A Sword is Never a Killer

This post has been one of the most difficult to write. There are so many facets to this issue and the dynamics change so often that it makes it difficult to stay on the main topic. None the less, I will forge ahead on topic of focusing on the controversy surrounding the so called gun control and stopping the senseless violence. I am a gun owner, former Infantryman, and supporter of the Second Amendment. I would love to own an assault rifle but I have no need for one.  I am not opposed to the responsible gun owners who have them for sport.

The hot topic of today is gun control. This is obviously due to the recently senseless killings of innocent people in schools, theaters, and malls around the country. To begin with, let start by making it clear that this subject is more of a political/ personal agenda than stopping violence against innocent people. Everyone from movie stars, the media, and politicians are making the loudest protests to “do something” to stop the violence by focusing squarely on guns. The fact that they immediately start with protesting guns and don’t bother examining the issue of violence, mental health, and radicalism demonstrates that they have no interest in addressing the real issues, just getting rid of guns. I wonder what long term purpose that will serve them?

I find it ironic that in this day and age, a basic human trait is still as strong as it was centuries ago, and that is fear of what we don’t understand. Yet, the most of the people protesting guns who fear guns, are the very ones who criticize gun proponents for “fearing” their liberal agendas. Yet, they simply refuse to understand guns, the 2^nd Amendment, or even how guns can actually protect people. To break it down even further, it was guns and the death of tyrants, dictators and evildoers that has liberated millions of people around the world including the formation of our free country. Guns have been part of the human culture since their inception and will continue to play a part though that point is often ignored.

The liberal protesters in this case, are notorious for putting labels on people and beliefs with a negative spin in the hopes of getting others to jump on their bandwagon.  Anti gay people are now homophobes, people who disagree with illegal immigration are now racists, and people who support any war are war mongers. Second Amendment supporters and NRA members are being called gun nuts, gun fanatics, and trigger happy zealots, all with negative connotations. Pay attention to what liberals in the media call anyone who goes against their thinking and you’ll see for yourself. It will usually lead to some extreme agenda in long run.

So, to begin, the issue at hand is not really about guns, assault rifles or otherwise like they want you to believe, it is about senseless violence against innocent people. The problem with that is that there is no simple solution to controlling unstable people without violating civil rights, making exceptions, and possibly repealing the 2^nd Amendment which not only strikes at the very core of our society, but could create some very scary unintended consequences. When gun critics realized this, they made the issue about guns and turned it into an emotionally charged movement to ban guns.

Let’s start by accepting the fact that violence has been around since the dawn of man and will continue to exist regardless of the method. If unstable people have a point to make, they will make it with or without guns. They will either find a way around any ban or come up with some other sick way to make their point. These unstable people can just as easily kill a lot of people with knifes, explosives, chemicals, or blow up a building full of innocent people, what their sick minds come up with, may be even more gruesome than people being shot. Remember folks, that’s why they’re unstable, they don’t think rationally. The 9 -11 hijackers killed hundreds of innocent people, and they were only armed with box cutters! ⁽¹⁾  With that being said, I don’t believe any ban, law, or policy will be as effective as most anti gun people would have us believe.

Several societies around the world have weapons bans, yet the violence continues with and without guns. Mexico has one of the most stringent gun policies in the world and look at the problem they have. In Mexico, a common citizen cannot own a gun without first going through a time and money consuming red tape gauntlet which is not worth the effort. Yet, the criminal elements in Mexico now have more guns that match or exceed the firepower of law enforcement and the military, and that’s with a full gun ban. Most of the criminals’ weaponry is easily obtained through the black market and other illegal means (2) to circumvent the so called “law”.

                  “The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become”.   Mark Twain

               “You may eat the fruit from any tree in the garden, except the tree in the middle.” God

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”.  Plato.

Some of the more radical gun critics have actually recommended repealing the 2^nd Amendment to our constitution. Not only will that set precedence for other repeals and bans, it will open the door to total government control of our lives. Once an armed controlling group, be it terrorists, criminals, or the government, realizes that another has no means of defense; they will immediately assume total control and oppression will follow soon after. History has repeated this over and over as have mass murderers.

   

I’ve included Mexican President Calderon (and predecessors) with other oppressive leaders to demonstrate how banning guns from citizens creates oppression. It leaves the common man defenseless against anyone with guns.

                                          “Politicians prefer unarmed peasants”.

Other gun critics have proposed banning or restricting only assault weapons. Well, if you were to look at this point from a logical and statistical standpoint, according to the FBI Unified Crime Report, more people in the US were killed by handguns, not assault or any other type of fire arm ⁽³⁾. So how will banning a smaller percentage of weapons not used in violence reduce senseless violence? Of those handguns used in violence, just under half were stolen. Same question.  Also, overall gun violence has been dropping every year since 2006.

