Dump the Second Amendment to Save Gang Bangers

Want to drastically reduce illegal killings in the US?
Yeah, like who doesn't want to do that?
Want to virtually eliminate illegal gun-related murders?
Refer to second sentence.
I think that the murder rate in this country is ridiculously high. And, darn near out of control.
It doesn't have to be that way.
We could, as a nation of rational, liberal-minded, pacifists agree to dump that antiquated and pesky constitutional amendment in the Bill of Rights that guarantees that the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
More than 80-million US citizens own more than 300-million guns. I need to add that those 80-million citizens are law abiding people who have killed fewer people than the late Ted Kennedy.
So, why not just take away their guns? That would stop the gun murders, right? Doubtful. And, no one will fall for this philosophy. Unless one subscribes to the philosophies of butt-kissing politicians who are trying to divert attention away from the political blunders of the current administration.
Those butt-kissers are doing everything they can to demonize law-abiding citizens, 80-million of us. In any other situation, those being demonized for no good reason, and with no justification, would be screaming discrimination. And, they would be right to do so.
If we want to discriminate, then I suggest we discriminate against the murderers. And, if one is to believe government stats, one will agree that the vast majority of gun killings are gang related. In Chicago, the city most often cited as being the murder city of the year, studies show that gang related gun murders accounted for more than 90% of the total gun killings last year. In case you're wondering, more than 500 people were killed in 2012 in Chicago. Gang activity accounted for more than 450 of those murders.
But, blaming gangs for the murders is not politically correct. Why? Well, those same government stats, once examined, show that the killers are black or Hispanic. In fact, 96% are black or Hispanic. Not my numbers, those are numbers from the government studies. And, the stats show that almost all of the murders are gang related, that either the killer, or the victim, or both, were gang members.
Given that info, why would we not just discriminate against the gang members? I can't think of any REASONABLE person who would disagree that gang members should not be allowed to possess guns. Not even my friends at the NRA.
Actually, those murders are already illegal, and most are committed by people who are not suppose to have guns in the first place.
Duh.
The problem is not guns. The problem is that our justice system does little to prevent crime. Police do a bang-up job investigating the crimes. After they occur. And, they will tell you that it's pretty easy identifying the bad guys 'cause they've got their pictures and fingerprints on file from previous crimes.
The problem is that we are treating these gang-bangers with kid gloves because of their minority status. It's time, America, that we take back our streets. It's time to do like New York City. Adopt stop and frisk policies for the police. I don't care if it's harassment. If an obvious gang member is in a suspicious area, then cops should be able to frisk him. It's worked wonders in the Big Apple. A city that's three times as big as Chicago had fewer murders than the president's home town (or, at least the town he seems to claim, these days). Every gang member should be stopped and searched, and if a weapon (and, that includes knives, martial arts gear, brass knuckles, or guns) is found, then that person should be held accountable. Justice should be swift, and punishment should be severe.
Naturally, the police should never be allowed to go where they're not needed, and this should not be an open invitation for the law to go beyond the intended boundaries. Strict controls must be strictly enforced. After all, this should not be an opportunity for an anti-gun establishment to violate the Second Amendment.
STOP AND FRISK may not be the best answer. But, it might be worth a trial in a city with a problem like Chicago has.
 

Another School Attack...this one gets almost no coverage

What the hey? Another attack on a school campus and it gets nothing more than local news coverage! How can that be, America? How can that be? No Brian Williams, no Piers Morgan with “School Attack Leaves One Wounded” reports. I’m disappointed. Shocked by their apathy.

Is it because there was no assault rifle or a handgun involved? You might ask the victim whether he thought the 12 inch butcher knife used in the attack was not as scary, not as dangerous as a semi-automatic rifle. You might ask whether the 17-year old man accused in the assault was any less threatening or less dangerous.

You might ask, or observe, as a number of those who have read the story on a local TV station’s web site, if the victim and/or the assailant are members of gangs.

The attack, luckily, was not fatal. At least, not this time. And, the teenager accused of attacking his classmate was quickly arrested. And, it was good that his bond was set at $25,000, a large amount the less-conservative-elements might say, given that no one knows if the assailant has a criminal record. Never mind that he is now free on bond, after appearing before a judge, coming up with the bail. The only positive part of this is that he is under “electronic surveillance”.

