Allow me to begin by sharing that, during my rosary, I often add a small prayer just before each of the five “Our Father” beads of the decades that goes as follows: “…and Jesus please defend, protect, and save the unborn, the children of the world, and the innocent ones of the world.”

I am sharing that personal prayer with you because I want to make emphatically clear that I, like you, do indeed care for “innocent lives.” That being said, I am quite suspicious of the motives of our politicians, whom I will from here out in this post refer to as “Pharaoh(s),” when they speak of a similar concern for the lives of the “innocent” as they seek to reduce and even eliminate gun rights. I say this as one who does not, at present, own a single gun though I grew up around some guns, have owned them. I also have been very personally touched by gun violence when my Uncle Danny (my father’s twin brother and my middle name sake) was murdered by a 12-gauge shot-gun and by a man who was his life-long friend. That man, Gary, was at one time my babysitter. I was eleven when it happened and, nonetheless, I have never once felt in my life that guns, of almost any kind, should be banned from law-abiding and/or background-checked citizens. I have TRULY never felt that that shotgun killed my dearly beloved Uncle Dan. Gary killed him and would have attempted to do so by any number of other means had he not had that particular weapon. I do pray for both Uncle Dan’s soul and for those in my family whom are still very effected by the tragedy…..and for Gary.

With those personal admissions out of the way, it still seems curious to me how, with such expedience, politicians in both Albany and Washington are suddenly so determined to ban as many guns as they can. I believe recent tragic events are being used for political power opportunities. Undoubtedly, our politicians are merely trying to protect the lives of the “innocent” as the Pharoah(s) did millenia ago. If you detect some sarcasm, skepticism, and even outright cynicism in the previous sentence, you are once again quite perceptive.

For instance, to begin to make this point, in my home state of NY, comparing our politician’s measured and cautious responses to other potentially dangerous issues concerning innocent lives, highlights a stark contrast and I think alludes to their real motives relative to the professed “urgency” they seem to feel around guns. For a specific example, on the subject of “fracking,” which I do NOT have an educated scientific opinion on, but of which many people (including many scientists) seem highly concerned about it being detrimental in terms of health effects upon countless “innocent” lives, N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo is recommending a slow, deliberated, and measured response. Nothing hasty until we have all the “facts.” Hmmm? I am of the belief, and therefore making the prediction, that fracking, whether safe or not, will be legally allowed in NYS eventually. What is being “spun” as a cautious approach to fracking is actually nothing more than the “powers that be” around Cuomo NOT wanting to ram and force through TWO unpopular non-majoritarian but authoritarian measures back-to-back (I am referring also to the recent “NYS SAFE Act” that gravely limits gun rights in this state even retroactively). In the end, even if it is proven that the health of innocent people is jeopardized, it is almost certain that due to the money and power involved, fracking will be coming to NY State. Incidentally, while we are waiting for said decision, companies that are already fracking in NY State are being allowed to continue to do so in the meantime. It should also be noted that, in that same interview referred to above from February 11th, Mr. Cuomo states that a presidential run in 2016 is not even on his mind. Can you say —- LIAR?

What I am suggesting is that the reason for this current “peddle to the metal” effort at gutting the Second Amendment is, as now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel once noted in another context, yet another example of  politicians not letting a “good crisis go to waste.” It is worth noting that in Chicago, where nearly ALL guns are basically illegal for citizens to possess, there were 500 homicides in 2012!

As I gave some thought to this subject of gun rights and the role of government in them, I attempted to do so from a biblical frame of reference. As such, three verses from the New Testament repeatedly came to my mind. First, I recalled how Paul made a case for us to respect legitimate civil and other authorities and “good governance,” if you will, when he wrote:

“Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.” (Romans 13:1-2)

However, Paul also noted that “bad governance,” (along with other shackles of the world), was NOT something that Jesus died for us to be enslaved to when he wrote:

“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

That being said, Jesus, Himself, seems to have made it clear how much “faith” He felt that we should place in earthly politicians and “leaders” when He said:

“And do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is Christ.” (Matt. 23:10)

In reflecting on the “gun rights” issue from the above biblical basis, I could not help from wanting to ask the question: “But Pharaoh(s), why the urgency to ban guns when we allow so many other things that could be quite realistically remedied, to one degree or another, to kill so very many more innocent children and adults alike?”

