Nra Basic Range Safety Officer Course First Name: Last Name: Fill & Download for Free

“What is the true function of the NRA?”Jeff Cantwell’s answer is excellent & should be the end of it.Unfortunately, for far too many, the function (notice I left out “true”) of the NRA is scapegoat. Boogieman. Bad guy. The single point in time & space where all “reasonable people that only seek ‘common sense’ gun laws” should concentrate their anger, disgust & ultimately hatred. I’ll come back to this shortly. The anti gun/anti freedom crowd cannot win the argument with calm debate relying on hard data to support their goal of total civilian disarmament. Their most effective weapon in the non stop push for your ultimate enslavement is the LIE. For them lying works, & works very well because the majority of Americans are completely & happily ignorant about firearms. For years many of my fellow Americans have been fed a constant drip of misleading terms, cherry picked data & bold faced lies. A part of this propaganda bombardment has been the demonization of the “gun industry” but specifically, the NRA.This didn’t start as an answer to the question. It started as a comment on Wayne Reses answer to the question, his answer reads,“The purpose of the NRA at this moment, as I understand it, is to act as a surrogate and salesman/woman for the arms industry. While at one time it may have been about gun safety and sporting use of guns (i.e. hunting) it has now morphed ostensibly into a catch all organization that purports to exists to promote individuals’ freedoms beyond just the Second Amendment under the U.S. Constitution.”My comment was, “If that's truly how you believe it to be, you are believing & spreading a lie. This lie has been proven false again & again. And that's just here on Quora, by me. You would know this with a little research but I understand it's easier to parrot the talking points of the anti freedom crowd than to discover the facts for oneself.” (I’ve corrected a few errors in my comment that remain in the original) Mr. Reses’ reply,“I’ve found it to be a dead end to engage with hard-core Second Amendment ‘the world is coming to an end’ types who typically believe that said government is coming for their guns.”It is not my intention or desire to shame or embarrass Mr. Reses, I’m using his words only as an example of what many millions of Americans believe. The problem is they cannot provide ANY valid evidence to support their belief. NONE. ZERO. What?! How can millions of people believe something that’s not true? Let’s break that down.Have you ever heard of Josh Sugarmann? He’s the founder & executive director of the Violence Policy Center (VPC) If you’re not familiar with the man it’s obvious you’re familiar with his work.“Today's N.R.A. is, in reality, nothing more than a gun industry trade association masquerading as a shooting sports foundation. The organization's agenda is increasingly focused on one goal: selling more guns.”All of Mr. Sugarmann’s quotes I’ll be sharing can be found here, TOP 12 QUOTES BY JOSH SUGARMANN | A-Z QuotesIt’s telling that he used three very specific words in that statement (bold faced lie is more accurate than statement) “shooting sports foundation”. Manufacturers have their own lobby group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. (NSSF) Of course Mr. Sugarmann knows this, he’s no dummy. He IS a liar & master manipulator of the average citizen due to their ignorance & gullibility regarding all things firearms. After all, he is most often credited as the source for the term “assault weapon”.“Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons”“... immediately call on Congress to pass far-reaching industry regulation like the Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act ... [which] would give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns.”“ Americans are ready to hate somebody -- and it's going to be the gun industry.”“who typically believe that said government is coming for their guns.” Wayne ResesIt’s NOT paranoia if they are actually out to get you. (guns in this case)The master propagandist knows what he’s doing. He has manipulated/fooled/tricked a large number of people into hating the NRA. This same Josh Sugarmann has maintained a Federal Firearms License (FFL) for many years. This next bit of information will be of great interest to those on the pro gun side while the anti gun folks will likely doze off. Mr. Sugarmann says he has an FFL for research & the ability to ship firearms used in research with fewer restrictions. That’s odd, there is NO FFL for research. Federal Law says it is a felony to apply for or to obtain an FFL if you are not or have no intention to be engaged in the business (stated on the FFL) for primary income. So, each year Mr. Sugarmann, one of the biggest anti gunners in the country, commits a firearms related felony (each application by him is a felony since he has no intention of earning a living as stated on the FFL) but no one seems to care.This shouldn’t surprise anyone, those who wish to subvert the Constitution believe the ends justify the means. They don’t care how they achieve their goal. Lies, suing makers out of business for the acts of criminals, back room deals, midnight votes, last minute changes to long established rules & the list goes on.“What is the TRUE purpose of the NRA”?About the NRA“Dismayed by the lack of marksmanship shown by their troops, Union veterans Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate formed the National Rifle Association in 1871. The primary goal of the association would be to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis," according to a magazine editorial written by Church.After being granted a charter by the state of New York on November 17, 1871, the NRA was founded. Civil War Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who was also the former governor of Rhode Island and a U.S. senator, became the fledgling NRA's first president.An important facet of the NRA's creation was the development of a practice ground. In 1872, with financial help from New York State, a site on Long Island, the Creed Farm, was purchased for the purpose of building a rifle range. Named Creedmoor, the range opened a year later, and it was there that the first annual matches were held.Political opposition to the promotion of marksmanship in New York forced the NRA to find a new home for its range. In 1892, Creedmoor was deeded back to the state and NRA's matches moved to Sea Girt, New Jersey.The NRA's interest in promoting the shooting sports among America's youth began in 1903 when NRA Secretary Albert S. Jones urged the establishment of rifle clubs at all major colleges, universities and military academies. By 1906, NRA's youth program was in full swing with more than 200 boys competing in matches at Sea Girt that summer. Today, youth programs are still a cornerstone of the NRA, with more than one million youth participating in NRA shooting sports events and affiliated programs with groups such as 4-H, the Boy Scouts of America, the American Legion, Royal Rangers, National High School Rodeo Association and others.Due to the overwhelming growth of NRA's shooting programs, a new range was needed. Gen. Ammon B. Crichfield, adjutant general of Ohio, had begun construction of a new shooting facility on the shores of Lake Erie, 45 miles east of Toledo, Ohio. Camp Perry became the home of the annual National Matches, which have been the benchmark for excellence in marksmanship ever since. With nearly 6,000 people competing annually in pistol, smallbore and high-power events, the National Matches are one of the biggest sporting events held in the country today.Through the association's magazine, The American Rifleman, members were kept abreast of new firearms bills, although the lag time in publishing often prevented the necessary information from going out quickly. In response to repeated attacks on the Second Amendment rights, NRA formed the Legislative Affairs Division in 1934. While NRA did not lobby directly at this time, it did mail out legislative facts and analyses to members, whereby they could take action on their own. In 1975, recognizing the critical need for political defense of the Second Amendment, NRA formed the Institute for Legislative Action, or ILA.Meanwhile, the NRA continued its commitment to training, education and marksmanship. During World War II, the association offered its ranges to the government, developed training materials, encouraged members to serve as plant and home guard members, and developed training materials for industrial security. NRA members even reloaded ammunition for those guarding war plants. Incidentally, the NRA's call to help arm Britain in 1940 resulted in the collection of more than 7,000 firearms for Britain's defense against potential invasion by Germany (Britain had virtually disarmed itself with a series of gun-control laws enacted between World War I and World War II).After the war, the NRA concentrated its efforts on another much-needed arena for education and training: the hunting community. In 1949, the NRA, in conjunction with the state of New York, established the first hunter education program. Hunter Education courses are now taught by state fish and game departments across the country and Canada and have helped make hunting one of the safest sports in existence. Due to increasing interest in hunting, NRA launched a new magazine in 1973, The American Hunter, dedicated solely to hunting issues year-round. NRA continues its leadership role in hunting today with the Youth Hunter Education Challenge (YHEC), a program that allows youngsters to build on the skills they learned in basic hunter education courses. YHECs are now held in 43 states and three Canadian provinces, involving an estimated 40,000 young hunters.The American Hunter and The American Rifleman were the mainstays of NRA publications until the debut of The American Guardian in 1997. The Guardian was created to cater to a more mainstream audience, with less emphasis on the technicalities of firearms and a more general focus on self-defense and recreational use of firearms. The Guardian was renamed America's 1st Freedom in June of 2000.Law enforcement training was next on the priority list for program development. Although a special police school had been reinstated at Camp Perry in 1956, NRA became the only national trainer of law enforcement officers with the introduction of its NRA Police Firearms Instructor certification program in 1960. Today, there are more than 13,000 NRA-certified police and security firearms instructors. Additionally, top law enforcement shooters compete each year in eight different pistol and shotgun matches at the National Police Shooting Championships held in Albuquerque, New Mexico.In civilian training, the NRA continues to be the leader in firearms education. Over 125,000 certified instructors now train about 1,000,000 gun owners a year. Courses are available in basic rifle, pistol, shotgun, muzzleloading firearms, personal protection, even ammunition reloading. Additionally, nearly 7,000 certified coaches are specially trained to work with young competitive shooters. Since the establishment of the lifesaving Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program in 1988, more than 28 million pre-kindergarten to fourth grade children have learned that if they see a firearm in an unsupervised situation, they should "STOP. DON'T TOUCH. RUN AWAY. TELL A GROWNUP." Over the past seven years, Refuse To Be A Victim® seminars have helped more than 100,000 men and women develop their own personal safety plan using common sense strategies.In 1990, NRA made a dramatic move to ensure that the financial support for firearms-related activities would be available now and for future generations. Establishing the NRA Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization, provided a means to raise millions of dollars to fund gun safety and educational projects of benefit to the general public. Contributions to the Foundation are tax-deductible and benefit a variety of American constituencies including youth, women, hunters, competitive shooters, gun collectors, law enforcement agents and persons with physical disabilities.While widely recognized today as a major political force and as America's foremost defender of Second Amendment rights, the NRA has, since its inception, been the premier firearms education organization in the world. But our successes would not be possible without the tireless efforts and countless hours of service our nearly five million members have given to champion Second Amendment rights and support NRA programs. As former Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos said, "Let me make one small vote for the NRA. They're good citizens. They call their congressmen. They write. They vote. They contribute. And they get what they want over time."The ONE thing the NRA should not be, is the ONE thing so many are working hard to make it. Bad Guy. You see, the NRA is not some faceless, emotionless, heartless monolithic icon of evil. I am the NRA & I am none of those things. I am a defender of the Constitution. I am a defender of the Bill Of Rights, especially the 2nd Amendment. I am dedicated to the safe & responsible ownership of firearms. I am dedicated to resisting any efforts to repeal the 2nd Amendment or gun bans.Here