BANG, BANG, BAN

Here we go again. Another mass shooting, another left/right argument over gun control or as the left is now calling gun "safety." This is confusing; I just got used to feeling at fault for the ravages of global warming. Now it's known as climate change, and good old fashioned illegal aliens are now referred to as undocumented immigrants. What exactly is a poor conservative to feel guilty about, and responsible for, if they keep changing the words?

Back to guns.

Second Amendment:

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Now that sounds simple enough. How can one sentence create so much disharmony?

A Militia is defined as:

A military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency.

with a couple of sub-definitions:

-a military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities, typically in opposition to a regular army.

-all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service

People are defined as:

Human beings in general or considered collectively.

with a sub-definition:

--the men, women, and children of a particular nation, community, or ethnic group.

Infringe is defined as:

Actively break the terms of (a law, agreement, etc.).

with a sub-definition:

--act so as to limit or undermine (something); encroach on

So, it would seem to me that what the framers were saying is that the federal government should not limit the military nor the people from having guns. A couple of more recent Supreme court decisions have backed up my rather scholarly interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

It would seem the left is rather hesitant to arm the "militia" with the biggest and baddest of war toys and will do everything in its power to limit gun access by the people. The left does not say that people can or should not have guns, they just want to throw as much administrative inconveniences at gun ownership as they can get away with. This I find interesting, when the right wants an ID card to be required to vote ( a constitutional right) the left cries voter suppression but is very willing to require considerably more paperwork to own a gun which is also a constitutional right. Are they not then making it more difficult for the poor and minorities to exercise their gun-totin' rights? Gun suppression?

But I digress.

In the US we have 319 million people 112,000 guns per 100,000 people (yes, more guns than people). We have 821.5 deaths per 100,000 per year and only 10.4 of those are gun related. We are more likely to die from Alzheimer or diarrhea than by being shot. The mass shooting fatalities per 100K is .31. Then let's throw in the fact that young children are 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than by a gun. (I will now leave some space to insert anti-gun statistics because there are enough on both sides to go around.)

The fact is guns are here to stay; there is no "expired by" date on the 300 million plus guns that now exist in the US, and new weapons are being bought in record numbers. The question is how do we work with that reality?

A segment of our society is obviously easily placated by "feel good" legislation so since politicians only response to any problem is to make legislation their go-to solution, they conclude they should make the background checks more extensive. It doesn't seem to matter that the Federal bureaucracy can't handle effectively and efficiently what we have now. Even 10 more pages of background checks would not have stopped the rash of mass shooting we have had recently, but it sounds good.

The last four presidents have averaged 16.5 mass shootings during their terms and President Obama has had 162 in seven years, and he has passed 23 gun control executive orders since Sandy Hook. We now have more gun laws now than ever before. Less types of guns are legally available to the average citizen than ever before. We also have more “gun-free zones,” zones where, by the way, most of these shootings happen. The prevalent thought is let's pass some more laws so we can all go to bed at night feeling good. Maybe not feeling any safer, but feeling good.

My personal opinion is you really have to "work" the words of the second amendment to get anything else out of it other than the people have a right to own weapons. I understand the desire to see the world the way one would like it to be, but concentrating on controlling the gun to make the world a better place is misplaced effort.

To change a habit we need to reward what we want done and/or punish what we don't want done. We reward good gun behavior by getting off the backs of good gun owners, and we reward bad gun owners by various level of punishment. The direction we seem to be going is making life more complicated for good gun owners and doing little or nothing more to punish the bad gun owner. I'm not sure how well that's going to work.

Guns are here to stay. If we just invented the first gun I'm sure we would have handled things differently but those 300 million horses are out of the barn. Guns ownership is a constitutional right, but we don't have a right to use them irresponsibly. When weapons are used irresponsibly we must significantly increase current punishment levels. I know that will be hard for the far left to accept, but that's what it looks like from the far right.

CAUSE AND NO EFFECT

Every behavior has a consequence. If we find that consequence pleasurable, we are likely to repeat that behavior. If we experience an unpleasant consequence, we are likely to avoid that behavior.

Simple human and animal nature.

Simple or natural stops when outside forces mess with nature.

Liberals seem to have in their political DNA the belief that life should be fair and equal, and if a person is a minority life should even be more fair and equal. Since life is not F and E, life must be artificially messed with.

If a woman chooses to drop out of high school, join the boyfriend of the month club, have six children all with different last names and perfect the speech and dress of the streets, those choices have consequences. Logic would dictate those consequences would not be good. But hold on, not so fast. The woman who follows Economist Walter Williams' blueprint for a successful life, "Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen," will have the opportunity to have some of her hard-earned money taken and given to Bad-Choice woman. Good-Choice woman gets to display the behavior of working with the consequence of having her money taken. Bad-Choice woman gets to practice the behavior of staying home and experiencing the consequence of being given some of Good-Choice woman's money. That's messing with life artificially.

Let's not feel too badly for Bad-Choice woman. While probably she is technically living in "poverty," it's U.S. poverty. She will most likely have a car, air conditioning, color TV with cable, DVD player, kids with XBox or PlayStation, refrigerator, oven, stove, microwave and a cell phone. All paid for by some 80 plus government programs for the poor funded by the folks who never took the easy way out. Not too bad consequences for someone who lived a life time of self-indulgent behavior.

