If you have forgiveness in your heart for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold than you're a bigger person than I am. I'd be lying if I said I didn't hope that they are burning in hell but today isn't about that, nor should it be. We as a society forget too much, too fast. Columbine was 12 years ago, how many of you even remembered or thought about it today without being reminded by someone or something you heard/saw? Be honest. That is not to say you are a bad person for not remembering, it just goes to the point that we forget too much, too fast. Admittedly distance is part of the healing process but there are people out there will never heal from those events. Part of the problem being that the two perpetrators chose to end that despicable act with a final act of cowardice by taking their own lives thereby robbing us of any chance to even try to understand why it happened.

When one student asked Eric and Dylan what they were doing when they burst into the library that fateful afternoon the response was as simple as it was evil..."Killing people" was the reply. I cannot possibly fathom how a heart could be so black; what could possibly motivate someone to sink to that level of depravity. Since that day there has been much debate regarding gun control. The far left and far right are both so far off base that they do not represent what I believe (and hope) to be the vast majority of peoples opinion on the matter. The trite old sayings of the far right make me sicker than bad dairy eaten during a drunken binge. The line guns don't kill people, people kill people is as overused as it is inaccurate. The fact remains that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would never have been able to unleash upon the innocent student body of Columbine the abject horror that they did without guns.

Our friends from the left have called for a total ban on handguns. To the liberals I say that outlawing hand guns is an impeachment of our civil rights, and would not stop these senseless acts of violence. The people of Washington D.C. actually tried this, they outlawed handguns. It was a failure in stemming violence and was ultimately struck down by the court system anyway.

To the right I’d ask how it makes an ounce of sense that it is harder to get a driver’s license than it is to get a gun? I’d also suggest they actually read the second amendment rather than just quote your favorite part of it like a school child repeating a catchy chorus from the Billboard top 20. The entire second amendment reads "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”, but the right wing only ever recites the right of a people to keep and bear arms. For Christ sake the word regulated appears in the amendment! It is not my position that we should have a ban on handguns, but certainly we can and must do a better job with gun control.

Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that one of the main reasons man enters into a society is to protect himself from the “war of every man against every man”. That the main impetus for the formation of societies is we make tiny sacrifices so that we may be afforded some kind of protection from each other, and random acts of violence. Yet as society evolved and became more sophisticated, the places that we should feel the safest, the grocery store, work, SCHOOL, have become scenes of bedlam and bloodshed. Can anyone tell me why? Or can anyone tell me how to stop it?
For starters why don’t we set a minimum age in which someone must be in order to own a handgun? Make it a crime for anyone under the age of 21 to even own a hand gun (exceptions made for those in the armed forces and police). There is no other reason someone under 21 needs to own a hand gun. Secondly we absolutely must do a better job controlling what happens at gun shows. Background checks aren’t run, and a lot of straw sales stem from these shows. I don’t necessarily believe, nor do studies show, that stiffer penalties are a deterrent. However, what stiffer penalties can, and will do, is combat recidivism. The longer someone is in jail, the harder it becomes for them to commit another crime. Those who deal/sell guns illegally need to be subjected to the stiffest penalties allowable by law. Those who illicitly deal guns are no better, and in some ways worse, than drug traffickers. They should be treated as such.

We should also punish gun makers/manufacturers who knowingly make guns that can be easily transformed in to automatic weapons. While we are it, I would even support an outright ban on many, if not all, fully automatic weapons. There is just no rationale behind a person owning a tech 9, an uzi, a street sweeper etc let alone two or three of them! Remember what Hobbes said…..we make tiny sacrifices in order to afforded some kind of protection, I think foregoing ownership of fully automatic weapons is a small enough sacrifice we can/should all make. I don't profess to have the answers, but what I do know is we need to make it as difficult as possible for guns to end up in the hands of children.

We would all like to believe that what happened at Columbine was preventable but I am not sure. As long as free will exists, than so too will evil. The shootings were an act of terror and my thoughts and prayers are with families of the victims as well as the survivors. It’s been twelve years , 4380 days since that fateful morning. I still remember when the news broke. I was in my senior year of college and was playing FIFA soccer on play station instead of going to class (real surprise). My friends and I caught the breaking news and looked on in disbelief. I remember looking at Frank Leone, Pat Tuohy, Beav and others who were at my house and saying “what the fuck? We are bringing guns to school now??” I was both dumbfounded and heartbroken. I had been in high school just four years earlier and had never imagined something like that happening. Our country was forever/irrevocably changed on the 20th of April 1999. I simply ask today at some point you remember those who were brutally terrorized and executed for no other reason than they were at SCHOOL.