on Quora, those of us that defend the 2nd Amendment get a lot of grief from those who see things differently. The most vocal & most harsh critics are often from outside the US. They claim we aren’t civilized, care more about our AR-15 than “the children” or are compensating for a part of our anatomy they speculate is rather small. These mental midgets are tiresome to say the least, but their brand of nonsense can easily be countered by their own countrymen, who give warning against surrender of our rights/firearms. Their words/warnings keep me focused.Courtesy of www.youtube.comCourtesy of YouTubeCourtesy of YouTubeCourtesy of YouTubeCourtesy of YouTubeCourtesy of YouTubeCourtesy of YouTubeAgain,“What is the true purpose of the NRA”?The NRA is THE authority on the subject of firearms training & safety , since 1960 their Law Enforcement Division (LED) has trained over 58,000 Law Enforcement firearms instructors. The NRA's Competitive Shooting Division offers a wide range of activities in all types of shooting, for everyone from the novice to the world-class competitor. The NRA sanctions over 11,000 shooting tournaments and sponsors over 50 national championships each year. The NRA’s Award Winning Eddie Eagle GunSafe program for pre-K -4th grade children teaches Stop! Don’t Touch! Run Away! Tell An Adult! If they ever encounter a firearm. In 1949 the NRA worked with the state of New York to create the Hunter Safety Program that now exists in all 50 states. The NRA offers shooting ranges a variety of benefits from proper set up to safety procedures & marketing. The NRA has developed training courses specifically for women & youth. The NRA National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia, has roughly 3,000 firearms on display in a 15,000 square foot facility. The Museum details and examines the nearly 700-year history of firearms with a special emphasis on firearms, freedom, and the American experience. Open every day but Christmas from 9:30 AM to 5 PM, admission is free.The NRA & the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), on behalf of it’s members, & the rest of the US population (despite the fact that most are too nearsighted to appreciate the effort), exists to defend the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution & to promote the safe & responsible use of firearms. Any assertion to the contrary comes from someone who knows nothing of the organization or, worse, seeks to malign the group & it’s members.Thanks for reading & all the best!

Where I Lived and Old Age ain't what it used to beLife in MilwaukeeI grew up in the late 1930s - 1940s in a Milwaukee urban environment; my family being Germans from Prussia (father’s side) and some red dog Irish from Dublin (mother’s side), who had immigrated to Milwaukee in the 1850s, entered into businesses (construction, pharmacy and diamond brokerage), and were as far back as I can remember, traditional Republicans. My adolescence were my immortal days when I was completely reckless, full of adventure, dared to do anything, was very physical, and thought the devil takes the hindmost. I can remember all those days well, so my adventures will make good story telling.Back then, Milwaukee was basically a European culture, with large German / Polish / British populations, a manufacturing center that believed in work, fair play and earned rewards. Milwaukee has always been a music-based town with ethnic festivals on the Lake Michigan waterfront celebrating national heritage. With religious zeal, Milwaukee was also a sports town that had a passionate love affair for the Green Bay Packers and Braves.It was home to parks every few blocks, the Lake Michigan waterfront, trolley cars, viaducts, corner stores and soda fountains, beautiful neighborhoods, an excellent school system, and was world famous for heavy manufacturing, custard, Brewies, Harley Davidson, Liberace, bowling, ethnic festivals, being an international sea port and USA freight train connector, Polka dancing, car racing, State Fairs, and the incomparable world class Milwaukee Zoo.Milwaukee was a working man’s politically and socially liberal city where unions prevailed, bars were on every corner, dance clubs dotted every ethnic neighborhood, and where new performing acts tried out and went on to become nationally famous like Buddy Holly, the Platters, Wilson Pickett and Elvis Presley. Milwaukee teenagers in the 1950's conjure images of boys with pompadour hair dos shaped into Duck Tails, Drape pants, Spade shoes, leather Bomber Jackets and girls with pony tails, in bobby socks, poodle skirts and white saddle shoes. And Milwaukee was a ‘dance city’ that emerged a new generation from swing dancing to Lindy and Jitterbug, to Be Bop, to Doo Op, and into the age of Elvis Presley’s rock and roll.Between ice skating at Washington Park, skiing around Milwaukee’s hills and dales, camping at Menominee Falls and running with the trains, going to Hoyt Park and on the amusement rides and to carnival side shows at the Wisconsin State Fair every year, exploring Milwaukee on my Schwinn bike, life was very entertaining. I bought my first car at 16 and became an auto mechanic to keep it running. Washington High School was great and I had the best time of my life with friends, working at KRAMBO grocery as a cashier, cruising downtown Milwaukee in my 1941 Pontiac Silver Streak, and going on double dates to the Drive in Movie Theater or one of Wisconsin’s lakes.Winters snows in Milwaukee were a constant thing, and would pile up and stay for the entire winter, but it was great for tobogganing sledding and skiing at Washington Park while farmers brought in their horse drawn sleighs to provide transportation for the city folk. Every snowfall left tons of drifts, often more than thirty feet high, especially when the City street snow blowers blew snow onto existing mounds of compacted snow laying about on playgrounds and front yards. We built huge snow forts and connecting tunnels with passageways that led to rooms we used as hiding places. But we never thought about getting a big snow collapse in one of our tunnels that could threaten our lives. Of course, with all the cold weather and snow, winter sports were king in Milwaukee. Skiing, sledding, tobogganing, and ice-skating were all our winter playtime favorites. And we never minded the cold, they say you get used to it.I received an excellent academic education in Milwaukee’s public schools. First there was Hi Mount Elementary, then Stueben Jr. High, and finally Washington High School, full college prep oriented school system and at the time, Washington H.S. was ranked the third best high school in the USA (so the Navy told me when I enlisted, it was behind Julliard and the Bronx School of Science in New York City).I was a very active as a child, what with my riding bicycles, horses and becoming a car mechanic so I could drive my pre WW II jalopy, all the adventure stuff camping and canoeing exploits in the deep woods and like keeping in shape with rock climbing, boxing in Golden Gloves and scuba diving at Devil's Lake. Every day of my adolescence I worked out on a speed bag and a heavy bag hung in my basement, doing 100 pushups and several hundred sit-ups. I was a workout freak! And I loved to fight, got into many with street gangs and bullies in school. Oh so young, strong and adventurous! I had ten horses, deep woods camped all over Wisconsin, canoed and portaged many lakes, rode my hot rod and got into motorcycles. My life has been full of getting a great education, working out and keeping fit, reading the classics, becoming expert on WW II Pacific battles in my youth.Life in the NavyIn the Navy I rode a WW II destroyer for three years through countless storm and hurricanes, traveling the western world to more than forty USA, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Middle East, African, Asian and Persian Gulf ports; was the leading Petty Officer for the Fire Control weapons division, marched miles in the Arabian desert with a 90-pound pack on my back carrying a Thompson Machine Gun on Recon with the Marines; was a really good street fighter, did Military Police and Shore Patrol all over the western world,; survived countless fights and rough seas, traveled the world, and fought the Russians. I lived on the periphery of a war zone fighting the Cold War filled with extensive world travel and lots of Military Police duties and street fights with Communists and Islamists where people were killed or injured.After the NavyAfter the Navy, I got an opportunity to be a Main Frame engineer for IBM, spent 3 and 1/2 years in Main Frame schools - finished first in my class - and was stationed at the naval base and went on never ending special TAD product support assignments all around the USA, especially to New York City which had the most and biggest computer applications in the USA. I also got involved in politics and Civil Rights, worked for Jack Kennedy and marched with Martin Luther King, all to work for equality. You could say that generally southerners: white - by culture, and black - by segregation, were educationally and culturally way behind northern peoples. And the whites were mean too . . . fighting Civil Rights to keep Jim Crow racial segregation in place.Living in the NortheastIn 1967 when I was 30, I moved to New York City. It took me a while to lose the negative perspective of human nature that I had developed while living in the segregated south. In New York, I found a new dynamic, friendliness and accepting all types and kinds of people. What got a New Yorker angry was dealing with poor character and behavior, which had nothing to do with race. Everyone was treated as an individual. People were much more sincere and much more caring. In the South, “race” was one of a person's defining characteristics. Up north, it was merely a footnote, if that. One of the first things I noticed was that those of predominantly European ancestry here very often do jobs, which are primarily performed by blacks and Hispanics down South, - and, with no negative stigmas attached. Everyone is down to earth; no one is pretentious.I spent a lot of time in Boston, which is the polar opposite of where I came from in the south in almost every way. Something else I’ve noticed up north that one would hardly ever see down South was a White Male-Black Female couple. These are incredibly rare in the South, but are common up north by comparison and are not considered “strange”. Most of the white guys I hung out with down South said that black girls were “too ugly” or “too dumb”, and that they would never date a black woman. Besides sit was illegal what with southern anti miscegenation laws. As a General Manager in the computer industry and 'Corporate Recruiter' I traveled across the south attending meetings or recruiting at the military bases and found it very backward compared to the Northeast {Massachusetts] where my headquarters were located.We Northerners tend to be more supportive of social egalitarianism: human rights, civil rights, workers’ unions, and people stuff en all. We think as long as you work hard, everyone should be given a fair chance to succeed. Despite both having a traditional culture, midwestern traditionalism didn’t originate from a class-based society and Southern traditionalism did originate from a class-based society. Northerners tend to be far more educated, industrialized, high tech, socially advanced, and immigrant driven worldly. More students from Northern States go to Ivy League and highly academic Colleges and get better-rounded educations. The North generally spearheaded and protected many of the American social and domestic human rights movements as a first world country in the early 1900's to ensure the good of its people. The south still remains in a backward thinking, a capricious slumber in which visions of white power and hate speech are as common as the rising of the sun.I will say that in the more urban areas around the South, and especially those where there are major universities, it’s not so bad, and interracial relationships do seem to be tolerated. But in all the times I’ve been to the Delta - the last being two years ago - I still have yet to see a single black/white couple in the Delta, even though it’s the “blackest” region in all of America. It’s not that the blacks won’t have relationships with whites, but because the whites would ostracize the family of any white man (and especially any white woman) who had the temerity to actually have relations with a black person. White and Asian are okay, but black and white? Verboten. That’s how it is there even today.Living in New York CityIn many ways, NYC is one of the best places on earth to live. There are downs to NYC… but they are minor compared to the ups. Whatever you want is about five minutes from your front door (in a coop or condo, most of that time is spent waiting for the elevator). We have some of the best salsa clubs than any other city, as well as one of the best West Indian Carnivals outside of the Caribbean. Lunar New Year and the Holi festival are also some of the best cultural events that New York City puts together. I also am a friend with some of the most talented artists and performers who one day might be the next star. There is always something to do in this place, no matter what your interests are. You might even try something that you had never