dragonlady7

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I love that this is what my Tumblr dash looks like lately.

[image description: a blank tumblr post with ten blank unloaded images all helpfully alt-texted with the single word “image” and at the bottom, a caption that says simply, “A little mushroom finds a puddle”]

All of y’all who rely on image descriptions all the time must save so much fucking time on this website because there’s just nothing here. Actually this post is better than most, the alt text actually loaded; usually it’s just acres of blank featureless white space and I scroll down and the caption is, like, “free him” or something like that. Why bother!

[my annoyance is mostly at Tumblr, partly at the work wifi that persists in fucking sucking for no reason, but also that the culture here has remained so steadfastly in avoidance of ever using image descriptions. it’s not even, like, a question of accessibility, it’s just that this whole site looks so fucking stupid most of the time and could be better with minimal effort! but no. *reaction gif*]

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So here’s the thing. I don’t really want to like, leap into politics here, but– suddenly everyone’s talking about how why don’t we make it so people on our terrorist watchlist can’t buy guns.

Ok. But. How do people get on our terrorist watchlist? 

I ask in particular because my father, who has a very common name, was erroneously identified as being on this terrorist watchlist for many years. (I just checked on How Many Of Me and his firstname+lastname is currently held by about 7000 people in the US. He has the second most popular first name for males in this country, and there are about 300,000 people in the US with our last name.) 

He’s a very long-time gun owner, served in the Army in Vietnam and ever since, for a total of over 30 years of service, mostly in the National Guard. (The last fifteen years of his career, he had top-secret clearance and worked in intelligence.) He is a historian and re-enactor, and also a passionate educator, and has taken it upon himself to teach anyone who asks gun safety and basic marksmanship. He tutored a number of the younger members of his National Guard unit whose marksmanship was under par, for years; even the Army, he feels, doesn’t devote enough time to gun safety and handling. He’s really serious about it.

My point, not to be an asshole, is that if anyone should be allowed to own a gun, it’s my dad. He takes it really seriously. I was taught trigger discipline when I got my first toy six-shooter as a cowboy-obsessed 2-year-old. [It was silver, with a fake ivory handle, and a hammer you could cock.] I never aimed that thing at a living human. Even playing with my sisters, I aimed over their heads. (Do I own guns now? No, I’m terrified of them, but I do make a point of periodically handling them so I’m still familiar with them. They’re fucking terrifying. I know how to clear the chamber and put the safety on for most of the basic types of them. Because they’re fucking terrifying.)

My other, probably more important point: wait when did we all decide that a Terrorist Watchlist was a great idea? Suddenly this is cool? Suddenly we’re all on board with it? 

I know we want change, and we want the corporate overlords of the NRA to burn in hell, and we want to stop the tragedy porn and all, and I am on board with this, but Jesus Christ why are we all suddenly fans of the Terrorist Watchlist and also what the fuck is this Terrorist Watchlist? 

I have no deeper insight, I’m just creeped-out as fuck, and my poor father is of course beside himself; I disagree with him on most, basically all of his politics, but he and I occasionally are unexpectedly on the same page. And yes, here we are:

 Why are we all suddenly totally down with a Terrorist Watchlist, and have no further interest in trying to figure out what that’s all about? 

And I reiterate, he spent at least three years erroneously on this Terrorist Watchlist (and found out the hard way that he was on it; it’s not like they call you up and say ey there we got our eye on you. No, they just kind of start strip-searching you in airports and just– not letting you on planes, and things). It took a great deal of paperwork and effort on his part to get himself off this watchlist; thirty-plus years as a state employee, a spotless criminal record, actual military top-secret clearance [they don’t just hand that out], and most importantly, being a retiree with the time and resources to look into it. He never should have been on it, but nobody was in any hurry to take him off it once he was on. (What happened to the actual-apparent-terrorist Dad’sname Lastname? Did they take him off by accident when they switched his records to my dad? Why was he on in the first place? What is this all about? Nobody knows.)

I really don’t have the capacity to get into it any further, I’m just high as fuck on cold medicine and really just wanted to express my alarm that this is suddenly a thing we all are like, super into. Oh my God. Just because it’s Against Big Gun Money does not make it a Good Thing.