Get Back to The Basics and Fundamentals

    In football, teams that win consistently do one thing, stick to the basics. Losing for them usually comes from a breakdown in the basic fundamentals of blocking, tackling, and catching the ball. Often you will hear a coach say after a loss, ‘We need to get back to the basics’. The same goes for our country. When society and the culture start going haywire There are two fundamental things we need to do to restore our country to what it should be.

    The first is to return to God. Repent means to turn around from doing wrong and choosing to do right. This nation needs to repent and turn back to God for forgiveness, guidance, and blessings.
The second is to return to the original purpose of the Constitution. The progressives have over time, eroded the Constitution so that its original meaning and purpose are lost. Free speech is lost to politically correct speech. Freedom of the press is lost to propaganda and an agenda-driven press. Now warrantless searches and seizures, wiretapping, etc. Freedom of religion is lost to freedom of worship (keep it to yourself). And of course, today the cry is to limit or end the 2nd amendment.

    I drove by the capital building in Atlanta this morning (because I didn’t listen to my GPS) and I encountered hundreds of students (not in school) and adults protesting gun violence and crying for more gun control. Guns are already one of the most highly regulated products on the market. There are plenty of gun laws. Enforcement of those laws varies across the country. For some reason, where gun laws are the greatest, gun violence is also greater. Logic will tell you that strict gun laws in those jurisdictions do not prevent crime and murder.

    Again, let’s talk about the fundamentals and constitutional basics. Many progressives will tell you that the Constitution is old and outdated because it was written in a different time and things and technology have moved us past that. Not so. The Constitution was written in a unique period of time where they could look back at 2000 years of history and at the success and failure of governments over that time. The Constitution was not written based on technology or technical advancements, it was written based on observing 2000 years of human nature. The Constitution is about the nature of man and how he relates to government and has no basis in time. The nature of man has not changed no matter how much technology does. The writers saw that man could not be trusted so they created a Constitution to limit what men in governments could do. 

To start with they created three branches to counterbalance each other. It put limits on the size and what government could do and left everything else to the people and the states. They listed the basic natural human rights that people should have and that the government should not be able to take away. Now, over the years congress has eroded these rights as I listed above. The government we have today would be totally unacceptable to the founders today. The solution to what ails Americans is to return to the basics and do what the writers intended.

With all the talk about guns, the 2nd amendment is a clear example of that erosion. It clearly says that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT be infringed”. Yet we have many cities and states that have severe restrictions on guns and who can have them. This is definitely an infringement and many liberal courts have supported that errant position. They interpret the Constitution according to what they wished it to say. They have over time, taken away the right to freely keep and bear arms and that leaves us no alternative but to have to trust the government to be our protector and safe keeper. People have come to believe that someone else is responsible for their safety and they should be totally passive and wait for help. The basic right to self-defense is replaced and you have no right to protect yourself without government help.

We have reached the point where people believe it is not their responsibility to protect and defend themselves. The memory of that right is gone and the students that are protesting today, totally believe it is the government’s job to keep them safe and provide for their defense. The problem is not more guns or fewer guns. The problem is knowing and understanding our rights and being able to defend our rights and ourselves. Parents need to demand that schools enforce the right to keep and bear arms and equip the schools with whatever force necessary to prevent whatever harm might try to come their way. This is not a federal government thing. This is a local thing where parents demand that their child will be safe and the 2nd amendment affirms the right to do that.

    It is reported that criminals fear people with guns. That is why they pick areas and people who look like easy targets (gun-free zones maybe). A nation that is truly free and allowed to keep and bear arms will have criminals fearful and look for less harmful ways to do their evil deeds.

    Governments, dictators, and tyrants also fear a well-armed nation. We need to keep them fearful, very fearful. When the government fears the people, we are free. When the people fear the government, we are no longer free. Tell me, right now, who is fearing who?
It is often said that the 2nd amendment is the protector of the 1st amendment rights. As we look at our society and culture we can see that we are losing many of our rights. We need to take our country back and return it to our roots, the basics, and the fundamentals. We need to return to God, and the Constitution and start protecting our rights. A single man will not make America great again. It will take millions of God-fearing, Constitutional freedom-loving people to make America great again. Otherwise, the alternatives are not good.

More thought on the Florida shooting and the subsequent protest by students

One more thought based on the Florida shooting and the subsequent protest by students. Students are crying for more gun control and an end to violence. They are protesting in their hometowns, in DC, and in the Florida capital. The same old cry is “Government do something”. "Government please fix my problem." "Government please take care of me." Someone told them that they should depend on the government for all their needs so now they blame the government, the president and anyone else they think should their provider and protector. These kids have missed a very important lesson in life. You are responsible for yourself. You are responsible for your own safety. In early America, nearly everyone had a gun or some means of self-defense. The Constitution guaranteed you that right. Reality has not changed but the education of our children has created a utopia concept that they don’t have to worry about evil anymore, the government will protect them and provide for them.