thought about trying before. NYC attracts the best and brightest from all over the world. They come from undeveloped regions, rural areas and other big cities. New York is a 24-hour-a-day adrenaline rush. If you’re a Liberal Democrat or amusingly right wing, have the right rap, are literate and articulate and a type-A workaholic (but appear languid and comfortable and can successfully soft-sell), you will, as the saying goes, love New York. And it will love you. Slip, however, and it will eat you alive. If you are turned on by that challenge, you’ll make it there. But not, as the song goes, anywhere.But NYC is very expensive; rents are very high in New York and many people have four or five roommates to help cover the rent (young people). A single, working mother with a child will struggle to pay rent, buy food and pay for childcare, which is the reason why the homeless shelters are overcrowded and housing court has a long court docket. Outer borough rents are ridiculous too. Crime is rampant in some areas. Imagine paying four digits rent but you cannot come outside after dark for fear of getting hit by stray gunfire! Blue Collar jobs do not pay enough for the average person to cover expenses and have funds left over for savings unless you are a professional or such as an attorney or a doctor or if you work in the tech sector or entertainment/news industry.People move here hoping to obtain a good job should reconsider unless the salary is $100,000 or more, otherwise, good luck enjoying New York the way the city is supposed to be experienced. The traffic is horrible – don’t bring a car into NYC. There are crowds everywhere. Wherever you go, it’s you and 20,000 plus of people you don’t know. There s every type of person from every country in the world here, all withy their food, social customs and religions. Everything is open 24/7; the gas stations, grocery stores, Diners, and bars and nightclubs close at 4am. NYC is filled with all sorts of different people, different races and cultures and churches. There are more than 200 different languages being spoken, so you’ll hear different tongues you’ve never heard of see clothing and dress you’ve never seen before. Lots of highly educated people in NYC, you will hear different conversations, depending on your crowd, it maybe more global or deeper into some philosophy or research endeavor.NYC is for the adventurous, skilled and talented, competitive and those loving to take risks. You can make it work. It will kick your ass and it will hurt, but it can be uplifting in so many ways too!Traveling Around the USAI traveled to more than 20 cities in the US and have never saw significant forms of discrimination at all. People are so friendly and welcoming to me. Even in places like Boston and New York where the people are known to be pressed and rude, people still say “thank you” and “sorry” a lot. Another thing that I find shocking most is the cultural diversity of the country. Foreigners like to think that the whole America is not much different from one another, but it’s actually much more diverse. The contrast between the Western and the Eastern parts of the country is very strong. They almost feel like two different countries. Though overall my biggest culture shock (or reality) of America is that it’s a very highly contrasting society and country, with huge geographic differences and that even people’s opinions varied hugely, people are not people but a black woman, white man, Asian guy, Mexican dude, white girl, black kid! And each subsection of Americans has their own stereotype assigned to them and they meet it more or less.I traveled often to the Carolina's and Atlanta and the Deep South into Alabama and Mississippi. The Deep South is a very poor White and Black region, religious, segregated, with lots of poverty, lousy healthcare, crime and social dysfunction. It seems most people live in trailers, drop out of school, have lots of babies with multiple partners, have few skills - the whites voting Republican who don't give a damn about them and Blacks for Democrats who try to improve their but they vote in very small numbers. There is an over-presence of religion. Religious billboards everywhere, churches on every corner, with signs admonishing to believe or else; and their is long list of those going to Hell. . I can’t figure the South out! It seems they are still living their Civil War over and over again . . . always fighting what is good for them because of their animosities toward outsiders and especially what they call Yankees. It almost seems that the Age of Enlightenment had never occurred, stuck in pre-18th Century mindsets regarding science, logic and humanism. Logical discussion seems beyond the range, almost an alien concept, of many who just tout set slogans and opinions, with no basis in observation or research for themselves. It’s mind boggling to find in a “Developed Nation.” It shows all the signs of Brainwashing.I had a great career in the computer industry as an engineering, sales and marketing manager for Banking and Fortune 500 accounts; went to Harvard Business School, wrote books, taught management development courses; was a national recruiter visiting engineering colleges, tech schools, and military based looking for high performance tech professionals and hired close to a thousand for NYC and Mid Atlantic operations. I was very sympathetic toward blacks since they suffered under racial segregation but found that generally they had poor educations and didn't qualify much for high tech jobs. I did my best to hire blacks and women who were highly inspired but also had to take into consideration job requirements. My company's revenue success and my job continuation depended upon being the best player in a very competitive market place. Kind of like NFL football or any professional sports.Life in Upstate NYAfter a 30 yr career in NYC, technology companies were downsizing, and all my terrific accomplishments didn't matter any more, and I took an early retirement at age 55. I moved from the corporate world in Manhattan to the rural world of Route Sales in Upstate New York. I wanted to be “that guy” who retired from his place of employment with a nice farewell party after a life of service, and spent his retirement babysitting his multiple grandchildren in the same house where he raised their parents. I wanted a permanency and sense of belonging! Interestingly, New York City and Upstate New York have always had a symbiotic relationship, as one needs the other for survival and both share multiple personalities. Whereas the City was a conflagration of social ills containing every ethnic type of person and culture, where some kind of opportunity existed for anyone on earth, where anything went and fun was exemplified at every turn, Upstate was the escape point from those big City manifestations, and was the place of relaxation, where camping, mountain climbing, hunting and fishing occurred. We lived in the Hudson Valley foothills of the Catskill Mountains, which has acres and acres of dairy cows, farms, etc. I like the fact that its many small towns have bandstands with evening concerts, parades, not the big commercial extravaganza's like in Manhattan, butcher shops, bakeries other than at the supermarket, small mom & pop stores where you are greeted by name . . . The area is full of lakes, rivers and reservoirs available for fishing and hunting. You are close to the mountains and deep woods so you can escape modern life for an afternoon, go fishing or hunting, and be back in the evening at the local diner for food. I could go on and on.From our front yard you can see the Shawungunk Mountains. They are beautiful and I can see living in Upstate New York biggest bonuses, every morning, afternoon, and night the surrounding mountains and waters never look the same. Different light, weather, time of year, it's always beautiful. And it’s nice for being in the 'burbs but still close enough to commute to Manhattan for work and got out for nights on the town. Upstate New York is littered with small cities and towns. And while the jury is still out on whether urban or rural residents are happier, there's a strong case to be made for the mental health benefits of small-town life. City dwellers have a higher risk of anxiety and mood disorders, and children who are brought up in a city are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia later in life. When it comes to living well, Upstaters may be able to teach us a thing or two. When you are living amongst the hustle and bustle of New York City, you are likely paying at least $2000 a month to rent a room in a shared apartment with a living room and kitchen that share the same 100 square‑foot space. There is probably a rat infestation in your building, the view from your bedroom window probably overlooks a dumpster and a brick wall, and your bathroom probably doubles as a closet. When you live Upstate, the mortgage on your 2000 square foot house is less than $1000 a month.Life in GeorgiaI lived in the south during the 1950s and ‘60s with the Navy and IBM aand during the Civil Rights movement and I can assure you that those years were fully racist and kept very violent to keep it that way. White southerners were ignorant, racist, armed and dangerous and just slightly more stable than an evangelical preacher who blessed racism. I watched men wearing white sheets and hoods to hide their cowardly faces burn an 8ft cross in the yard of the first black family that moved into our neighborhood. The authorities only managed to show up after the men had finished their hate filled display and departed.Because of the civil rights movement that sort of racism was on its way out. The cities had become too exposed for the good old boy network to effectively cover up the racism. Too many eyes with easy access to telephones were watching and in a population where everyone doesn’t know everyone else, it had gotten to the point that the police officer who arrived in response to a call might not look the other way, or worse yet to them, be ‘colored’.During the '60's and '70's there was a feeling that blacks and whites were taking bricks from the walls that separated us. But then those bricks began to be put back in place. At least that's how it seemed to me. The walls remain. Today Atlanta is a very racially diverse city. But this diversity is made up of pockets. There's the Hispanic community over here, the Asian community over there. Each of these communities has pockets within it. Since outright racist behavior was becoming less tolerated publicly, the racism of the 1980’s mostly consisted of under the breath muttering with pure hatred behind closed doors. Depending on who you were, where you were, and who you were with, you might not have even notice the racism was there. If you were a Caucasian male living here, you were reminded of it often as the racists of the time assumed that everyone thought the way they did and would drop their guard if only Caucasians were present. Anyone who thinks it didn’t exist because it wasn’t openly discussed in coffee shops either was too privileged to be aware of it, part of it, or just completely ignorant as to what was going on around them.I moved south in 2005 at age 68 and immediately gained more weight, it's peaceful and quiet but just not as physically active here as in the north. I am about 40 pounds overweight based on Manhattan physical standards but considered skinny here in the south where fatness reins. Gods . . . there are a lot of really fat people here. And I have no arthritis, my hair isn't getting wispy and my voice is still strong and not changing. My skin isn't covered in weird little warts and brown shapes. Only a few wrinkle here and there. People say I look like I am in my late 50s or early 60s. Even my two heart bypass operations in my 50s didn't slow me down. I walk regularly at Fleckers (an exercise gymnasium). If you remain engaged and have passions and curiosity about life, nothing much changes. I have taken good care of physical myself and kept my mind in constant learning mode, whether with books or classes or experiences my whole life. So here I am, all that rambunctious and death defying stuff of my youth gone. Most of my friends have passed. As you get older, ones' circle of opportunities to live life and have friends’ ceases. I miss movies that tell a story. I’m not crazy about gore on TV or movies. Most of all, I don't like today's ultra conservative leaning on white nationalism Republican politics and evangelical (southern) religion - too extreme, radical and hateful for me! It's like America is not a nice place anymore! The USA is in shambles today. Trump and his supporters are a disaster. What a hateful bunch! So life goes on . . . Every time you enter a new decade it feels like you’ve gotten so much older. It’s the 9’s of each decade that gives you a whole year to anticipate falling into the next decade. And once you actually have a birthday, it just doesn’t seem as bad as you anticipated.Living in the SoutheastI think while things got lots better than they were in the 1960s or earlier time periods, racial issues are still a significant problem. And it comes from both black and white. Don't ever think that racism is just a white thing against blacks; it works the other way around too. And 'Political Correctness' just adds to the fire, dictating that even if