Me And A Gun

[Posh]

Such wit. Perhaps your time might be better spent trying to unmask the sense of entitlement so many of this nation's children and young adults seem to be acquiring (dare I say even easier than they find a gun?) Perhaps you'd also be so kind as to explain to us all how reliance upon a government for our "rights" like health insurance or a welfare check relate to freedom.

I really haven't met anyone in America who didn't have some sense of entitlement, whether it is the children and young adults you mention or people your age and older. Without entitlement, we wouldn't have the economic crisis we have now. Thanks to President Bush's push for an "ownership society" (ownership for everything except corporate or personal responsibility), there's people who thought they were entitled to a having a house and people who thought they were entitled to make a great deal of money for helping them achieve this end, both caring little for the consequences because reckoning was supposed to be a long way off.

And as for freedom, I'm sure you're aware that America is not as free as we would like to believe; it's just more free than, say, Myanmar. And welfare, whether most people want to realize it or not, is good for the American economy. "Welfare reform" was a ruse, a good one, that played to certain segments of the population's prejudices and misconceptions about the program and who it helped and why. Welfare will NEVER go away; you've created a class of permanent to semi-permanent consumers. They pump money into the economy and America is about money, the constant flow of money and credit. If I didn't work for an asset management, I would still believe this.

And to bring it back home to the topic at hand, weapons make money. And the gun lobby in America is more about money than it is about protecting your right to take someone's life.

In the event that you can't interpret sarcasm, I'll be blunt. You don't have to like guns, but before you make a mountain out of a mole hill, perhaps you might take a look at some of the more pervasive threats to our children and our society as a whole. Before any meaningful change could come from the complete ban of any projectile weapon our society needs to examine it's values.

My core values are very simple: one of them is in preserving the sanctity and dignity inherent in life. Anything that destroys and takes away human life is something in which I cannot personally abide. It's the feelings in that place where my heart would be and my personal relationship with G-d. G-d said, "Thou shall not kill." That's pretty straightforward to me; there's very little ambiguity in G-d's Word within the context of The Ten Commandements. A device that was invented solely to end a human being is something I have genuine concern about. Not many things were created with that sole intention in mind and the gun is one of them.

Oh and to put it all in perspective, according to the CDC around 1600 "kids" as in under 18 were killed by guns in 2005.

Compared to nearly 19,000 neonatal deaths.

In all 28,000 "infants" as in children under 1 died in 2005. Maybe you should take a look at the evils of pregnancy next. That or the dangers of being born. Those two are the real killers of kids.

It's actually funny you mention this. A great number of women die in childbirth worlwide wide, something we are fortunate to have less of here. So preganancy can be a death sentence for both mother and child. The infant deaths you mention are from things that are from unpreventable things like pregnancy complications, birth defects, prematurity and low birth weights, some of which stems from fertility treatments.

But if you'll notice, my post didn't say anything about the killing of kids by guns. I believe that kids shouldn't have access to guns anywhere in the world. I believe kids should have access to education, love, fun, safety and happiness. If one child dies by a gun, or any type of weapon, that's one too many for me.