I Think Too Much

OK, you want to do something about gun crime?  Do you REALLY want to get guns off the street?  Then here is how to do it:  Stop trying to get guns off the street and start trying to get criminals off the street.

This morning on a local TV news program there was some local alderman spewing about all of the guns that were apparently causing crimes independent of the idiots pulling the trigger.  In this cad’s entire diatribe he never once mentioned getting the criminals off of the street. It was, needless to say, an amazing performance.

Here’s how I would go about reducing gun crime:  Make possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony punishable by a minimum mandatory sentence of 15 years in prison.  Make it double that if you are a felon in possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.   If you get caught with a ounce of crack in your car, enough to make it a felony, and there is a gun in your car, consider that a ticket to prison.  And let’s take it a step further–if you pretend that you have a firearm in possession when trying to rob a liquor store, that will get a minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in prison.

Oh yeah, and if you are a juvenile and you commit a felony-level crime with a gun in your possession, you not only serve your 15 years until age 19, if there is any left over you head to prison and finish it up. 

Going after the gun is not going to stop the criminal.  Going after the criminal is goign to stop the gun crime.

THIS IS CROSS POSTED FROM MY FOX6 WEB SITE 

I’m really getting unnerved by the degree of hatred that I’m seeing (reading) lately.  The visceral degree of hatred of our president is something that I’ve not seen ever before.  It seems that some folks wake up in the morning in a state of burning hatred for the president and the rest of the day is spent venting that hatred.

I cannot understand understand hate like that.  In fact, I dispise it. I’ve been on the opposite side of the political power game.  But I will only speak from my experience when Clinton was president.  There were conservatives like myself who disliked Clinton’s policies and behavior.  To be sure, there were also conservatives who hated the guy and wished all sorts of bad things on him.  But I can honestly say that those folks were were very much in the minority and were scorned by mainline conservatives.  I heard Rush Limbaugh read the riot act to more than one conspiracy monger and those who merely wanted to vent their hate of Bill Clinton.  He also often encouraged listeners to be of good cheer, to not let our political disagreements lead us to hate the other side. I remember the day after George Bush 41 lost the 1992 election.  “Be of good cheer my friends,”Rush said.  “Stay positive, stay productive.”

But where are the folks on the left who are counseling a similar line when it comes to George W. Bush?  I’ve read right here on these pages people come right out and express their hatred for George W. Bush.  Not for what he’s done, but for who he is.  They’ve equated George W. Bush with some of the worst tyrants of history.  Yet, where are the liberals upbrading the haters?  Indeed, it seems as if expressing one’s hatred of George Bush is the necessary bona fides for proper liberals.

But now they seem to have gotten worn out by focusing their hate on George W. Bush. Now it seems as if they are moving towards hating the USA–at least as long as George W. Bush is president.  But if they take it to that level, how will they return to loving this country when George W. Bush is out of office?  How can a person on one day express their unabashed hate for the leadership of this country and all that it stands for, and then turn around and say how much they love this country the day after the general election? When a person’s hate knows no boundries, how will they keep it in check when the next administration, regardless of party, doesn’t live up to their expectations?

For Heaven’s sake people!  How can we be a productive nation with so many people running around filled with hate, not just for our president (that’s bad enough!), but for our government?  There are people so filled with hate that it controls every aspect of their lives.  Hate consumes everything in their lives.  It becomes the virtual eyeglassses that they wear.  Everything from waking up to going to bed is sen through the glass of hate. Folks who disagree with these people become a focus of their hate just as much as the president is.  I can’t understand how anyone can live like that.  And I really can’t understand how a person can transmit their hate from one generation to the next.  When you sit around at night and express your hatred for the president (an I have seen this happen) in front of your kids and even school them in hating he president, then you have to wonder about the stability of those people.

 A few months back I inspected a building in Madison that contained a bookstore that must be some sort of Nirvana for the people who almost smoke with hatred of the president.  Inside of the bookstore were posters showing just about every depraved means of punishing the president that one could conceivably imagine.  Yet, in talking to the men at the store, their hatred of the president was genuine, visceral, and at the basest level.  I think that they thought that they were being funny.  But really, a normal person would not be amused by something like that.  At least I hope so.

Frankly, I can’t tolerate hate like that.  To be sure, there are folks and things that can get me fighting mad.  There are politicians that I probably wouldn’t want to be around for fear that my disagreement with them would lead me to say something stupid.  But I don’t hate them.  If Russ Feingold were suddenly to die, I would definitely not rejoice.  In fact, I’d probably be sad for his family and friends.  It would be a terrible shame.  I’d grieve. I certainly would not rejoice as one Bush-hater said that he would if the president were to die.  Indeed, this person was genuinely disappointed when one day there was a bulletin on the TV news that said that there had been “an incident” involving Air Force One.  When it was reported later that it was a minor problem with an engine or something, this guy was genuinely disappointment.  “I really wanted to read that he went down in flames.”  Sadly, that sort of mindset is increasing and not decreasing.

And don’t tell me that it is Bush’s fault.  George W. Bush does not have the power or capacity to make anyone mad, glad, or sad.  No one has that power over anyone else.  YOU AND YOU ALONE, decide how you are going to respond to external stimuli.

I’m going to close this with a quote from Ronald Reagan, “The Gipper”,  a man whose infectious optimism inspired a nation…and this young man.  In 1972, after the shooting of George Wallace, Reagan made the following comment:

“And isn’t this an outgrowth of the, of the hatred that seems to have been injected into what has in the past has been simply normal competition and normal rivalry and certainly election year emotionalism and all. But if something is to be done about this kind of tragedy for anyone, isn’t it necessary that all of us review our own attitudes and say yes, it is possible for men and women of good will to differ, to have opposing viewpoints, to discuss and debate them, and perhaps never to come to agreement on them, but as God is in his heaven do we have to hate each other to the point that people with less balance are stimulated to deeds of this kind? [The shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1972]“