a white policeman farts on a black criminal he is a racist.So the racists went underground and then lost their collective minds over the election of a black man as POTUS… but that is a different story. Today if they are brave enough to show their faces, they generally label themselves as “white nationalists” or “alt-right”. Failing that they go underground into a like-minded hate filled echo chambers so it isn’t as obvious.To be blunt, the racism in the South is really only noticeable to people who aren’t from the area. To the people who live there, it’s like background noise; it's how they live! By that I mean, unless its volume is turned up, you just consider as being part of living in the region. However, people who have been elsewhere (or who have lived in the South and have returned after many years) immediately notices how racist things still are. I recently took a trip to the Atlanta metro area for a few days and I was stunned at how rude some White Southerners can be and what Black Americans in the South still have to endure,Jim Crow was still practiced; almost nothing had changed . . . including the signs above the two doors to the only doctor’s office in town. One said “WHITE” and the other said, “COLORED”. Oh, they were painted completely over in a Kelly green, but paint doesn’t hide inch-deep chisels in marble so well. And the people still obeyed those signs. The racism’s so thick in the air you can cut it with a knife. If I’d had a lick of sense,I once attempted to open the door to a shop for an old lady who, after hearing my voice and accent, told me she "didn't need any he's from no yanked." I get along with older people and that incident almost broke my heart. One last thing - did you know that the Mississippi state legislature did not ratify the Thirteenth amendment banning slavery until 2013? Yes, three years ago. Oh, they claim that it was because of an “administrative error” wherein they “lost the paperwork” when they tried to ratify it back in 1995 (which was only 130 years after the end of the Civil War, you know)…but any of us who were raised in Mississippi know better as to why it took so inexcusably long to ratify that amendment.A brand of racism certainly does exist in the South in the 21st century [as it does everywhere], one that is peculiarly southern and is complicated in its historical origins and its sociology. Sometimes it's extraordinarily vicious and ugly; at other times it's much more systemic, subdued, and passive. It's never a good thing. It varies from town to town, county-to-county, and even from one parent to another. Southerners tend to have traditional conservative values, lots of religion, and pride in the Confederate heritage that all Southerners share. Southerners tend to dislike liberals, like that they are more religious and don't like socialism. They like their guns; many carry and are better armed than northerners. There is only a hand full of different cultures in the Southern States, while in the Northern States there are many diverse cultures from around the World. Conservative southerners tend to dislike anyone that disagrees with their conservative Republican political and fundamentalist evangelical religious opinions. They are eager to view themselves as morally superior to others. One is not allowed to be gay, transcended, and non-Christian without being looked down upon. Consequentially, the South tends to be bigoted in race, gender, sex, and religion. The south leads the nation in income inequality, poverty, obesity, homicides, violent crimes, divorce, births out of wedlock, and is this least peaceful region of the USA. It’s funny that the one sin the North excels at slightly is Sloth, which is measured according to: “Expenditures on art, entertainment, and recreation compared with employment.” Basically, it just means Northerners have more fun and have more high culture. As far as sins go, that is definitely the one to choose.Northeast vs. SoutheastNortheastThe Northeast isn't the fastest growing but it appears by and far the healthier, most affluent, highly educated and has the lowest crime rate than everyplace else. Actually, the NE dominates the US when it comes to "upper middle class" and wealth. Nearly all of the richest areas in the country are in the northeast, which continues to solidify its wealth dominance with explosion of finance and government employment. The weather gets unbearably cold and the people can tend to be "Know it all M@ssholes." And it's expensive as hell to live anywhere halfway decent. Diversity and modernity is the normal, people are open-minded and vote toward the liberal end of the spectrum and are socially progressive. In terms of spending on education, the quality of healthcare, the standard of living, etc., the New England states are excellent. Massachusetts leads the country in a great many parameters of health and welfare. Also, it has the second lowest gun ownership rate, behind Hawaii, so more children there make it to adulthood than in any other state. Plus all the hundreds of world-class universities and high schools, not to mention several of the countries best secondary schools. Boston also has some of the nations, if not worlds, greatest universities, including Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Boston is a lovely city, it’s an hour from Cape Cod, and an hour from the ski slopes. It’s also one of the only walkable cities in the country, very European that way, you can survive without a car. But it’s expensive to live there, and the winters can be brutal.Connecticut and Maryland are also states with excellent schools, high per-student spending, good healthcare, and very supportive social safety nets. They are Top Five in nearly every quality-of-life indicator. But again, not cheap to live in the nice parts.SoutheastLook at the conservative areas of the South and Appalachia. Many southern states are measured as "Developing." Such as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, e.g., the old Confederacy plus a few more. Now imagine that all states, all regions, all the country was dominated by a similar conservative culture. Imagine that all government (local and federal) was run by a majority of conservative politicians. Imagine spread across the entire country the same degree of social problems, the same high rates of: poverty, wealth disparity, violent crime, incarceration, intolerance, broken families, illiteracy, high school drop outs, teen pregnancy, low birth weight, infant mortality, STDs, lack of healthy food and health care for the poor and working class, and on and on. Imagine all of that combined.The south is especially troubling, it has the lowest life expectancy, fattest, least educated people, has the highest poverty rate and overall is the most backward region in the USA, but has lots of migration there for its weather, cheap housing and low taxes. Unfortunately, the people on average have a much lower education rates than in other places, and the culture is not as "advanced" as other places. One of the first questions southern people ask you is "What church do you go to?" Tradition is the normal, people tend to be very religious, opinionated, judgmental and are on the ultra conservative end of the spectrum and are socially restrictive. For example, Jody Hice, an ex Pastor with a radio talk show in Atlanta was elected for congress in my district in Georgia. He says it's OK for women to be in politics as long as they are under the political control of their husbands. He also wants to take away the first amendment rights for Muslims. He is a gun everywhere advocates, including bars, restaurants, churches, schools, and government offices, and he enjoys the biggest NRA ratings. He is an ultra conservative who says he will repeal ObamaCare, stop abortion, immigration and Gay rights, and any contraception for women.City life vs. Country lifeAs a born-and-raised big city boy, having traveled the worked and USA widely and lived or visited just about everywhere in the USA, I now have adopted a country life in rural Georgia, and I think it is safe to say I have experienced the best (and possibly worst) of both worlds. They are two entirely different ways of life – each with their own advantages and disadvantages. As for me, I like beauty and nature, but also the convenience, diversity and open-minded people of the city who are also spoiling and have become a necessity to my happiness. OK, I admit it the country life has fewer opportunities but think about it it’s much healthier. You know that people who live in the city are like bees. They are precipitous and bustling. Because most people live in cities, they have a lot more social and business activities: shopping malls and restaurants galore, thrift stores, libraries, and concert venues, just to name a few. Space is at a premium, housing is expensive, and you need more money than living in the country. But city life is exciting and fun with tons of things to do with a huge variety of people. Obviously, to get the most out of city life, you need to be able to afford it. Meanwhile, life in the country differs greatly from life in the city. Country nights are quiet and the expansive sky bounteous with brilliant stars that seem brighter than those in the city. The clean, evening air is permeated with the sounds of katydids, crickets and birds. It all depends, then, on what your preference is on where you'd be happiest. If you thrive around lots of people, don't like being out in the Sun much, and aren't keen on driving through miles of cornfields just to get to the nearest shopping center, then city living would probably be ideal. But if you have anxiety attacks, consider yourself an outdoorsy person, or enjoy being around animals, your life may be complete in the heart of the country.Old AgeToday I am 83 years old and been around the block a few times. I was raised in 1940s - 50s Milwaukee, then a very liberal city that was diverse and on the top of civilized accoutrements e.g.: ethnic - religious diversity, top education, good jobs, lots recreation - cultural, Music - Milwaukee Fest, infrastructure - parks, museums, libraries, health care, etc. That progressive environment existentially formed my life to this day. In between I lived in the 1950s - 1960s Jim Crow segregated conservative South and saw a very primitive, poverty stricken, violent poor man's existence exemplifying man's inhumanity to man all set up by local/state governments implementing legal and institutionalized racial - social restrictions all supported by the evangelical church who said the Bible justified a segregated society with no diversity of ideas and life styles, For some of those years, I was in the Navy and traveled the western world and saw countries struggling to recover from the destruction of WW II and appreciated the USA. But I needed social, economic and intellectual freedoms and moved to New York City where I found a completely different universe, even better than my Milwaukee growing up altruistic experiences.I am making the most of my time on Earth? I feel, for the most part, like I did at 50 (which I considered the strongest period in my life). I abhor the saying “I’m bored” as there are ALWAYS things to do such as reading, writing, researching and always learning, working in my wood shop and activities that many people hire others to do. Nothing is too mundane for me to find satisfaction in. Any vices should be infrequent and not permanently debilitating. The body WANTS to sustain and regenerate, so listen to it. I feel the cold much more. My temper has mellowed and my patience is more. I don't get riled up easily, except over today's divisive politics. I don't like the socialist leaning Democrats much and left the destructive Republican Party and am a social Libertarian now. My sight is slightly worse, but I can still drive safely without glasses, and can read a newspaper without glasses if the light is good. It takes me a bit longer to do serious brainwork. But I see no signs of real mental deterioration. Stuff I write gets published. My stamina has decreased. So far, no chronic aches and pains. Yes, minor injuries take a bit longer to heal, but nothing dramatic. The annoying feature is the need to pee more often: I carry around a rather precise mental map of public toilets or concealed spots when in urban areas.These are the best years of my life. Gone are the stress, competition and uncertainty. I have traded insecurity for wisdom and let me say, it feels wonderful. If you get to the end of your life with no regrets at all, you probably haven't lived that interesting a life. When your traveling days are done, you'll still wish you had taken just one more trip. Even people who had done a lot of globetrotting would wistfully say something like, "But I never got to Japan."My family members, military, work associates and friends keep passing away. Just recently two passed. When friends pass away, it is not just their presence that is lost, it is also the memories they have of you. The "Do you remember when...?" conversations that pepper the elderly reminiscences. Fear of death is actually rare and is commonly a joke. On the other hand, fear of losing one's memories, faculties, or independence is real. We put a great value on having people, who we can trust - especially to carry out wishes when we are gone. Making final decisions can be upsetting, particularly