I’m sure that the victim’s parents are feeling good about the security of their child. And, I’m sure that the accused knife-wielding assailant has learned his lesson, and poses no threat to anyone because the man wearing the black robe in court told him to behave himself. Hopefully, he is satisfied that whatever dispute happened over the weekend has been resolved. If not, the victim remains at risk. And, if either or both of these individuals are gang members, their families and friends also remain at risk.

And, the bloodshed shall continue. Mark my word, and put it down in your notebook. This story is far from over.

No Chance for Feinstein's Gun Control; and Murder in Chicago

At least, that's what North Carolina's Third District Congressman, Walter Jones, says. Jones, during an interview on Live and Local with Raeford and Friends, doesn't give the proposed ban any chance of even getting through the Senate. Let's hope he's right.

That interview can be heard here https://soundcloud.com/raefordandfriends at least for a few days. Scroll down until you find the link "Interview with Congressman Jones".

The gun ban is not the only issue he talked about. He dealt, extensively, with women in combat roles, the debt ceiling, and more.

Moving on to guns, a hot topic these days, have you noticed that gun control freaks seem to use murder statistics in Chicago when they call for more gun bans and controls? Well, let's just take a look at those stats. The most recent ones I found were from 2011. Actually, the first six months of 2011, January to June. There were 185 homicides in the Windy City. Not sure how many involved guns, or how many of those were pistols, rifles, assault rifles or shotguns. Matters not, but one will rightly assume that most of the murders involved a firearm.

The population of Chicago, according to the 2010 census:
42% White
37% Black
26% Hispanic
...and the rest

The stats, according to the stats available, show that the killers were:
3.7% White
61% Black
35% Hispanic
...and the rest

In other words, 96% of the murders in Chicago in the first half of 2011 were committed by Blacks and Hispanics. Given that the majority of those murders involved guns, would one...if he wants to be labeled a racist or a bigot...not conclude that confiscating guns from all Hispanics and Blacks would reduce the number of murders in Chicago?

In North Dakota, by comparison, there were 10 murders STATEWIDE in a recent year. There are a lot of guns in North Dakota. Less than 2% of the population is Black.

If gun control advocates want to use statistics to prove their cases, then they should show us ALL of the statistics.

Going a step further. Chicago gangs, from the information available, are comprised mostly of Hispanics and Blacks. I can find no stats on the murders and how gangs play in them. But, I would venture an educated guess that a large number of those killings are gang-related. So, why not control gang activity with tough laws and stiff punishment? We "don't need no stinkin'" community organizers to handle tough problems in the inner city, we need tough cops, tough DA's, and tougher judges. Instead we decide that punishing 80-million law abiding gun owners who have more than 300-million guns, guns that were involved in NO murders last year, is the solution.

Typical liberal reaction to a real problem.
 

It’s NOT about raising money or taxes

 

Good for North Carolina’s new governor. He’s going about trying to cut expenses instead of raising money, i.e. taxes. Finally, a politician who “gets it”. Pat McCrory, a successful businessman, the former mayor of North Carolina’s largest city, is looking for ways to reduce the runaway spending programs across the state. It only makes sense to do that. Unlike those guys in Washington who’s only plan is to raise taxes, borrow more, and spend even more, maybe…just maybe…the McCrory crowd can get at least one state back on the right track.

That said, there are some additional steps that could be taken to make this state economically sound.

There are more than 20,000 inmates serving time in the state’s prison system. Estimates vary, but it’s generally accepted that it costs North Carolina’s taxpayers $40,000 per year for every one of these prisoners. That’s for food, housing, clothing, guards, and heaven knows what else. Ok, so, doing the math, I find that the annual cost just to keep these guys in prison is 800-MILLION dollars a year.

Can that be right? Isn’t there something we can do to reduce that financial burden? It’s a given that MOST of those serving time are repeat offenders, and that the only reason they were released in the first place was because the prison system is overcrowded. Building more prisons is expensive. We all admit that. And, none of us want that added expense. But, if you look at the big picture, an intelligent person might deduce that it would be cheaper to build more prisons than it is to catch and prosecute a formerly convicted criminal who should not have been on the streets in the first place. Stands to reason.  And, if you add up the costs for the losses caused by these denizens of society, it looks like a no-brainer.

“Losses?”, you question. Yep. A parolee who breaks into your home and steals your property causes you losses. Even if you have insurance, you lose because your insurance rates…already high because of crooks…will likely go up.

