A Little of This, That and Gun Control

Over half way through January and I am finally feeling almost like me again. I still have a lingering cough and migraine-like headaches plaguing my days, but I am assured the end of this flu/strep throat/bronchitis debacle is in sight. Tomorrow I may even try going outside and see what the world outside my four walls is like. I barely remember as I have only been out 3 times since Dec. 17th when this all came on me.

With the new year at hand....I am making some changes here and there and my blog/blogs cannot escape the change. If you are a facebook (fb) friend and read my blog/blogs you probably already have seen part of the change. For quite some time I have had a fb page dedicated to this blog called: From Beginning to End and Back Again. When I post a blog on fb...I also post to this page. However, this blog is not my only blog and I have been told that interested readers either don't know how to get to the other blogs or they get lost in the fb shuffle at times...thus not getting the readership that this blog gets. As of yesterday....that has changed. The former From Beginning.....page is now The Lisa Blogs. This is where posts from all three of my blogs will be posted. Feel free to like the page and show my blogs some love. They are very needy you know.

The second change is going to be the frequency of blogs. In 2011 I had a record blog year. Granted most of my posts were on this blog....but apparently there are those of you that miss my daily or almost daily blogs. I am honored!  Last year Davids blog became a favorite read among many as I blogged daily about his pre surgery, surgery and recovery. I have been asked by many of you if I will ever start blogging daily again. Here's the deal. In my own way I am very obsessive compulsive about things. When I was blogging daily....if I missed a day, I would feel like I let the world down (maybe that is more delusional than OCD but OCD sounds better) and it actually affected my day. Yes...it was unnecessary pressure I put on myself. I promised never to do that to myself again. So here is what I have decided. Life, time and things to blog about willing.....I will try to blog 3 to 5 times per week. The posts will be spread out on all three of my blogs and hopefully along the way....my other two blogs will get more reader love and appreciation.

Now....like you thought I could let the latest news of what is going on in the world go unblogged. Here it is. Yesterday...the president used executive order to circumvent the constitution yet again to further release us of our right to bear arms. All those who think we are not on the slippery slope to becoming a legally unarmed country.....raise your hand. Now come on....I know more of you voted for him than that! Seriously though.....I have never seen such an about face of liberals in my life. People who voted for him are dumbstruck that suddenly we may lose our 2nd Amendment rights. Why? Really...I don't care. The bottom line is "you" voted for him.....I didn't and yet we are somehow stuck in the same boat. I don't think that thank you are quite the words I am looking for.

So here is my unsolicited observation and opinion of all of this. The school shootings are horrific....and yes....they must be stopped. Common sense though tells us that banning guns is not going to stop the criminal element from getting their hands on them. You ban something and suddenly it is black market. Street drugs are illegal and yet even school children can get them. Chicago has/had gun bans and yet people die there everyday from guns. Telling us that we as a country are too stupid to own guns and that we don't have the right to protect ourselves solves nothing. Banning guns solves nothing. Just like illegal drugs....if someone wants to get them bad enough....they will.

My suggestion: bring back the death penalty in all 50 states. Is that gasps I hear? Did you just call me a hypocrite? Yes....I am pro-life. I believe in the respect and protection of all innocent human life from conception to natural death. For years I stood on the fence where the death penalty was concerned. Yes...it is the willful killing of another human being, but not an innocent human being. I firmly believe the death penalty should be the sentence for 1st degree murder whether it is with a gun, knife, rope, etc. These individuals have had their chance at life. They have had their chance to be productive members of society and to live within the law just like the rest of us....however, they made the choice to willfully and maliciously kill someone. With choice comes consequence and the consequence should be a deterrent for such behavior. Death might just be that deterrent. Even the Bible states "An eye for an eye!"  With the stakes that high....that means no three meal a day/tv watching/gym to work out in/and free education and medical care prison sentence. It means you kill someone maliciously and you die. That just might make someone think before they pull that trigger.

