December 31, 2012

This is 40

Today is the birthday of my little brother Luis Gabriel Martinez (Gabo). He would have turned 40 years old. I imagine him just as inventive, funny and good humored, but with the enhancements that experience afford us. In September 23rd, 1990, Gabo was killed at age 17 by a supposedly "unloaded" gun. The kid that wielded the illegally acquired revolver pointed the gun at my brother's face and pulled the trigger in a jest.

Meanwhile, at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, I was entertaining my dear friends David and Reneda Campbell, who had just arrived on base when I received the phone call. It was my Mom on the other side of the call crying, sobbing and with a trembling voice said to me: "your brother Gabo has been shot and we don't think he is going to make it". I hung the phone and like a mad man, took off running into a nearby clump of trees located near my block of base family housing units and began punching trees with my bare hands. To this day, 22 years later, I still get a weird feeling when I receive phone calls and my Mom's voice comes up.

My poor Mom, I do love you so and I can't believe that so much has been thrown at you in this life.

Gabo was my best friend and the one guy that could always make me laugh. He was awesome and I wish that all my good friends today would have gotten to know him. In many ways, I always felt that my boy Paquito took after him.

Happy Birthday Bro!

Gabo y Paquito

Gabo and Mom

Posted by martinf at 09:14 AM | Comments (1)

December 15, 2012

Gun Control. Come again?

Gun control debate or should we be talking about much deeper and perhaps, harder to fix problem in our society.

It sure seems simpler to just take away the capability of harming others from those who are the perpetrators. Is that capability a gun? More than once now in China we have individuals that walked into schools and started stabbing kids. No gun needed. How about people that poison Tylenol by aggregating a toxic substance? No gun needed either.

The problem is malfunctioning people. Mental illness that goes untreated, children that are raised without an understanding of the value of human life reinforced by a popular culture that teaches us that killing games like "Cowboys and Indians", "Playing Soldier", "Cops and Robbers" is fun and, because it is a game, we don't realize that no one adult is there to teach gun safety -- firearms are serious tools and not harmless toys.

Did you ever see the NBC television show "Chuck"? Talk about using guns in every episode as it is a toy, comedic and no real consequence. Willie Coyote, the Three Stooges, and so many other media examples of extreme violence without real consequence and all for entertainment.

Our little girls are given dolls on their birthdays and as Christmas gifts. Many of these dollies are representations of babies and have little baby bottles and diapers. This is because we -- Society -- are training our little girls to be Moms. We see things like teen pregnancy and premature motherhood, but if we were to give those little girls a "Teenager" doll and in the role play we then tell our little girl to handle when the school principal calls you up because their kid acted up and was bullying other kids... You get the picture.

We give our kids water pistols super soakers, cap guns, cork guns. They often point that toy gun, they fire and other kids in the role play may even pretend to be "shot", wounded and even die. Seconds later, they re-spawn to life and the game resets. No consequence no lesson being imparted.

We need more parenting, more supervision, more love, ethics and teaching of respect for human life.

A car is one powerful deadly weapon, yet millions are out there being used, but even people lacking the most basic form of education and higher learning teach their kids how to drive. They supervise them during their driving lessons and practice runs. They are always mindful to point out about the dangers of crashing into other cars or the potential of death for pedestrians being hit by a driver.

So the next time some one dies in a traffic fatality, do we outlaw Cars? The next time we have a deadly stabbing, do we outlaw knifes?

Difficult deep rooted problems are not fixed with half backed simplistic solutions.

Posted by martinf at 07:03 AM | Comments (0)