Open Letter to Congress

Dear Congress,

I understand your need to do something meaningful after the tragedy at Sandy Hook.  It was painful to see, and neither you nor I can truly understand what those poor families are going through.  However, twisting a tragedy like this for your own agendas will not help them heal.  The fact that this atrocity was committed by a mentally unstable individual with a fire arm does not give you the right to declare open season on the second amendment.

It is not the fault of the gun that this occurred.  It was not the style of the firearm or the size of his magazine that made that young man commit such a horrendous act.  It was his mental health.  If you want to do something good in the wake of all of this evil, stop attacking guns you know nothing about, and push for better mental healthcare.  

If you are able to pass your "assault" weapons ban or limit the size of magazines, it will not lower the amount of violent crime or decrease the homicide rates across the nation.  It will do nothing but deprive good people the ability to use their favorite firearms for sport, or for hunting, or most importantly self-defense.  You don't believe me? Well, come spend a weekend in Chicago.  Chicago is gun-free and oh so safe right now isn't it.  Chicago has had over 40 homicides in January, yet guns aren't allowed.  You know who doesn't care about your gun laws? Criminals. Merriam-Webster defines a criminal as "guilty of crime; also: of or befitting a criminal".  We all know that crime is breaking the law, therefore, a criminal will not care about your weapons ban.  It will only take weapons out of the hands of people who respect and obey the laws, leaving them defenseless and an easy target for the criminals you fear.

Now, before we even get into common sense gun laws, we have to talk about the lack of knowledge you show on the subject.  You are attempting to a pass a ban on "assault" weapons.  Well true assault weapons have already been banned in this country.  You are actually attempting to ban a product based solely on its appearance.  An assault weapon is capable of firing multiple rounds per trigger pull.  The ar-15 you are going after now is a semi-automatic rifle.  It fires one round per trigger pull. The only difference between the weapon you say is a threat to safety and the hunting rifle you will not ban is its clothing.  Yes an AR looks just like an M16, but it functions totally different.  My Blackhawks jersey looks just like the one the professionals wear, but whats inside is not a hockey player, just like whats inside the skin of the ar-15 is no military rifle.

Lets talk about magazines or as the uninformed amongst you like to call them, clips.  Let me set the record straight on that.  A clip is what the ammunition comes on for storage and inventory purposes.  A magazine is what is loaded inside the weapon in order to fire.  You want to ban what you call high capacity magazines, making anything more than ten rounds illegal.  Well that sounds good on paper, however what you are banning is not high capacity magazines, but standard magazines.  Smaller magazines will not prevent death or injury from occurring when someone is intent on doing harm.  All they have to do is reload.  A smaller magazine will actually cause death and injury to occur to people who obey the law, a police officer in a firefight having to stop and reload because he only has ten rounds instead of the standard fifteen is putting his life in even further jeopardy when  he steps out on the street.

Lets discuss common sense gun regulation.  Law abiding gun owners are not opposed to regulations, if they serve a purpose and make sense.  I for one see no problem with requiring background checks for gun ownership, and including a check into the mental health history of the applicant.  I do not have an issue, in fact I would love if safety training and mandatory yearly qualifications in order to be issued a carry permit.  I have no issue with denying legal carry and ownership to people with violent histories.  I do however have a problem with blanket bans, half measures, and laws that affect only the people who follow the law.

Sincerely,

A concerned citizen   

Memorial Day

With this holiday weekend coming up, I would like to remind people what it is about. Memorial Day may be the first real weekend of summer, but it is more than beers and swimming and barbeques. As you go about your long holiday weekend take a moment to remember the men and women who died so that you could enjoy your summers freely.

Take a moment to think of those Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen who will not be getting a three day weekend because they are far from home. You may not agree with the war or our reasons for fighting, but please, put that aside and thank a veteran.

I like to remind people about various charities helping our young warriors around this time of year. That bag of old clothes you haven't worn in five years? Call the Purple heart, they can use your donation. If you have a few dollars to spare, the wounded warrior project can use your help taking care of folks who have sacrificed so much for this country. Please help in anyway you can.

