The pros of legal gun ownership far outweigh the cons

So out of the blue my liberal relative sends me some anti-gun literature that he wrote, knowing that I am a gun-a-holic. He said he read every peer reviewed study on guns and this is what he came up with; “the costs of gun ownership far outweigh the benefits”. I think he was trying to help me see ‘the light’ and sell all of my guns. Hahaha, fat chance. The summary of his article is the following:

“In summary, the main benefits of gun ownership are feeling safe, free, independent, and powerful. However, if you own a gun it is much more likely the gun will be used to kill you (suicide) or someone you love (accident, homicide in a heated argument) than a stranger in self-defense. The costs of living in a society of gun owners also means a substantially higher rate of homicides, suicides, and accidents. In our view, the costs of gun ownership far outweigh the benefits.”

Here is my response:

I finished your article. You did not mention that one of the main benefits of gun ownership is personal enjoyment. I went shooting today with my brothers and it was “literally” a blast. It is one of my favorite hobbies. I agree with the portion you highlighted for me. However, I couldn’t disagree more with your statement “In our view, the costs of gun ownership far outweigh the benefits”.

Guns do not cause suicides, guns do not cause homicides, and guns do not cause accidents. If I am afraid of committing suicide, it would be better for me to fix my life, find religion, find a purpose for living, rather than throwing my guns away. If I am afraid of killing someone, it would be better for me to improve my relationship or distance myself from that person rather than get rid of my guns. If I am afraid of gun related accidents, it would be better for me to learn and practice proper gun safety rather than get rid of my guns.

I am tired of doctors, the government, and society focusing on the symptoms or temporary fixes for problems. If you get sick take a pill. If you get fat take a pill. If you are depressed, take a pill. If the government is running low on cash, raise taxes. If people kill themselves or others with a gun, take their guns away. If the globe is supposedly warming, pass a bill called Cap and Trade. They are all at best temporary fixes that avoid the main causes of the problems.

It is better to focus on the cause of these problems rather than focus on the tools with which they were carried out. If we want to lower suicides or homicides, let’s focus on what is causing people to kill themselves and others. Let’s fix the economy, let’s help people find a purpose, let’s help them find a reason for living, let’s help them find God. If we want to lower gun accidents, let’s teach gun safety better.

For me personally I own firearms for the following reasons. They are fun to shoot. I want to protect myself and my family. I want to be able to protect myself and others if the government collapses. I want to protect myself if the government fails to do so. I want to protect myself from the government if they do things I do not agree with. I want to protect my freedoms and rights. I have guns so I can obtain food if food becomes hard to come by. Having guns is an insurance against bad things that may happen. Although it is not perfect, that insurance brings peace of mind and a feeling of preparedness for hard times to come.

These things by far are more important to me than minimizing the already miniscule chance that I will kill myself or my family.

It would be like getting rid of my car because the main cause of death of people my age is car accidents. I can potentially kill myself and others, but the car is a tool, it is useful and important and I personally have chosen that driving a car is worth the risk.

I do not have a problem with anyone who chooses not to own guns. It is their decision, and I respect it. I have a major problem with people who want to take my right to own guns away from me.

If no one had guns, we would be powerless to the government. I believe the only thing stopping the government from taking our guns away and other rights they have no right to take away, is that the government knows if they try to take the guns away the government will have a civil war on their hands. Our government uses a check and balances system. Gun ownership by ordinary citizens is a way to keep the government in check.

Sorry about my tangents and my ramblings. I know you haven’t directly said anything in your article about taking away our constitutional rights of gun ownership, but I get very defensive and angry when people say guns are bad or create anti-gun literature.

How taxing the rich more than others is a bad idea and not fair.

This is some rambling from me to a liberal uncle of mine about taxing the rich and about the free market.

What will increasing taxes on the rich do? Just give the government even more money, who says any of that will go to the poor?
With all this corruption in the government and the super corporations like GE or other companies like Solyndra will get it and the corrupt rich will actually end up getting the money.
Will giving it to the poor even solve anything, other then making them more dependent and reinforcing the idea in their heads that the government will always take care of me so I don’t have to think much or make wise decisions.

I agree with you Rees, a lot of workers aren’t getting fairly compensated for they value they provide. I worked at a job where the owner only came in once a week for an hour or two and then left. I was doing a lot more work than he. But he worked his butt off to make it there and took an enormous amount of risk. Taking risk translates to increase in earnings.