if they relate to young people who are distant in age and lifestyle yet close in relationship. One gets comfort from familiarity; the same cup; the same chair, the same view. One can be disturbed by the disruption or criticism of established habits. Having pets is a comfort, but caring for them can be increasingly difficult when joints get stiff, and even bending over is an effort.One of the most important things you can do to stay healthy in your golden years is to maintain your sense of purpose by staying connected to people and things that matter to you. However, this isn't always easy-especially in a society that all-too-often views older people as a burden. Visit your local senior center. Spend time with at least one person-a family member, friend or neighbor-every day. Volunteer in your community, attend a local event, join a club or take up a new hobby.Perhaps in some ways, one wants to leave the world as one entered it; without fear or pain; without anger or distrust; without possessions or debts; without demands or expectations; in innocence.As for me, bottom line, I am highly organized, very adventurous, a big risk taker, considered a "take no shit tough guy" who doesn't worry and has a positive attitude that hangs around with good friends and life styles and avoided situations and people that annoyed me and am in constant learning mode. There is my desire to leave one's mark; graffiti on the wall of time; an apt engraving on a tombstone or small plaque on a park bench, so I wrote books and stories about my life and commentaries on politics and religion.So, who are the Americans?There has been debate about this in recent times, but it still holds true. Anybody that lives in America is considered an American. Asians are Americans, Blacks are Americans, Indians are Americans, Whites are Americans, Arabs are Americans, and Italians are Americans. People can retain their home culture, but they dissolve into the large American society and are considered a part of it, not strangers or outsiders. If you would believe the media, you’d think there’s a race war going on and there’s an open season on black people. This is grade-A bullshit. I’ve traveled coast-to-coast, right through the Deep South, and people in general get along just fine pretty much everywhere. Sure, racism is a real thing, but it is not nearly as bad as they’d like you to believe. They just like to put the cameras on the scumbags of society like the KKK, Neo-Nazi’s, BLM, and Antifa. These assholes don’t represent the population, thankfully. Remember: news media is a for-profit business. All they give a shit about is ratings, and they’ve been caught by video-bloggers plenty of times fabricating and twisting stories. They are the main reason for the bullshit that’s been going on lately.Friendships seem to be one-dimensional. Most people live in bubbles. In my experience, your school friends remain your school friends. You may occasionally grab a bite to eat, but the topics of a conversation focus on school. Your sport friends remain your sport friends. Your work friends are simply your work friends and so on. Friends from one circle of life don’t automatically enter other circles or groups. Everything seems very isolated from each other. Friendships also don’t have such strong bonds. You may have some good childhood friends that you keep in touch with, but for the most part, people simply do not have a strong nucleus of friends that lasts forever. People veer to the extreme sides of things on almost everything. A good example is the way people look. There’s a lot of fat people and super-fit people in the USA, and not much in-between. Most of all, it’s an awesome place with a wide variety of people. Some of them are assholes, but most of them are great. Americans have a kind of happy excitement about them that I find very fun and pleasant. Europeans are generally a little more stoic compared to them.Remember the 1960s social revolution? Traditionalists feared and fought it, but it happened anyway with dramatic organizational and moral changes to society and government. Society changed for the better, with things like Civil Rights for African Americans and women. Today the civil rights battles are being fought for woman controlling their own bodies, homosexual rights, and immigrants being recognized as an asset rather than as a problem.Beneath the glorious and over fantasized “American Dream” is the harsh reality that Americans slog their back off to survive. On an average 35% Americans are doing more than one job, either to pay bills or to reach a level of a lifestyle that they aspire for. American Dream is not a fallacy. But Americans really want to work hard to achieve it. There is a charm to America, beautiful landscapes, and friendly people. But for all the stuff they talk about how great they are, seeing reality is actually really shocking! The people I met were genuine, friendly warm-hearted individuals. There are a lot of hugs and kisses. In my entire life I have seen people of different sex, even the married ones hugging or kissing all across the USA.Our American Values remain strong on several things, the absolute freedom of speech. Yes it is OK to offend people. Yes it is ok to make fun of people. Some so-called liberals are trying to change that but as of right now it is still ok. And yes freedom of speech gives you a right to be racist, anti-Semitic, etc. It is your right to be an a-hole. America is a huge country formed on immigration and consequentially is very diverse what with its different races, religions and ethnicities. America has always been considered strong on 'Rugged Individualism' and 'Self Reliance' and in its gut still retains these values in the 21st century. The belief in a small government and (for now) rejection of socialism, a system for the weak and needy while capitalism is a system for the strong and competent. The American dream is what makes’ US produce companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, etc. No other country comes close to the opportunities that US has. As John Steinbeck said “Socialism never took roots in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”Polarized AmericaSomething is broken in the American political system again. The country is wallowing in pessimism and cultural conflict; Congress has an approval rate somewhere around 7 - 9 per cent and is useless as a governing body. For years technology has replaced blue-collar jobs and globalism has increased competitive pressures and painfully changed the rules for economic development. Now demigods push racial reasons like non-white immigration for the decline of the economic stability the average American. In today’s America, the predominant emotion among the majority of its citizens is dissatisfaction with not getting what they deserve, fear of the non white mixture brewing in America’s melting pot and anger with established political system. It happened before!The USA is overwhelmed now with left and right crybaby dissenters. They complain and blame instead of exhilarate! Anti everything ideologues coming from a racial blend of black or white, evangelical religious nuts, all uneducated to the issues but full of righteousness, they think the worst of everything. And they are ruining my America! You can easily recognize them right off the bat, they have an enemies list, lots of things they don't like, they have andUs or them' mentality. They believe they are right and non-believers are wrong, there can be no compromise, for their views are sacrosanct. And do we ever have demigods! They are not lovers of humanity, innovation, imagination, science, intellect, but are contented with extremism, fears and anxieties, their minds full of conspiracy, threats and end times. They have got us pegged too, to them you are either a socialist, immoral or the worst, someone who is an open minded 'Free Thinker' and believes modernity and in the First Amendment and wants to change the world for the better.Worst of all, in today’s America, we share, in any meaningful sense, frighteningly few moments together. I believe this is a large part of why our politics are so maddeningly deadlocked. Today, it appears that we have divided ourselves into ever-shrinking tribes into silos isolated by our own truths, which are encased in the bubble of our own self-serving realities. We are largely no longer the USA, but rather the Divided States of America.Even religion plays an ugly hand. Not a good guy anymore, but a firestorm builder. Once upon a time, the Christian faith had an overwhelming influence on every day life in America. But the evangelicals have soured the taste for religion what with their discrimination and fears towards others not like them. Contrary to popular belief, it was segregation — and not abortion — that mobilized the religious right in the 1960s and ‘70s. Conservative political activists worked to organize evangelicals around segregation as an issue of “religious freedom.” Today they organize to stop abortion and Gay Marriage. Evangelicals are also against non-white immigration, free trade, environment and global warming. Prior to the 1970s, the relationship between evangelical Christians and the Republican Party was negligible. In 2016, it’s hard to imagine a Republican party without its hard-core evangelical voting bloc.I thought America was well past its ugly past - you know that slavery, Jim Crow, Ku Klux Klan thing - and we had grown into a more moral and altruistic nation like we were founded to be . . . that shinning light on the hill that illuminated the glimmers of hope throughout the world that looked to us for inspiration, freedom, better things and ideas. Enter misogynist – bigoted – lying – cheating Trump. He is voted into office intent on punishing both the political establishment inside the country and its many outside enemies, scrubbing the pot clean of whatever ingredients are unappetizing to the ordinary folks in the majority, and reinstating the American dream: “Make America great again!” Trump’s promise to scrub the melting pot and reinstate white majority rule was the second reason why Americans voted for him. As he made quite clear during his campaign, he dismissed accepted social norms of “political correctness” toward any minority and, without caring about whether he was accused of racism, misogyny or bigotry, he spoke in the name of the majority of “the forgotten men and women of our country,” vowing that ordinary people who work hard should have a voice, pledging “I am your voice.”America is not perfect and we suffered though great changes, from southern slavery into being a free nation, we manifested ourselves as a liberal democracy, won two world wars, fought a Cold War against communism, won Civil Rights battles, led the world's free economy and were a nation of ideas for the good life and betterment of mankind. That was my America! We were always moving forward and setting an example. It was so easy to see the divide in the USA back then. I think that today these are the same 'bones' for our present day division. It's more subtle today, a cultural, governing, religious, economic divide . . . something like between communism/fascism and democracy. You could even call it our own "Cold War." It manifest in adjectives like optimism verses, pessimism, theocracy verses secularism, progress verses regression, freedom verses restrictions, absolutism and monolithicism verses diversity. But underneath it all were very unhappy and angry people exhibiting a creeping ugliness that was boiling away . . . e.g.: like the Christian Right working on getting the USA to be a theocracy and the removal of separation of church state, the rise of white nationalism, my way or the highway thinking by outlawing other peoples freedoms - born that way homosexuality and women's choice for abortion, practicing religion and voting like you want to, stopping immigration especially from non white or Muslim countries and a paranoia toward modernity and open minded critical thinking.These days we are fighting Islamic terrorism, gun violence and mass shooting at home, a horrific black on black crime wave, nasty populist movements across the world [and in the USA too] seeming to move toward fascism. Our major problems are trying to understand and work with the impacts of highly advancing technology and competitive globalism, the resulting weakening of the old economy and loss of good jobs and the shrinking of the middle class. And enter Donald Trump! He will make America great again! Trump is an ugly person with hateful messaging, he personifies the ugliness, the fear and anger, he feeds it, lives off it, enables ugliness to being the new normal, which is seriously diminishing the greatness of the USA. Our bright light is dimming and only fervently glows now. What we need is a leader who shows us to create the new high tech economy the most people can succeed in.Yes, I have concerns; I think [in general] our government has gotten bloated, bureaucratic fat and sloppy. We have corrupt ideological politicians who work for their own selfish ends and not for the good of the country. There are too many people and corporations on the dole and even looking for more handouts (benefits and tax breaks), some actually expecting bailouts from the government. That includes the unethical "To big to fail" banks, protected government [oxymoron] workers