To the men I served with in the Second Battalion Fifth Marines, Semper Fi and God Bless. To the men and women of my former National Guard unit, good luck on your upcoming deployment, and may you all return home safely.

Failure of Gun Control

Gun control in Illinois is a failed experiment. A program that was started with the noble goal of making it difficult for street criminals to get their hands on firearms has done little to prevent the spread of gun violence. Gun control has had the opposite effect, allowing criminals to arm up with ever increasing firepower while denying the law abiding residents of Illinois the ability to return fire.

In order to own a gun or purchase ammunition in Illinois, a resident has to apply for a Firearm Owners Identification Card, or FOID for short. Any Illinois resident who is twenty one or over, or 18 with parents permission and has not been in a mental institution; convicted of a felony; charged with a felony; charged with domestic battery; or is subject to an order of protection is eligible to apply. Once you have the FOID card you are eligible to purchase a firearm and ammunition in the state. There is a twenty-four hour wait for long guns like rifles and shotguns, and a seventy-two hour waiting period for hand guns. The problem with that is the people the government is trying to keep the guns away from do not and for the most part can not apply for their FOID cards. Since they don't have FOID cards they are not going to go to a licensed, reputable dealer, they won't get the background check done, and the police will have no record of their purchase.

Until recently it was against the law in Chicago to register a handgun. Chicago passed a handgun ban in 1983 and it was in effect until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban in 2010. The court ruled that Chicago's ban on registration was unconstitutional in the case of MacDonald vs. Chicago. Chicago residents can now register their handgun, if they take a safety course with a minimum of one hour of range time and four hours of classroom time; and then they than have to pay the city a one hundred dollar fee for the permit.

If a resident jumps through all of the hoops the state of Illinois and the City of Chicago has put in front of them, they can now legally exercise their second amendment rights inside of their home. It is still a crime in Illinois to exercise your right to bear arms, but progress is being made now that we can again keep arms.

Illinois' gun control laws are unconstitutional. The second amendment states "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. "(U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights). In Illinois, the government tends to ignore the part that says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Illinois makes it a crime to bear arms, yet the only real crime is the selective interpretation of the constitution.

Recently the Illinois Senate has proposed a bill known as "Family and Personal Defense Act". If it passes it will allow law abiding gun citizens to apply for a concealed carry permit. Right now, Illinois is one of only two states that make concealed carry illegal. Illinois is the only state in the union that views the second amendment with utter disregard. If this law passes it will no longer be just the criminals on the streets with guns. The good people of Illinois will finally be able to defend themselves without being persecuted for it.

Let's face it, right now, Illinois is not a safe place to live. Every time you turn on the news, reporters are talking about yet another murder. In Illinois, a state that makes it illegal to carry a loaded gun, there were six murders per hundred thousand people. In Texas where it is practically a crime to not have a gun, there were 5 murders per hundred thousand people. In Wisconsin, a state that allows for the open carry of hand guns, but not the concealed carry, there are only 2.5 murders per hundred thousand people (FBI UCR 2009). The statistics don't lie, you are safer when you are allowed to defend yourself and don't have to rely on an overworked police department. It is safer to walk down a street in the worst neighborhoods in a state with liberal gun laws than it is to walk down any street in the city of Chicago.

Anti-gun lobbyists like to tell people that if carry laws pass the streets of this country would turn into the wild west. That idea is as far fetched as it can be. If you were to look at every other state that allows some form of carrying a weapon, you do not see people meeting in the street at high noon to settle their differences. The local bank isn't being held up a couple of times a week, and there is not the constant threat of train robberies. In fact in carry states, you see none of the crimes that the old west was famous for.

