I like when vortices happen. You know, vortices, when two or more seemingly random moments collide out of nowhere and have connectivity. You might refer to this as kismet, fate, coincidence, etc. For example, you think of somebody you haven’t talked to in years and then the phone rings a minute later and it’s that person. A song pops into your head that you haven’t heard in 20 years, two minutes later you walk into a restaurant and that song is playing. Those are the personal vortices I think we all experience. Then you have the broader v-texes and that’s the focus here. So I’m digesting all the facts from the high school atrocity in Parkland, Florida and I start thinking…. Parkland, where have I heard that name before?…. and then it finally hit me. Parkland Hospital in Dallas is where they took JFK after he was shot and where he was pronounced dead. So the Kennedy assassination turned out to be the first permanent impression of gun violence for me because of the obvious reason that it was our president. A ditchrat took down the most powerful man in the world in an instant. I was certainly aware of guns, I had a lot of toy guns and watched gunfights on tv all the time but gun reality didn’t sink in until that November afternoon. Two days later I and millions of others witnessed a murder live on tv. However, I don’t remember much outcry for stricter gun laws, even 5 years later when Robert Kennedy was shot. We’ve certainly racked up much more gun carnage since the sixties and a lot of it is from the past 25 years. Now the 2nd Amendment was written 225 years ago when there were no police stations nor grocery stores so protecting yourself and getting food were quite different. Let me throw this at you, that shooting in the theatre in Colorado, even if everybody in the theatre was armed what would you do if someone comes in like that maniac did and starts shooting? How would you sort things out in total darkness? They had security at the high school in Parkland and the guard ran away from the shooter. Listen almost 600 people were shot in the middle of the street in Vegas. If that nightmare didn’t ignite, at the very least, an in-depth discussion regarding any tweaks that might be needed with our gun laws then I thought it appeared we were pretty much staying with the status quo. Well that was until the Parkland massacre. It seems this student movement might have some traction. Remember in 1791 the population was just under 4 million people in the entire country and guns had to be loaded one round at a time and people were sh…ing through a hole in a piece of wood. There’s a reason we don’t dress like Paul Revere and churn our own butter anymore, things change.

Peace,
Garry