getting can't be fired security with platinum benefits, the Wall Street mentality where anything goes to make a buck, health care that cost to much and provides limited results and misses the poor (we need a single payer system like Europe), the Christian Right that exhibits the worst bigotries, the South looking like the confederacy again and loving it, the bloated military industrial complex - its become a safety net jobs program e.g.: we don't need any more M1 Tanks, southern cultural backwardness Bible Belt mentality that loves the 19th century and is afraid of scientific modernity and social progress.Food is cheap and comes in huge portions. I once ordered a chili and tortilla dish at a simple Mexican restaurant for $6.5. It was huge - I couldn’t even finish half of it, and I am a person with a big appetite. In Israel you would pay more than this for half the amount of food at the same quality. The same goes to all restaurants I went to. Food is cheap, and comes in huge portions. Fast food restaurants are all over the place. Political satire: The late night show hosts mock, question the residents of highest offices on national television and make money. I can't imagine the same happening in India.Flags, flags, flag. Everywhere. It’s like no one in US would know which country they are living in if they didn’t put US flags on every square foot of their porch, front lawn, a cemetery, shopping malls . . . Exception to confederate flags - those folks are proving they don’t know which country they are living in. Or maybe they do. There was this one huge flag, probably almost the size of a house, in Interstate-5, with a sign, "GOD BLESS AMERICA. Support our troops!" In the South, religion is in your face and mixed up with everything. Everywhere. Only in US have I seen “Jesus is Lord” sign under “Mike’s furniture” or bible verses on store flyers. In your face and everywhere, just like the flag.Homeless people. They are everywhere. They stay in public spaces and use toilets at fast food restaurants. Too weird to me. The poverty in cities, so many homeless people with absolutely nothing and suffering from severe addiction and mental health issues. And at least in the cities I visited most of them were black. I didn’t expect that from a wealthy country and it was quite upsetting. You don’t get that scale of poverty in most of Europe.So what happened to my country? We used to be the world's leader and now we follow the devil incarnate. We are terribly divided and our government is totally dysfunctional. What is next?Being a Good ManWhat does it mean to be a 'good man?' For me, it means being strong, honest, willing to learn, compassionate, tolerant, and more than anything, loving to all and with a sense of humor. Notice I did not say religious here, so many of the 'religious' types I have met are ignorant, judgmental, mean spirited and unforgiving - and then of course, are we talking about any religion (I have known good men who were Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs), or just the Christian religion, I think you would be going down hill there, their track record is not so good in the south, so I think religion has nothing to do with being a good man for many people. For some, yes, but I have seen the some of meanest people call themselves Christian. Those Duck Dynasty folks, there's the kind I am talking about, just because they say Christian prayers everyday does not say they are good Christians, they are racist, homophobic and ignorant people. They sound like the Ku Klux Klan types I ran into in the south during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. I almost died when our pastor called them out from the pulpit as Christina people he extolled as good people. Ugh, give me a break. And talking about religion, when you go back to our founders, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, etc., they were all good men. Some owned slaves but that was what the times were like back then. Madison knew slavery was wrong and was ready to give it up except the rest of the southerners were not. The moral to that story is that good men are not perfect, they are subject to their historical perspective of the time they lived in, so they have faults too, but they must be willing to change to be counted good men. And what causes change; I would suggest 'enlightenment' and the ability to integrate ideas. I call it the 'decent' bone in your body! Some people never change, their culture is too regressive or they are too stupid.I think Martin Luther King was a good man. I will add Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the bunch to; they tried to change things for the better at great risk to their personal well being. While I am at it, I will add my dad in there too! And my uncles, most of my Navy buddies, now, that's the type I call good men! When you think about it, the list gets pretty big fast - there is lots of good men out there. There are a lot of people these days, especially in the evangelical south, that think that religion will change things for the better. Well, it should but hasn't, more hate and segregation have been generated by religion than any other reason.

“According to this article, a total gun ban in the U.S. is inevitable. What should gun owners do if they want to keep their guns? Apparently, opposition to gun-control measures won't work.”It’s Too Late. You’ve Lost Your Guns.This is not an “article”.It is a hysterical (in either sense) ranting blog post by a graphic designer who blogs about parenting.(On closer examination, it appears it’s her edited reposting of a conversation with a “retired lawyer friend”—apparently not one with much knowledge about gun issues…)But, you know what, I’m bored and intellectually masochistic, so let’s go through the claims made, and see if there’s any substance.[Fair warning—this is a doorstopper of an answer…]“The NRA is strong, but even the NRA can not spin these massacres and buy-off enough politicians, when we’re dealing with an endless pile of dead children.”That’s not remotely what the NRA even is.Anthony Zarrella's answer to This is not meant to be facetious, but do the askers of all these NRA related questions actually know what the NRA even is? If not, what is it that they believe the NRA to be?TL;DR: The NRA’s power doesn’t come from donations or advertising, but from its extremely loyal constituency. If you oppose Bloomberg’s Everytown, you get nasty tweets and staged protests from people who were never voting for you in the first place, but if you oppose the NRA, there’s a massive bloc of gun owners who will vote for your challenger in the primaries.Second, there isn’t “an endless pile of dead children”. An average of ten children die each year in mass school shootings (averaged over the last ten years). Each time it happens, it’s horrible—but restricting the rights of roughly 100 million law-abiding Americans to save ten lives per year is insanity… even if we were to (counterfactually) assume that a gun ban would end all school shootings and that no thwarted would-be shooter would attempt a mass killing by any other means.“Can high-speed, high capacity assault rifles be grown in backyards and fields like drugs? With no high level machining, manufacturing knowledge, and capital?”Yup.All made by non-gunsmiths using freely-available parts and tools. All semi- or fully automatic.And here’s perfectly legal instructions (for a much cruder gun) for your edification.How to Make a Real Gun (entirely parts available at Home Depot)Oh, and here’s a 3D-printed one:(Technically, only the lower receiver is 3D-printed—but that’s the complicated and highly-regulated part.)“We know that guns can be eradicated, because it’s been done before. Many countries have drastically reduced the amount of guns in the possession of both citizens and criminals, bringing death rates from gun violence to almost nothing.”No. They haven’t.What they have done is bring already-near-zero rates of gun violence down to slightly closer to zero. And there isn’t even any reliable data demonstrating a causal reduction.Anthony Zarrella's answer to If gun laws don't prevent violence, why is Australia's gun violence rate so low since they banned guns?“It’s a question of time and a few more thousand children being killed”OK, so… another few hundred years, then? That’s how long it would take for a few more thousand kids to die in school shootings. Only a grand total of ~170 have died from the 1960’s to today.“Is the father of two who keeps a gun under the driver’s seat a responsible gun owner?”Maybe. Maybe not.How old are the kids? Have they been trained in gun safety? Is the gun left under the driver’s seat all the time, or only when Dad goes somewhere in the car?“Is the grandmother who sleeps with a gun under her pillow, and also gets unexpected visits from the grandkids from time to time, a responsible gun owner?”Yup.Believe it or not, guns don’t emit a homing signal that draws kids to them. If the kids wouldn’t normally be allowed to snoop through Grandma’s room, then the fact that there’s a gun there isn’t an issue—especially if the kids have no reason to know she even has one.Hundreds of thousands of American children live in households with unsecured guns. A few dozen or so deaths a year are the result of children gaining unsupervised access to guns. Clearly it’s not a genuine issue. Unsecured cleaning cupboards or medicine cabinets kill more children than unsecured guns.“If your guns are stored with the ammunition, are you a responsible gun owner?”This is the sort of question that can only be asked by someone ignorant of guns.If someone is going to break into your home and steal your gun, they’re not going to have any trouble getting ammo for it.But if your gun is not stored with ammo, and you need your gun because your home has been broken into… then you have an expensive and complex club to defend yourself with.Literally the only place I’ve ever seen it advised to store guns and ammo separately is in gun control advocacy pieces. The bogeyman fantasy of the burglar who breaks into your gun cabinet, grabs your gun, loads the ammo, and blows away your family is something that simply does not happen.As for children—if there are kids in the house, the guns should not be in a place where the kids can gain unsupervised access, period. If that rule is followed, then it doesn’t matter if the gun is loaded or not, because they won’t touch it. Every gun is always loaded—Rule One.“If he’s never had gun training is he a responsible gun owner?”Sure, why not?The number of gun deaths per year due to incompetent gun ownership is too low to reliably count.Deaths that could have been prevented, if only the owner of the gun had been a better shooter just aren’t a thing.I’m not counting deaths from stupid, often drunken gun stunts—because that kind of idiocy isn’t something you can train out of someone with a few hours of classes on the weekends. That said, accidental gun deaths in total account for only ~1.6% of all gun deaths—about 500 per year across the whole nation of ~325 million people and ~100 million gun owners.“If your kid shoots a neighbor kid with your gun, then should you as the “responsible gun owner” go to jail?”To jail? No.But if you were culpably negligent, then of course you can be sued.“If your gun is stolen because you didn’t store it safely, are you as the “responsible gun owner” at fault for any crimes committed with the stolen gun?”Of course not.If someone breaks into my kitchen and steals my carving knife, then goes and stabs someone with it, am I responsible?If someone hotwires my car and drives it into a crowd of pedestrians, am I responsible?We don’t hold law-abiding people accountable for the actions of criminals—especially not criminals who have victimized them.“Gun owners have had their chance — over and over again for many, many years — to embrace simple regulations that would curb gun violence and protect our children.”No. They’ve had many chances to embrace regulations that they are told will “curb gun violence and protect our children”.But there is no reason to assume most of them actually would.“Politicians like Trump who eliminate regulations designed to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.”Nope.The regulations in question didn’t keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. They kept guns out of the hands of veterans and retirees who had difficulty managing their finances.Sorry, but “You’re not competent to balance your checkbook” and “You can’t be trusted not to shoot someone” are entirely unrelated statements.