Guns and Gun Control AGAIN

As my wife and children head off to a March for Our Lives event, here are my latest thoughts on all things 2^nd Amendment and guns. 

First off, I am a gun owner. We have a selection of guns for hunting. They were designed for hunting first and foremost. While I would give them all up to save a single life, I would prefer not to, and don’t think that will solve our current crisis.  I do not own an “assault rifle”.  I define an assault rifle as a firearm with a rifled bore, shot from the shoulder, that has been designed to kill people. Assault rifles typically support multi-round magazines with over 10 shots. They are semi-automatic and can be converted to automatic if you want to waste ammo. Hunters, any worth their salt, should never need more than a few shots even if they’re being charged by that killer grizzly in the Revenant.

So, I’m not against guns. They are tools to my mind, and just like a chainsaw, they need to be respected.  Unlike a chainsaw, they can move masses of metal very quickly beyond my immediate area, and because of that, I think the people utilizing them should be licensed and regulated similar to how we are licensed to operate a car. (another mass of metal that moves very quickly)

For those who say the 2^nd Amendment guarantees their right to have an assault rifle, I say let’s vote on it. I don’t believe the majority of Americans will agree with you. You have no “right” to operate a vehicle, so how do you mentally justify the assault rifle argument? However, that doesn’t mean, if you really, really love assault rifles, that you should not be able to shoot one in controlled conditions. You can own and shoot assault rifles in other countries (in Europe), but you agree to lock it up at the gun club and not take it home with you after you’ve had your fun at the shooting range.  Guess what, even our own military aren’t allowed to take their assault rifles “home”.

Oh, but you and your friends want to protect us from a potential tyrannical government with armed insurrection?  Do you ever wonder why people look at you like you’ve just gone insane if you say that? Here’s some insight:  You’ve spent your life paying taxes, and those taxes fund the largest military in the world. You’ve basically paid for your government to have the most advanced weapons on the planet, but you want the “right” to fight that government with your AR15?  Really? Let’s say you decide THE TIME IS NOW!.. and you and your buddies decide enough is enough and take matters in your own hands. The “evil government” is going to dispatch you quickly and effortlessly with weapons you paid for. They might even use a drone so nobody gets hurt on the government side! The person who “takes you out”, has been effectively paid BY YOU to do the job. The irony is almost too much to bear. Do you get it? If not please go back and read again.

Here’s another angle on the above. Let’s say that you and your patriotic buddies are all about armed insurrection against the government should it “get out of hand”.  Who are YOU to decide when that trigger point has occurred? How will the rest of us know when “you” decide it’s time to take matters into your own hands? What if we disagree? What you are basically telling us, is that YOU and your friends are ticking time bombs that could go off the moment that YOU decide you don’t like how things are going. You are a terrorist in waiting. If things really do go off the rails, then our only hope is that enough people feel the same, and that a military coup rescues us, because otherwise, there you are, fighting tanks and drones with your little AR15.  Either way, you and your little assault rifle never does anything to change the big picture.

But wait, you don’t want to fight the government, you want to protect your family! You need that assault rifle for personal protection!  A pistol just won’t do.  OK, well, we’re sorry, but just how many bad folks do you expect to be breaking down your door?  No really.  How many? Oops, are we back to fighting the government again? Better go back and read the above over, it doesn’t end well for you.

No, no.. don’t you get it you dumb snowflake, if we get rid of assault rifles, then only CRIMINALS will have assault rifles! How will we protect ourselves!?  Well, yes, I hear you, but if only CRIMINALS have assault rifles, at least we KNOW that they are criminals, and when we “get them” we’ll take their assault rifle away! ‘cause, you know, they’re not legal! At the moment, the criminals are welcome to have them. Once they’ve done their time or paid their fine, we’ll effectively hand their gun back and say “now be a good boy!”.  Nice argument, but I’m not buying it.

