For my blog entry 6 I have chosen and article ““ No Guns on Campus”” from the student blog ““ Government for the People 2011””. Whereas the article makes some points, it is purely an emotional stance with no supporting evidence presented. The author, through their use of language, makes it clear this an opinion article and everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I will be presenting an opposing view. This is another area where, though being a moderate in general, I swing solidly to the right and I am fully in support of allowing concealed weapons on college campuses if the gun owner has a concealed weapon permit.
Speaking from my own personal experience, I attended a small rural High School in the 1980’s that quite literally was loaded with guns. If you looked into the parking lot, almost every pickup and a lot of cars had at least a .22 or a shotgun at minimum. Many were fully decked out with a .22 for varmints, High power hunting rifle, Shot gun, and sometimes even a hand gun; even though they were widely regarded as inaccurate and useless. The point is that during my entire time there, not a single one of those weapons were brandished. The owners were brought up around weapons, trained in their use from a young age and taught to respect them. If there was a fight, you fought, you either won or lost, and you never thought “I’m going to go get my gun”. Guns can safely be in an academic environment if the owners are responsible.
Also speaking from personal experience, I have been involved in a shooting incident. A co-worker was driving a tractor in a field where I was also working and someone they knew walked into the field and blasted a shotgun right into their abdomen. We immediately retrieved our rifles and stood at the ready with the truck as cover. If we had not had our weapons, they could have easily have decided not to leave any witnesses. As it stood, we had equal or greater firepower and a defensive position. The perpetrator did not threaten us, fled the scene and was later arrested. Despite the adrenalin of the situation we did not fire a shot because our gun culture and training said you only fire if directly threatened and a show of force prevented that.
Having established that background, I will now address the article. The author’s first elaboration comes in the first paragraph where they say, “I would support a higher level of a security force on our campuses verses an 18 year old or anyone having a concealed hand gun on campus”. The author also makes a reference to maturity thus implying that we would be handing our kids a HS diploma, handgun and sending them off to school. This shows an ignorance of the proposal in question and a lack of research by the author. In Texas you must be 21 to own a handgun or get a concealed permit and the process includes a full background check, even a Class A misdemeanor disqualifies you. You must prove proficiency with the weapon and read and know the laws concerning the use of deadly force. The process takes up to 60 days so there cannot be a “in the heat of the moment” permit. If you purchase the gun from a licensed dealer, you must also pass a federal check with a mental health element and a waiting period. Just the age restriction alone would limit most permits to the late junior or most likely senior grade level, older students or professors. “ Texas Gun Laws”
By comparison, we take 18 year olds into military boot camp, train them for 9 weeks, only a small portion of which is weapon training, and after completing their MOC they can be sent off into battle with weapons many times deadlier and accurate than a handgun and are considered to be mature enough to know when they can and cannot use them.
The second fallacy of this is that quite simply, the police cannot protect you in a gun situation, they can only respond to one after it is in progress. This may be a matter of minutes if they are close, but those are some very precious minutes. 32 people died at the Virginia Tech massacre and many more were wounded before police were able to take down the gunman. If someone in a nearby classroom had had a concealed weapon that might have only been 20, or 10, or 5. Theoretically, if the 5th person had had a handgun, and even if 2 more people died in the cross fire, that would still have made 7 dead instead of 32. Even if that person only managed to wound the perpetrator before dying them self it could have stopped the massacre.
The Gunman, Cho, was not a concealed permit holder. He was a mentally erratic student that was ignored by the campus authorities despite repeated complaints about him. The lesson learned from the Virginia Tech incident is NOT that we need gun control; it is that we need a better mental health system.
“ Virginia Tech massacre”
In almost every case where firearms are restricted, gun crimes increase because it disarms only the law abiding citizens and criminals do not get their guns legally nor follow the laws on their use. That is why we call them criminals. A 1997 survey of more than 18,000 prison inmates found that among those serving time for a violent crime, "30% of State offenders and 35% of Federal offenders carried a firearm when committing the crime." Yet, A 1982 survey of convicted felons in 11 states found that almost 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun”. “Gun Control Facts”
It is true that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. And if I had my choice, I would prefer the gun to be in the hands of a law abiding and permit holding citizen.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Let's all move to Somalia!
Let’s move to Somalia!