                         “A well armed society is a polite society.”  Robert Anson Heinlein

Using a reasonable logic on senseless violence, Thousands of innocent people die every day because of drunk drivers and other violent crimes. Where’s the outrage there? There are already laws in place against drunk driving, yet people still drive drunk every day. In 2010, 211 children were killed in drunk driving crashes. Out of those 211 deaths, 131 (62 percent) were riding with the drunk driver ⁽⁴⁾ yet drunk driving cases increase every year. Why is there no demand to ban cars? The principle remains the same for both issues, its not the instrument, it’s the person wielding the instrument but there is no benefit in banning cars or alcohol.

                               “A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands.”

                                  Lucius Annaeus Seneca "The Younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD).

The words of Lucius Seneca were spoken around 60 AD. That shows that in his time, a “civilized” Greece faced the same dilemma we are discussing today. I have found no law(s) banning swords in ancient Greece. Yet, Greece still lives today.

In conclusion, I am not attempting to create a bandwagon for anyone to jump on, I only want you to see that there are so many other facets to examine and study before taking a stand on this so called gun control issue. I’m sure there are many more problems and issues regarding this matter, but you must address those yourself with an understanding that whatever decision is made, it must be logical, reasonable and in the best interest of our society. It is a decision that cannot be made as a knee jerk reaction based on emotion, personal feelings, or political agendas. Strongly consider the factor of unstable people in our society and the social issues that cause these people to snap. It’s not just about the guns. Our Constitution has made America the most prosperous and powerful country in the world. Now is not the time to start gouging the constitution for political reasons without regard for our future. The 2^nd Amendment is there for a reason, and without it, all the others are worthless. 

⁽¹⁾ The question of whether the outcome of 9-11 would have been any different if the hijackers had been armed with guns has led many to believe that, if the hijackers would have had guns instead of box cutters, they would have been caught before they boarded the aircraft, thus avoiding the disaster. I differ in that opinion because I know that the mindset before 9-11 was not as heightened, therefore, boarding a plane with a gun would have been easier than it is today. Even today, the TSA has reported finding over 1,500 guns at airports and in aircraft. If that many were found in a post 9-11 security minded state with increased detection technology, how much easier would it have been to get a gun on-board a plane before the 9-11 security measures? The hijackers planned that event for over a year, if they can figure out how to take over an airliner while in flight, re direct it, navigate it, while coordinating with others doing the same, isn’t it possible that they could have figured out a way to smuggle a gun onto a plane?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/02/travel/guns-airport-checkpoints/index.html

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-lets-loaded-guns-past-security-planes/story?id=17358872

⁽²⁾ There have been many reports that state that 70% or more of the weapons recovered in Mexico come from the U.S. I do agree that many do come from the U.S. but what is not stated in those statistics is that many of those guns are actually stolen from US citizens which cannot be counted as exported. Another fact that is conveniently left out is that, guns recovered with ground off serial numbers, are also credited with coming from the US if the model is the same as the traced guns, sometimes including the Chinese Norinco CQ 5.56mm Type A which is an American AR 15 knockoff. What is not included in the 70% of guns, are those which are still in use, which I have seen as authentic AK 47s, Chinese and Hungarian knockoffs of the AK 47as well as many other non US made assault rifles. Most of those weapons are smuggled in from El Salvador and Guatemala where there are thousands of guns left over from civil wars. I have also seen Chinese made equipment and grenades captured from cartel members. Remember folks, Mexican drug cartels have big money and they will get weapons from anyone willing to sell, not just the US. If all the guns in cartel hands in Mexico were counted, I would be willing to bet that the number of US guns in Mexico would be way lower than 70%.

(3) I am not a big fan of Unified Crime Reports as I know from experience with UCRs, that statistics are sometimes skewed to reflect political and tax revenue agendas. I know that a UCR report can reflect a gunshot to head as “blunt trauma” in a case where the weapon was never found. A suicide can also be shown as a gun crime to increase support for gun control, or ruled as just a suicide with no mention of a gun being used to reduce the gun crimes numbers. There is no set conformity standard for reporting UCR stats and no exact definition of the reported crime required. None the less, here are the FBI statistics I used.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl08.xls

 

⁽⁴⁾  If these statistics are even remotely correct, 211 innocent children were killed in 2010 in drunk driving related incidents. (That’s 17.5 children a month). In many of these cases, the children were killed by their drunken parents. When large numbers of children are killed at once such as in Newtown, the reaction has more of an emotional impact because we saw it with our eyes on the news, but that should have no more of an emotional impact than the other 211 children who died needlessly one by one because we never heard of each incident or saw the aftermath of those crashes.  

(National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Traffic Safety Facts 2010: Alcohol Impaired Driving”

       Washington DC:  http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811606.pdf


eModicus

 

 

Ninja Runners

I know that this post has absolutely NOTHING to do with the subject matter of this blog but I thought I'd give my runners a piece of my mind just for the fun of it. While going over my New Years resolutions, I recalled this piece I wrote few months back. I think it's timing is appropriate now due to countless resolutions regarding getting in shape. I hope you think about it when you go out for a run.

I like to run. I try to run every day if I can. Some of you like to run and that’s good. Some of you like to not run and that’s bad. Anyway, because of my ever changing schedule, I sometimes run early in the morning when it’s still dark. Sometimes I run in the evening after dark. Because of my crazy schedule, I sometimes also have to drive to work early in the morning before the sun comes up, (that means it’s still dark). Sometimes I get out of work late after the sun goes down and it’s also dark out. What does that have to do with running you ask?

