Gun nuts and wingnuts

I was listening to a story on NPR the other day while driving home from work that was about the shortage of ammunition in this country, partly due to the two wars we're fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also because so many gun nuts thought that Obama was going to take away their guns or at the very least, put severe strictures on their use. So what did people do? They stockpiled huge amounts of ammunition, in some cases, a lifetime supply. For example, part of the story was about a 69 year old lady who bought a lifetime supply of ammo for her AK-47. Now, I ask you, what in the world would a little ol' lady be doing with a high powered military assault rifle? (These are probably the same kind of people who listen to the ultra right wing radio talk shows hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and other right wingnuts who think that government is what's wrong with everything in this country.) It's getting to where our citizenry are outgunning law enforcement personnel, to the point where they are vulnerable because they lack the protection against high powered military assault rifles. In recent weeks, there have been a number of killings of police, namely in Pittsburgh and Oakland, CA, and in those cases, the police were badly outgunned by the criminals and were shot down in cold blood as a result. This is inexcusable. We can't have people going around with high powered military assault weapons able to gun down our law enforcement personnel at will. It renders policemen moot and it almost creates a situation where people seem to feel the need to take things into their own hands. The gun nuts and wingnuts still insist that Obama's going to take away their guns even though he has reassured them that he has no intent of repealing our second amendment. But in recent days, there have been so many killings and mass slaughter that something is going to have to be done. Too many people have access to too much high powered weaponry and this isn't right. No one needs an AK-47, period. No one. That's ridiculous to allow people to own weapons that should be the exclusive purvue of the military and others who really need it. Either a ban on assault rifles will have to be put into place or police and other law enforcement personnel are going to have to be better armed and better protected if people are going to be allowed continued access to this kind of weaponry. It just isn't right and before we have another mass murder on our hands, something's gotta give.

OH, MY ACHING BACK!

Sometime during the past week, I managed to injure my left lower back. I don't know whether it was due to lifting something at work or going nuts in the gym or what, but the pain has migrated to my hip as well, making movement incredibly painful. I had my massotherapist work on me on Saturday morning and it seems to have helped somewhat. I've been icing it regularly but that tends to stiffen me up a bit, so I bought a moist/dry heating pad and have been using that to augment the cold treatment. It feels so good to sit and warm up my lower back and it tends to make me very sleepy as a result. It's tough in the mornings when I'm not fully awake to begin with and I have this warm and relaxing heat on my lower back. At night, it makes me sleepy to the point where I fall into a nice deep sleep fairly easily because the heat relaxes me so much. I'm still sore today and probably will be for a while yet, but each day, the pain decreases just a little bit. I have to be very careful about how I move and do things so as not to aggravate the injury, and at times my job makes that tough because we often do a lot of lifting and bending and stooping. So I'm trying to be very gentle and careful about how I do things and probably will continue to do so until this thing heals. If my history of this sort of thing happening tells me anything (this isn't the first time I've done this), it's going to be a few weeks yet before the pain completely disappears. Guess I'll have to be patient until then.