Accused deadbeat Dad Joe Walsh-fired Illinois Representative- declares war on small businesses and families over conceal carry laws. Calls on fellow pro-gun hysterics to boycott small businesses in towns crafting any gun legislation. Takes a big man to bully mom and pop businesses, especially in this economy. I guess old Joe secure in holding his small hard… gun in public is more important than these people. can’t imagine why he wasn’t re-elected? Tells audience to shop in wealthy Lake Forest instead. Sounds like tired old Joe is for sale, or just needs attention. Does anyone know if and how much the NRA or Illinois Rifle Association might be paying him to sell guns in Illinois? Not saying I have direct proof he’s gettin’ paid. Just asking an innocent question.

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Boston, Bombs and the overwhelming logic of the NRA

I have to admit, all this time I have been mocking the NRA. As it turns out they have been right all along-their logic unassailable. I have called them gun pornographers for their obtuse arguments that any sort of “reasonable” gun legislation amounts to eradicating the Second amendment. I am now all for conceal/carry everywhere, and that civil order and common etiquette not only should, but must be enforced if need be at the point of a gun. friends of ours just were married and this jerk cut in line for cake. If I’d had a gun, or better yet, if all the people who exchanged annoyed glances as the guy pushed in line out of place had weapons, we’d have sent in to the back of the line or to his maker.

Readers will recall, before my enlightenment yesterday following the bombing at the Boston Marathon, that some months back I sarcastically called for a Ninja amendment to the Constitution. That was in response the NRA calling for an armed guard in every one of America’s 130,000 schools, which I incorrectly characterized as absurd. The Ninja amendemnt would mandate an actual Ninja to schools, who could dispense an assailant silently, popping out from a locker, a waste bin or the ceiling.

I was just being a punk, missing some of the layered beauty of the NRA’s offer. It wasn’t simply about protecting our children, but the NRA was offering a whole new world. Taking in account sick and vacation days, longer school shifts, that could quickly amount to a half million armed posse protecting our schools. As schools close due to extreme budget constraints, these paid guards would also maintain order so that classes doubling and tripling in size do not overwhelm the diminishing number of teachers.

Two weeks ago an ammunition clip was found on a bus, highlighting the vulnerability of the nation’s half million strong school bus fleet. There is another job opportunity, albeit part time. Still, the brilliance of the NRA’s position leads as well to at least a million jobs being created. And that is just the beginning. We should then begin thinking of shopping malls, churches, restaraunts and everywhere more than two or more people gather. Guns are indeed the answer.

But there is one critical bit of logic dispensed by the NRA that I missed. Watching the terrible and shocking images from Boston yesterday it was as if a light went on inside me. I smiled at the simple brilliance of the NRA’s position, and blushed with shame for my own short-sighted previous position. While I spend quite alot of time on Chicago’s south side working with a homeless group, I have taken an interest in the violence there. The NRA argued that Chicago has the toughest gun laws in the country, and violence continues unabated. I foolishly argued for tougher oversight on the gun shops and shows that ring the outskirts of Chicago, citing the facts that the Chicago Police identified fully 70 % of weapons used in gun crimes as being purchased legally and given to gang members. One Federal firearms license holder sold more than 600 guns to Chicago street gangs. I also pointed out that gun laws IN Chicago would only have impact against looser laws OUTside Chicago only if the city was surrounded by a giant wall. Boy, was I wrong. Yesterday’s tragedy confirmed that.

The beauty of logic-true logic-is that it is unassailable and works in all situations. Gun laws do not stop killers from getting and using guns, right? If we extend that logic, there are laws against bombs in the United States, but it did not stop the bombing yesterday. More Bomb laws will not stop future bombers. And I will go a step further. Listening to Glenn Beck, the NRA and other Second amandment patriots, we have guns to let the government know we will stand against them when they become tryannical, and will refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of heroes as Jefferson described at the founding of our great nation. Let’s not mince words any longer. What they are describing is nothing short of an arms race between the true patriots and the government. Obviously, and logically, any imbalance opens the door to tryanny and oppression by the government. If that is the case, the Second amendment falls painfully and dangerously short.

