Shot Through The Heart

Transcript (Unedited)

So, over one is Tyler bride in here on a Saturday, afternoon February 17th, 2018, at innovation works. I did a little bit of stuff this morning, but one to pop into the office here this afternoon and just sort of continue this habit of re-taking some time to myself and putting some content out there and trying to address some things that I’m thinking about. And I think really realistically the world in general. And it was a big week it was a big week with what happened in the world, and one of the main things that people are talking about and rightly so, is what’s happened down in Florida, here. And obviously, if you if you didn’t see it, it was another mass shooting. There’s been a lot of them lately, and a lot over the last seemingly five years. I just keep cropping and popping up every… every several weeks here. And so I was really interesting about this instance, in particular, is just how much the conversation has been about mental health and mental illness, and I think that’s a really important thing, but I think that’s also a stark contrast when we see someone who is an immigrant isn’t dark or part of her religion that is an inherent in our country and not really an extremist. And I think it’s really interesting to see the play of when it’s sort of a normal American person who are someone consider a normal American person commits a crime like this that the conversation is a lot different than you know, if it is an immigrant or if it’s someone who has been radicalized by radicalized by Islam, and just to see the discourse of it, the reaction from both sides.

And I think, I think that’s saying that both sides, I think is one of the big problems that we’re facing is that we’ve made this a very binary system and the world that we’re living in. And so, of course, you’ve got the right side. Who they wanna keep their guns, they wanna have guns, they think people are trying to take their guns away and they want for protection, they want it for safety and they wanna be okay if, if something happens, something breaks down that they know that they still got to the fence.

And I think that makes a lot of sense, I think we’re living in a pretty volatile world and it seems to continue to be that way. And so for me, I get that, I get that understanding, that you want to be able to protect yourself, especially when it seems like maybe the people who are supposed to rotating you or the people who are… have a little bit more control in the world aren’t really doing a good job of that.

So I see, I really do see that side. I consider myself very independent of obviously, I’m first of all I’m not American, Cain but I see myself very independent of these two very binary systems we see in of course the other side we here are people who don’t think people should have guns. And this is me trying to put it in that binary place. They don’t wanna have guns. I think guns are dangerous, if you have guns. The risk for something happening, like what happens in Florida goes up. And of course I agree with all of that side as well, too. It makes perfect sense statistically you look, you have a bunch of Damon. There’s probably gonna be a bunch more shootings, and we’ve seen that just it’s not a debated thing any more. Statistically, if you lower the amount of guns in a country amount of shootings will go down less people will be hurt and less people will die. And I think the fact that this binary system that we put in, has made us overlook those facts is just so crazy. And so the discussion that really what has seemingly come up from this week’s event, and I’m going to call this shot through the heart because it was Valentine’s Day, when this happened a day that’s supposed to be about love, about connection, about sharing time with someone that you enjoy spending time on. We had something like this and it’s really I think a representative of the state that we are and as as a world right now is it’s pretty hectic, it’s pretty divided and these days that we should be celebrating or turning it into these obviously a horrible tragedy, her where all you seeing at least seven people dead and young children. We seeing the story about how this teacher who hated his life to these students. And lost his life doing that and it’s really disappointed to see when when you’re supposed to be having days like this something happens. And what that discourse and what that discussion has been about… has been about… now has been a “momenta Health, and I think one of the big things that we’ve seen, it’s been different in this story with the cruiser who went and did this is that he had a dramatic history where the signs were very ones he you know, Ben-E-spell from school, his mom, mom had called the cops on him because of his violent outrages had a reputation in the school, he was posting, you know, comments on, on Reddit, and sharing pictures of guns on is on his profile Instagram and the signs are bio. I as got tips about this guy I received over 220 sort of tips and cause that or something wrong with this kid. And so, I think rightly so, this conversation has shifted into of course gun control. And I think that is… to me, for myself, and I think for a lot of people, it’s just common sense.

Well, why can… how old is it, 177 years old? I popped up with an AR-15 after he had a history of mental mental illness and be able to buy an A 15A, a semi-automatic rifle, and cloud down 117 of his own classmates. You know, get that out of there. Why would we continue that why would we have that as part of our society? Why… why does anyone really need an AR-15? I does anyone need a semi-automatic rifle?

