12.12.2006

NRA and various items of interest

Well the school year is over, and it looks like I did alright in my classes... One more semester to go...

Anyways, I was looking at renewing my membership to the National Rifle Association and found a rather interesting web page. Give them Back is the name of the web page. This stems back to the time shortly after Katrina when the government managed to regain some sense of control over the city of New Orleans. Now New Orleans even during its best days was never what you would call a crime free city, and in the days after Katrina there was no significant government influence. This meant no 911, no emergency services, no significant health care, and especially no police presence. These things are significant because when you with draw those controls on a society, the criminal elements within that society go on a hay day. This is what the days following Katrina were like.

Now seeing that I never lived through this, I have no first hand knowledge. I watched it on TV like everyone else. I know that doing so will bias you to whatever opinion that the networks you frequent, be it Fox news, CNN, MS NBC, or the network news providers. This means that you only get the producers take on the news they are reporting. This web page is somewhat the same, it is another view completely. Basically the gist of the thing is that the local governments, New Orleans and the parishes, decided to disarm the populace. The people they got were not the criminals for the most part, it was the people relying on their weapons to protect themselves, or those who were getting their valuable firearms out of their houses. Anyways I blogged before on the importance of the second amendment. I will reiterate this fact - In a situation like Katrina (which people in Indiana think won't happen here - ha! more on that later) you need your protection. You DO NOT need to own a gun. I don't care what you think about the statistics regarding gun violence, because there was significant violence LONG LONG before guns were ever created. I want to protect my right to protect myself and my family. Will I shoot to protect my home and family? Absolutely, any other answer would put you in danger, because if you pull a gun but can't pull the trigger, you are pretty much dead. Anyways, enough of my highly conservative views.

Oh by the way - people in Indiana - You may be safe from a hurricane, probably fairly safe from a terrorist attack, and a tornado - well that is a small area disaster... What you are not safe from is pandemics, earthquakes (yes, I said earthquakes, there is a major fault capable of massive damage a couple hundred miles away, and that is too close) These are major disasters that would stretch the response capability of emergency services probably even more than Katrina. So the idea of it can't happen here... well it can and very well may.

I'm going to go clean a gun.