In the real world, you know that real thing, they are still responsible for themselves. Evil is not going away. Maybe in the utopia fantasyland evil does not exist but in the real world, it does. People die every day. In my high school days if a student died from a car wreck or whatever, we just dealt with it. Today a flood of counselors is required because the utopian bubble has a leak. Kids shouldn’t have to experience bad things like death and all that.

But to the main point: we are responsible for ourselves. Something that is lost on many American kids today, is being self-responsible and being self-reliant. Our Constitution and our freedoms are dependent on people who are self-responsible and self-reliant. So, when it comes to protecting our kids it is up to us to do it or demand the institution we send them to do it. Whether it is armed guards, concealed weapon carriers, reinforced barriers, or any other means, it is not the Federal government's job to do what you need to do at your local level. Here in Georgia, the state has passed a law to allow concealed carry on campus. Who is against it? Every school board in the state and the teacher’s unions. So, who is going to protect your kids? That sign says, “Gun Free Zone”. Is that sign going to keep your kids alive? Parents need to take actions that work. Crying for some law that just might, maybe, slightly possibly keep some bad guy from getting a gun all the while it only makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to get guns to protect them and their children.

I’ve posted below some real common-sense solutions to protect your children at school. They are not the “if we take guns away from everybody then the bad guy will be nice and leave us alone” utopian dream.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2018/02/18/how-to-eliminate-school-shootings-overnight-n2450380

Parents, if you want to really protect your children then do something that works. Remember, the 2^nd amendment gives you the right to protect yourself and your loved ones by being armed. If you choose to not exercise that right that is your choice. Don’t blame the government.

 

Another thought about these advocates for more gun control

Another thought about these advocates for more gun control. These guys want the government to pass some sort of (they call common sense [senseless to me]) gun laws to stop gun violence. Would that be the same government that hired the armed school security guard that never encountered the school shooter? Or would that be the government that provides the police that can help you maybe five minutes from now? I’m not bad-mouthing the police but the reality is they can’t be where you need them when you need them, but they are usually only just a few minutes away.

Would you want the government that put the FBI in charge of protecting us when they failed to follow their own procedures that would have prevented the killer from taking action? Or maybe the government could get the FBI to put in a little more effort in finding a person who claims he wants to be a “professional school shooter”. Is that the government you want to protect you?

Or maybe you want to put your trust in the government that fails to report a domestic abuser so that person can kill 23 innocent churchgoers.

Maybe someday the governments above can fix all those problems I listed, but then what is the next dot that they fail to connect. More laws mean there is more work to do. More work means more opportunities to fail. There will be a next time, and another and another. Each time someone will be blamed for their failure. Each time there will be calls for more and more laws which means more failure. Over time the only thing that will be reduced won’t be the violence, it will be our freedoms.

Ultimately the government cannot save you. When your house is on fire you don’t wait for the fire department to pull you outside. You get yourself and your family out as soon as you can. If your spouse’s heart stops you can’t wait for the EMTs, you must do CPR now. In most of life, we must learn to take care of ourselves until help arrives. We take safety classes, first-aid, and CPR all because we cannot just wait for someone from the government to take care of us at the moment we need them. When it comes to self-defense the same thing applies and that is what the 2^nd amendment provides for us, the natural right to take of ourselves until other help arrives. The natural right to defend ourselves against a threat when we need to, right now in this moment, not later.

Oh, and about this banning AR15s. The old saying “don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”. Well, don’t bring a little gun to a big gun fight. If the bad guy has a 30-round AR15 (legally or illegally), I don’t want the government limiting me to a 10-round magazine because they think it makes “US” safer. The only person they have made safer is the bad guy. While I’m trying to reload he is still shooting at me. I want to be able to have as big a gun and as many rounds as the bad guy does. If he only brings a little gun with a limited magazine that’s his problem, not mine.

The reality is, ultimately, we, you and me, are responsible for our own self-protection. Most of the time the police arrive after the crime has been committed or at best at the end of a crime and chase the bad guy down. If you want to protect your children, your family, and loved ones, YOU are the one responsible. Your only real option is to have more good people with guns in more places than bad guys with guns. How you make that happen is up to you. Because if you don’t, next week will be no different than last week. It could happen all over again.