I get why people wanna have guns to protect himself and said, if it gets to a dire situation, but you don’t need a semi-automatic rifle that’s gonna put a hole in a NWA whole family. Like just doesn’t make any sense.

And so what are those other discussions that need to take place, what are those other things that need to happen? And I think that’s where it’s just come back to this mental health and mental ones and there’s been a lot of people talking about the fact that this new administration is actually lowered the standards for people actually accessing guns, and I think that’s a really disappointing thing to take place, it just it doesn’t make any sense, but I guess we can come to expect that from the current administration and if we’re not going to tackle it from the gun side, can we look at it from the mental health side? As long as this NA keeps pushing as long as we have the current administration, as long as Republicans just will seem to seem to ignore facts, a “glaring-ly obvious for most people we’re gonna have guns. I don’t think guns are gonna be leaving American we’re lucky to be Canadian, where people just don’t generally enjoy guns as much. And then there’s some pretty strict regulations on who can actually access them.

But a big thing that I wanna talk about in one thing that obviously, I care about with what I’m doing in my life and just from my own experience, is this mental health side of it and something that I’ve been thinking about it and trying to see this.

How could this be integrated? How could we play this out, is this idea that mental health should have, there should be a course or a class or a curriculum dedicated solely to that. And I think that that’s something that we’re completely lacking as a generation right now we have, I know we have math we have science, we have even Jim like we have things about physical health, and we have practical things like math and science, but in reality, your mental health is one of those things that is gonna have the biggest impact on your life, not just your happiness, but your success and your contributions to society. And so why would we not try to put that inherently into our education inherently into what these kids are learning? To me that’s such a clear cut thing and something that we missed out on so much, in the previous generations, we’ve seen, we’ve seen, I’m a millennial, but the generation before us and generation for… they didn’t talk about this stuff, they didn’t know about how much, if you had trauma in your childhood that that could come back and impact you later in life. And the fact that we’re learning that stuff now, what we’re not teaching it to kids, to people growing up when they are in that time when they actually need to learn the stuff really only getting them to address that if they get into a crisis state or they have they show up down at a school and kill some ten people like those discussions don’t happen don’t they shouldn’t be happening then it’s not waiting to a crisis, this has to be prevented even. And so I know what I would really, really wanna see is a practical curriculum, and not just theory and talking about mental health and your feelings but let’s look at the science behind us. Let’s look at it. Like a math class are the practical things that you can bring in about mental health, what are those coping strategies, what are those awareness pieces that you can do? So if you know that if you’re having a problem that you can address that at those communication channels and strategies that you can open up, these are all really important things. And I think, so my own distancing from my research from talking to counselors or I’m talking to other mental health experts when something like this happens it’s because they don’t have the person doesn’t have the capacity or the ability to deal with their current situation. And if you have any sort of trouble, any kind of trauma and I don’t know enough about this God, but in general, you need to have these coping mates, you need to have these tools because if you’re not aware about it, when you’re younger, as you grow up, you’re gonna be stressed out, you’re gonna have problems, you’re gonna see Tragedy you’re gonna be a part of tragedy and when you can’t deal with that, that’s when the problems really arise in… and it sounds like this isn’t, it’s a systemic thing. The school expelled this kid any support that he had a lot of the human contact that he had before even with his violent outbursts. And his aggressive attitude, he lost that.