Now I know you are going to say....what about those that kill and then before they are caught....kill themselves? For most of us...when push comes to shove, we are a self protecting bunch...meaning that no matter what, we fight for our own lives. Someone who kills them self, no matter the circumstance, is usually someone with pretty severe emotional or mental issues. They don't have the same self preservation need that the rest of us have. And of course....anyone who is going into a school with the intent of of shooting innocent children isn't playing with a full deck in the first place. Adam Lanza...the Sandy Hook, CT gunman did not get his gun legally. In fact he had tried to purchase a gun on his own and was turned down...so he stole his mothers gun. It is also said the Lanza had been showing signs of mental instability for years. If it was in fact his intention to kill those kids....he would have gotten a gun one way or another and if not a gun....he would have found a way to carry out the massacre. The fact is....Lanza was unstable and family and friends knew it. Did his parents ever seek mental health care for him? Did his parents drop the ball or did the mental health care system? Obviously hine sight shows us that Lanza was extremely disturbed and him taking his own life after the massacre proved just how badly disturbed he was. Could this all have been avoided had he had proper care, medication or even been institutionalized? A lot of what if's, but the bottom line is that there is little doubt...gun or not....that Lanza one way or another in his mental state would have carried out killing these kids.

I looked for the statistics on the number of gun killings in 2012 and how many of those killings were done with legal guns. Amazingly I couldn't find the statistics. They are undoubtedly buried under all the anti-gun and gun prevention links. I would bet though...that the number would be interesting. Many gun deaths in the US are drive-by and gang shootings. My bet is that most gang members don't have legal gun permits. And how about those killed in robberies, home invasions and other criminal acts. Do you think most of those happen with guns that are legally procured? Of course not! They happen with guns purchased illegally or stolen. This says that when you take the guns out of legal law abiding citizens hands....then the only ones with guns will be the criminals.

We hear about the gun deaths like Sandy Hook. In fact it is played day and night until we can see nothing but the faces of the children (master manipulation by the media) even in our sleep, but what we rarely hear about or see is how many robberies, home invasions and other criminal acts are thwarted because law abiding citizens have Conceal and Carry licenses and do? Again....I looked up the statistics and amazingly again....if they are there....they are 1000 pages down under anti-gun propaganda. Let's face it. We have a government who is heavily protected by gun power, but they don't want the same for their citizens. You will hear precious little about guns saving home owners lives, or school children's lives or the lives of those in the midst of a robbery because it goes against this administrations desire to disarm us. All you will hear is that guns kill, guns are bad and guns need to be banned. I think another leader....what was his name? Oh yeah....Adolph Hitler preached much the same propaganda at another time in history. And how did that work out for his citizens?

So if you are opposed to the death penalty and you don't feel that mental health care needs to be stepped up, then how about this.....when the CIA and Secret Service stop using guns to protect the president, his family and all those they protect.....THEN you can talk about unarming Americans. Until then Mr. President...don't act as if your family is more precious than mine, nor your life more worthy of staying alive than mine. Punishing the majority for the acts of the few is wrong. Punish those who commit the act and make the consequences dire and you just might see a decrease in killings both gun related and otherwise.

Sadly...there will always be those who slip through the cracks. For whatever reason they will wish harm to others and will carry it out whether it means blowing up a federal building, flying a plane into the Twin Towers or opening fire on a bunch of school children. Is our next step to outlaw planes, fertilizer, rental trucks and any number of other items that can and have been used to kill...or do we get off the knee jerk reaction to ban what we cannot control and go take steps to fix the real problem.  The thing that all of those benign and yet lethal items all have in common are imperfect humans with ill will towards others. Fix the human equation and the guns, planes, fertilizer, bats, rocks, ropes and all the rest will no longer be an issue.

There is obviously so much more I could say on this subject and so much wrong that is going on in our country today. I know I should be relieved that there are eyes being opened as we speak to what the next four years could be like. There are those wishing they had voted differently and those who are angry because they feel they have been duped. You can't change the past and we can't bring November back. What we can do though is to fight to keep Mr. Obama accountable. He still has not answered for Benghazi and his continued desire to cut corners and circumvent both congress and the Constitution when he doesn't get his way.....need to be addressed....along with his own personal extravagant spending on the tax payers dollar when we as a country are nearly bankrupt. This country is only lost when we quit fighting for what is right and continue to allow leaders to stomp on and disregard the Constitution. I don't think we are there yet and now more than ever.....I think I just might see a glimmer of hope as blinders are being thrown aside and common sense is once again starting to show signs of life!

So there you have it. A little of this, that and gun control!