We must expand the Second amaendment to include tanks, jets, bazookas and bombs. Bomb laws obviously do not work, as became clear yesterday. If patriotic god-fearing people are prevented from having bombs, only criminals and terrorists will have bombs. Like that guy cutting in line possibly facing a cake-line of gun-totting wedding goers, maybe if the terrorist yesterday thought that citizens would show up with bombs at his house, he might think twice. Thank you NRA. Consider me among the converted. My registration is in the mail.

Catch 900poundgorilla’s WC Turck and Brian Murray each Sunday 8-9am only on Our Town with Mike Sanders, at Chicago’s Progressive Talk, WCPT AM and FM, and streaming online.

Friend us on Facebook at Revolution and Beer. And if you have a cause to champion, please let us know as we work to become the grassroots support network for Chicago Activists and community organizers.

Catch the beer of the week review with 900poundgorilla’s WC Turck and Brian Murray each Sunday 8-9am only on Our Town, at Chicago’s Progressive Talk, WCPT AM and FM, and streaming online. And check out the weekly food pairings for our featured beers with innovative and original dishes by Chef AJ Francisco. Friend us on Facebook at Revolution and Beer. And find all of the great beers we review each week at Louis Glunz Beer Inc., http://www.glunzbeers.com

Illinois about to sanction death penalties for shoplifting, and other petty crimes

This past weekend in Chicago a flash mob, organized on social media made headlines. The estimates were af around 400. There was a hysterical tone to the reports, most especially on the two dominant right wing stations in the city, WLS and WIND. They used the event, which was down played by police, and apparently handled quickly and effectively. About 2 dozen were arrested for serious crimes such bumping into people. There were several reports of purses being snatched, but no more than usually happens on a busy weekend day in Chicago, and most every other city on the planet. I’m not downplaying the incident, as much as attempting to balance the fear and hysteria stoked by a media with a very purposeful agenda.

The NRA, gun pornographers, the media proliferators of gun porn, like WLS and WIND have been vocal and aggressive on their support for conceal carry laws in Illinois and Chicago. But here it is important to take a look at several facts about violent crime in Chicago. Notably, the most violent years in Chicago history were in 1974 and 1992, with 970 and 942 murders respectively. The city had a lower population at the time, so the adjusted rate now would be over a thousand for both years.

From 1992, the murder rate declined steadily. By 1999, it had decreased to 641, though admittedly that was still higher than any other large city in the US. Murder bottomed out in Chicago back in 2004, but has seen a year over year rise. The vast majority are due to neighborhood specific gang violence. Nearly all murders in Chicago occurred by people known by the victim. Overall, the city is safer than it has ever been, with steady decreases in violent crimes and property crimes.

The conceal carry would in effect, make petty crimes like purse snatching, shoplifting, even a fight punishable without the benefit of trial or appeal a death sentence for the would-be perpetrator. It would also significantly increase the likelihood of so-called collateral damage to bystanders as well. Indeed, such a provision under the law could cost someone their life simply by virtue of the conceal-carry gunman feeling threatened. Moreover, on a crowded bus, or train, the possibility of a gun battle erupting from multiple shooters startled, frightened or confused in a chaotic situation becomes greatly increased.

The proliferation of guns in public spaces creates does not create a deterrence, but rather tension and fear, which is hardly necessary. Moreover, will downtown offices and business be safer with pistol packing salesmen and secretaries? Will business be required to allow guns into their offices? Will you fire or lay off a person with a loaded weapon? Or will we now have weapons lockers in office buildings? Or will the NRA take to suing businesses that ban guns in the workplace? Will you be less likely to complain about your sandwich at a downtown Subway if the cashier has a glock on her hip?

Will the headlines scream injustice or shame the first time a nervous suburban tourist guns down a kid who purposely bumps him, and then cops an attitude. Is it worth killing a man who steals a purse? Should the punk who grabs a cellphone on a bus take three of four slugs to the chest? Isn’t that a police matter to arrest the kid, and have a sane sort of justice, instead of this fear and paranoia based pornography from WLS and WIND?