About the massacre that occurred last week at the high school in Florida

The massacre that occurred last week at the high school in Florida was as horrific as it can possibly get for the parents, friends, students, and teachers. Many of the angry students are venting their anger and the media is using it to their advantage to promote their leftist agenda. Instead of blaming the shooter (the actual evil person who perpetuated the act), the FBI who failed to act, or the school for not doing some common-sense safeguards, especially after the warning signs so clearly given by this student, the students now blame President Trump. Now where would the students get the idea that it is President’s Trump fault? That somehow, because he didn’t focus on gun control laws in his first year in office, it is his fault that 17 students and teachers died. Is some leftist coaching involved here?

So now the cry is “gun control”, “gun control “and more “gun control”. Another cry is “stop the violence” (like we haven’t wanted that since the beginning of time). Does that mean we don’t have enough gun control already (http://thehill.com/…/359363-What-if-there-were-serious-gun-…). There are already plenty of gun laws on the books.
 
The problem with laws is 1. They are usually for punishment after the fact. We already have laws that make killing illegal, carrying guns on campus illegal, and making terroristic threats illegal. None of these had an impact on the young mentally disturbed student who wanted to kill people. We even have some laws that prevent mentally ill people from buying guns but that doesn’t stop them from getting them illegally. Until we have the power to predict the future of what every potential individual lawbreaker will do, we cannot stop violent and evil people from doing violent and evil acts. In Minority Report, the movie, they did predict the future of evil acts. That was fantasy of course but then a lot of what the left does is fantasy.


Problem #2, is with more gun laws or making certain guns or even all guns illegal, doesn’t stop lawless individuals from breaking the law. Never has, never will. France has some of the toughest gun laws in the world and that didn’t stop evil people from killing over 100+ people a couple of years back.


Let’s compare what leftists want to do with actual reality. We have laws against drug trafficking. Is that working to perfection or do we still have drug trafficking? We have laws against human and sex trafficking. Is that working to perfection or do we still have problems with trafficking, especially across the southern border? We have laws against many crimes. Does that stop people from committing crimes? Not so much. Again, the laws usually dictate what punishment will be given after a crime has happened. Just as the young shooter will probably face life in prison or the death penalty for killing 17 people. The laws against killing never crossed his mind.

The far-far left will want to go even further and call for repealing the 2nd amendment. They are those who are totally ignorant of history or they are openly bent on destroying America. The primary reason for the 2nd amendment is for the security of America. To maintain a free country and prevent totalitarianism. In today’s world, it is socialism, communism, and many other forms of Marxism that would like to replace American freedom with their tyranny. An armed citizenry is the prime reason some communists or dictators cannot take over this country.

The other prime reason is self-defense. The creators of our Constitution recognized that there we certain inalienable rights due to free men. You can say the most important were listed in order of appearance. The first of these rights was freedom of religion, free speech, freedom of the (honest) press, to gather and confront the government with grievances. The 2nd was the right to bear arms. The right to defend yourself against greater odds, bigger or multiple thugs who would do you harm. This is a God-given natural right, not man-given. The government takes this right away as we so clearly saw last week in a "gun-free zone". There was one armed guard on campus last week but he never encountered the shooter. Had the people (teachers and coaches) had the unfettered right to arm and defend themselves there may have been a few of them that could have cut short the rampage and the killing. Possibly more children would have come home to their parents that day. If you want to blame someone, blame the people who take away this sacred god given natural right.



A local school union leader here complained that you could have some teachers who have issues (mental maybe?) and might start shooting students. The answer there is first, anyone with a concealed carry permit will undergo an FBI (FBI, oops) background check. Then as any teacher does in education, undergo further training not only in how to deal with school and crowd shooting situations but also continuous vetting to make sure they are ready and able to deal with not only mass shootings but the days to day encounters they might have with violent students without the need to shoot everyone.

So, to end this paper I would like to suggest something. More gun laws are not going to do anything to stop violence. Thousands of years of history prove this. Nothing will stop violent people from becoming violent. That is the reality of life. If it were possible to totally eliminate guns then that would be something else, but then men always create new ways to work around laws to accomplish what they want to do. Bans don't work. Banning alcohol didn’t work. Anything you ban will create an underground black market for the same. Another reality of life. Thousands of years of history prove that too.

The job of the police is to protect and serve. But if they are not where you are when you need them then you are on your own. If you want to protect your children the one sure thing that works that does not deal with fantasy or wishful thinking is to have good people with guns ready to protect people from bad guys with guns. The more the better. That is the only answer that works. That is the 2nd amendment answer. You have the natural right to defend yourself and your loved ones. Put that in place in our school and you will see fewer students and teachers dying at the hands of madmen.