So, in the end, you, dear assault rifle lover, don’t get to have that assault rifle. Not at your house.  It’s a shame, but you have the NRA to blame. They’re the ones that flooded the market and made it so easy for “the crazies” to get their hands on them. They did it for money. That’s all they ever cared about.. but, they duped you into thinking it was for “freedom”.  You let them do this. Politicians let them do this. (there’s that money thing again) There will always be crazies… they exist all over the world. But, we’re the only country that has “the gun problem”.  Everywhere else has to deal with the odd bomb, car/truck ramming, knife attack, etc. It’s not a perfect world, and never will be.  However, you and your friends will lose your rights to certain types of weapons because, just like hand grenades and bazookas, you don’t need them, and it’s not safe for you to own them. (A Bazooka would be so fun to play with though wouldn’t it?)

Gun owner’s rights don’t supersede the rights of others to be safe. Your interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment is flawed and self-serving. You didn’t act and push for sensible protections when you could, and now it’s too late. The line has been crossed. It’s only a matter of time. Sell it/them while you can.

Here's a big "Fuck You!" to politicans, the NRA, and your 2nd Amendment Rights

Snappy headline eh?
As we roll out of 2015, I wanted to take a moment to address all the gun and freedom lovin' folks of America, even though few of them will ever read this, since I don't tend to keep such people as "friends".
So, where is today's angst is coming from you ask?

Let me lay it out for you:
The family and I went to see "A Christmas Carol" yesterday at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, NH. We've been before, and it's always a wonderful performance and a great way to get some Christmas cheer going. We had good seats, everyone was feeling festive, and as I said, the performance was wonderful. However, I found myself at some point during the performance suddenly working out a mental plan as to how I will handle the kids if someone bursts in and starts shooting up the place. WTF!? I'm not supposed to be thinking about that in the middle of a freaking Christmas play!! I've never thought about it before at a Christmas show, even though I know some of us are prone to such thoughts from time to time. So, there I am suddenly engrossed on the thought of which kid I am going to throw to the floor first and jump on top of to shield him from bullets, and how i'll instruct my wife to do the same. Seriously. So, I eventually convince myself, (now that I have a plan, YEAH!) that I can return to the regular scheduled Christmas play currently proceeding before me. Now I am pissed off, because I am most definitely not feeling all Christmassy.

My takeaway today, is just how fucked up it is, in 2015, for me to have thought that. What triggered the memory was the fact that schools in the neighboring district of Nashua are all closed today due to a threat of violence,received via email, specifically targeted at today, Monday the 21st of December. I sure hope the perpetrator is stupid enough that he/she doesn't know how to mask the header info on that email so their IP can be traced. If they are smart enough to know how to be anonymous, then that's all the more frightening.

So, yes, I've had enough and I want to say something: All of your 2nd amendment rights stacked on top of each other, doesn't give you the right to ruin my Christmas cheer for one millisecond. The fact that the possibility of someone shooting up a theatre has become MORE probable than any time in my life is enough for me to shout "Fuck You!" at the top of my lungs to everyone who stands in the way of sensible gun control laws. Everyone that thinks the "right of owning a assault weapon" is SO important, can kiss my ass, because your "rights" don't get to infringe upon mine, and currently they are. My rights are to "the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Any of you out there that think the puny second amendment should have any leverage over that most basic foundational tenant of our society should go back to school and learn about what the founding fathers where really doing. Currently, you 2nd Amendment A-holes are seriously harshing my preservation of life and pursuit of happiness buzz in the name of your liberty! ... and I detest you for it.

