise there would have been shards of glass in his/her crib.
We started investigating at the newspaper and my first thought was perhaps it might be the range off River Road where the police practiced. No one thought that made any sense, but it kind of did to me. They checked all of the ballistics of the weapons fired at the range that day and guess what? One of them matched, thus it was one of the police department's bullets that careened out past River Road, across State Rt. 21, and into the farm house ceiling about a mile and a half away. Scary, isn't it? They shut down the range after that.
One charitable organization is gathering together toy guns and giving kids some kind of reward for turning them in. You know, with all of the research that's being done out there, some of it dubious at best, I bet someone has done something on whether or not kids playing with toy guns are any more likely to use real ones when they get older. My first guess is NO. My brother and I each had six-shooters and played with caps all the time. The one rule was you weren't allowed to point the guns AT anyone. No matter that they were toys. It was my mother's rule and we usually obeyed, but if we didn't we THOUGHT about what we were doing.
I've never shot a real gun and don't have any plans on doing that any time soon. Yet, when I was little pretending I was Dale Evans was high on my list of things I liked to do. Could it be something like using a rake? A rake can be a pretty scary weapon in the hands of a disturbed individual, can't it? And yet, how many people use a rake as a weapon? Or for that matter a nail gun. Or a blow torch.
Just saying.
The real problem with guns in our society is the disintegration of the family unit. Throwing money at the problem, confiscating toy guns, and making more rules for registering the real ones just doesn't get at the heart of the problem.
Family, or the lack of one. The family unit, even when it isn't perfect, is the means by which we raise children. When the dad is missing, or there are drugs in the house, or no one can be counted on for anything -- we end up with kids that are neglected physically and emotionally and who are actually raised on the streets by their peers.
So we're starting the new year today, and I hope you found one or two of my helpful hints from yesterday useful. I think maybe this year I'm going to really pray about what I can do to help families.
Oh, and one other thought. Last night, two members of The Five, the talk show at 5:00 p.m. on Fox ushered in the new year with their own show. It was really awful, I've got to say. They interviewed a few of the partyers about their resolutions. One young woman actually said, "I'm going to try and eat less cheese." Oh, my gosh. That's it? Eating less cheese? Well, what does that do for others? How does that move a person from self-centered to others-centered? It doesn't, does it?
So this was going to be short and now it is rather long. Sorry about that. Tomorrow maybe I'll have something more positive to say about 2014. God Bless You.
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