“No one thinks mentally ill people and criminals should be able to have a gun. But right now, there is literally nothing in place to stop it because of the gun show and private sale loophole, and the lack of any resources to make the national database useful.”There is no “gun show and private sale loophole”.What there is, which pro-gun Republicans have tried to fix, is an inability for private sellers to access the NICS database.The proposals of Democrats have been de facto bans on private sales, by saying, “You can’t sell a gun without a background check, and only FFL dealers can perform a background check.”That being said, less than 15% of all guns used in crimes even come from gun shows or private sales in the first place. The vast majority come from hand-to-hand transfers from friends, family, or criminal associates, or from black-market sources.As for a “national database”—if she’s referring to the NICS, that’s been addressed, but if she means a national registry… that’s not happening. The only plausible reason for a registry is to enable future confiscation.It would be useless in actually solving crimes, because unlike on TV, the chances of getting a “ballistics match” to a specific gun are negligibly low. If I were a criminal obtaining a gun in a State with a registry, the first thing I’d do is either swap out the barrel, or (simpler yet) just scratch up the inside of the barrel with a tool of some description so that the “ballistics fingerprint” of a fired bullet (if one could even be read, which is uncommon) would no longer match the test-fire record in the registry. (Would this subtly damage the function of the barrel? Maybe—I don’t know. But if I’m a criminal, I’m not really going to be taking precision-aimed competition shots, am I?)“Instead of embracing real change, gun owners have proposed ridiculous ideas like minimum wage armed guards at every school entrance, and laws to force teachers to be armed.”No one said anything about forcing teachers to be armed. That’s a pervasive canard.The anti-gun side caricatures the pro-gun suggestion of “arm the teachers” as, “issue each teacher a gun and force them to carry it.”The actual suggestion is simply, “Lift restrictions that disallow teachers who already have a CCW permit from carrying on school grounds.”Come on, people—we have actually had a scenario where a faculty member who held a CCW died heroically shielding students from a shooter: Stoneman Douglas football coach ‘died a hero’ protecting students during shooting. Imagine if he had his gun that day. Maybe he’d be alive. Maybe the students who got shot after him would still be alive.And for those who say, “Then we’d just have more shootings from disgruntled teachers”…First, what’s stopping them now? If a teacher has a gun, and wants to shoot up a school, are you really telling me that the fact that it’s illegal will stop them?And I know, I know—the next argument is that it’s not about premeditated shootings, but about teachers losing their cool on the spot, and shooting because the gun is already right there. But we don’t see teachers going murderously berserk on their students without guns.Second, CCW holders are significantly more law-abiding than the average citizen. They commit a trivial rate of violent crimes, accounting for less than 0.1% of all violent felony convictions, despite making up roughly 6% of the adult population. In most States, they are responsible for less than 25% as many violent crimes as police officers—meaning your child would be safer in a classroom with a CCW-holding armed teacher than with an armed officer (as regards the threat from that armed individual, I mean). And that’s nothing against police, either—their rate is low, the CCW rate is lower.“Unless gun owners start taking solutions seriously then people like me are simply going to say fine, it’s over, no more guns. So while I have always supported the right to own guns even though I have no interest in them, my support is hereby withdrawn.”OK, that’s nice.But people like me, combined with actual gun owners, vastly outnumber people like you, combined with long-time ban supporters.There are roughly 230 million eligible voters in America. Roughly 90–100 million of those own guns. That means ~140 million non-gun-owning eligible voters.Anthony Zarrella's answer to There are approximately 100m gun owners in America out of a population of 323m. Imagine if the other 223m voted unanimously and consistently for people who promised to repeal the Second Amendment. What would happen?If even ~35% of those non-owners are pro-gun, then there is a pro-gun majority. And consider that a significant number of those non-owners will be spouses or children of gun owners, not even counting people like me who aren’t around guns at all but still support gun rights.And you need not only a majority, but a more than 75% supermajority to actually amend the Constitution.Good luck.“A true national background check for all gun sales with a fully funded complete database.”Already addressed.“Taking a harder look at who has the ‘right’ to own a gun.”What does that even mean?How is this a distinct policy proposal, rather than just a restatement of the primary concept of gun control?Let’s assume, for a moment, that it refers to the infamous “militia” language.First, grammatically, that clause is prefatory not restrictive.Second, there is ample evidence that “militia”, in the late Eighteenth Century, referred to (in the words of one Founder), “the body of the people, trained to arms.” What modern sensibilities would call a “militia” is what the Founders would have called a “select militia”—a body of men drawn from the “general militia” to receive special training and to act as essentially the first responders and leaders in a situation in which the militia was needed.Third, even if “militia” meant a formally-organized body of combatants, and even if the prefatory clause operated to restrict the right to bear arms to solely “militia” purposes, you’d only see a bunch of “militia clubs” forming—because history is quite clear on the notion that a “militia” need not be government-sponsored (see, e.g., the Minutemen).“Defining what responsible gun ownership looks like. Are there mandates there?Already addressed.Moreover, “responsible gun ownership” is indeed something pro-gun-rights advocates frequently discuss, but it appears nowhere in the Constitution, so if “responsible” were to be defined any more broadly than the preexisting common law of negligence, it would still be an “infringement” for Second Amendment purposes.“Making gun owners responsible for whatever happens with their gun.”Asinine, and likely unconstitutional on multiple levels—even aside from the fact that it would require a comprehensive registry, which is a no-go.Anthony Zarrella's answer to Would making legal gun owners civilly responsible for damages caused by the use of their guns be a useful measure to curb gun-related crimes in the United States?“Making high-capacity weapons illegal.”First, what most banners call “high-capacity” is actually standard capacity—and what they consider an appropriate capacity is actually an artificially-reduced capacity… sometimes to the extent of actually requiring mechanical workarounds just to make the reduced magazines work in the guns they’re intended for (e.g., a Glock 17 carries 17-round mags because that’s what fits inside the grip—a 10-round-or-less magazine has to be fitted with internal blocks to reduce its capacity, because just shortening the mag would make it unusable).An actual “high-capacity” magazine is usually 30 rounds or more (for pistols and small-caliber rifles).Second, there is no verifiable instance in which magazine capacity has caused increased lethality in an unlawful shooting—mass or otherwise.People often argue, “If the capacity were smaller, the mass shooter would have to reload sooner, and people could rush him as he reloads!” Yeah, sure, maybe if he’s manually thumbing rounds into a revolver (and even then, there are speed-loader devices).But a moderately-well-trained shooter can swap mags on a pistol or rifle in a second, maybe two. By the time bystanders or would-be victims have even realized that the shooter has paused in his firing, and verified that it’s because he’s empty, not because he’s just looking for his next target, he’s already slapped a new magazine in and begun firing again.“Requiring a mandatory 2-month waiting period.”Why?There is no conceivable reason for a wait that long, except “to make it harder to get a gun.” And law and precedent are quite clear that naked animosity towards the exercise of a given right is not permissible justification for a law.A mandatory waiting period of days might possibly be justified… for a first gun purchase.But crimes of passion don’t take place weeks after the inciting incident—if a would-be murderer is willing to wait a week, they’re probably also willing to wait two months. Once again, there is no verifiable instance in which a longer waiting period would have prevented anything.(No, Parkland does not count—the only reason a waiting period might have helped there is because the FBI utterly screwed the pooch and didn’t correct their mistake until after the shooting. And we have only their word that they would have ever realized their mistake if it hadn’t been staring at them from the front page headline.)You know who does need a gun a lot sooner than two months?The abused woman whose ex is stalking her. The old man who witnessed a robbery and has received a threat in his mail slot from the gang responsible. The gay couple in a hick town who got a brick thrown through their window last night.Go ahead—explain why the world is safer when they died defenseless.“Requiring fire arm insurance.”For what?We don’t insure against criminal acts, and we don’t insure against “someone took my stuff and used it for criminal acts.”Anthony Zarrella's answer to If a responsible car owner has auto insurance then shouldn't a responsible gun owner also have a form of insurance for firearms?If you want to mandate insurance for gun accidents (and assuming, arguendo, that the Second Amendment permits it), then it would be very cheap based on the same standards used for accident liability on car insurance (we’re talking not even $100/year), because there are only ~500 fatal gun accidents nationwide each year—but I don’t think that’s what she’s talking about.“Requiring firearm registration.”Already addressed.No good reason for it—it won’t solve any crimes, and will be useless except for confiscation (or perhaps for some of the punitive measures suggested here, like making owners responsible for any harm at all that happens with the gun registered to them, no matter how it happens).“Requiring annual mental health checkups for gun owners.”How? By what standards? At whose expense? With what consequences?The number of firearm murderers who could be legally found to be mentally incompetent is trivial. The only one I can think of off the top of my head might be the Aurora theater shooter.Most murderers are perfectly sane, from a legal standpoint. They simply choose to do evil.And that’s not something we can reliably pre-screen for. For every Parkland whackjob we caught early, we’d also wind up disarming thousands of perfectly harmless people who simply have some issues they’re working through.Believe it or not, gun owners are human. They get angry, they get depressed, and they get anxious. And yet… over 99.99% of them never use their guns to express those feelings or work out those problems. Unless you count going down to the range and blowing off steam at the expense of poor, innocent paper targets.“Banning bump stocks.”Done.Pointless, and done the wrong way, which will probably be overturned…But done.And I honestly don’t care all that much, except for the procedural violations.Anthony Zarrella's answer to Bump stocks are banned. Does anyone disagree with this or is it good for all sides of the gun debate?“A lifetime ban from any gun ownership for domestic violence convictions (which funding to enforce).”It’s already the law almost everywhere. And hardly anyone objects.There are objections to the DV laws themselves being unfairly enforced—but that’s a separate issue. You’ll find very few gun-rights advocates arguing that domestic abusers ought to be allowed to have guns.“If you are being investigated for any domestic violence crime you lose all guns until it has been settled.”Perhaps if you are indicted on probable cause.But a seizure of property on the basis of a mere investigation is ludicrous and unconstitutional—especially in States where the law requires all domestic violence allegations to be investigated, regardless of lack of evidence. It would be used as a harassment tool by vengeful exes, and a political weapon by anti-gun activists.