What Has Changed?

For over two hundred years, the United States has been a country in which people owned and sometimes carried guns. When I was growing up, I don't recall ever hearing about mass shootings such as we've had in the past few years.  If people have always had guns, yet the mass shootings have increased, what has changed?

People who lean left politically always predictably call for gun control after these heinous acts. The problem is that only law-abiding people will obey the laws and we're not the ones you need to be concerned about. Criminals are, by definition, those who violate laws and new gun laws will be no exception.  

These horrible mass shootings present a multifactorial problem. Our society has changed over the past thirty years or so and not for the better.  It's not the presence of guns in society that's the basic problem.  There are other social factors at play:  broken families, too many parents who fail to teach their children right from wrong and a lack of respect for law and order.  On top of this, many children are exposed on a daily basis to extreme violence in video games, television and movies in which human life is portrayed as expendable and not worthy of reverence. In addition, our society has become less religious and more secular which sometimes results in a broken moral compass.  Add all of these factors together and you get a mixture that is toxic and potentially explosive.  

One of the supreme ironies of this day and age is that even as our communication technology has become ever more sophisticated, more and more people seem isolated and alienated from others.  There was a time in the not so distant past that most people had ties to their neighbors, communities at large and churches.  Now, it's not uncommon for people to not know the people who live right next door to them.  The loosening of these community ties contribute to people feeling disconnected from those around them, and when a person doesn't feel connected to others, it's easier to harm those people.  

While I'm in favor of common sense gun laws, we can all play a role in keeping guns out of the hands of those who should not have them.  We must have the courage to speak up if we know of someone who seems unstable, perhaps with violent tendencies, or someone who talks or writes about hurting others.  If you sense something is wrong, don't ignore it!  You could possibly be saving lives by taking notice and trying to get help for those who need it most.

Day of Resistance

Last Saturday, there were approximately 150 Day of Resistance rallies across 39 states.  Knowing that the mainstream media won't publicize events that don't fit their agenda, I just wanted to pass these pictures along to you.  Hope you enjoy them!

Pictures from Day of Resistance rallies

Guns Can Save Lives Too

President Obama and Vice-President Biden are meeting today with victims of gun violence.  Since fairness seems to be important to Obama, having heard him use the word "fair" several times in his efforts to redistribute our wealth, I'm just wondering if Obama and Biden will also be talking to some of the people who have saved lives with their guns?  Somehow, I doubt it.

Did you know.....


• A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Miss., was halted by the school's vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck. 
• A 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun. 
• A 2002 terrorist attack at an Israeli school was quickly stopped by an armed teacher and a school guard. 
• A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Va., came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter. 
• A 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah, ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened. 
• A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas, was halted by two co-workers who carried concealed handguns. 
• A 2012 church shooting in Aurora, Colo., was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun. 
• At the recent mall shooting in Portland, Ore., the gunman took his own life minutes after being confronted by a shopper carrying a concealed weapon. 
2500 times last year alone legal gun owners stopped violent crime when confronted with it long before any police assistance arrived. 

Of course, you probably didn't know any of this because mainstream media doesn't find it worth reporting. It's not sensational enough and doesn't fit with their agenda. What's insane is people who think removing rights from responsible people will somehow keep them safe. 
I wonder what else we have NOT been told, before it's too late.

In the Crosshairs

In the wake of the shooting tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, the anti-gun people are predictably calling for more restrictive laws on firearms.  No one is against common-sense regulations on weapons, e.g., background checks to make sure a prospective buyer doesn't have a criminal record or history of mental illness.  

The problem with gun laws, as with all laws, is that only law-abiding citizens obey them.  Criminals couldn't care less about the laws - that's what makes them criminals.  Thus, more restrictive gun laws are unlikely to reduce criminal behavior.  

The gun control crowd is focused on a symptom and not the disease.  Al Sharpton, in advocating for stricter gun laws, used the analogy of a headache.  To paraphrase the good reverend, if you have a headache,  you take an aspirin to get rid of it.  What Sharpton seems to miss is that a headache is a symptom of another, deeper problem.  If you only treat the symptom and do nothing about the underlying causative disorder, the symptom will recur over and over.  

In a similar fashion, enacting tighter gun control laws will do nothing to prevent future violence and will certainly not alleviate the underlying problem.    Clearly, in the shootings in Arizona (Gabby Giffords), Colorado and Connecticut, all three gunmen were mentally deranged to one degree or another.  It would be more useful to focus on recognizing and treating mental illness than to focus on the means by which they achieved their atrocities.  Charles Krauthammer, who at one time was a practicing psychiatrist, has said that it used to be easier to commit people who were believed to be a danger to themselves or others, but organizations such as the ACLU have made involuntary commitment more difficult.  While recognizing that abuse is certainly a concern with involuntary commitment, there surely is a way to formulate common-sense laws that will protect the community while preserving the rights of the mentally ill.  It's time to focus on the people who perpetrate these heinous acts instead of the inanimate weapons which they employ in their violence.