Thoughts and prayers, that is what they say after every shooting. They try to cover all the bases by saying “Thoughts” to cover the non religious people like me, and “Prayers” to cover the religious people. When something bad happens, like a death in the family or a person is sick,  I am always saying that I will keep them in my thoughts. Why do I say that? Usually because I am in no real position to help so I send my thoughts. If I was in a real position to make a difference I hope that I would do more than just send my thoughts, I hope that I would do something that would help. The same goes with prayers. If all you do is pray when you are in a position to help than all you are doing is using your prayers as an excuse to do nothing. I saw a posting on Facebook that said instead of thoughts and prayers we need to make murder harder. I agree with that statement but it is easier said than done. You may disagree but I think that the only way to make murder harder is to have common sense gun control.

There has been another school shooting and this time it was at Michigan State University. I could say that our schools are just becoming a shooting gallery but that would be an overreaction. What would not be an overreaction would be me saying that we have a huge problem with violence in America. You put a gun in the hands of a violent man and let him parade around with it is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. Michigan is what they call an open carry State which means that anyone that is eligible to own a gun can carry it around in public. The FBI keeps a terrorist watch list and it has a ton of names on it. About two percent of those on the list are U. S. Citizens that are able to purchase and carry a gun? The first time I heard that I thought it was just nuts. It was allowing for guns to be purchased by suspected terrorists that could do harm to the people of this nation. I have softened my stance on that a little bit because not all lists are perfect but if they are on the list a red flag should definitely be put up. Public security and the security of our children should be what concerns the Legislature more than anything else. What surprises me is that concern for our children appears to not exist in States that are controlled by the so called party of family values, the Republicans. Where I live in Florida legislation it has been proposed that you will not longer need to be licensed to conceal and carry a gun. That alone is nuts but just wait, open carry will be right around the corner which is even crazier.

What I worry about is public safety and the people that are supposed to protect the public, our Police. Police brutality is on the rise. Guns on the street is on the rise. Is there a correlation between the two? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, for a number of reasons, with one being the police worrying about their own safety. We talk about the militarization of our police as our streets get more violent. Our police have transformed from civil servants meant to serve the public to our first line of defense against what they think will harm society. With the number of guns on the streets, and, the open carry and the conceal carry laws what they are, I would never want one of my grandchildren to be Police Officers. Every time a police Officer pulls over a speeder he has to worry about whether the person has a gun in their car. As least needing a license to carry would make it so they know to ask because you would be on a list. Do you think that maybe they will enforce the law a little bit less because of the amount of guns that out there and not know when one is going to be pointed at them? Every domestic violence call that they get can put them at greater risk because of the number of guns out there. It sure would affect me and I am sure it has to affect them. If the people that are supposed to keep our streets safe themselves don’t feel safe then how effective are they going to be?

We are now attracting a whole different type of person to be police officers. In some cases they are becoming more like soldiers than they are the police officers that made me feel safe in the 50s. A soldier’s job is to seek and destroy the enemy. Soldiers trained in war do not make good policemen, in my opinion, because the training should be very different. Soldiers have enemies but the American people should never be considered the enemy of the police. I am not saying that there are not bad people on the street what I am saying is that there should never be an us against them attitude when it comes to our police. There should be only us. I am not saying that a former person from the military could not make a good police officer. What I am saying is that the training of the two should be very different and no Police Officer should be on the streets unless they are trained in what the community expects of them which should be different than what the military expects of them. That has always been the key, training standards that are established by the community.

The militarization of our police is not just something that happened just yesterday. Every political party has played it’s part. This is not something new and it goes across party lines. Obama gave surplus Military grade equipment to local communities. Nixon started his war on drugs with our law enforcement being the first line of defense. It started a long time ago with the first early Militias called Slave Patrols that were formed after the writing of the Second Amendment. Some believe that our police were actually adapted from those early slave patrols whose job was to catch runaway slaves and patrol plantations so there would be no slave rebellion. Back then some states had laws limiting the type of gun a free Black person could have and in some cases whether a free Black could process a gun at all. Our history shows that gun laws have been passed to restrict minorities but most were meant so that the White population maintained the power. That is what I believe is  one of the problems we have today is that too many people view the 2^nd Amendment was written so that White people could protect themselves from minorities, that it is only a White person amendment. One interesting fact that I learned was that after Martin Luther King Jr. house was burglarized and he applied for a conceal and carry license. He was denied.

Our Police Officers need to feel safe when they are doing their duty and I think that every Community and State should have their backs just like the Police should have the back of the Community. I can’t figure out why police are not demanding that communities work at getting guns off our streets instead of letting more guns onto the streets. This really is not a 2^nd Amendment issue because the 2^nd Amendment applies to Congress as it states in the Amendment itself.  Why are there so many sheriffs that want to put their deputies in harm’s way? Why are so many Alderman and City Council members allow our police officers to be put in harm’s way? Why do so many Governors and State Legislatures want to put our police officers in harm’s way? I have always been a fan of the Watt Earp movies. What is the first thing that Watt Earp does when he becomes Marshall of Dodge City? He has the City Council enact gun laws. No carrying of guns in city limits. He knew back then that our streets were safer without guns then they were with them. See what we can learn from history?