Doesn’t sound like a good idea? How about Afghanistan or Pakistan? Want something closer to home maybe? How about we go to Tijuana? Why would I suggest such a thing? Well, these countries have exactly what everyone seems to be clamoring for, small government. Granted, they have poor healthcare, lack of basic sanitation, rampant violence, crappy education and shoddy infrastructure… but hey, they have small government!
Quite frankly, I love the services my government provides. I get to drive on nice roads, my children and I attend good schools. I can walk to the store without the slightest fear. I can take a crap and with one little push on the handle, it just magically disappears! There are no packs of wild dogs digging in my garbage; my food and drinking water are safe. I’ve got the biggest and toughest army on the Planet to keep me safe from foreign invasion. The list goes on and on the more you think about it.
Every year when I pay my taxes, I remind myself what a great bargain I am getting. And also that is why it ticks me off to high heaven to see the current attempts to gut our government in the name of a political ideology. We love all the services we get but all of a sudden everyone is screaming about paying for it.
Here is the reality folks, we no longer live in 1776 or 1950, and hopefully never will again. We live in a modern and extremely complex world. And our government has evolved over time to meet the growing challenges of this complexity. Like it or not, it grew based on need. We understand more about science than we ever did back then, computers and technology have rapidly changed almost all facets of our daily lives. We are more diverse a society than we ever have been in the past with many different subcultures. We have grown to a population of over 300 Million people, up 9.7% from 2000. Our government does more than our founding fathers ever imagined it would, but they were wise enough to see that needs would change and provided a way to make it happen. As we have evolved, we have added services and policies and programs to address the evolution.
Now, getting back to my point, imagine where we would be without these services. Take a few minutes to imagine how your life would be impacted. Some of the examples of other countries I gave might seem extreme, but they go to show how life is without a government there to do its job. Think it can’t happen here? In the last couple decades many countries that were once peaceful, modern and prosperous have degenerated into shells of their former selves. In each case citizens who were once middle class now find themselves having to come to terms with the realization that they are suddenly living in poverty ridden and violent societies. Sure, some have been due to war, but others were due to internal conflict or collapsed economies.
The current attempt to trim massive amounts off the budget in a time when our economy is unstable is the height of folly. Our country is currently at a dangerous precipice looking down into what could very likely be a permanent decline in our wealth and stability. It’s all fine and dandy to play politics under normal circumstances, but when the country is in trouble, they need to put away the campaign hats and actually govern for a change.
Here is the truth of the matter, we HAD a budget surplus 10 years ago. When George W. Bush took office we were in our 3rd year of surpluses. By the time he left office, spending had increased from 1.7 trillion to 3.5 Trillion. I’m sorry Republicans, Obama inherited most of his deficit budget. Here is the data straight from the congressional budget office. “CBO Historical Budget Data”
Bush made 2 fundamental mistakes. The first thing he did was give a massive tax cut his first year in office. That effectively wiped out the federal surplus. Next, he invaded Iraq despite widespread public sentiment it wasn’t necessary. That was a very costly war.
Now, this didn’t help at all, but our problem has another facet. A lot of the prosperity of the late 90’s was a residual effect of Clinton raising taxes and restraining spending, but some of it was due to the economic surge from technology and computing bubble that was maturing about the time Bush took office. This prosperity masked another underlying problem issue and that was the exporting of our industries overseas. Someone got it into their head that we would just drop all our trade barriers to any other country willing to sign an agreement and that we would benefit from having access to their markets. The big problem though is that many of these countries didn’t have any money to buy anything, and were so impoverished that their people would work for pennies on the dollar. This resulted in a massive exodus of our factories, equipment and technology overseas, destroying our manufacturing base. The “transition to a service economy” sounded good until you consider most service jobs pay half what a good production job pay.
This exporting of jobs has resulted in fewer “working class” jobs for Americans and an erosion of the overall tax base. Not everyone is suited for a service job and the loss of wages and corporate income not only erodes direct tax revenue but also trickle down benefits. Americans are not earning the manufacturing income so they can’t spend it here, the companies move their profits to overseas entities instead of re-spending it in the US and industries that once supported the manufacturing plants either shut down or move too. This transitions workers from taxpayers to entitlement recipients.
