Grey Pro-Choice

Watching Gilmore Girls, woman who had a baby at 16 and raises her child as a strong independent woman my past ghosts come up and cause me to question my choices.

  When I was 18 I became pregnant. It was very dramatically revealed while trying to join the army and all of coming home in shame to my mother who put into place me having an abortion within a month.

  No one in my family asked me if I wanted to do anything differently and to this day I wonder if I should have stuck up for myself and really thought about my options. But I didn't and I had the abortion, which led to a period of time in which I was so depressed I lost months of time and eventually agreed to marry someone I didn't want to marry at all which led to me being raped by that husband.

  But here is the grey area of being pro-choice. Once upon a time abortion was illegal and people still had them, and sometimes died from that. With them being legal, women can have them safely. I refuse to put my guilt and ghosts on others, saying, look how bad you will feel. Because not everyones situation is the same.

  Now I am a mom to two fantastic daughters who I love very much. They are the lights of my life. I mourn my choice from 17 years ago, but have to move forward. So I write and volunteer to counsel women who have abortions and are having trouble with the grief and guilt. I am also pro-choice, because it is a womans body and choice.

Sadly, be well.

Gun Control? How About Some Statistics?

So today I was doing some things, such as studying the gun laws of NYS (which are super strict and awesome by the way), and that got me to thinking about gun statistics in general. Low and behold you know what there is? Lots of awesome statistics.

  To put this in perspective, I'm actually not against people having guns. Hunting is something that is good to do (within reason), and if you have no history of violence and in general you are a reasonable person, you should absolutely be able to access a gun (within reason, you don't need an assault gun, handguns, sure).

  But, that being said. I'm for very tight gun laws that restrict who can have a gun. Such as the following:

10 States with the Most Lenient Gun Laws

10 States with the Strictest Gun Laws

 These ratings come from the Brady Campaign to restrict gun access, in all fairness, but I fairly agree with their judgment (of course I would, right? I'm a liberal). Still, for the sake of this argument, let's say they are fairly accurate. So there is part of the information I was looking for.

Next, I was looking for this map (from 2015):

I found this here: Map Source

So here we go, up to math.

Taking the numbers from the States with the Least Strict gun laws, I end up with an average number of deaths per 100,000 people as 14.83.

 

Taking the number from the States with the Most Strict gun laws, I end up with an average number of deaths per 100,000 people as 5.68.

So gee, it seems that strict gun laws do statistically make a difference.

If you are not a violent person (no history of violence or have ever had a restraining order against you), if you do not do drugs (sorry), have a severe mental illness (sorry even someone who is depressed should not have a gun because of the easy access for suicide, for example), have ties to any hate group anywhere (no matter the religious connection), and cannot find 3 people who can be interviewed by a policeman as to your character, you should not have a goddamn gun.

Rant done.

Have a Happy Holidays.

Don't Drink And Drive.

Ever.