“Allow the CDC to study firearms as a matter of public health.”They can already. They simply cannot advocate gun control.A few decades back, the arm of the CDC that did firearms “research” essentially operated as an adjunct of various gun control lobby groups. Top administrators openly stated that their goal was to find data that could persuade America to ban guns.Government-funded research was openly biased in the 1990s. CDC officials unabashedly supported gun bans and poured millions of dollars into “research” that was, in fact, advocacy. One of the lead researchers employed in the CDC’s effort was quoted, stating “We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths.” Another researcher said he envisioned a long-term campaign “to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.”One of the effort’s lead researchers was a prominent attendee at a conference called the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP) Network, which was “intended to form a public health model to work toward changing society’s attitudes towards guns so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have guns.”Why we can't trust the CDC with gun researchWhy Congress stopped gun control activism at the CDC[D]irector of the CDC National Center of Injury Prevention branch Mark Rosenberg told Rolling Stone in 1993 that he “envisions a long term campaign, similar to tobacco use and auto safety, to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” He went on to tell the Washington Post in 1994 “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol — cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly — and banned.”Why Congress Cut The CDC’s Gun Research BudgetNo one will ever convince me that conclusion-driven “research” is real science at all, much less that it is something the federal government should be spending money on.The Dickey Amendment did not ban CDC gun research. It only banned gun control advocacy.Here’s the actual text:Provided further, That none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control[.]So, the CDC can say, “Here are the stats on gun violence, broken down by such-and-such factors and categories.”They can say, “Adoption of Policy X was associated with a Y% [increase/decrease] in gun homicides, with the following possible confounding factors and a Z margin of error.”They cannot say, “Therefore, we urge the adoption of Policy X,” or, “We find that guns are a public health risk and ought to be eliminated.”They cannot start from the conclusion, “Guns are bad and should be banned,” and then seek to design “studies” to confirm that conclusion (while systematically downplaying, ignoring, or outright excising any data to the contrary).Incidentally, the CDC has done numerous “gun violence” studies since the Dickey Amendment, notably a rather large one in 2013, and again in 2015.“The reality is there are no meaningful gun laws. It’s a charade. There are no meaningful background checks.”You know what?She’s half right.In terms of preventing individual sales, background checks are reasonably effective—at least, as effective as they can be, given that it’s nigh-impossible to stop straw purchases proactively (since the buyer actually in the store is someone who will pass the background check).Only 12% of guns used in crimes were purchased from an FFL retailer—and some non-trivial fraction of those were used in crimes by people who had no record at the time of purchase, and who therefore were in fact legally permitted to purchase them.But in terms of stopping criminals from getting guns, they’re pathetic. And not because of any mythical “gun show loophole”.Rather, the problem is that, of the over 100,000 “lie-and-try” instances per year (in which a would-be buyer is caught lying on ATF Form 4473), as well as other instances in which a person tries to buy a gun but is denied as a “prohibited person”, only a dozen or so are ever referred for prosecution.Thankfully, back in March, Jeff Sessions instructed federal prosecutors to start aggressively pursuing such cases—but it’s too early to know how effective that’s been.As for what “Design Mom” is trying to imply, though… no, that’s simply false.When 80% of gun homicides are committed with illegal guns, it’s clear that there are plenty of laws to keep criminals from getting guns (why would they get them illegally if they could get them legally just as easily?). The problem is that the laws in question don’t work. The problem is exactly what we’ve been saying the whole time—that the laws make it harder to legally buy a gun, but do very little to make it harder to get one illegally.“Sorry. Your gun isn’t big enough, even combined with all the other ones, to protect yourself from our military.”That is not what we mean when we discuss the right to bear arms as a protection from tyranny.Anthony Zarrella's answer to Why are the majority of Americans so against removing their right to bear arms?Anthony Zarrella's answer to Why do we still have the second amendment? Don’t people understand that the government could simply nuke a revolution?Anthony Zarrella's answer to How would a pro-gun person respond to the claim that the 2nd Amendment is obsolete because the US military is too powerful for civilians to revolt?“Actually, the widespread availability of cheap, effective, high speed, high capacity weapons mass marketed to the general public is a new thing since the mid-1980’s.”Nope. Not even remotely.In fact, there haven’t even been any groundbreaking improvements in civilian arms since quite a bit before then. We’re still shooting mostly the same guns that existed (and were available to civilians) in the 60’s—slightly more accurate (to a degree that only a target shooter would care about) and slightly more reliable (to a degree that becomes relevant over the course of thousands of rounds fired, not dozens), but essentially the same guns.In fact, prior to 1986, it was easier to legally acquire some very serious firepower, because the NFA registry for Class III weapons (full-automatics, among others) was still open. Since then, it’s closed, so it’s impossible to (legally) acquire a fully automatic weapon that was manufactured later than 1986.Prior to 1994, there were no mandatory national background checks.Prior to the mid-80’s, it was much easier in most States to get a “Saturday Night Special”—a cheaply made and cheaply sold pistol that could be quickly obtained (and usually easily concealed).If anything, we are living in an era in which it is harder to legally obtain powerful firearms than at any time in living memory.The only valid point here is that high-quality guns are somewhat cheaper now, as improvements in manufacturing have driven production costs down. But it would be quite unjust to oppose affordability of a constitutional right—it would basically be saying, “Middle-class yuppies have the right to bear arms, but the urban poor do not.”“And as you would expect, the rise of these mass shootings correlates with the mass marketing phenomena.”Let me fix that for you:“And as you would expect, the rise of these mass shootings correlates with the mass media phenomena.”This isn’t my crazy idea, or “just another right-winger griping about the media”—this is a view I’ve seen supported from the left and the right.We sensationalize mass killers. We remember their names, even when their victims go nameless (which is one reason I try to avoid naming them in my answers).Starting with Oklahoma City and Columbine, we essentially taught disgruntled and disaffected losers (and political radicals) that the way to be remembered—the way to utterly capture the news cycle—the way to have every belief of yours dissected on the evening news… is to rack up a body count.When we go through the endless hand-wringing of, “What drove him to do this?”, we are publicizing their every cause, their every grievance, their every dream.That. Is. What. They. Want.Why is this so hard to understand?You want one cost-free measure to cut down on mass shootings?Change the way we report them.Write up the shooter as a nameless, faceless nobody. A loser. Feel free to briefly mention what nutso ideology motivated him—but not in an anthropological, “let’s understand this mindset” sense. If his ideology must be discussed, it should be in tones of dismissive contempt, like how we talk about that jackass who drove a van into a crowd in Toronto because he was upset that women wouldn’t sleep with him. The point of mentioning his beliefs is to tear them down and to warn people against them, not to understand his point of view. And skip past all the mushy quotes from friends and family, saying, “He was such a nice boy—I can’t understand why he would do this.”He can’t be a person anymore—not in public perception. He’s a human virus. Viruses don’t have friends, family, backstory—they have disease symptoms and means of sterilization.If he survives the event, trial coverage should be similarly dehumanized and rendered clinical—it’s not like we don’t know he did it, so the only real question is whether he gets to cop an insanity plea (which is permitted far, far less often than on TV). So, just, “The trial of the Townville shooter is set to begin on Monday. It will not be televised.” Then, however many days or weeks later, “The Townville shooter was convicted today, and sentenced to [life in prison/death by lethal injection].”The end. Damnatio memoriae. Let his very identity fade into the void.For the human angle, focus on the victims. Tell their stories. Or the stories of the people who mitigated or stopped the attack, or heroically got others out of harm’s way. For a real “man bites dog” twist that no one would expect in the media… tell the story of the civilian gun owner who put down the shooter—it doesn’t happen frequently, but it does happen.Those are the stories that are worth preserving. Those are the people who should live on in our memories.“Let’s stop pretending that things are great and no changes are needed or possible! And that a separate “criminal or insane” class of people (who somehow don’t exist in other countries, for some reason) commit all these terrible crimes in the U.S.!”Except… that’s exactly what FBI statistics show.As mentioned above, fully 80% of all gun homicides are committed with illegally-obtained guns—i.e., committed by criminals.Lawful gun owners commit only roughly 2,600 homicides per year. That’s only ~400 more than the number of murders with hand-held weapons, and comes out to one murder for every ~38,500 gun owners.By contrast, licensed drivers kill ~18,000 people per year (not including themselves), coming out to one death per ~12,000 licensed drivers. More than three times more than lawful gun owners.It is mostly criminals driving up our homicide rates. Take out the top 50 most crime-infested cities in the country, and the homicide rate of America looks like the rate of any Western European country you’d care to name—down in the low 1’s rather than the mid-4’s.“My belief is that it is just a question of time before there are enough votes for a constitutional amendment eliminating guns.”Really. I see.So, let’s run down the States—you need 38 for an amendment.I’ll be giving the (rough, eyeballed) average NRA rating of each State’s Senators, and the Brady Campaign rating of its gun laws in the following format: [NRA/Brady].I’m considering only Senators, not Reps, because a ratification vote is statewide, like Senate elections are—a small pocket in one district may be strongly anti-gun, but if they are outnumbered by a pro-gun majority in the rest of the State, they don’t matter for these purposes.States likely to vote in favor of an amendment will be in bold and States likely to vote against will be in italics. Tossup States will be in plain text.Alabama—[A+/F] *not counting Doug Jones, because frankly his election was a not-to-be-repeated fluke, and he’ll be out long before any amendment could be proposedAlaska—[A/F]Arizona—[C+/F]Arkansas—[B/F]California—[F/A-]Colorado—[C/C]Connecticut—[F/A-]Delaware—[F/B-]Florida—[C/F]Georgia—[A+/F]Hawaii—[F/B+]Idaho—[A+/F]Illinois—[F/B]Indiana—[B+/D-]Iowa—[B-/C-]Kansas—[A/F]Kentucky—[A/F]Louisiana—[B+/F]Maine—[C+/F]Maryland—[F/A-]Massachusetts—[F/B+]Michigan—[F/C]Minnesota—[F/C]Mississippi—[A+/F]Missouri—[A/F]Montana—[A/F]Nebraska—[A/D]Nevada—[unrated/F]New Hampshire—[A/D-]New Jersey—[F/B-]New Mexico—[C+/F]New York—[F/B+]North Carolina—[A/D]North Dakota—[A/F]Ohio—[C+/D]Oklahoma—[A+/F]Oregon—[F/D+]Pennsylvania—[A-/C]Rhode Island—[F/B-]South Carolina—[A/F]South Dakota—[A+/F]Tennessee—[A/F]Texas—[A+/F]Utah—[A+/F]Vermont—[D+/F]Virginia—[C+/D]Washington—[F/C]West Virginia—[A/F]Wisconsin—[C+/C-]Wyoming—[A/F]So, by my count (and being very generous to the pro-amendment side), we’ve got 13 probable “yes” States, 24 probable “no” States, and 13 tossups.Realistically, it’s at least 25 no’s and 12 tossups, because even though Vermont’s Senators don’t reflect it, VT is an overwhelmingly pro-gun State outside of Burlington and Montpelier—it’s the only State I’m aware of to have never had any restrictions on concealed-carry, for instance.Now, let’s give all the tossups to the pro-amendment side, just for fun. Because even with 26 States, the pro-amendment side is twelve States short of success. Look at those italicized States—tell me which ones you think are going to go anti-gun in the near future.It’s almost impossible to imagine in any of them. It only takes 13 States to block an amendment.“Maybe as a gun owner you can get your act together fast, ditch the NRA, and make all gun sales go through a background check, fully fund all government agencies to ensure the database is complete, enact laws which make gun owners 100% responsible for what happens with their gun, and other obvious things most gun owners support.”Uhh… no.Those are not things that “most gun owners” support.This is the standard No True Scotsman slight of hand where “most X” is used to mean, “most reasonable X, but not the nutjobs, whose opinions don’t count.” But, of course, “reasonable” is used to mean “the ones who agree with my policy proposals” and “nutjobs” are “the ones who refuse to accept my undeniable logic.”I could go on, but the rest is basically more of the same baselessly triumphalist nonsense about how gun owners (and people like me) had better wise up and do as we’re instructed by our betters, or there will be… A RECKONING! (Dun, dun, duuunnnn!)We can talk about real compromises whenever the gun control side is ready.But as long as the question they’re asking is, “How much are you willing to ban?” or “How many restrictions are you willing to put on the people who are not the problem?”, their efforts will continue to be no more than spitting on a bonfire while taunting the flames that this next loogie will be the one that quenches them for good.