Here's another thought I had. Let's say we take the NRA's stance on "arming everyone" as a good idea. Even though there's been precious little evidence that this has ever been a good idea and produced a desirable result. Here's how I imagine it plays out in my above plan. So, let's say three terrorist/nut-jobs come into the theatre and start shooting up the place. Because I am carrying my super-duper Glock 9mm pistol in my leg holster, I quickly get the kids on the floor and reach for my piece. Being the big hero all us carrying folks are, I now proceed to blast away at the terrorists with my deadly accurate pistol and take two of them down. Yeah, I'm saving the world! Oh, look, one of them is escaping, so I get up and run after him, towards to door to stop him taking the lives of any more innocents, and BAM!, I am shot dead by a hail of bullets from every cop that's just arrived at the scene. Obviously they are going to shoot me. I have a gun, I am running (presumably with my terrorist friend they've just shot) trying to escape the carnage I caused! Makes perfect sense. When will this play out? Any day now, I guarantee you. Some 2nd Amendment hero is going to get shot by the cops as he's defending us all. So, no, arming the citizens is NOT the answer!

I am so done with this country some days... truly.

I know I am the worst blogger.. cause I forget I have a blog...

OK, so just for "grins" I'm going to enter this into my so-called blog just to see if I still know how to make it work!? What can I say, life is too busy for me to think about blogging, and if I'm in the mood to be writing, then I should be making money and doing writing something from my work "to-do" list. However, lately, I've been playing around with the IoT (internet of things) and the "connected home" (what is it with me and quotes and ellipses anyway).. ahem... So, yes, we ditched ADT, and have gone to Samsung's Smartthings where the whole house is now wireless and "smart". In addition to security and smoke/fire/Carbon monoxide all being tied into the system, we also have LIGHTS... and MUSIC... So, yes, every morning the security system automatically disarms itself and each person has a customized playlist start playing on their Sonos to gently wake them, and some of us have LED lights coming on at 10% dim, only to brighten over time. It's kinda sweet to have your house gently get you going in the morning. Now if I could just figure out how to tell it to make a proper espresso!? We've got leak sensors, and heat sensors, and this weekend, the Phillips HUE lights are going into the main den/fireplace room for complete custom color lighting. Six new recessed fixtures in the ceiling (my back is already sore), and some cool Iris lamps. Next will be thermostats, and door locks(at least one), that will automatically unlock when certain (approved) individuals approach with their cell phones and/or proximity dongles. I'm about to go downstairs to put the dog out for her "last business" of the night and the house will automatically light my way (thanks to motion sensors). Everything is controlled by our iPhones. What fun it all is for a gadget guy. Yeah, I have blogged! I'll sleep better tonight!

Did you ever see this? The story of building my "recording studio" with my dad

So, I'm in the mood suddenly to catch my blog up with historical fun stuff that's been happening over the years. I was lucky enough to have this story published on the venerable "Creative Cow" in both online and print form.
I have no idea how long some of these links will last, so for now, this will be a place to find such stuff.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/hansel_doug/magazine_recording_studio.php /a>

Man can I talk... and talk.. and almost be "on message"?!?

This is me preaching Avid's message last year at the NAB show. If you find yourself having problems sleeping, then by all means, watch. Otherwise, unless you care about such things, you'll not want to waste precious minutes of your life watching this. ;-)

PVC at NAB 2014 - Avid from ProVideo Coalition on Vimeo.

I'm on a Blogging diet... only one post per year!?

