Gun Laws and Sales Take Unique Twists.

     If there is any logic to American gun laws, past and present, I’d love to hear it.

     The irony and flexibility between different states and communities provide both a progressive and paranoid picture. The United States Senate panel on gun control is considering specific steps forward this week.

     State officials may be battling the federal government soon because the conflicts and confusion provide for an enormous undertaking for a comprehensive plan. It’s impossible.

     But the one thing that isn’t complicated is the enhancement of state revenues through gun sales. State officials are lining up to find a “sin tax” revenue source, and they may have found the butter for their bread. Maryland officials want a 50 percent ammunition tax and Massachusetts wants to impose a 25 percent sales tax on all gun purchases. Nevada officials are considering a $25 tax per gun sale, which would include all gun shows in Las Vegas.

     And the most persistent legislation is coming out of California. House of Representatives member Linda Sanchez, D-California, wants a 10 percent tax on all concealable weapons purchased in the United States to go toward a federal buyback program to get guns off the streets. Meanwhile, the state legislature in California is considering a 5 percent tax on every bullet sold in the state towards a mental health screening program for children.

      In Congress, the Senate legislature would target a new ban on semi-automatic weapons modeled after military assault rifles. It would consider imposing the 1996 ban on all assault weapons that expired a decade later.

     But would it make a real difference in America’s fight against violence?

     Experts say there are already somewhere between 280 million and 320 million guns in the country today. Director of gun policy and research for the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Jon Vernick says research doesn’t find any evidence gun buyback programs reduce crime.

     The powerful National Rifle Association would have you believe we need more guns in America to fight criminals. The NRA released figures recently showing more than 500,000 new members have signed up since the 26 educators and children were shot to death at an elementary school massacre by a lone gunman last December in Newtown, Connecticut.

     The General Social Survey at the University of Chicago says gun ownership in households has actually declined steadily over the past four decades. The survey also says household gun ownership rates have declined from 50 percent in the 1970s to about 35 percent since the year 2000. The national survey is the only one of its kind and is funded by the National Science Foundation.

     But those figures differ with FBI statistics as well as Gallup Research Surveys which show nearly half the households in America have a firearm.

     The Second Amendment of the Constitution allows for the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and that right shall not be infringed.

     To what logic that freedom is allowed is a good question.

     Two small communities in Georgia and Maine have taken a unique but perhaps worrisome approach to the growing gun violence dilemma.

     The City Council of Nelson, Ga., has written a Family Protection Ordinance to be considered in April.

      The two-paragraph proposal reads, "In order to provide for the emergency management of the city, and further, in order to provide for and protect the safety, security, and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition therefore."

     As explained by city officials, the rule would mirror one passed in nearby Kennesaw back in 1982. It would mandate gun ownership in every household. It is also supported by the police chief of Nelson, a city of just 1,300 residents, who has offered free gun safety classes and gun checks, if the law passes.

     “It’s a great idea,’’ said Police Chief Heath Mitchell. “Obviously, if you cannot afford it, don’t believe in it, or are a convicted felon or are handicapped, you are exempt from the mandate.”

     Nelson residents believe it is a great deterrent from crime. They believe criminals will bypass their small town just north of Atlanta, if the bad guys “don’t know what’s on the other side of the front door of the house.”

     Despite the national and international media attention the city of Nelson has received with the proposal, it turns out it isn’t that unique. Similar laws have been passed in Utah, Minnesota, and Idaho since 2000, and a small town in Maine is also currently considering such a proposal. Monday the town of Byron, Maine unanimously rejected a proposal to require every household to own a firearm, but city officials in the 140-resident town plan to bring the issue up again next month.

     Colorado state officials are barking for stricter gun laws. That state has seen two of the worst mass murders in recent American history. Last July, a lone gunman with an assault rifle stormed into a theatre and killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora.

     In 1999, two students shot and killed 13 and wounded 23 others during the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton.

     Yet, just south of Colorado in Arizona, state officials passed a 2009 law that allows residents to enter bars with loaded firearms. Tucson officials recently took in 200 guns in a citywide buyback program with the idea of destroying those guns. State officials are discussing a law that would mandate any guns received in such buyback programs be resold.

     As if we don’t have enough guns without the sale one more in America. The Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show there are 310 million guns in America which include 114 million handguns, 110 rifles, and 86 million shotguns. After nearly 17 million background checks since 1998, the FBI has denied about 900,000 individual gun sales. In the past year, the FBI denied 7,879 sales due to mental health issues.