I believe the motives of the Pharaoh(s) and politicians, including all of their rhetoric, pseudo-eloquence, platitudes, professed moralities, and clichés aside, are nothing more than those associated with their own naked self-interest, and their covetousness for political power, and control over the lives of  their largely “innocent subjects.”

To explore this assertion, let’s consider the numbers. According to a U.N. study cited by CNN, between 2003-2010, guns killed 88,000 people, or about 10,000 per year in the U.S. One other source has the number as high as 12,000 last year in 2012. It might be worth noting and considering also that, tragically, a very large number of those deaths were suicides. How do these numbers compare to other things?

According to the American Lung Association, we lose 13,000 people each year in the U.S. due to coal-burning electrical plants (like Tonawanda Coke) that are not properly held to existing regulations. Also, according to the NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), air pollution  and “…Poor air quality is responsible in the U.S. for an estimated 50,000 premature deaths each year; [and further…] costs from air pollution-related illness are estimated at $150 billion per year.” Why are the Pharaohs not so adamant and hurried about “banning,” regulating and/or enforcing their authoritarian will upon those polluters in the name of saving and protecting the lives of the innocent? Could it be that those polluters provide the money and some key political support that vitally augments the Pharaohs’ political power and property and, therefore, is perceived by these “incarnated sun gods of secularism” to be more sacred and less dangerous to their status and “prestige” than an armed and free populace?

Please understand, I am all for background checks and the denial of gun rights to the mentally ill and convicted criminals. Additionally, I am in full support of increased and complete access to needed mental health services for all of our “mentally ill” brothers and sisters.

However, allow me to get back to other examples supporting the main point. According to the CDC (the Center for Disease Control) nearly 100,000 people die unnecessarily in the U.S. each year due to preventable incidents of medical malpractice. Perhaps we should ban doctors now too! Additionally, in a related matter, about 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of access to essential medical treatment due to their lack of  medical insurance (Source: The Harvard Gazette, HarvardScience). Why is it that our little Pharaohs in Albany and Washington, with their own personal access to what amounts to fully covered single-payer healthcare for themselves (and their families) and their immediate unrestricted access to the best health facilities that your tax dollars can buy, do not seem overly concerned about the above mentioned 150,000 less fortunate “innocent” ones who DIE each year in the U.S.? Could it be that those 150,000 lives do not quite qualify as people worth “saving” if the political cost for such action would be to alienate “Big Pharma,” the health insurance lobby, and the AMA, and other special interests, all of whom represent key political and financial support for the Pharaohs while the medically disenfranchised listed above represent neither seriously needed political support nor any meaningful threat to the Pharoah’s power?

Another possible example, though I am certainly not a “teetotaler,” are the deaths of the “innocent” relating to alcohol abuse?

Undoubtedly, those who choose to consume it do so of their own God-Given free will, nonetheless, of the more than 75,000 Americans that suffer alcohol-related deaths each year (according to NBC News), how many were “innocent” victims who themselves were NOT consuming alcohol such as those that were killed by drunk-drivers? Could not Pharoah make for MUCH stricter laws discouraging drunk-driving, such as those in Germany and other countries, in order to save so many “innocent” lives? How about the estimated 3,000 deaths a year due to distracted driving largely due to the unwillingness of Pharoah to enforce his own laws on that matter? No, on the contrary, it would seem that the Pharaohs are not so deeply and urgently concerned with drunk people and/or stupid people behaving poorly while they are driving and/or are under the influence of alcohol even if those people are perpetrating violent acts, domestically and otherwise, against “innocent” people (including children) with weapons of every kind. Perhaps this is since they seem to represent little threat to the Pharaoh’s political power as do not the drunks who beat their spouses and/or children to death in fits of alcohol fueled rage. In fact, in their ignorance and cluelessness, these people likely increase the pharaoh’s political power.