And I know maybe that it didn’t seem like he was being not supported, but just the fact that he was there interacting with other people and even if he was angry, didn’t like the me was full of hate and Vine. That’s still a support system. And for him to lose that It obviously puts them in a really tough situation and I think that’s where not having the ability to understand what that situation is the process. He’s going through his own mind and having a coping mechanisms or even an outlet to talk about that. It leads to a really dire sad situation like this, and it’s not something that we want to see again. And unfortunately, my big worry is that this is just gonna keep happening. And when is it, when is it gonna just keep getting worse, before it gets better, or we just used to try Teal stores stories where we think it’s gonna get better but it’s not… and we’re not in a fairy tale we’re not in this. Whatever your beliefs are, if you’re believing that we’re being guided by the universe, there still has to be some personal accountability in action, that takes place, and I think that’s been a lot of big part of this discourse, this week of thoughts and prayers aren’t enough. You need to have action you need to make systemic changes you need to introduce policies and laws and legislation to make sure that… to make sure that these problems that we all know are there that were praying and hoping, or get better actually change. And until we all start to take action collectively contribute to the world and the community that we’re in. We’re just… we’re not gonna have that change, and you know what we have right now, these laws and especially specifically now in the United States with the they’re out to date, you know what I mean? When they made these laws that you should have your guns and freedom to arm myself. We didn’t have semiautomatic rifles that were capable of killing hundreds of people, and it was a new Chris Rock special where he sort of talks about this, where they say If you they say a gun is just the Dan angers as a knife, it’s not guns that pill people, it’s people that kill people. So a person with the knife, I could kill a hundred people too, but the joke that resort says is that if you are, if you’re the 87th person who gets stabbed by you probably deserved die because you can’t get that far with a knife on you can’t bow down 60 people in a short time period, you can’t do that and it’s just not the same situation. And for them to compare that, you know, for these talking points to have that and continue to use the excuse, it’s really ridiculous. And to me, it’s such, it’s so obvious if “Guns don’t kill people, Okay, there’s your point, there.

People kill people.

Well, then we need to invest in people to get them to stop doing that. But you’re not doing that. So how are we gonna get people to stop killing people when you’re not taking care of people and in fact you’re making it to continually worse for them that isn’t gonna make people better and it’s not gonna make them use guns less as a tool to kill. And her other people. It doesn’t make any sense. And so, I don’t like that talking point. And I think that we’re really starting to see through that that none of these make any sense. And I pulled up this image from the vernal “The Daily Show, it was sort of like the GOP mass shooting response, translator. And so if they say No, this is not one people. Tragedy, it really means, this is a tragedy. We won’t speak about when they say thoughts and prayers. It means you want criticized God, what you… and if they say don’t politicized this, which is something that has been said over and over again after the shooting, it means that the shooter wasn’t a Muslim or an immigrant. These translations are so obvious to us, and yet it continues to repeat and repeat and repeat until we have to see more of this. We have to see more crying, students on TV crying mothers people who have sent their kids to school, and not have their kids come home and that’s just something I wanted to touch on today. I don’t wanna keep this too long and I don’t wanna keep ranting and rambling on, but I just think it’s so important to have these discussions and not just have these discussions.

I try to take some action about it, so that’s what I’m trying to figure out is, what can I do here? That actually contributes even just on a low level to shift awareness to bring these things into action, and stop this from repeating and repeating again, so I don’t wanna have too much else to say today, but I’d love to know if you’re listening. This you take a couple minutes to listen this what do you think we need to do, what are the things are you thinking about this too?

What pass do you see, of actual action that can make a… make a real change in our community or just in people’s perception, in general? And that’s something that I, I’m really interested in, I just wanted to be a part of this discussion. You see something like this happened, and we’re getting to sensitize to it, but you’re reading about it or you’re talking to people about it’s the discussion that’s taking place and you wanna contribute and be part of that discussion. And so, I hope I put a couple things together, here today. Not that fun to really come in on a Saturday and talk about this and to see just the responses to it. You see people like Betsy DeVos, down in the US who instead of taking guns ways they want to arm teachers and get security guards outside the schools and really with the right education with the right, the right tools with the right, correct? We shouldn’t have to worry about that. And I’m hoping that as this happens as I’m sure unfortunately, sadly, another event like this will happen that we continue to have these discussions that we continue to work towards change and a better world where… no parent has to worry about sending their kids to school, so they can learn and live a better life. So that’s all for me today.

Have a great weekend guys, if you listen again, shoot me a message you’re always happy to not happy, but always wanna chat about this stuff and be part of the conversation out there. So I have a great long week, and I have a great family. We can enjoy the time with those people that you Bob, I think that’s really, really important right now..