Some of the Anti-gun people say owning a gun is a danger to children. When you turn on the news and hear a story about a child being hurt with a gun, it is a majority of the time an illegal firearm. It is an illegal firearm owned by someone who has not gone through the safety training that legal firearm owners go through. Guns are dangerous but a gun is only a tool, and like any tool, making it available with adult supervision and teaching the child proper safety procedures will severely diminish the threat. The people who are waiting for this law to pass are for the most part responsible individuals who know to keep the firearms locked up when not in use, they know not to store a loaded gun in reach of children, and therefore allowing concealed carry will not lead to increased injury to children.
Another argument against concealed carry is "it will put more guns on the street." Well, yes, it will put more guns on the street. It will put guns in the hands of people who follow the law. The people who will apply for the permit and begin carrying their guns when it is legal to do so are not criminals. They are not sitting at home planning their drive by shootings and their bank robberies, just waiting for the day when the government says it is ok for them to carry. The guns people need to worry about are already on the streets. Criminals who misuse firearms are already carrying their weapons regardless of what the law says they can or can not do. The new guns on the street will be carried by people who have gone through at the very minimum the state mandated safety training. Responsible gun owners are not gang bangers who shoot at people for wearing a different color shirt. Responsible legal gun owners are not going to shoot innocent people or police officers in a battle over their drug turf. If a legal gun owner draws and fires their concealed weapon, it will be for a good reason, such as self-defense or the defense of others. When seconds count, you can’t count on the police who are minutes away.

There are numerous documented incidents in which responsible gun owners used their firearms to save lives. While most of these incidents take place in the home where it is legal in Illinois to use a firearm in self defense, there are also several incidents that occur in public places. For instance, at a store in Wilmington Delaware, the owner was closing for the night when a group of teenagers attempted to rob his business, and then shot at him with a rifle. He drew his own weapon, returning fire wounding the attacker and saving his own life. In another incident in Dallas a man was waiting for his wife outside of a grocery store when armed men entered, began firing and robbing customers. The man dialed 911 and while he was waiting for the police, he received a call from his wife and on that call he heard her tell the robbers she had nothing in her purse, a shot, and then silence. The man who was a concealed weapons permit holder drew his gun, rushed in to the store, and when faced by one of the armed men shot him twice. No one but the offender was injured because of his actions. If either of these events had occurred in Illinois, lives would still have been saved, but the hero in each of these situations would have found themselves arrested for violating the gun control laws of this state.

There are also times when responsible armed people decide not to use their weapon and avoid making an already bad situation worse. In the January 8th shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, one of the men who subdued the shooter was legally armed. Joseph Zamudio was near the scene when it happened, and because he was armed he rushed to the scene to help. When he got there, people were already attempting to subdue the shooter, so he rushed in and helped to hold him down.

Gun ownership in the United States is a right not a privilege. The founding fathers felt so strongly about this issue, it was included in the constitution. The very fact that this country exists today is because of privately owned firearms. When our forefathers marched out to fight the British, they did so with their own guns, not one given to them by the government. It was a gun in the hands of men who knew how to use it that tamed the west, not kind words. When we sleep safely in our beds at night it is because there are men and women out there with guns, and the twelve gauge in the closet. It is time the government of Illinois abandons the failed policy of gun control and restores the citizens constitutional rights.

I'm sorry America

Dear future generations of America,

I am sorry. I am sorry for the music my generation has left you. No one should be exposed to the crap that our generation called pop. I am sorry that classical music now includes the likes of Rebecca Black and Lady GaGa.

I am sorry we took away good television and left you with things like Jersey Shore. We replaced quality programing with people who will act like fools and “fall in love” on national tv for a million dollars. We replaced actors with a script that says “drop people in jungle, for wardrobe, send one intern with safety scissors, watch drama unfold” When we make actual fictional tv shows we don’t come up with original ideas, we just make the same show over and over again and set it in different cities. There was a time when we made the same show in the same city that aired on the same channel with three different titles, just changed the cast a little bit. I am sorry your tv options consist of Jersey Shore reruns, 27 different law and orders, or 6 versions of CSI.

I am sorry for the food we have left you with. Yes our generation actually considered two pieces of fried chicken wrapped around bacon and cheeses a sandwich. I apologize for replacing real sugar with “high fructose corn syrup.” I apologize for products with giant “gluten free” labels slapped on it.

