My first reaction: fear. I quietly crept upstairs to see if my 21 year old son was sleeping. He was. Had he been awake, I would have told him to get dressed and we would have driven to a family member's home on the South Shore. So I crept back downstairs and called my husband and told him I was scared.
My husband is a good man and he stayed on the phone with me for an hour. Yes he had to walk into an office bright eyed and bushy tailed. Yes there was nothing he could do outside of talk to me. Yes he was just as powerless as I was, but he was there and suddenly cowering under the blankets with a death grip on the cat didn't seem like a necessary thing to do anymore.
He pointed out that if the police were telling people not to stop for anyone and these guys had carjacked someone, then exposing ourselves to get to the relative safety 20 miles south was not necessarily a good idea. He was right.
What he didn't say was me driving at night on little to no sleep is a bad combination and there are people who have witnessed why this is a bad idea and have (fortunately) lived to tell the tale.
As tired as I thought I was, the poor news anchor on one of the Boston station kept making gaffes that couldn't help but make me laugh and wish someone would bring her a cup of coffee or let her take a nap. By the time I fell asleep around 4:30 this morning, I had slipped back into an ice cream sandwich eating angry woman... or so I thought.
Being ticked off about being stuck inside on a beautiful spring day with no half and half, no bacon and no cookies (but plenty of Guinness from the other night - so there's a bright spot) was nothing compared to a stupid tweet from an elected official.
My friends are reporting about armored enforcement folks knocking on their doors to make sure they're OK as they do door-to-door sweeps. Friends in the neighborhoods being evacuated are checking in via social media so we all know they're OK. Once again I'm giving thanks and wondering how this is happening here when I see this:
Is this asshole serious?
Well Rep. Bell, as a Bostonian that was scared but found my balance and center I say this:
Bite Me
If the son of a bitch had shown up on my doorstep, I suspect the police who are TRAINED to use an AR-15 would have been right behind him. I know how to shoot and I'm a damn good shot but I never once wished last night, even in my darkest hour, that I had a gun.I'm from Boston, I don't need a stinking gun. I'm also educated and have something called common sense (you may have heard of that and I don't mean the pamphlet by Thomas Paine) to know that if you shoot a maniac wired with explosives, you're going down as well unless you're a sniper and can pick him off from a safe distance.
I know that the kick of an AR-15 would do more damage to me than it would to him because, again, not trained on that kind of weapon. You think it's easy for a civilian to use an assault weapon? May I refer you to a semi-realistic scene from one of my favorite movies, "True Lies." There is one point where Arnold puts an Uzi in the hands of his still stunned wife and directs her on how to use it. She steps forward, starts to shoot and realizes she can't control the weapon. That, sir, is how most people would handle any assault weapon - with fear, trepidation and not the results they were expecting.
In fact, most people carrying any weapon would handle it the same way I would an assault weapon: with fear, loathing and bungling.
Now had you suggested I wished I had a .45 or some such... perhaps. I haven't shot one in almost 30 years and I know I tend to flinch when I do shoot (thus I aim for the chest and know I'll probably get the target in the face) but then I would also have to process the taking of another human life. Unlike most folks who tend to judge and act as if the Creator was cast in their image rather than the other way around, the taking of another's life does not interest me.
A more worth fantasy would be taking the Boston bomber, putting him on the starting line at Hopkinton and giving him a 10 second head start with a full pack of marathoners behind him. Mowing him down with an AR-15 is cowardly and lazy.
So yes, I will continue to jump every time I hear a Statie's siren on the Mass Pike for a bit. I will sulk that I am inside on a beautiful day instead of going for a run or riding my bike on a day because a coward who thinks violence is the answer. Instead I will make cookies, play with the cats and laugh with my son at the sheer ridiculousness of life, the universe and everything.
Understand that I am #Bostonstrong. I am not a coward and I don't need a gun. I have a that is set up in such a way I should never need one. Should I chose to move to Syria, Israel, Bosnia, Kabul, Johannesburg or any number of cities in this world, we'll talk. Being trained in use of and owning an AR-15 would make sense then, but not here.
Not in Boston.
And certainly not when I have well trained military and law enforcement officials in place to take care of this stuff for me.
Because #Bostonstrong is more than a hashtag, it is what Bostonians are made of: piss and vinegar with a big enough heart to tip the scales to make us some of the best people on earth and don't you ever forget that simple fact.
Oh, well said, Karla. Well said.
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