J'Espere

      Sometimes things come too close to home. Almost a week ago in Chapel Hill three young people were shot and killed at a condominium complex. They were killed by a man who had a dispute with them over a parking space. Some say it was a racial killing, since they were Muslim. I’m focusing on parking right now and moving to hate crime later because 1. We are not positive of the facts, since it is an on-going investigation and 2. The parking thing at this particular complex is no joke. I know because I lived it.             For several months during my senior year of college and after I graduated, until I moved to New York, I lived with a friend who had a place in the complex. It was lovely. Nice two and three bedroom condos with bathrooms for each. Perfect for college students and young professionals, which is what most of the neighborhood was made of. But the parking situation there was ridiculous. Really, shoul...

Before I could publish my post about Ferguson, another article popped up in my newsfeed. This time about a 9 year old who shot a shooting instructor at a shooting range: 9 Year Old Shoots Instructor . It actually wouldn’t have bothered me that much- after all, any time you handle a loaded weapon you are risking death- except that the gun she was shooting was a Uzi. A Uzi. The real thing- an automatic weapon preferred by the Israelites in the 1940s. And she could not handle the recoil and started spraying fire, killing her instructor. It’s being called a “tragic accident”. But is it either? To be sure I understood that a 9 year old American girl (please don’t even TRY to compare our children to child soldiers) had been given a Uzi as a recreational toy (and yes, if it is used by a child, it is a TOY).  So I consulted Wikipedia and here is what I read: The   Uzi   ( Hebrew :   עוזי ‎, officially cased as   UZI ) is a family of   Israeli   open-bolt , ...