Most of all I am sorry for the politics and the mounting debt that probably has you reading this as you stand in line for your weekly government issue of toilet paper. I am sorry we brought you Barrack Obama who rode into office by taking his campaign speech from a children’s tv show. I am sorry that my generation considered “Can we change it, yes we can!” a campaign platform. I am also sorry we gave you the great decider George Bush. I am not sorry for George because he was an idiot or because he led this nation into war, I am sorry that he was so hated by our youth he made it possible to elect a first term senator from Illinois. I am sorry that by now you probably have to wait six months to see a doctor for a routine procedure, and because practicing medicine is no longer a lucrative career the poor doctor you see is so over worked he doesn’t care.

I am sorry for the America my generation has left yours. Hopefully you can change it, Yes you can!

Sincerely,

An apologetic American

Here's some thoughts

To be a truly effective political blogger who’s main goal is to influence reform and change in the American Government, you need to be flexible. Case in point, I personally do not like Barrack Obama. I can’t stand him and I know he will go down in history as the President with the potential to be the next JFK who turned out to be more like Carter. His entire administration is a lame duck failure. That being said, sometimes he says something so smart that all but the most hard corps tea partier stops hating for a minute and listens. In the last few weeks President Obama has actually managed to impress me, and I am quite the cynic.

I mean for every universal health care debacle, the guy has a plan for making America better. How can I fault him for wanting to end our countries dependence on middle eastern oil? Will it happen? Not likely as long as big oil companies are making a profit off of regional instability and cheap labor, but that is the sad fact about America. We are not really a free nation anymore, we are a nation caught up in the corporate version of the Matrix. While I understand the reality of what our President wants to do is just impossible because it will destroy corporate profits I can’t blame the man for having a reasonable dream that in the end will benefit the average joe and not the billion dollar industries that have America in a strangle-hold.

Sure the guy hemmed and hawed about sending reinforcements to Afghanistan and then sent a much smaller amount than the commanding General in the region asked for, but then when Libya came up, he jumped right on the international bandwagon and ordered the air strikes. People are faulting the guy for committing U.S. troops to another battle when the two he promised to end are still on-going, but people wake up a minute. We can not find fault with doing the right thing. This mission is not about conquering Libya as our 51st state or stealing the oil from the region, this is to stop a dude who we already knew was a crazy asshole. Now this crazy asshole is slaughtering his people by the hundreds because they want a little freedom. Ask your grandparents what our nation did as a whole without complaining to get rid of the last crazy asshole who slaughtered people by the millions and decided Europe was his personal property? If you don’t get the reference I’m talking about World War II here when the people of this country had no problem driving on bald tires if they drove at all and buying war bonds, and walking their children to the recruiting office to go “do their part.” Today’s American citizen would protest and call it an Illegal war if Chinese tanks were rolling down the street in front of their house. Even President “I’m not George Bush” is now being knocked by the same people who elected him for doing the right thing. That is why this country will never see effective change because the young people who are going to be voting in the coming elections and are raising the next generation of voters are completely incapable of rational thought.

The point I am trying to make is that we as Americans have got to stop listening to the news media to get our information. It is said that us “crazy tea baggin republicans only watch fox news” and the “liberal lefty commies only like MSNBC”. While that is probably true it needs to end, because guess what people? Their opinions are not formed through rational thought and educated analysis of the issue, their opinions are formed by sponsors. If the oil companies pay millions of dollars in advertising dollars to Fox news you can damn well bet they are going to push the republican agenda because the oil companies make more money under a conservative government, and therefore by more advertising, and the same goes for the companies that advertise on MSNBC.

If you want rational political discussion, discussion that will focus on the issues and not who’s paying top dollar for someone’s opinion, do a little research on the internet and discuss it at the dinner table or among friends. The best political discourse I have had is not on the internet or on twitter or watching Bill O’reily, it has been sitting in the cafeteria at my local community college having a burger and talking with my friends. It was the best because we were uninfluenced by special interests or large checks. If more people learned about the issue from unbiased sources more of Obama’s good ideas would make it through the process, and less of his crappy ideas like the health care law would.