Make no mistake, if the gun pornographers get their way, there will be deaths, of petty criminals and of innocent bystanders. As for the training conceal carry advocates claim they will have, let me remind of the police shoot out last year in Times Square between a gunman and several trained New York Police. After dozens of shots exchanged the gunman was killed. 11 bystanders were wounded as well, all by police bullets.

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Friend us on Facebook at Revolution and Beer. And if you have a cause to champion, please let us know as we work to become the grassroots support network for Chicago Activists and community organizers.

Catch the beer of the week review with 900poundgorilla’s WC Turck and Brian Murray each Sunday 8-9am only on Our Town, at Chicago’s Progressive Talk, WCPT AM and FM, and streaming online. And check out the weekly food pairings for our featured beers with innovative and original dishes by Chef AJ Francisco. Friend us on Facebook at Revolution and Beer. And find all of the great beers we review each week at Louis Glunz Beer Inc., http://www.glunzbeers.com

Evil and the Colorado shooting

In the wake of the Colorado shooting the word and concept of evil are likely to be used as a tool of the Right. It becomes the end of an argument. The gunman was “pure evil.” What is to be done with evil in that case? It can only be eradicated, for there is no negotiating, co-exicting or appeasing evil, only defeating and destroying it, in society with regards to crime, in dealing with the Iranians, your political opposition. It begins to rob you of true freewill. The word is initself a falsehood and a means of control.

Evil is, at it’s core a lie. It is the antithesis of the truth, and since truth can be manipulated, interpreted and degraded the line between evil and truth is terribly thin. The lie is certainly as old as mankind, undoubtedly the symptom of negotiations between our selfish souls and wants and desires of others. Separated from one another by the needs of the body and the ignorance of the mind we are certainly suffering the legacy of those first lies, and, hence, their inherent “evil.” We may also be suffering the echoes of the first recorded lie.

There are few words as misused or misunderstood as the word Evil. For some it is the embodiment of the worst the human heart and mind can conjure. To others it is a living thing, an ethereal essence or spirit that tempts and persuades us to cruel and selfish acts. Some believe that Evil is its own power, one that must be crushed and driven from the world. To those who eschew that belief, evil is a misnomer, a cartoonish way of describing a process. Some believe that strength and force are the only means of confronting evil, while others hold that if it can be dissected, and understood, that the roots of “Evil” can be treated or diagnosed before causing greater harm.

What is the nature of evil? Where does it come from? If a person does evil then we are left with but a few possibilities. That is, they are either seduced, are tricked, or are too weak to resist evil. If that is the case then someone or something ultimately must be responsible, and since the devil, or some dark specter, is not liable under the law we are left to judge the human perpetrator or accomplice to the evil act. If some one is under the influence of evil, is it something akin to a coercion, a trance or a drug? In that case, if they are control as if they were a puppet, are they truly laible for those actions? Finally we are left to ask if a person is evil? In which case they either succumb, fail to resist, or act upon that inherent evil quality. And who decides who is evil, partly evil, just a bit evil, and who is a bit good, partly good and good?

Does it require a catalyst, like a spark, or a particular environment to rage out of control? Can it be synthesized, controlled, vaccinated against or used commercially or for warfare? Some might argue that war is the attempt to harness evil for one side against the real or perceived or concocted evil of an enemy. Certainly the very word is a generic term, an umbrella word covering varied and even necessary evils. It also describes innocuous things, like an evil smell, and the like. Is sadistic evil different from abject evil, manipulative evil, genocidal evil and many others?

But the critical mind eschews the cartoonish conept of evil, which is all too easily  coward to in ignorance and fear. But the world is not trapped between light and dark, just as no person struggles with good and evil. We struggle against our inherent selfishness and the complex processes of our lives. Learning to comprehend the processes of the world leads to enlightenment and our best hope to one day intervene ahead of tragedies like that in Colorado. Failure to learn surrenders us to the control of those only too willing to manipulate our ignorances.