All this tax revenue that once went to support our way of life is now lost and the American people are forced to get by on less. Goods are imported from countries without environmental protections and with a fraction of our organization and infrastructure costs without any form of tariff or balancing factor. They are allowed to compete in our marketplace and enjoy the benefits of our economy without making the same contribution an American company would have to. Not only that, to add insult to injury, companies are allowed to deduct the cost of moving industries overseas from their taxes.
So yes, we do need to reduce how much we spend, but if we don’t fix the rest, it won’t do us any good. A lack of regulation enforcement led to Enron, the Wall Street meltdown and housing crisis, business MUST be regulated no matter who they make campaign contributions to. Free trade must be balanced trade. We must protect our jobs, industries and their associated technologies from being exported. This will bring our tax base up and help with the budget crisis. All this requires a government that is willing to govern. If we simply gut the existing government, this will never happen.
As part of the Republicans drive to “slash” the budget, they are trying to include another tax break for businesses while trying to “unfund” the EPA! They voted down a bill last year that would end the tax break for moving industries overseas… Stop it already! I like clean water and air! I want a job! Let’s stop the politics and tackle this problem. If you don’t fix “We the People” first there won’t be anyone left who can afford what the businesses are offering.
The Left must get equally real, Medicaid just proposed approving a $93,000 drug to “extend the life” of late stage, metastatic prostate cancer patients. WTF? I don’t want to sound morbid, and they do have my sympathy, but can we afford to keep spending so much on a terminal patient? Just like that patient, at some point we have to just accept the facts.
We can reduce government spending without destroying it, one example is the bi-partisan effort to identify regulatory duplication across government agencies, we can cut costs and increase efficiency while sufficiently funding departments primary roles.
Beyond that, we must be willing to accept the burden of paying for the society we made for ourselves if we expect to continue to enjoy it. If we take what we pay in taxes and look historically at the numbers, the current tax rate for both businesses and individuals are at close to historic 30 year lows. We can pay more, let’s give up our Bush tax cuts and add another point or two. “Historic Tax Receipts”
Mostly, as a people, we need to end our political stratification. We must demand our representatives focus on the real problems and govern wisely, be willing to negotiate reasonably from a realistic perspective, seek the middle ground and last but not least, take off those damn “party” hats for awhile.
Doesn’t sound like a good idea? How about Afghanistan or Pakistan? Want something closer to home maybe? How about we go to Tijuana? Why would I suggest such a thing? Well, these countries have exactly what everyone seems to be clamoring for, small government. Granted, they have poor healthcare, lack of basic sanitation, rampant violence, crappy education and shoddy infrastructure… but hey, they have small government!
Quite frankly, I love the services my government provides. I get to drive on nice roads, my children and I attend good schools. I can walk to the store without the slightest fear. I can take a crap and with one little push on the handle, it just magically disappears! There are no packs of wild dogs digging in my garbage; my food and drinking water are safe. I’ve got the biggest and toughest army on the Planet to keep me safe from foreign invasion. The list goes on and on the more you think about it.
Every year when I pay my taxes, I remind myself what a great bargain I am getting. And also that is why it ticks me off to high heaven to see the current attempts to gut our government in the name of a political ideology. We love all the services we get but all of a sudden everyone is screaming about paying for it.
Here is the reality folks, we no longer live in 1776 or 1950, and hopefully never will again. We live in a modern and extremely complex world. And our government has evolved over time to meet the growing challenges of this complexity. Like it or not, it grew based on need. We understand more about science than we ever did back then, computers and technology have rapidly changed almost all facets of our daily lives. We are more diverse a society than we ever have been in the past with many different subcultures. We have grown to a population of over 300 Million people, up 9.7% from 2000. Our government does more than our founding fathers ever imagined it would, but they were wise enough to see that needs would change and provided a way to make it happen. As we have evolved, we have added services and policies and programs to address the evolution.
Now, getting back to my point, imagine where we would be without these services. Take a few minutes to imagine how your life would be impacted. Some of the examples of other countries I gave might seem extreme, but they go to show how life is without a government there to do its job. Think it can’t happen here? In the last couple decades many countries that were once peaceful, modern and prosperous have degenerated into shells of their former selves. In each case citizens who were once middle class now find themselves having to come to terms with the realization that they are suddenly living in poverty ridden and violent societies. Sure, some have been due to war, but others were due to internal conflict or collapsed economies.