Sure, there are those who, through bad luck, need the help of others, and they should have it, but because of the size of the federal government, the need of politicians to buy votes, and unfortunate number of the population who believe giving is helping, often actions do not generate the consequences needed to change those unproductive behaviors. I work, I get money. I don't work, I get money. Those consequences are likely to drive what behavior?

What brought the behavior/consequences thought to mind was the recent story of a South Carolina Sheriff's deputy vs a nameless 16-year-old girl (I'll call the Little Princess), which has been in the news and big on Facebook. The LP was told twice, once by her teacher and then by a school administrator, to put down her cell phone and leave the class. Apparently nobody was going to tell her what to do and all the "negations" and techniques taught in teacher school were not achieving the desired results, so the school authorities called in the next in line. Deputy Ben Fields, a decorated School Resource officer for seven years was asked to do what the teachers couldn’t, or didn't want, to do. It would seem talking was not getting the job done. The LP's behavior was to remain sitting and to refuse to follow the teacher’s directive to leave the class. Deputy Fields asked her again to leave the classroom, she again refused. At this point, he could have handed her a strongly written note or he could have given her a set of keys and ask her to lock up when she leaves after school thus avoiding any unpleasantness, but it didn't go that way. He was a resource to the teachers and he did his job. I guess Deputy Fields could have been a bit more "delicate," and for that he is paying with his job, thanks to an apparently spineless, PC-infused Sheriff Leon Lott, who will never win a Profiles in Courage award. The Deputy is fired while the teacher and administrator go about their business. The student, probably wearing a neck brace, claiming racial discrimination, will walk away with thousands of dollars in hush money.

The Little Princess's behavior--disobeying authority; consequence-- authority gets fired. What do we think will happen a few year from now when LP gets pulled over on a traffic stop, and the policeman asks for her license and registration? What has she learned from her behavior? What did everyone aware of this occurrence learn? What did the police resource officers learn?

Ask a teacher in a public school today what consequences a student would receive if he or she were to swear at the teacher. Facebook had a video posting recently of a substitute teacher in a Chicago south side high school classroom. It was beyond believable. These students were past the point of a resource officer, their "behavior" was at National Guard level. This is where our liberal educational approach causes day by day, classroom by classroom, the decline of a once powerful country. These kids are our future and because they are minorities we are afraid to provide them with the appropriate consequences to their actions. Black lives do matter and this PC BS is doing more to kill current and subsequent generations of black lives than all the guns on the streets. Time to stick PC where it belongs and provide, no impose, strict guidance and direction. If the "adults" don't provide strict consequences now on anti-social behaviors, we're looking at more and more "Cop Shoots....." headlines.

What does a person learn when he or she drops out of school and with no skills gets a job paying $15 per hour? When it is learned they suck at this thing called work they could get as much as 99 weeks of unemployment. There are about ten websites from the Department of Labor telling the unemployed how to get free money. What does a person learn about putting an effort into holding a job? If this person happens to be minority she might not even be able to be fired without a Supreme court hearing.

Do the names Michael Brown or Eric Garner mean anything to you? They died while disobeying the lawful orders of a policeman who was hired and authorized by us to keep us safe. If you haven't heard of Michael or Eric, if you haven't seen them held up by certain segments of our society as, at the least victims, and the most, heroes, you must have been in a cave on Mindanao for the last year. How about the names Jason Dunham and Ross McGinnis? Michael and Eric, for their unlawful behavior, were killed and highly publicized. Jason and Ross were also killed for the "behavior" of fighting for the United States military, were each awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, and promptly forgotten. What does a person learn about the consequence of defending or offending society?

What do we see modeled from our leaders? Do their behaviors generate the appropriate consequences? The last politician who seemed to suffer negative consequences from his actions was President Bush the Elder. "Read my lips, no new taxes." There were new taxes; he was defeated. From that point on, we have, "I did not have sex with that woman." This lie resulted in minimum political fallout but did help Bill's stud numbers. WMDs harmed George Bush's legacy but not much else. "You can keep your plan/doctor" and "Benghazi was the result of a video" were two outright lies told to the American people by President Obama and his staff. As a consequence of these lies, the President was reelected. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Hillary hit an all-time low in trustworthiness, favorability and honesty and yet it's believed 40 plus percent of people will vote for her even if she is in jail on inauguration day. Any chance politicians will lie any less in the future? There appears to be no downside.

The riots (behaviors) in Ferguson MO. you would have thought would have received presidential condemnation (consequences) but the president said the police need more training. Does it seem that putting the pressure on the police will get the rioters to tone down their destruction?

A series of bad choices on a hookup? There is always abortion. Choose to sell drugs? Good chance you can be among the 6600 drug dealers being given an early release by the administration. How about choosing not to perform your job for religious reasons? If you are a Christian, you can be fined. If you are a Muslim you can sue and collect a settlement. This behavior/consequences thing is tricky.

As I said, there is a segment of our society that would like everything to be fair and equal. Yes, "all men are created equal," but the minute we are carried out of the hospital things start to change faster than our diapers. All the important things we know, we learned through failure. When we get to that part of our lives when somebody takes the failure away from us, we're done. When an unpleasant consequence occurs, and somebody reduces or eliminates it under the guise of helping us, we never learn the true outcome of a potentially bad behavior and we continue the destructive behavior, why not? We cannot, as a society, make everybody whole. We shouldn't even want to. We, as humans, learn from our mistakes, but we have to be allowed to make them.