Recall Governor Pat Quinn

America, it has come to my attention there is an effort underway to recall the governor of my home state of Illinois. Here at Fix America, I the angry American support this effort. In a time of great financial strain on the American working class, the state of Illinois has decided to raise taxes. They raised the income tax to 5% of your earnings. A 2% increase doesn't seem like alot but lets break it down to an easy to understand number. For every hundred dollars you earn in Illinois, the state is going to take five. That's five dollars for every hundred on top of your social security withholding, your medicare and medicade withholding, and your federal income tax. That means for every hundred dollars made, you will take home if your lucky seventy dollars. Think about that, for every hundred dollars you make, the government is going into your wallet and grabbing thirty bucks before you even get home and start to pay the rent and the car payment and the credit card bills and if there's anything left buy some groceries. The government is the very reason the foreclosure rate is through the roof and children are hungry and living on the streets.

We pay our government so much money we can't afford to pay for our own lives. If the government would turn around and ease the tax burden on employers so they could afford to give the poor working stiffs in this country a raise so the tax hike didn't sting so bad, then maybe people would be ok with paying a little bit more. That would be nice wouldn't it? But what did good old Pat Quinn do? He decided the 2% tax hike wasn't enough, so while promising to help create jobs in Illinois, he kept his fingers crossed behind the podium and jacked up the corporate taxes too.

How in the hell are you going to create jobs in a state when you make it financial suicide to operate in the state. You tell me what business owner in their right minds is going to open shop in Illinois when the taxes in Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin just to name a few are a lot lower. Those states know to create jobs you need to give business an incentive to open it's doors in your state.

Quinn's excuse? The state has a budget deficit that we need to fix. Ok fine, the state is broke. I bet you would have a better shot at closing the budget gap if you LOWER taxes. Remember that incentive thing? If you bring jobs to Illinois because of lower taxes, there would be more people working, more people paying their taxes, and you would be spending LESS on unemployment benefits and social welfare programs. Wow what a simple solution!!

Right now Pat Quinn reminds me of Prince John and Speaker Madigan is his Sheriff of Notingham. The way things are going, it won't be long until you see state troopers holding kids upside down and shaking them for their lunch money after all, the only thing that matters to them is wringing as much money out of people as possible. The residents of Illinois may be starving, but hey our budget is balanced so re-elect me!

GO TO HELL GOVERNOR QUINN!

Concealed Carry in Illinois

Today a bill that will allow concealed carry permits in Illinois goes to the house floor for a vote. If you value your constitutional rights, you need to write your representatives and urge them to pass this bill. For too long the law abiding citizens of Illinois have been denied their god given, hard won right to defend themselves. Gun control laws were designed to prevent criminals from getting their hands on firearms and to increase the law abiding citizen's dependency on government protection. In Illinois it is a bigger crime to defend your family and your home than it is to be a drug dealing scumbag. It is time for the good people of Illinois to take back their rights as Americans.

Even if you have no intention of ever owning or firing or carrying a gun, we need your help. If you continue to allow the government to trample our rights, soon we will no longer live in a free and democratic society. We as Americans were given the right to bear arms less to defend ourselves from criminals, but in order to oppose the tyranny of government if it ever became necessary. Don't get it twisted Mr. FBI agent, I know your reading this, I'm not saying we need to overthrow our government, but I am saying we need to let them know that we as citizens are not happy with our rights being violated.

States that have passed carry laws have shown a significant decrease in crime rates since they game the citizens back the right to bear arms. Texas averages 5 murders per hundred thousand people, and illinois averages 6 per hundred thousand. That says to me that the anti gun lobby saying that "concealed carry laws lead to increased violence" is all bunk. In Illinois if you shoot a criminal, they throw you in jail for life, in Texas, they give you a medal and buy you a steak dinner, but Illinois must be safer since we cant carry guns right?

Please, if you feel as strongly about your constitutional rights as I do, and you must if you read this page, Join me at the Illinois Gun Owner Lobby Day (IGOLD) on Thursday March 10th in Springfield Illinois.