The Philosophy of Failure

During Obama’s presidency I have grown tired of hearing about what people are entitled to. Whatever happened to duties and obligations? There can only be one answer, socialism places entitlements above duties and obligations. But let us not forget that Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery (Winston Churchill).

Many state attorneys general have noted that ObamaCare is the first time Americans would be forced to buy a good or service, which is why they are challenging the constitutionality of it. So how do they justify this? As a bit of a fitness fanatic I bet we could save just as much money by literally forcing people to work out. Obama tried to pass a law that for the first time in American history would force Americans to buy a good or service, so why not force them to buy a gym membership and force them to work out? Is this ok with you socialists out there? If the justification for forcing them to buy health care is b/c it is good for them, well I submit so isn’t working out and would absolutely improve their overall health, thereby making it cost less to insure them. So Socialists is that ok? Socialism is absolutely an infringement on individual rights, socialists cannot get around that fact no matter how hard they try.

For the record I reread the constitution and only found the word entitled (or any permutation thereof) once in Article IV Section 2 basically stating that a citizen of any state had the same rights as the citizen of any other state. Interestingly enough Article IV Section 2 also guarantees a “Republican Form of Government”.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. This country was born out of a set of ideals, the key components of which were rugged individualism, that the best government is the government that governs least, and that individual liberties must be protected. That no one was to be given a free ride, and that government was meant to treat us all as equals before the law, and give us all one vote. Government was never meant to be, nor should it ever be, meant to make us all equals in terms of wealth, property ownership, or even the level of education we all receive. It is about guaranteeing equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

Obama has said on more than one occasion that the rich need to pay their fair share, according to figures from the IRS it appears to me that they already do. “The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned 68.7 percent of the nation's income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86.6 percent). The top 1 percent of taxpayers earned approximately 22.8 percent of the nation's income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid more in federal individual income taxes than the bottom 95 percent of tax returns. The bottom 50% on the other hand paid just 2.89% of income taxes collected. “

I support a progressive tax, it is the only way this country will work but as Sam Seaborn once said " I paid my fair share, and the fair share of twenty-six other people. And I'm happy to because that's the only way it's gonna work, and it's in my best interest that everybody be able to go to schools and drive on roads, but I don't get twenty-seven votes on Election Day. The fire department doesn't come to my house twenty-seven times faster and the water doesn't come out of my faucet twenty-seven times hotter. The top one percent of wage earners in this country pay for twenty-two percent of this country. Let's not call them names while they're doing it, is all I'm saying". I find it offensive when the president, or anyone for that matter says the rich need to pay their fair share for the exact same reason Same Seaborn did. I am not in the top 1%, may never be, but that doesn't mean I support taxing them at a ridiculous rate when almost 50% of this country pays no taxes at all. If he honestly believes that the rich are not paying their fair share then he is more out his mind than Charlie Sheen banging 7 gram rocks. To even suggest the rich need to pay more, or their "fair share", is socialist.

Being a citizen of the greatest country on earth is not about entitlements, even though this president would have us believe that being a citizen of this country is something that everyone is entitled to, including those who broke the law to get here. It is about duties and obligations. It is our duty as citizens to work hard and pay the taxes we owe. It is our duty that if we choose to have kids that we raise them right, and provide them with a safe home that fosters stability and is conducive to learning. Sometimes I get the feeling that this White House feels that government is better for children than parents are. That it looks at 40 years of degrading and humiliating free lunches handed out in a spectacularly failed effort to level the playing field and says let’s try 40 more. This White House that says of anyone that points that out to them that they are cold and mean and racists and then accuses the Republicans of using the politics of fear. And just yesterday a school in the city of Chicago (Obama’s hometown) banned kids from bringing lunches made at home. Are you f-n kidding me? If that is not clearly an infringement on individual rights, and a move toward socialism, than I do not know what is.

As Cecil Palmer once said ““Socialism is workable only in heaven where it isn't needed, and in hell where they've got it”.