     But firearm sales are a $5 billion annual industry in America, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. And that insures America continues its prominence as the most gun violent country per capita in the world.

Manhunt Adds to America's Gun War.

     Are Americans frustrated enough with the wave of recent mass murders and mental health dramas to act?

     Are we willing to sit down and resolve the very uncivil issues destroying our communities and this country, or are we merely clicking the control button toward the next television episode?

     It may be time for all of us to make that decision.

     The largest manhunt on the west coast continues today. This one defies logic but could explode into epic proportions. The Los Angeles Police Department have called upon more than 100 law enforcement officials to canvas Southern California and neighboring Nevada to find one of their own.

     Former LAPD and Navy Lieutenant Jordan Dorner has killed two people Sunday and shot three LAPD officers on Thursday, killing one, before vanishing into the mountains. After literally igniting a raging fire of terror in the greater LA area and beyond, he remains at large.

     Considered deranged and dangerous with a 6,000-word “manifesto” to his credit, Dorner has hit the Los Angeles area so hard, his own former bosses are holding press conferences underground in heavily secured buildings.

     It may surprise you to learn more cops committed suicide in 2012 than were gunned down by fugitives. It might not surprise you Dorner, who was fired by the LAPD in 2008 and possesses vast military and weaponry skills, is considered a one-man army.

     The real question is whether this is the start of something worse in society. Survivalists taking on the very community they either serve or reside in. More guns, more anger, more mental health issues, and even support from the area’s disaffected.

     “We look at the police differently from the way you look at police in your community,” Hodari Sabadu, a 56 year-old South Central Los Angeles resident told the New York Times.

     “In your community, the police is there to protect and serve. In my community, the police are there to harass and insult and to kill if they get a chance.”

     There are more than 100 law enforcement agents, including SWAT, along with some of the most sophisticated weaponry and surveillance in the United States trying to track Dorner down. And folks, that effort in itself, day by day, costs a lot of money, man-hours, and worry.

     People were outraged when a single gunman killed 20 children and six adults in the Newtown massacre in December.

     That’s old news.

     This latest western madman is creating a dire frenzy throughout the third largest police force in the nation and, to date, law enforcement officials have been unable to capture him.

     Now that is a terrorist by every definition.

     He says in his manifesto he plans to strike again. The professionals hunting him say he has the equipment to start a small war.

     When will Americans wise up and realize we are at war? We are at war with mental health issues, poverty, unemployment, and immigration within our own communities. We are at war with our neighbors who we believe will stay across the street forever. We are at war with the very people who are assigned to protect us. We are at war with our youth who do not have the proper tools or opportunities to deal with the future.

     Will new gun laws be a start toward ending the day by day violence in America?

     A recent Quinnipiac University poll released this week showed that 92 percent of the respondents support expanding background checks to all gun sales, including gun shows now exempt from background checks. Earlier in the week, a Pew Research Center Poll showed 85 percent of Americans back universal background checks on gun sales. Yet, Congress continues to stall.

     We hide our heads in the sand and believe it won’t happen to us. And then when it does, we cry wolf and want justice.

     On Friday, Black Bear Lake Mayor Jay Obernolte openly joked at a press conference that the ski resorts will remain open and residents aren’t panicking or worried. He actually told everyone to enjoy their stay while in the well-known affluent resort community. That was the same day police found Dorner’s truck abandoned and burned.

     If and when Dorner strikes again, the mayor might not be as happy.

     Dorner is believed to be on foot and hiding along the San Bernardino mountainside with up to thirty weapons at his disposal. The police are checking all of the dwellings in the Big Bear Lake community. Let’s hope the mayor won’t be eating his own words real soon.

Wake Up, America! Before It's Too Late.

     I adore America, and that is the first and foremost reason for my bark on this blog. But it also seems to me, we aren’t communicating in this country.

     If you believe our Founding Fathers were of genius and perhaps benefited best from pure focus and the lack of distractions, we could learn a great lesson from them on how to bargain at the table.

     Are we even capable of an open, honest debate in public or is that a myth of the past not even worthy of a sound bite anymore.

     Have we become an inhumane group of uncivil selfish beings only driven by single issue politics? Perhaps robotic in many ways? Have we any interest in unity and the benefit of our fellow man and community?