The current attempt to trim massive amounts off the budget in a time when our economy is unstable is the height of folly. Our country is currently at a dangerous precipice looking down into what could very likely be a permanent decline in our wealth and stability. It’s all fine and dandy to play politics under normal circumstances, but when the country is in trouble, they need to put away the campaign hats and actually govern for a change.
Here is the truth of the matter, we HAD a budget surplus 10 years ago. When George W. Bush took office we were in our 3rd year of surpluses. By the time he left office, spending had increased from 1.7 trillion to 3.5 Trillion. I’m sorry Republicans, Obama inherited most of his deficit budget. Here is the data straight from the congressional budget office. “CBO Historical Budget Data”
Bush made 2 fundamental mistakes. The first thing he did was give a massive tax cut his first year in office. That effectively wiped out the federal surplus. Next, he invaded Iraq despite widespread public sentiment it wasn’t necessary. That was a very costly war.
Now, this didn’t help at all, but our problem has another facet. A lot of the prosperity of the late 90’s was a residual effect of Clinton raising taxes and restraining spending, but some of it was due to the economic surge from technology and computing bubble that was maturing about the time Bush took office. This prosperity masked another underlying problem issue and that was the exporting of our industries overseas. Someone got it into their head that we would just drop all our trade barriers to any other country willing to sign an agreement and that we would benefit from having access to their markets. The big problem though is that many of these countries didn’t have any money to buy anything, and were so impoverished that their people would work for pennies on the dollar. This resulted in a massive exodus of our factories, equipment and technology overseas, destroying our manufacturing base. The “transition to a service economy” sounded good until you consider most service jobs pay half what a good production job pay.
This exporting of jobs has resulted in fewer “working class” jobs for Americans and an erosion of the overall tax base. Not everyone is suited for a service job and the loss of wages and corporate income not only erodes direct tax revenue but also trickle down benefits. Americans are not earning the manufacturing income so they can’t spend it here, the companies move their profits to overseas entities instead of re-spending it in the US and industries that once supported the manufacturing plants either shut down or move too. This transitions workers from taxpayers to entitlement recipients.
All this tax revenue that once went to support our way of life is now lost and the American people are forced to get by on less. Goods are imported from countries without environmental protections and with a fraction of our organization and infrastructure costs without any form of tariff or balancing factor. They are allowed to compete in our marketplace and enjoy the benefits of our economy without making the same contribution an American company would have to. Not only that, to add insult to injury, companies are allowed to deduct the cost of moving industries overseas from their taxes.
So yes, we do need to reduce how much we spend, but if we don’t fix the rest, it won’t do us any good. A lack of regulation enforcement led to Enron, the Wall Street meltdown and housing crisis, business MUST be regulated no matter who they make campaign contributions to. Free trade must be balanced trade. We must protect our jobs, industries and their associated technologies from being exported. This will bring our tax base up and help with the budget crisis. All this requires a government that is willing to govern. If we simply gut the existing government, this will never happen.
As part of the Republicans drive to “slash” the budget, they are trying to include another tax break for businesses while trying to “unfund” the EPA! They voted down a bill last year that would end the tax break for moving industries overseas… Stop it already! I like clean water and air! I want a job! Let’s stop the politics and tackle this problem. If you don’t fix “We the People” first there won’t be anyone left who can afford what the businesses are offering.
The Left must get equally real, Medicaid just proposed approving a $93,000 drug to “extend the life” of late stage, metastatic prostate cancer patients. WTF? I don’t want to sound morbid, and they do have my sympathy, but can we afford to keep spending so much on a terminal patient? Just like that patient, at some point we have to just accept the facts.
We can reduce government spending without destroying it, one example is the bi-partisan effort to identify regulatory duplication across government agencies, we can cut costs and increase efficiency while sufficiently funding departments primary roles.
Beyond that, we must be willing to accept the burden of paying for the society we made for ourselves if we expect to continue to enjoy it. If we take what we pay in taxes and look historically at the numbers, the current tax rate for both businesses and individuals are at close to historic 30 year lows. We can pay more, let’s give up our Bush tax cuts and add another point or two. “Historic Tax Receipts”
Mostly, as a people, we need to end our political stratification. We must demand our representatives focus on the real problems and govern wisely, be willing to negotiate reasonably from a realistic perspective, seek the middle ground and last but not least, take off those damn “party” hats for awhile.
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