Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Reply To Doug.

I am not surprised by your response. Truthfully I could have predicted it. You want to ignore one glaring fact. There is almost NO voter fraud, but a great deal of voter suppression. I want my vote protected as much as you do and we could certainly look to put in place procedures to ensure voters rights without disenfranchising groups or individual voters. My return question is why now. Why were we not doing this ten, twenty or even one hundred years ago? There is less fraud now then ever and yet it has become such a rush to institute these laws. I would be willing to bet, that if new voter suppression laws were being enacted that affected white, middle to upper middle income men, you would be screaming your head off. Remember Doug we have a responsibility as Americans to ensure every ones rights. I would even fight and have fought for you to speak and vote and carry a weapon, even though I disagree with you. That is what makes America different. That is what makes America great. Protecting every ones rights, not just your own.

Voters Rights Versus Gun Owners Rights!

Yesterday Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that their will be no new bills introduced on gun controls. To the surprise of many who read and know me, I agree with Mr. Boehner. Now, is NOT the time to look at ways to reduce the number of deaths by firearms. The atmosphere is too emotional.

My question to the Speaker and all of the Republicans around the country, at both the state and federal level is why is it a good time to restrict voters rights? Why now? Why after the 2010 election and not before?

Let's look at some facts. To my Swedish friends, that demand facts here they are.

The following are from the firearms industry. There are approximately 235 million guns owned in the United States. That equates to almost one gun per person. From the Center for Disease Control, there are approximately 14 thousand murders by firearms in the United States each year.

So with facts, there are a great deal of firearms and deaths caused by firearms in the United States each year. Tragedy, yes, but to make it clear I do not support bans on firearms. I support ways to weed out the irresponsible people that kill needlessly with firearms each year.

What is my point. Exactly this, over the last couple of years we have seen 19 new laws in 14 states that target voter ID and fraud. This push is being lead by Republican and conservative lawmakers and is trying to impede and keep over 5 million ELIGIBLE voters from casting their votes. The right to bear arms is mentioned in one amendment, the second. Voters rights are so important that they had to be addressed in the 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th and 26th Amendments. Yes each one of these were changes to address the inequities that we failed to cover previously.

Some more facts for everyone to think about. Over the years 2002 to 2007, and this is according to the Justice Departments Records. there were 86 cases of voter fraud investigated and their were no, zero, nada people prosecuted for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti fraud laws are supposed to stop. Think about this over 300 million votes cast only 86 investigations and ZERO prosecutions, and the frauds that were investigated were due to the registering process not ID at the polls. During this same time there were over 33 thousand UFO sightings reported. There were 353 deaths in the country due to being struck by lightning. There were approximately 70 thousand deaths by firearms and yet what are we worried about. VOTER FRAUD.

Where are the same people that are concerned about gun ownership laws? If they believe in the Constitution so much why are they ignoring the restrictions on voting rights. Does not the same concerns apply here. If we loose our right to vote, a small, select group of people will gain more control. They will come after your gun rights. Make no mistake about it.

 We have a problem that kills and affects people everyday and we do nothing. We do not look at ways to retain the right to bear arms and yet reduce the number of deaths by firearms. On the other hand we have a problem that is not a problem. We spend money to investigate voter fraud and yet we get no prosecutions. We waste time, energy and resources to find a solution that has no problem and yet the conservatives are perfectly fine with that.

One last point. The voters fraud laws being passed were done to restrict early voting and absentee voting, No fraud here, lets just restrict it. They were done to limit voters registration. This is where the 86 cases occurred. Still not much to find here. No prosecutions. Bottom line is they are being enacted after President Obama was elected to affect minorities, poor, disabled and students. All people that tend to vote Democrat or liberal. That is the intent. To suppress voters rights. This pisses me off, sorry to my Swedish friends for having an emotion, and should do the same to you. If you really care about our country and believe what is written in the Constitution, then you should be involved and speaking out against anyone that is taking away our rights. Whether they are gun rights or voting rights.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

There Are Ways To Help Curb Violence!

Here we go in the discussion, in the aftermath of the mass killings in Colorado. I am sure the extremists on both side will attack my ideas, but so far I have not heard anything that would help to, at least, reduce the killing sprees here and around the world.

In response to the left, that will scream severe gun controls, no way. I will always defend the right of law abiding and stable Americans to purchase and own guns.

In response to the extremes on the right, I say we need some common sense restrictions on types of weapons and the amount of ammunition that is available.

Will either of these end the gun violence? No, but could it help? Very likely!

I feel that limiting the amount of ammunition people can buy and track any extremely large purchases, can reduce the ability of mass killings. Limit the size of clips, so that the crazies have to stop and reload, giving an opening to someone to stop the massacres.

Stop the sale of assault weapons until a complete and comprehensive background check can be performed.

Stop the ability of people to buy multiple weapons without the same background check.

Does this make it harder for the regular gun owner to buy for their collection, hunting or pleasure shooting. It does, but we are at the moment making it harder for people to vote all across the country and I have not heard anyone from the right scream about the rights of people voting being violated.

To the "Dirty Harry" wannabes, the idea that arming so many people, will stop, nut jobs, from killing is extremely naive and actually incredibly stupid. Think of the scenario, that just happened. A dark theatre. Some mad man opens fire. Chaos ensues. Ten people, with concealed weapons jump up and start to return fire. Who do they shoot? Will they think that there is more then one person involved? Remember it is dark and smokey and panic has set in. Now everyone is firing in the direction of muzzle flashes. Other people are trying to get out of danger. There is crossfire and people are trapped by it. Bullets fly everywhere. They go through the side walls. More "heroes" with weapons start to run into the theatre, firing as they enter. The police start to arrive. Who do they fire at? Nobody knows who the actual killer is. The end result is the number of dead is multiplied. This is not the way to handle the situation. We need to stop the killer from getting the ammunition and weapons in the first place. That is the closest we can come. Will it stop the killings completely? Again I have already stated it will not, but if it keeps one idiot with a gun from killing innocent people, we need to look at it.

I stated in the beginning I am not now and have never supported the idea of taking gun ownership from Americans, who are responsible and law abiding. The right will argue they want no restrictions and the left will argue they want severe restrictions. The answer lies in the middle. I will address additional comments I have heard over the past few days in future post. Some of them just made me shake my head in disbelief at how uncaring and uneducated human beings can be. As for my readers, state your opinions. Let me hear some thoughtful and educated ways to help end the violence.