Well , I’ll tell you. It never ceases to amaze me how many people I see, (or almost don’t see), running in the dark wearing black shirts, black pants, black socks, and black shoes. I wouldn’t doubt they are wearing black underwear too. I have had so many close calls nearly hitting these idiots that I quit counting. The stupid thing about this whole dilemma is that they flip me off and curse me out because I didn’t see them crossing the street at zero dark thirty on a non lit intersection!

Newsflash for you suicidal runners, and you know who you are. That nickel sized Nike logo on the back of your shoe DOES NOT light you up like lighthouse! I hate to be the one to burst your black bubble but, reflective logos will not protect you from a 2,000 pound vehicle moving at 40 miles per hour. At most, you’d feel like a speed bump. If you run for your health and continue your careless choice of night camouflage, you’ll only die healthy, sweaty, and painfully I might add. It may be your choice to die while getting your exercise, but it’s not your choice to have me or some other innocent driver having to live with the guilt of killing another human being because you weren’t  bright enough (darn right the pun was intended) to take some ridiculously simple and cheap precautions.

Seriously people, is your life not worth the $3.00 cost of a fluorescent / reflective vest? How about a $5.00 bright yellow shirt? Or God forbid a $5.50 headlamp from Harbor Freight? Yes I know wearing all black looks cool. Johnny Cash, Wesley Snipes, Al Pacino, and Darth Vader all prove that. But you are not at that level of coolness, especially at 6 in the morning and covered in sweat. Besides, who’s going to see you? Everyone who might admire how cool you look in black is still in bed or going to bed!

 

Vest $3-6.00

Arm/ankle bands $6-8.00

Head lamp $ 5.50

  

OK. If you are thinking that maybe drivers should just be more careful, you can just forget that. Drivers are already distracted enough with texting their bosses an excuse for being late, eating a breakfast taco, putting on make-up, and trying to set a land speed record because they woke up late. The last thing on their mind is looking out for some sweaty ultra cool wannabe health nut trying to make a fashion statement.

If you continue to believe that running down the street in the dark dressed as a ninja is still a good idea, maybe you should be eliminated from the gene pool. Is that a little harsh? Then consider living with a broken body for the rest of your life. Or, in a wheelchair, living with the nagging thought of, "If only I had spent the $20.00 on safety". Or, living with the resentment towards a driver who never saw you. That’s IF you survive getting run over. If you don’t, at least you can look cool in your black suit or dress while lying in your coffin. Your friends at the funeral will also be wearing black. Nuff’ said.

In case you’re wondering, I wear a fluorescent yellow shirt, yellow road guard vest with reflective strips on front and back, 3 inch wide reflective ankle bands when I run. I also have a white LED headlamp if I’m going to run on the street. In 2007, I was hit by a car in broad daylight while running. Fortunately, only the rearview mirror hit my left elbow but, it still knocked me to the ground. The lady driving the white Toyota slowed down and looked in her rear-view mirror but drove on when she saw me get up. She then made a quick turn before I could get the license tags. I now run towards traffic if I run on the street. Yes, I know what the law says but, the fine is cheaper than a stay at the hospital or a funeral. At least, if I can’t get out of the way in time and I do get killed, I can get a description of the driver or maybe the license tags before I die. When I meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates in my running shoes and bright yellow vest, I’ll give him the description of the driver and the license tags. They may have a little surprise when they get there cause’ St. Peter was a runner too.

Night ninja, A.K.A. speed bump.

Will live to run another day.

.

That's all I have to say about that. Now, let's all go for a run!

Check out the Cardio Trainer App from Work Smart Labs for Android.

eModicus

The Year 2013

 Well folks, welcome to 2013. At the risk of sounding cliche, I'm looking forward to a better year. In the past few years, the only resolution I made was to not make any resolutions, and instead, starting things anew. This year, I have backtracked a bit and decided to make a few resolutions since I'm approaching 2013 with a sense of a new beginning. I want to post them here in general terms for everyone to see as a form of accountability for myself.

1. Lose some weight and get in better physical shape. I know that's a very common New Years resolution but I'm talking about a getting on a set plan for eating healthier and diversifying my exercise program. About 5 years ago, I did resolve to lose weight, and I did, but in a kind of haphazard manner. I've managed to keep the weight off but still have a few more pounds to go.

2. I resolve to communicate better with my wife and family. Not that we don't, we just got into some habits that made communication difficult. I will break those habits and relearn the art of meaningful communication.

3. I resolve to manage my finances better. I've already made some helpful changes and seeing the results. That has encouraged me to continue.

4. I resolve to post to my blog on a consistent basis. I'm open to discussing a subject. A pet peeve of mine is following a good blog, then finding that the blogger is not consistent and eventually loses interest or goes months without posting anything.

5. Read more books.

Going over my resolutions, I believe time management will be a vital element in keeping my resolutions. Prioritizing and time management to be exact.

Happy 2013 and make the best of it!