An Independent

My most liberal point of view is that I believe everyone on earth is entitled by being alive to food, shelter and clothing (including clean water to drink). However, without some sort of universal birth control and world zero population growth that isn't likely to happen anytime soon because of overpopulation.

My second and most conservative point of view is that I believe that every able bodied person should own a gun and know how to use it to defend their locality, state and nation as well as their families if necessary.

My first point of view is logical. I don't like to see people suffer needlessly. So, my first point of view is based upon altruistic compassion.

My second point of view is based upon the fact that the U.S. wouldn't exist today and never could have existed if most families didn't have weapons in 1776 to kill varmints, for hunting for food, and been expert markesmen and ever since.

Our whole nation is based upon the populace having weapons to defend themselves as well as for hunting at each and every point. Why do you suppose no nation has tried to attack us in our lower 48 in any serious way? One of the reasons is any standing army would be picked off one by one by citizen snipers all along the way just like they were during the founding of our country.

Democracy is a great and wonderful idea. But, look around the world. Democracy only exists when people stand up and fight and die for this wonderful idea. It is only an idea. It needs to be enforced or it is no more.

People often say, "Let the police and military have all the weapons." Have you ever studied history at all? The only way that works is if you have a draft where every young person male and female is drafted and has to serve in the military 2 to 4 years. Otherwise, eventually every volunteer military and police force becomes corrupted through nepotism. Eventually nepotism works against the people and they lose their rights. If you want to study history this is an important thing to study. To think that we are completely free from this is to be stupid. Human nature is human nature and human psychology is human psychology. Certain things are inevitable. So, without an armed populace it is INEVITABLE that we become a Dictatorship either from within or without. Take your pick.

I might have been  idealistic enough and impractical enough to think that a more liberal point of view might work "make love not war" and all that somewhere between my ages of 18 and 25, but even then a part of me knew this was true at core. Idealism is great but sometimes it is like walking out into the middle of a freeway at midnight and expecting no one will hit you with a car or truck just because you are a nice person.

I've seen many nice dogs die on freeways waiting to be petted by the nice people in the cars and trucks as they were run over. The first time I was 8 years old and it was a beautiful pure bred dog that my father had no choice but to hit and run over to save our family's lives as well as all the people in the other cars around us on the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles in 1956 at night. Practicality isn't nice it is just survivable.

Another friend of ours swerved to miss a deer and went off a cliff in their car and his wife's arm was permanently paralyzed and hung by her side the rest of her life inert. She was a very beautiful woman so it was incredibly sad and pathetic to see this happen to her. So, practicality saves the day even if it is painful at times.

Another friend of mine hit a Moose in his Subaru Outback in Wyoming. It took out the front window and smashed the hood and went over the top of his car. And then it got up and walked away. I've heard of deer that are smaller than Elk and Moose actually coming through the front window of a car. But people don't usually survive that kind of thing if they are in the front seats and neither do the deer.

So, a background check of anyone buying a firearm sounds like a really good idea (until you realize this was what Hitler did before he registered all the firearms in Germany, went door to door and took them all away from law abiding citizens, herded all the Jewish people into concentration camps and then either shot them, starved them to death, or gassed them or did medical experiments on them until they died. People might say, "That will never happen here!" 9-11 should never have happened here either, should it? But, it did. And that's the real problem. Bad things shouldn't happen here but they could.