And, of course, cops have to investigate, and though they don’t make a lot of money, it still costs taxpayers who pay their salaries. And, local jails have to take care of these crooks once they’re arrested. And, there’s the cost of prosecuting them, which will likely include the cost of a public defender. All at taxpayer expense. Money that could be used for education.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to build more prisons and keep these clowns off the streets in the first place?

Ok, so we don’t want to go to that expense. I have another solution. Why not contract with other countries to take care of the REPEAT offenders? Those we know are going to get out of jail and do the same crimes over and over again. Those who we know are going to cost taxpayers a lot of money. I bet that by soliciting other countries, allowing them to BID on the opportunity to take care of our scums, that they could do it a lot cheaper than $40-thousand a year. First, there would be an immediate savings. Second, other countries would see this as a source of revenue and it’s doubtful that they would be granting early releases. And, third, once these thugs are released, I suspect they would think twice about doing another crime that would send them back to that sort of hell.

To me, it sounds like a win-win. For the taxpayers, if not for the criminals.

More Dangerous than a Madman with a Rifle

Over the last five years, an estimated 25-times as many kids have died than were killed by an armed mad-man in Connecticut ten days before Christmas. And, it’s because our government has done nothing.

By its own estimates, the government of the United States says that some 110 children, under 10, die every year when they are backed over by drivers who can’t see them. As you would expect, most of those drivers are related to the victims.

This is one you can’t blame on George Bush. In 2008, before leaving office, then President Bush signed into legislation a LAW calling for new manufacturing techniques to provide better visibility BEHIND a car. That law went into effect almost five years ago. Since then, an estimated 500 kids have died.

You want to get mad about something, then get mad about this. The standards signed into law have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has pushed back that deadline three times — promising last February that the rules would be issued by the end of 2012. And, guess what? Not yet.

Seems to me that Transportation Secretary LaHood needs to become history. Sure looks like he is a politician who needs to find a pasture. What really sucks is that he had announced plans to retire after Obama’s first term, but is now indicating he wants to stick around for a while longer. I guess he doesn’t have enough blood on his hands. Perhaps another 500 children will have to die before he takes this situation seriously. 

Politicians certainly make strange bedfellows. Bloody LaHood is a republican, appointed to the position in 2009. If he can’t carry out one little command that, once implemented, could save the lives of as many as 100 children every year, then he should be ridden out of town on a rail, wearing a combination of tar and feathers.

Won’t happen, of course. He may be a registered republican, but he’s an Illinois politician.

 

The Wisest Generation

The Wisest Generation

Much is written about the Greatest Generation, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and the like. Seldom do we drop back to the time of what I call the Wisest Generation. It was more than two centuries ago, at a time when our forefathers decided that “enough was enough”. It was 1776 when they drafted what became known as the Declaration of Independence.

The men of the Wisest Generation produced a document declaring their independence from Great Britain, a land they left to exercise their desire for freedom from what they deemed an oppressive government and society.

 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Thus was born the Declaration of Independence and a United States of America.

It was a battle, of course. England wanted the colonists to pay taxes to the King. What was it providing in exchange for those taxes? Yep, nothing. The King saw the colonists as nothing more than a source of revenue. Sound familiar?

Over the next dozen years, the Wisest Generation knew that order and rules needed to be established within the newly formed organization of individual states. Over a lengthy period of time, after a lot of soul searching, the Constitution of the United States was drafted. Those working on that document had to look not only at the current state of affairs, but at both history and the future. After all, they didn’t want their sons and grandsons to have to go through the same turmoil a few years down the road.

These were some pretty smart people. Knowing full well that, even in their lifetime, man had come a long way, that situations would change, that additional rules would need to be addressed to deal with those changes, they left some wiggle-room. There was no way, in 1789, that they could have seen the coming of the automobile, and a need to issue licenses for motorists. That is why drivers do not have a constitutional right to drive a car. Every state issues driving privileges, privileges that you must earn. Privileges that can be taken away.  But, our Declaration covers that, too. All men are created equal. Laws are not adopted giving any person or group any more privileges than another. At least, that’s the way it’s intended.

It is amazing, then, that the Wisest Generation saw fit to include RIGHTS within the Constitution that could not be taken away. The First Amendment, for instance, guarantees us the RIGHT, not a privilege, to worship…or not…any way we choose. It guarantees us a RIGHT to say what we want. It provides us with a press that is free to report on the deeds or misdeeds of government, free from government control.