... But seriously... who else can claim they are a blogger and only do one post a year? Who?
I'm not proud of it, but it just "is".
So, what's in the news? Only that I quit my job at Avid after more years than I can count (at least on my hands) 20+? ..with 2 tours of duty... Good news is that I am now happier than I've ever been. I'm working from home with my lovely wife as I have joined her successful marketing and public relations business. www.highrezpr.com It was all part of a dream I didn't even know I was having... I started to realize while working for Avid over the years that the favorite parts of my job were my interactions with customers, and the communication and educational aspect of that interaction. I guess I've never really gotten over the thrill of giving a good demo to anyone who is interested. So, with that in mind, I made a bold move and switched careers at Avid, leaving behind my "Product Designer" role, and joining the marketing group as Senior Marketing Manager. Some people probably thought I was crazy... but, I needed to know if I could do it, if I could be any good at writing (still working on that), and if the whole marcom thing was really something I was interested in. It went ok, and I was fortunate to have so much knowledge on the subject that I could learn while doing. Of course I learned a lot of things I didn't like and had to continue to suffer an intolerable amount of high tech jargon. (leveraging our core competencies to deploy best of breed solutions) -- That could be an entire blog subject on its own (another day). However, I successfully wore the marketing hat, and found that although I can write "ok", there are a few people that can write so much better... I mean the WOW, how do they do that? kind of better..(my wife being one of them) I figure I'm as good or better than most, so I'll keep plodding along trying to up my game. As the year progressed, the dream started to materialize of possibly going to work for Veronique at HighRez. If we could just pick up enough clients, the math might work out and we could survive? So, we discussed the possibility for weeks, agonizing over things like health insurance costs, 401Ks, and all our other expenses. Almost like clockwork, potential new clients just started coming out of the woodwork. Without ANY solicitation by us!! So, if ever I felt something/somebody was looking out for us, it was then. We signed up three more (just the number we calculated we needed) and I gave my notice. Things really took off and I was working out my two weeks with Avid while writing and having meetings with HighRez clients. Avid could not have been better to me. They said "as long as you get your work done, we don't care where you are", which was lucky, since we needed to attend a kickoff meeting with a client in California!

So, that was July 2014... and here we are still going strong in November (touch wood). I've taken the title of "technology evangelist", which is certainly unique, but I have to admit that I'm doing a fair amount of it every day, so it's actually quite fitting. One of our biggest concerns is not taking on too much work, as we continue to get business leads from some great companies. We have to be careful not to get buried in our work. However, wintertime is a good time for such things! All in all, I'm so happy, I can't even describe it. Working from home with the woman I love is just heavenly. We have different strengths, so we make a good team. Some folks can't imagine working with their spouses, and I can understand that, however, so far (touching wood again) we are managing pretty well! The other problem I'm having is not taking this all for granted. I feel so blessed and full of gratitude, but I still can't express how wonderful the change is in words. It's truly extraordinary, and I owe so much of it to Veronique, because yet again she made it all possible! Love, love, love that woman!!

Hello Summer 2013 - I just remembered I had a blog!

It's no joke that this is indeed "The very rarely posted and never read thoughts of Doug Hansel..." Do you believe me now? It appears that my last entry was December 2009?! The boys are 7 going on 8 and flying to France in 3 days to spend the summer with their grandparents. What an amazing opportunity. They of course have no idea. It's just what you do, go to visit your grandparents, what could be more normal right? Of course we as parents have a nice broad range of emotions ranging from "OMG we're putting our kids on a plane by themselves to Europe" and "Wow, they're going to be bi-lingual in no time with an experience like this" and "Yeah, we have our freedom again, let's be spontaneous!!" to "wow, we miss them and they haven't even left yet." To be clear, Veronique and I are really enjoying being parents, and couldn't be more proud of our boys. We've made a big decision this year too, since we will be moving them out of Montessori school and into public school this fall for the 3rd grade. They are genuinely excited by the prospect and newness of it and we can't help but me amazed at their spirit of adventure. In other news, I'm getting a new John Deere garden tractor this Friday, so it should be fun to mow the lawn a couple times before the novelty wears off and it becomes a chore again. Oh, and I got a snow-blower attachment for it too, so it will be fun to have that capability again this winter (the last one broke) so that I can do a nice clean job versus the mess that the plow guy makes, again up until the point that it becomes a chore. I'm sure there's a lesson in there... how to keep things fresh? Why should mowing the lawn one day be fun and not the next? It's all about perspective and awareness I guess? Has anybody seen my nirvana? Probably trapped under the cushions of the couch again. Ok, so, this is getting boring. I might as well talk about the grass growing next right? I didn't have a real reason to write, other than to prove I can still access my blog account (which took a few moments!) So, let's see if this lights up my corner of cyberspace for a nanosecond. Publish!