Also increasing taxes on the rich based on the point by Elizabeth Warren that no one is a self made millionaire doesn’t apply to everyone. Yes there are businesses like your place of employment that rely on ideas and work from employed workers. But If I make millions making iphone apps in my parents basement, no one but me is working and why should I get taxed 40% when the people working at McDonalds don’t have to pay any. And what about about all those authors like the lady who made Harry potter? Why should she be taxed more? This is just like the Warren Buffet situation, you can’t justify a new tax on all the rich when the example they give for justifying the new tax only applies to a few.

My point is increasing taxes on the rich isn’t fair and doesn’t benefit hard working workers like yourself. Do you think you will see a dime from those new taxes on the rich Rees? This system and regulations do not help honest hard workers. They benefit the irresponsible, the poor, and the corrupt people; even that is debatable because it is helping them stay that way.
I bet you will actually be in worse condition than before. The owner of your company, since he has more taxes to pay, will lay some of you off, refuse to increase wages, and force you guys to work harder for less.

I was thinking about it and maybe a solution would be to increase wages and benefits for workers? But that is just like the unions and that has a direct effect on the unemployment rate and make companies force their workers to do more with less or force companies oversees to cheaper sources of labor.

I believe in a free market system a lot of the problems will be solved. But there needs to be less regulation for it to work. If you think you aren’t being paid enough, demand a bonus or raise, or quit and go to a different business or create your own. But now in economic hard times (that where caused by the regulations and government intervention) you can’t. Creating a business is very difficult now. It is hard for people to quit when the unemployment rate is 10%. I think the government needs to free up the markets, and reduce regulation so it is easier to start a business and compete. And capital gains tax? How can you talk about increasing that? That money has already been taxed through income tax. Why tax people on building the economy through investing? More than that who gives the government the right?

I think the federal government needs to do what it was meant to do originally. They try to poke their noses in everything, and may have good intentions, but end up making things worse.

How did the USA ever survive without all these progressive programs? There wasn’t even any income tax before 1913. The founders considered it immoral. I venture to say that the USA was in better condition before all of these regulations and new socialist programs.

Why? There was more freedom. People could start a business in a day if they wanted. Now there are loads of taxes, regulations, paperwork, legal stuff they have to deal with that are constantly changing you almost need an attorney and accountant just to start a business now. And you also deal with the constant fear that the government will add new regulation that will put your business out of business. I have personally experience with this in creating an investing program for the Foreign Exchange. They added more regulation “to protect” me that actually hurt me and wasted a whole year of my hard work because i relied on hedging which they removed.

I believe the USA was also better because I think the people had more integrity and charity. There was no social security, welfare, or Medicare programs. But the retired people survived, the widows survived, the poor survived, the handicapped survived. How? They were more responsible first off and people took care of other people. Now there is a decline in morals and the immoral government is trying to force it upon us and it is failing miserably.

Founders said for this government to work, the people must have integrity and morals. The founders said income tax was evil and immoral.

What is the solution? Quit punishing the people with integrity and morals. Quit unfairly taxing the rich. Create a flat tax for everyone. That way the corrupt rich and corporations (GE, Google) can’t find all these loopholes to get out of it. Create an environment through less regulation and more freedom where it is easier for businesses to start up. Allow people and businesses to fail but make it easy for them to get back up and start up again. Do not reinforce their bad behavior. Out of their failure they will learn and be better.

And the bottom line, even if we had a perfect system and government we will still have major economic and social problems if the people continue to lose morals and their integrity.

I don’t agree with you that the Gram,-Leach-Biley Act caused the recession. I don’t see how enabling financial institutions to merge in order to diversify caused it. Diversification promotes stability and helps during economic instability. The most irresponsible financial firms like Lehman did not take advantage of the Act at all. The institutions that did like JP Morgan where far better off.

I will stick to what I said before. The government intervening in the free markets through regulation and through manipulation through the Federal Reserve caused it. The politicians got it in their head that the new American dream was a home for everybody, despite their credit and income. Through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (both government sponsored enterprises), the Federal Reserve, and The Community Reinvestment Act the government was able to carry out their new American dream. Corrupt leftist organizations like ACORN also contributed.
The Federal Reserve artificially manipulated the interest rates to be low when they should have been much higher. The economy started to boom again in 2004 but the Fed did not increase the interest rates. Many investors took advantage of low rates to buy homes just to resell. Others bought homes they couldn’t afford thanks to interest-only loans. The Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to people who would normally be rejected due to bad credit. Let the banks do their jobs on determining if a loan is a good investment or not. It is their business, not the governments.
Under the free market the government would have no involvement with home ownership or the interest rates. The interest rates would have been set by the banks based on risk, reward, and a clear understanding that making bad loans would result in bankruptcy.

