{"id":1140,"date":"2019-11-26T20:10:16","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T03:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2019-11-26T20:10:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T03:10:16","slug":"dont-be-a-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1140","title":{"rendered":"Don’t be a Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
McCulloch CP125 and Colt .45 1911<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I went to a public forum on Federal lands in Idaho a few\nyears back that the Idaho legislature sponsored. It was a traveling interim\ncommittee meeting the legislature set up to consider just what the Idaho\nlegislature should do to take back federal lands. It was Sagebrush Rebellion\n2.0. The meeting was in my district back when I was a State Senator. I was\namazed at the turnout. I never got that many people to show up at a town hall\nmeeting I held. I was also surprised to see a sheriff\u2019s deputy standing by the\ndoor. It seemed a pretty dry presentation to me. But then I noticed the guy\nnext to me had a side arm. And then I noticed quite a few in the folding chairs\naround me. I hadn\u2019t brought mine; hadn\u2019t felt the need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My church wants to pass a resolution that our church\npremises should be a \u201cgun free zone\u201d. I\u2019m not opposed to it. I just don\u2019t\nunderstand why we need such a statement. I think my fellow congregants believe\nsuch a statement might help quell the mass shootings we hear about in the\nmedia. I don\u2019t. It just seems like common sense to me. But then, maybe common\nsense needs some support nowadays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think we all need to start thinking differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see a gun as a tool, like a chainsaw. Both have their\npurpose. Both are incredible innovations our modern minds and industrial\ntechnologies have developed. Both can be misused. Both can be used for powerful\npurposes. Both have the power to cause lethal harm to oneself or others. Both\nhave a specific function. One cuts so fast it has made getting firewood almost\nfun. The other directs a projectile with more accuracy and power than a human\narm could hope to throw. And that can be fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we have very different feelings about these two tools,\ndon\u2019t we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you saw a guy walking down the street with a chainsaw on\nher shoulder, would you be afraid? Or would you think them a bit silly? How\nabout if the guy had an AR15 on her shoulder? Would you be afraid or think them\na bit silly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My liberal friends find guns threatening and react with\numbrage, indignation, anxiety, outrage and fear. But I think that reaction is\njust what the idiot with the AR15 wants. She\u2019s not going to use the gun, just\nlike the idiot with the chainsaw wouldn\u2019t fire it up on Main Street. When an\nidiot postures, sometimes the best reaction is to laugh at their folly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we can\u2019t help reacting, can we? It is just such\nreaction, such a visceral response we need to learn how to avoid. Such a\nreaction gets us hooked to FOX News, CNN, or whatever click bait we fall for. Such\nreactions make us a tool of these powerful media machines we give so much of\nour money to. It\u2019s time to look at the idiots and laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But be alert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laughing at the guy with a chain saw might be a little\neasier than laughing at the guy with a semi auto. The guy with the chainsaw\ncan\u2019t kill you from across the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know of any school massacres that have happened with\nchainsaws. But they have been stars in some horror movies. We don\u2019t live in a\nmovie, or do we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tools have their purpose, as do people. It\u2019s time we started\nreacting to the people around us and not just the tools they carry. Have we\nbecome a society that can\u2019t know the people among us? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banning tools won\u2019t change people. People change people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be a people, not a tool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to a public forum on Federal lands in Idaho a few years back that the Idaho legislature sponsored. It was a traveling interim committee meeting the legislature set up to consider just what the Idaho legislature should do … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1142,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}