Warning, warning, warning

This is a rant. If you don’t want to read the rant, this is your chance to run away. If you are afraid I won’t follow the so-called enlightened thought process so many folks are trying to force on the rest of us — and you’re right. I won’t be following it — then navigate away from this page.

So what, you ask, has brought on this rant? What wonder of idiocy or just not thinking has set me off today? That’s simple. It’s facebook. It started with yesterday when I reposted a picture that I thought was not only accurate but pointed out the idiocy of what has been going on in New York of late and it continued with this morning and all the “right” sort of posts that appeared on my wall.

I’ll say this right up front. I don’t mind anyone posting what they want to on facebook. I am old enough and know enough to either ignore the posts or simply move on to the next one if I don’t like what it says. I don’t go onto someone else’s wall and tell them how wrong they are or how they will never learn, never be one of the “right” sort of people. I don’t ban folks from my f-list for not agreeing with me on politics, religion or just about anything else. In all the years I’ve been on facebook, I think I’ve de-friended a whopping three people — one for getting close to cyber-stalking and two more for just being butt-heads and not dropping a topic on my wall when I’d warned them, multiple times, to do so. It wasn’t that they didn’t agree with me on something. It was that they kept coming back and doing their best to incite arguments and old fashioned flame wars. That isn’t what my wall is for.

I love debate. But a debate is not coming onto someone’s wall and saying that person is wrong and unenlightened. Nor is it asking “when will you learn” after saying how wrong that person is about a position they’ve taken. Debate is to take facts and draw conclusions from them. You listen to the other side, point out the logic fallacies or factual fallacies in what they say and then put forth your own position: one that may have emotion behind it, but is also supported by facts and logical supposition.

So, back to the link from yesterday that started all this. It was a photo with four images on it. Two represented items allowed, or legal, in New York. The other two were variations of the same photos with minor changes that made the items pictured illegal. One photo showed a semi-automatic gun with a clip that holds 7 rounds. Legal. Another photos was of a pizza for delivery with a can of cola. Legal. The counterpoints to these photos were the same gun with a clip holding eight rounds and the same pizza with a two liter bottle of soda, both illegal.

Now, my first reaction was not to the gun but to the pizza and soda. I’m no kid. Haven’t been a kid for a very long time. I don’t need the government, be it local, state or government, telling me what I can eat or drink. Does anyone remember Prohibition? It didn’t work. Now the government wants to become even more of a nanny state by saying we don’t have enough self-control to monitor our eating habits. So it will do it for us.

Be honest, if you don’t have a medical condition that requires you to make sure you don’t eat something, do you really read the list of ingredients or nutritional breakdown that is now printed on so many menus? I don’t. Yes, I will check the nutritional breakdown on some items I buy at the grocery, but that is because I am watching certain things like fat content. But, honestly, when I go out to eat, I am granting myself a momentary break from worrying about such things. It’s called a reward and I have enough discipline not to have fast food on a daily — or even weekly — basis.

The fact that government thinks it has to tell us we can’t order a two liter bottle of soda with our pizza is ludicrous. For one thing, why is eating a pizza by myself okay and yet drinking that two liter bottle of soda isn’t? Frankly, I could no more eat that pizza in one sitting than I could drink that bottle of soda. But let’s look at something else. What about that family of two or three — or more — that orders the pizza and wants the bottle of soda for all of them to drink. Can they get it? Nope. Because the government doesn’t trust it to be reasonable in the way it drinks the soda.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with this false logic?

And then there’s the fact that it is legal to buy a semi-automatic gun with a clip that holds seven rounds but not one that holds eight. Blink! What? What makes that additional round so much worse than the seven before it?

I’ll admit right here that I believe we have the right to own guns. I have worked in law enforcement and have seen too many situations where a gun would have helped save someone. Remember that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie? You know the one I’m talking about. He comes face to face with the bad guy wielding the sword. Whip v. sword won’t work. Gun v. sword will.

Should we have regulation on who owns guns? Sure. But the knee-jerk reaction to ban guns, or even certain types of guns, just because something horrible happened isn’t the way to solve the problem. Look, guys, the only folks who will abide by the new regulations are those who obey the law. They aren’t the folks going out and opening fire in their workplaces or on the street or in our schools. Putting limits on the number of rounds we can buy at a time won’t work either. Why? Because those wanting to stockpile will do just that. They will buy their limit and then wait however long they have to and buy some more. But that’s only if they are law abiding folks. Those who are planning to do something horrible with their guns will simply go to the black market and buy however much they want. Or they’ll steal what they want.

I want to be able to protect my home and my family. That means if someone breaks into my house, I want the ability to be able to shoot them because, more often than not, they will be armed and will not be there to bring me cookies and ice cream. Do I want to kill anyone? Hell no. But I have always said that the surest way to drive me into berserker mode is to threaten my family. You think a man can be tough and violent? Wait until you see a mother pushed to the point where she has to protect her family.

So don’t lecture me on how bad it is that I find it ridiculous that a clip of seven rounds is legal and yet a clip of eight rounds is not. Before you start, go find yourself a cop on the street. Specifically, find yourself one who has had to face down a junkie high on PCP or just about anything else. Ask them how hard it is to bring down someone so hopped up on drugs that they don’t feel what is happening to their bodies. Find out how many times it takes for a round to be fired into them before they drop.

Now, tell me what is wrong with me training on the proper use of my weapon? What is wrong with making sure it is safely stored when not in use?

Yes, there should be safeguards put into place. But that doesn’t mean crippling our ability to protect ourselves and our loved ones just because we happen to obey the law. Believe me, the ones we need protecting from don’t and they won’t give a flying flip for any regulations the government puts into place to limit the sales of guns or ammo.