A free market is a market free from state intervention. I completely agree with you that someone has to the regulating, and I completely disagree with you that it is the government that should do it. Let the businesses do their own regulating. It is their business, they know better than the government about their business. If the businesses make stupid decisions, they will fail. If businesses put harmful chemicals in their food and their customers get sick they will fail due to legal suits and diminishing sells. If they make bad loans to people with bad credit, they will fail. The businesses know these things, it is their business. The government has been constantly proved to be corrupt as corporations. They both except bribes, tell lies, and have an agenda. The difference is that the government has the legal system and guns to enforce what they say. With all that power they don’t have to be fair. They don’t have to be smart about it. They don’t have to worry about people buying their products because they can force people to pay taxes.

Companies on the other hand cannot imprison people who don’t want to comply with their regulations. Companies can’t force people to pay them taxes or buy their products. Companies are at the mercy of the market, the people. If the people don’t pay for their services, if they don’t support them, they fail. The government is at the mercy of…… the people? yeah right. The will of the people is being disregarded left and right.

You say “In addition many restrictive regulations put in place under the pretense of helping us are actual the product of powerful corporations writing our laws.” The corporations wouldn’t be able to use the government as their vehicle if the vehicle didn’t have that much power to begin with. So by limiting the government, you actually limit the ability of corrupt corporations to pass evil bills.

Corporations are essentially people. Without people corporations wouldn’t exist. Who works for them? People. Who created them? People. Who suffers when corporations are under attack? People. Who does the poor people we love so much work for? Corporations. When you hurt corporations, it ends up trickling down to the people. Buy taxing the rich, adding regulations to corporations, the workers are affected. I don’t understand how people don’t know that by attacking corporations, they actually hurt the people they were trying to save in the first place.

Grandma and Grandpa did not live in the period I am taking about, I was talking about before the 1913. Even still, there are people eating catfood today even with all these programs. There will always be poor people in our country, Jesus even said that the poor will always be among you. The thing is the poor here are hundred times better off then the poor in other countries. They are now giving free cell phones and plans to people but only if they receive free housing, food stamps, medicaid, free lunch, etc. Poor people need cell phones now? When will it end? When everyone has a BMW, house, high speed internet, free food? Or when everyone has the same? That is communism, it doesn’t work, it’s not fair, and it punishes the people who work hard. Not to mention it goes completely against what this country was founded upon.

I am all for helping the poor. But it appears what the government classifies as poor and as I do is different. I also disagree with the government on how to help them. They do not help them in the right ways. You don’t give a man a fish, you teach him how to fish. And you don’t poison the fish lake with evil regulations that kill all the fish and then steal the fish that rich have and then give it the poor. You encourage charity, encourage love, encourage service. Help people be and do those things. Do not force them. Man is supposed to have his agency, let him. Forcing was the plan of Satan.

Questions that we need to answer about Global Warming before we do anything about it.

First question in all this Global Warming debate should be: Is global warming bad? I personally wouldn’t mind if it warmed up a bit. Yes some animals may not like it but others will thrive in a warmer environment.  Seriously, we need to way the pros and cons of a warming environment.  Why do we just assume it is bad.  Was the global warming that happened at the end of the ice ages bad?

Second if it is bad, then what is causing it? The climate is changing, yes, but hasn’t the climate on Earth always changed? Even before humans, the earth went through ice ages and warming stages. Who says man is causing it? If man is contributing, then how much? Is it even a significant amount?

Then we should ask ourselves, what can we do to stop it?

Finally we need to ask how are we going to get the rest of the world (especially China) to stop burning oil and go along with it?

I find this green movement and global warming crap infuriating. We can prove the climate is getting warmer but the other questions remained unanswered and unproven. We shouldn’t be doing anything to stifle the economy until those questions are indeed answered and proven. But instead everyone just jumps to conclusions saying its bad and that we are causing it and buying hybrids will solve it, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a global warming denier and an idiot. It is ridiculous.

Here we are facing another recession and coal plants are being shut down across the nation, regulations discourage entrepreneurs from mining or drilling for more resources, and off shore drilling is being restricted. We are a nation that runs on energy and if we restrict it, the economy will suffer.

Answer those questions and if we are doing a lot of damage then we need to get working on providing a renewable source of energy. Until we have that new energy that meets our demands, we need to drill for oil and keep burning that coal.

Bottom line is, restricting energy before answering those questions and providing a suitable replacement is restricting growth and development and is complete nonsense.

Debate on How Effective Obama has been.

Look at the evidence. Depression averted. U.S. auto industry saved. And check out the stock market and unemployment rate when President Obama took office vs. today. Data speak. Volumes.

The stock market is a horrible indicator of how successful the policies of the president are. Look at the stock market during Bush’s years. In 2007 you could have said Bush was one of the best presidents ever if you go off stock market data, and I assume we both agree he was far from being one of the best. The stock market doesn’t follow reality. It can burst like a bubble just like the housing market did.