     Or have we allowed the rules of law and individual rights in America to be manipulated to where our country is almost unrecognizable? There is absolutely no reason why we cannot come together and problem solve via the latest swift technology devices mankind has developed? Let us allow intellectual freedom to overcome paranoia. Before it is too late.

     Nine out of ten cities are deemed “financially stressed” by experts. I’m still not sure exactly what that means, but if it is anything like the stress I have undergone over the past five years since the economic crisis of 2008, it isn’t a pretty picture.

     Yet, the House of Representatives voted two-to-one Wednesday to delay a federal debt ceiling confrontation or decision - depending on how you look at it - until May, basically kicking the garbage can down the calendar once again.

     What was a fiscal cliff late last year has faded away for another sunny day, leaving uncertainty among investors and economic forecasters. That translates into an uncertainty of whether new jobs will be created for the twenty million or so Americans still having the guts to look.

     Do you actually believe in the Constitution or just parts of it that serve your own purpose and individual needs? Have you any idea what is in the Patriot Act 1 and 2 legislation that Congress enacted and how it affects your life and liberties? Do you care how it has altered our reality? 

     We’re talking about banning assault weapons in Washington. That debate should have taken place two decades ago. Who is kidding who here? We are way past that discussion. Ask the residents of Newtown, Connecticut.

     Do you have any appreciation for the debates and open forum that had riveted Philadelphia during the constitutional convention, or do you simply consider it a myth of the past?

     These words and principles should still hold true. They are valid even in an invalid society. More importantly, the Constitution works to protect the very people represented if enacted and acted upon. The ideas of the Constitution allow the people freedoms beyond reproach, if they take advantage of the empowerment.

     We’ve traded open debate for protests. Protests create flair and fire but not results. The influence needs to be in the decision-making process, and we are far behind in scheduling the debates. Our government is fading fast in answers, and we’re hiding in the sand waiting for a mirage.

     To that point, we are all at fault. When corporations are making record profits yet college educated people can’t find work besides minimum wage jobs throughout the United States, there is a problem. When more than forty-two million Americans are living on food stamps, there is a problem. When billion- dollar athletic stadiums are erected on the taxpayers' back under the guise of economic development, and yet thousands of homeless congregate aimlessly within miles of its unused entrance for fair weather gladiators, there is a problem.

     Simply put, we are out of whack because we’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. We aren’t involved in civics, and therefore we have more politics than problem-solving in American government today.

     Has Congress failed us? The politicians can’t even sit down in the current two-party system and negotiate anymore. Everything is formulated behind the scene and behind closed doors at the last minute. Wednesday’s vote to extend the debt ceiling took yet another step in that process. That’s a huge problem. The public doesn’t seem to have any idea what it’s paying for and basically doesn’t care, either.

     Thomas Jefferson said, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent”, while James Madison added, “a well instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

     I figure if Jefferson and Madison were somehow brought back to life today, they would take a look around and drop dead in their tracks of massive heart attacks.

     The pure beauty of those quotes can still ring true in today’s society. We really don’t need a new Constitution to fix our vast woes. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to learn how to follow the old one. As written.

     The first words coming to mind are education and community. Without a reawakening, our ship has sunk. The days of electing a representative and following the political rhetoric toward positive results are long gone. The only way the community benefits is when those within the community get involved.

     I'm not talking about a revolution as much as an overhaul of the system. There are simple ways to get everyone on the same page. But it requires work instead of words.

     The House of Representatives will invariably have to act on the debt ceiling. Is America going to default on her debts? What are the politicians waiting for, another economic downturn, an influx of monies to save the day from Uncle Sam?

     Every now and then, you hear a public cry to fix a broken tax system. It might be the first step for a fairer process that could absolutely solve other issues such as unemployment, health care, housing, and our debt problems in the same dialogue. Everyone is affected by the tax system so why not have a say in the process. The internet can go a long way toward welcoming Americans back into the political system and bureaucracy controlling it. You can demand facts from politicians and require answers.

     We simply don’t have enough information in hand. We don’t know if Congress is going to pay its bills later this year. We should be demanding our elected officials sit down at the table for eight hours a day in public session until something gets done for all to see. That is how most employers handle their business. Why should the American public observe the federal government by any other means?

     That is exactly what should happen here, today and now. Open debates until some plan towards the future begins to take shape. The American people deserve this step. We should demand it.

     After all, it’s your dollars and your debt.