The Crystal Bullet
A couple of months ago I wrote an article about the Chick-fil-A controversy. In the article I used what I like to call “my sarcastic wit” to illustrate a slippery slope of folks being publicly identified for their political views. My outlandish example?- red and blue stickers put on mailboxes to delineate someone’s political affiliation. The idea was that once a person was publicly outed, it could eventually lead to harassment, bullying or intimidation by anyone with opposite viewpoints.
Little did I know that I was given the ability to read the future for Christmas. It seems that in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting, (which I believe has been most horrific event for the nation to witness since 9/11) it seems my prediction has come true. I mention this fortune telling only because I happen to live in the area where it took place.
As most of you may have heard, in some warped response to the shooting, a local Hudson Valley newspaper- which I also write articles for indirectly believe it or not- decided to publish the names and addresses of every legal gun owner in two suburban counties just north of New York City and roughly 30 miles away from Newtown. And this was not just any list….Big Brother, excuse me, I mean the Journal News, pinpointed the exact locations on Google maps with complete disregard for the personal safety of those identified. And while the newspaper smugly held up their middle finger and tried to shame law abiding citizens for exercising their rights to bear arms, thousands of police officers, retired and active, corrections officers, domestic violence victims, along with their families were suddenly on display for the criminals to see. You know the same criminals who account for 95% of the gun violence in the country. That’s besides the brainless identification of which homes have guns to steal and which ones are ripe for robbers. Stats show about 1 out of 23 own a gun out of about 1 million people between the two counties. Ironically Connecticut gun laws already had a law on the books to prohibit the Freedom of Information Act. Could you imagine that fiasco with the anger boiling over.
Well, once the irresponsible maneuver got out, the sh*t storm started, all the way to the national headlines. As the Journal News tried to gather more names to publish from surrounding counties, they were met with fierce resistance by all us ‘gun folk’. Republican Congresswoman Nan Hayworth may have lost her seat in November because of redistricting, but GOP State Senator Greg Ball said it best when pushed by the paper to release the names of permit holders,”The egghead editors at the Journal News can kiss my white, Irish behind.” Ball also accused the Journal of “placing a virtual scarlet letter on law abiding firearm owners throughout the region.” Are my predictions sounding even more familiar? So as the Journal headquarters hypocritically hired armed guards to protect them from the fall out, a new Right to Privacy law was rushed through as part of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s ‘progressive’ gun control package, and the newspaper has since taken down the list claiming some flimsy sanctimonious reasoning.
Are you sure you are the Majority?
Now last week while most city folk were probably hanging tight to their backpacks and i-pads, in a land far far away, the biggest firearms trade show in the world was being held in Las Vegas. ‘Shot Show‘ quietly set a record attendance of over 60K , record firearms sales, all happening under one roof without even a peep. Now my husband is a Green Beret so guns, other dangerous weapons and all their equipment are a normal part of life for me. Shameless promotion: my husband’s new TV show, Elite Tactical Unit on Outdoor Channel, will definitely satisfy the average gun enthusiast’s appetite for firearms. It’s a reality type police swat competition with real officers competing for $100K for their department. Fairly benign, but the commercials during the show will probably be enough to give any upstanding gun control activist a heart attack just because of the in your face aspect. Remember the target audience; military, police, hunters, sportsman etc., all industries where as my husband once told me, your gun is just part of the gear needed to do your job. “My assault weapon is almost an extension of my arm, I am so familiar with it.” That’s where personal responsibility, I believe, comes into play.
I live in a more rural area now and can not help but notice that most people who live in urban areas do not understand the American gun culture. Just like President Obama who is unable to understand ‘certain’ people’s penchant for “guns and religion,” most living in urban areas associate guns with crime and not sport or profession. Or so we are led to believe. According to Gallup, 47% of Americans own a gun, the highest since 1993, those people can’t be all in Texas can they? And, remember, that’s only the ones who are self reporting.
In my town, the majority of conversations I overhear are against stricter gun control laws, and subsequent fear of the government “cracking down” on legal gun owners, eventually confiscating their weaopns. Again to a more liberal gun activist this might seem over the top, but when doing a little research on the matter, the stats were overwhelming in their favor. There are countless historical accounts of populations eventually tyrannized and decimated by their own governments after they were forced to give up their guns. In fact there are a number of cases in California during the 60’s and 70’s where guns were confiscated after the state passed stricter gun laws, all were eventually reversed by the Supreme courts. How about those Japanese internment camps during WWII? Nah, America would never do anything to take away the freedoms of its citizens. Our forefathers foresaw this possibility which is why the “right to bear arms, without infringement” was written into the constitution.
From states with the strictest gun laws having the most crime-Chicago anyone? to the states that allow concealed weapons having the least gun crime on record, Hello Florida! It seems the politicians really do not want to solve the problem, not much different that the crisis in inner cities. Throwing more money and creating new laws and regulations have never stopped crime and murder, they just add more restrictions to law abiding citizens, while the criminals continue to skirt the law, new regulations or not. How about in New York, where it’s now illegal for cops to carry more than 7 bullets in their guns while criminals can have up to 30? Ridiculous. Who is the government really protecting? Again proving that personal responsibility and liberty, not more government control is the answer. Keep Ignoring it, and it will keep biting you in the ass.
So how many more restrictions, regulations, controls and laws will a one sided government try to enforce before the people say enough is enough. Yeah yeah yeah, regulations are in place to protect the balance of human stupidity with public safety. But the fact that New York City allowed our mayor to ban Slurpee’s can only be a foreshadowing of things to come. Any many of us don’t believe its going to bode well for the personal freedoms our ancestors fought and died for. And in this case, I don’t need my fortune telling skills, I can just look at the history book.