The Second Amendment, the one we hear so much about these days, was apparently important to the Wisest Generation, in that it guarantees us the RIGHT to have guns. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The language is simple. The message is clear. Even William Jefferson Clinton would have trouble honestly (I realize that’s a tough word for Clinton to swallow) interpreting that sentence to mean anything other than what it states.

While times do change, and we must adopt rules to adapt and deal with new challenges, you would think, at least, that our elected representatives could understand our core values, and would take to heart what the men of the Wisest Generation did to ensure a future society free from oppression from within and beyond our borders. If they have any doubts, I strongly suggest that each of our elected representatives refer to that sentence in the Declaration of Independence that states Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  How often do we need to remind them that they get their powers from us?

You would also think that a president, who claims to be a constitutional scholar would abide by the oath he took to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”. And, repeating what Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to prompt as a question, “…so help you God?”.  Barrack Hussein Obama said “…so help me God”.

So help me God is not part of the official oath. Neither is there a requirement to use a Bible in the ceremony. But, it has become a tradition for most presidents taking the oath. It’s ceremonial, to be sure, and what many feel is a presidential guarantee that he takes to heart what he is saying, that he will honor his commitment to the citizens of this Great Nation.

Let’s hope so.

New York and New Jersey want MY money???? For Sandy Relief????

Yeah, that's right. Hurricane Sandy caused a LOT of damage along the New England seacoast, leaving death and destruction in her wake. And, now the governors of New York and New Jersey think that the Federal Government should pay for that damage. By Federal Government, they mean you and me.

A question that some of the folks out there in North Dakota are asking is "what's in it for me"? Like, when did the taxpayers from either of these states send money to help them dig out from blizzards?

Ok, get off your defensive high horses. We are a United States of America. And, we take care of our own. That's one of the things that makes us special. We even send billions of tax dollars to all sorts of people in all corners of this world when they need help recovering from a natural disaster. It's the right thing to do. Right?

Not no, but HELL no! We don't have anything extra to share with those countries. We don't even have enough to take care of our own. Let me know if you find those outpourings of money or donations coming into this country when we suffer an attack from the likes of a hurricane, an earthquake, a flood, or forest fires that burn for months. But, let a third world country get clobbered, and you'll see tax dollars by the billions (dollars that we actually borrow from China, then repay with interest) going to their aid. Not to mention all of the good hearted people, many representing churches, who pack their bags and tools and head out to help rebuild.

Being politically incorrect and insensitve, but realistic, I'll tell you that, thanks to us, those places "devastated" by storms are oftentimes better off when we leave than they were BEFORE the storms.

So, where are the other countries when we get nailed? Why is the weight of the world on the shoulders of the United States? We certainly seem to contribute much more than our (I hate these words) fair share. It's like our president and his liberal socialist fiends (yes, that's the word...no "r") who want to let the minority of Americans pay their fair share so those who don't want to work don't have to.

Don't get me wrong. Or, if you want to, that's ok. If a person, a state, a society is in trouble, I'm all for lending a hand. And, I don't expect anything in return, except maybe a thanks. The key word here is helping. There is a big difference between a helping hand and a handout.

When you check out the list of countries on our handout list (aka, foreign aid), you might be surprised at just how much we give to whom. Countries that are not in dire straits. We give them money, we're told, because we want to keep them friendly to the United States. Why? Why do we need to be friendly with countries that could care less about us? Do you think, even for a moment, that any one of these friends would not stab us in the back, given a chance?

Well, now here's a real kick in the pants. Several countries HAVE offered us assistance. Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill disasters are two recent cases. But, we DECLINED their offers!!!! Can you imagine? We don't mind giving, giving, and giving. We don't mind taxing our citizens to death. We don't mind having the 2% of the richest people in this country pay their fair share to keep the masses from having to lift a finger. But, we won't accept help when offered? We don't mind borrowing money to give to other countries; we don't have a problem printing all the money we need.

Americans. We have a problem. And, its not one that has just happened. It's a problem that is decades in the development. And, unless we get our hands on the throat of this problem and choke the life out of it, this once great nation is going to continue its downhill slide to a point that it will, as many a great nation has done in the past, collapse from within and die.