It is easy to spend trillions of dollars that we do not have to artificially prop up the economy, but any day now it could come tumbling down. When Obama took office the debt was 10.63 trillion, now 3 years later it is at 15.26 trillion. That is 4.6 trillion dollars of debt increase in only 3 years. The total debt divided by the entire U.S. population is $50,000 per person. Add yearly interest onto that and that is a monumental debt to pay off.

We are doing bail outs left and right, the auto industry, the banks, Greece, the EU. We do not have the money to do these things. We have to pay the piper sooner or later and Obama is just putting off the pain, but it is going to be a lot worse when we eventually do have to pay it. So if you agree with Obama that we should spend money we don’t have to put off the pain, then I agree, the data does speak volumes that he is successfully doing that. I on the other wish to get the economy, debt, and government spending under control now, before an economic disaster forces us to. Because if that disaster happens we will wish we had lived in the days of the great depression instead of the great collapse.

Oh and the true unemployment rate is much higher than the government would have you to believe. If you look at the real data, it is on the rise around 11.4%. The number the government puts out conveniently doesn’t include people who have left the labor force due to inability to find a job. If you believe he has the unemployment situation under control you have been misled.

I wish I could believe Obama averted the depression. He hasn’t, he has only put it off until it grows into something worse. Tough times lie ahead for the USA. Obama didn’t start the mess but he is without a doubt making it worse. If he wins the reelection and doesn’t stop his spending we are heading for disaster.

Please, show me the evidence that Obama really has got this nation back on course because I would love to see it so I can sleep better at night.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/real-jobless-rate-114-realistic-labor-force-participation-rate

The problem is there is no comparison group. Thus, we don’t know how bad things would have been had Obama not taken the steps he took to save the U.S. economy. I am of the opinion that they would have been much worse, and that Obama saved us from a second great depression.

Obama doesn’t have to keep blaming Bush for the state of our union. It is obvious that we got here because of Bush. It is a simple argument. We are where we are because of Bush. WE ARE IN THE DIRE STRAITS WE ARE IN BECAUSE OF BUSH. And we have not gone over the edge thanks to Obama.

 Bush contributed but he did not start this mess, it’s been a hundred years in the making with all these entitlement programs and the ever growing government and regulations that have been strangling the economy. Look at Greece, that is what America is turning into. I wish we could magically pay for endless pensions and entitlement programs, but it goes against nature, you can’t create money out of thin air and taxing the producers is unsustainable due to decreasing incentives to produce. If you guys think stimulus after stimulus, printing more and more money backed by nothing but the full faith and credit of the United States will solve this debt crisis, then you are living in a dream land. He spent $787 billion in 2009 in his stimulus package, $858 in his 2010 package, and tried to get a $447 billion last year in his jobs bill. His projections on how much these will help the economy haven’t been met. They aren’t working nearly as well as everyone hoped. I hope I am wrong that magically we can get out of debt by making almost a trillion dollar stimulus each year. That isn’t even including the money the Fed is dumping into the IMF bailing out the Euro behind our backs and without any representation from us.

Yes Obama is putting off a depression so it grows into something much worse down the road. Is that what you guys want and support? If that is what you want then I can understand how great Obama has been in your eyes.

The national debt as a % of GNP was very high during WWII and then fell steadily in each presidency until Regan, when it balooned with trickle down economics. It began to fall again with Clinton (who paid off the WWII debt) but really balooned with Bush II as he started two wars and lowered taxes. President Obama had little choice about the stimulus, but it arguably did stop the fall off the cliff. BTW he last summer tried to come to a major long term budget agreement with Boehner but the latter was stymied by the House Republicans. Hopefully after the next election adults will be in charge.

Clinton paid off the WWII debt?  Hahaha wow.  Where was I when that happened?  What budget agreement are you talking about? I know there was the 1.4 trillion in cuts over 10 YEARS that would have done essentially nothing, but that was passed. What is 1.4 trillion in 10 years going to do when you are adding more then a trillion EACH YEAR to the debt. A super comittee was formed, the failed to agree on what to cut, so now in 2013 automatic spending cuts in the military of all things will start. Or maybe you are talking about the Balanced Budget ammendment that would have forced the government to spend less then what it takes in and to actually have a budget. Oh wait, silly me, the democrats voted overwhelmingly against that.

Just last week house republicans rejected Obama’s desire to raise the debt ceiling of an additional $1.2 trillion. Lets see how long the lasts until the senate and Obama yet again get it rammed through. Let’s keep on raising that limit on our national credit card. Great idea, Obama.