Guns and Bozos

Like I said before, most people who own guns for protection will probably never have to use them, but it makes them feel safer to have them just in case. Are they really safer? Maybe not, because more people are killed accidently by guns than on purpose. I read that in National Geographic a long time ago. It was a statistical thing, telling what the probabilities are of you dying from various different causes. Guns were way down near the bottom of the list, I don't think they were the last thing, but I don't remember what the last thing was. The thing about statistics, though, is that, if something bad happens to you, you really don't care that it was statistically unlikely to happen, you just care that it happened to you. Another thing is, as long as the bad guys have guns, the good guys need to have guns. Maybe you don't need to own one yourself, but somebody in your neighborhood, like the police, should have them. Of course the police can't be everywhere at once, so that's why some people feel safer having a gun of their own. One thing for sure, if you don't know anything about guns, and you're not willing to learn and follow the basic safety rules, then you're better off without one. That's why Michigan requires that you pass an approved gun safety class before you can get a handgun permit. They don't require it for long guns, but they do require it for a kid buying his first hunting license. Of course, just because a guy passes the class doesn't guarantee that he's going to act responsibly once he's got the gun in his hot little hand, but you can't make the world idiot proof.

That's the thing about the American legal system, nothing is cast in stone. Any law can be changed by new legislation or a Supreme Court decision. Even the Supremes don't have the last word because there is no last word. All the legislature has to do is re-pass the law, changing the wording a little bit, and it's a whole new law. Even the Constitution can be amended, which is probably why it's still in use. If it couldn't be amended, it would have been scrapped long ago, either by legislation or revolution. Of course it's not easy to change any of this stuff, and it was made that way on purpose. If it was too easy to change, they would be changing it all the time and nobody would know where they stood on anything. Like it says in the Declaration of Independence, "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;"

Of course, Kevin Bleyer, the author of the book is a whacko, but he's a whacko who has a way with words, which is what makes the book interesting and fun to read. He does make a few good points in spite of all his bull shit, or maybe because of it. Like his idea that every man, woman and child should be made a congressman at birth. He doesn't say anything about the logistics of this, which would be challenging at best, but I think the basic concept has some merit. Actually, this idea is not so new, it's called "direct democracy". I know that because somebody brought it up in an internet discussion at least a decade ago. The idea is that, with the communication technology that we have nowadays, we could vote on the issues directly ourselves, making representative legislative bodies unnecessary. I can see a lot of problems that would need to be ironed out, but we have a lot of problems with our present system as well. Just because an idea seems to be ridiculous at face value doesn't mean that it's totally without merit, maybe somebody just needs to fine tune the details to make it work. It's like one of my favorite quotes, author unknown: "The reasonable man adapts himself to his environment, while the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt his environment to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

We don't get the Comedy Channel. We have the cheapest package that the Dish Network has to offer. They are always trying to get us to upgrade, but we don't have time to watch most of the channels that we already have. The only reason we got the satellite system was that, when we moved here, we found out that aerial reception is almost non existent in this location. Cable is now available on our road, but I have heard bad things about it from people who already have it. Those little satellite dishes have been sprouting up all over, even in neighborhoods that have had cable for decades.

I do so read books, just not as much as you do. I used to read a lot more when I was younger, but by know I already know most of the stuff that's worth knowing. This one caught my eye in the catalogue, from which we also get most of our CDs and DVDs. I got the impression from the title that it might be a little off the beam and, since we have been discussing the Constitution lately, and are a little off the beam ourselves, I figured it would be relevant.