Terrorists and Toy Guns

I can’t figure out whether Michael Chertoff has a gut feeling about terrorism in the US or not. First, he says he does. Then I read today that he says he doesn’t- or at least doesn’t think we’re going to get any threats this summer. Some reports say that Al Qaeda is stronger now than their pre 9/11 status (Thanks Homeland Security! Thanks Mr. President! Thanks CIA!), but I think Chertoff is still out on that report. Are they a threat or not? I’m not going by his gut feeling- me thinks his gut feeling is due to too much Muslim Food and nothing to do with terrorism. Especially when he comes to tell us that we have no higher level of threat intelligence for this summer.

Where the hell is he getting his information from? And are we going to go based on those intelligence reports or are we going to go on his gut feeling? A man being interviewed last night on the O’Reilly Factor suggested we code his gut feelings similar to color coding the threat levels. I think that’s a fine idea. We could go for “Fine”, “Bubbly”, “Acid Reflux”, “Burning and Churning” and “Vomit” levels. Chertoff reminds me of heroin addicts when I see him. Got that skin-wrapped-around-his-skull look. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, pop into a 12 step meeting sometime.)

Without going too much into it, I do not like Chertoff. The director of DHS was telling America last week that we screwed up in not passing the Amnesty bill, because those laws can’t be enforced. It’s going to be harder now to crack down on terrorists who want to come into the country because we didn’t elect to just give them our country- via the southern border. Instead, the People decided we were NOT going to give our country away and that we want to secure the borders. That’s going to make things soft on the terrorists, according to him. HUH!!???

By the way- why the hell isn’t he doing something about the border? As the DHS director- the head honcho- the Top Dog In Charge- he has done nothing in the way of securing that part of America. Instead of impeaching the president- shouldn’t we be focusing on starting at the bottom and working our way up? Like toothpaste. I’d sure like to see him out of that position- I’m more scared after 9/11 with him IN office than not. Hell, I’d almost rather “Brownie” do the job.

Meanwhile, some states are getting serious about safety and cracking down on violent people. Why New Jersey wants to ban toy guns for kids. Kids with toy guns just scare the ever-living crap out of me. I mean they might think the gun is real and pretend to shoot their friends! What if that toy gun misfired? I’m sure glad New Jersey thought of that, we’ll all be safer. I was just wondering though…what about the shoot-em-up video games that these kids play? What about the rap songs that talk about “busting caps in yo’ ass”? Will they ban those, too? Because on a serious note, personally, I would rather my children play with a cap gun than play a video game with detailed graphics of brains being splattered from a bullet. You know, we hear so often of children dying from being shot with toys. And you know, we hear all the time of children who had toy guns growing up to be murderous felons….

Instead of pretending that guns don’t exist, or pretending that if you ignore a problem it will go away, or pretending that if you don’t tell kids about guns, they’ll never want to know (like sex, right? Yea, right.), how about education? Because making a law against something doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. Making murder, rape, assault, etc. illegal certainly didn’t stop people from doing it. Can you imagine if the laws were strictly obeyed by everyone? No prisons, no police, almost no courts. (No Singing!! I’m not invoking John Lennon here!)

When we were growing up, my grandfather and father had guns. We got Red Rider BB rifles for Christmas one year, I was 10. Just like A Christmas Story. My father sat down with my brother, step brother and myself before ever giving us the guns. He explained that these aren’t toys, although they can be fun. We must be responsible. We cannot shoot each other- as much as we’d like to at times. He taught us the proper way to carry a gun (down, like scissors), taught us about the safety lock. Showed us how to hold the gun and aim. Taught us proper storage, cleaning, loading techniques. He told us we can’t go shooting birds or anything like that, that these guns would more hurt some animal rather than kill it- and it’s not humane. He taught us how to set up targets in a safe way, making sure that whatever was BEHIND the target was safe to shoot at.

Our father never told us what would happen if we got caught abusing our gun privileges. He never mentioned what would happen if he found out we operated the guns in an unsafe way. The reason why he never offered any threats of beatings (and we surely would have been beat) or groundings or anything is he knew we took our responsibilities seriously. And we did. Not once in my whole childhood was there ever an unpleasant incident. No accidents, injuries, nothing. The neighbors all knew we had guns and were glad they were told, and would sometimes come over and offer advice on aiming, or just to see what we were up to. The most unpleasant experience using our Red Rider BB rifles was not having a partner to shoot with! That was boring- no competition!

Here’s a GREAT reason why guns are good. I would have done the exact same thing. The thing about firearms is people understand they are dangerous. Just like cars. So people take it seriously when owning/operating them. People understand that while safe most of the time, people can get seriously hurt or killed by them. And so there is an amount of respect paid by the owner/operator. Law abiding citizens don’t break the law, and so these gun grabs, like proposed in Illinois (you know, because there’s nothing better to do) are only going to grab the guns of those following the law. What about the ones that don’t?

What if the burglar in the link above had a gun? You know, because he adheres to the law so well regarding burglary.

What does Michael Chertoff’s gut say about toy gun bans, gun grabs and the like? My gut says “Vomit”. With the way he regards our borders, I would say he doesn’t mind these guns, but one never knows. At the risk of being less safe around toys, he could be up to “Burning and Churning” at this point. Unless the country is in a complete Nanny State, he may never be fine. Give these likes of people some time and before you know it, we won’t even have to look both ways before crossing streets, as it would be illegal to drive near pedestrians, JUST IN CASE a car decides to drive on the sidewalk.