As for tobacco and the lives of the “innocent,” according again to the American Lung Association, secondhand smoke alone kills about 50,000 additional Americans each year.

Though I realize that they are not used in our own country in this manner yet, how about drones? Last year Pharoah killed nearly 900 confirmed non-combatant Pakistani civilians with these unmanned, well-trained, highly-efficient, obedient, and artificially intelligent mechanized and bomb-dropping New Model Pterodactyls. I wonder what Pharaoh Rameses might have chosen to do with these in the Sinai Desert if he had he been able to send them after the fleeing Jews?

Regardless, there seems to be little political haste in Washington to ban or even moderate the use of these drones and I’m sure Governor Cuomo here in NY would not mind finding a local use for them someday –  of course in the name of protecting the “innocent” people under his benevolent rule. In fairness, most of the victims of these drones are not Americans — YET. Keep your eyes out for the bi-partisan cooperation we will see, ultimately, when it comes to the upcoming likely renewal of the beloved “Patriot Act” that surely protects so many “innocent” Americans. Do you think our “leaders” would ever use drones on American civilians considering that lethal flying drones can now be made as small as a football? Yeah, neither do I. (????)

By the way, if you have been keeping score, just the causes of “innocent” deaths mentioned above, that seem to be far less urgent to the Pharaohs, total over 300,000 American lives each year. There are, of course, also many other similar examples of our beloved Pharaohs failing to take meaningful and reasonable actions to protect the lives of the “innocent” in many other such cases where, however, they do NOT find it politically expedient to do so.

Incidentally, but as an aside, I personally feel this way very much also when it comes to the manners in which we and our government have more often than not allowed many “innocent” animal species to be treated. God made ALL creatures.

Again,  however, keep in mind that the number of people killed by guns each year, on average, in the U.S. is about 10,000, and,  according to one other source, last years total reached about 12,000. In light of all of the examples above, the ratio and role of guns in the deaths of “innocent” people in the U.S. must be beginning to seem a bit more fractional when considered in this comparative and proportional light. This though I believe that NO SINGLE LIFE LOST IS INCONSEQUENTIAL in the Eyes of GOD! To the Pharaohs, however, so many of these other causes are seemingly less urgent and important.

Finally, if one believes, as the Pharaohs seem to, that guns kill “innocent” people more often than any other preventable causes and that, thus, some or all guns should be banned or severely restricted even from the most law-abiding of citizens,….. then abortions, which MOST CERTAINLY KILL THE “INNOCENT,” should also be banned! Abortions have killed, on average, 1.2 million of the most truly innocent Americans EVERY YEAR IN THE U.S. since 1973!

If we are to trust that number, that is about 48 million “innocent” lives that have been unnecessarily killed. That is equal to EIGHT Nazi/Jewish Holocausts! It is still even equal to more than FIVE Nazi Holocausts even when we include in the total all of the Polish Catholics and Gypsies the Third Reich also murdered. Would any of us today, even the Pharaohs, contend that those people were somehow NOT innocent?

Many will argue that the example of abortions is unfair to include because it has more to do with a woman’s right to choose than with the lives of the innocent unborn. Yes, I would agree… it has to do with the legal right of a woman to choose something…….the right to choose to kill and murder and INNOCENT CHILD. Did Adam Lanza have the right to kill those 20 children, and six adults? Certainly in the Name of GOD the answer is NO!

So why then as a supposedly “civilized” society and nation, do we allow for, facilitate, and even encourage the destruction of over a million of these “innocent lives” each year, and somehow, through the MOST perverse cognitive and moral dissonance, we try to tell ourselves that it is “different?” This, whether any of us want to admit it or not, is the equivalent of legally allowing and permitting the grim and unholy consequences of the actions of 500,000 Adam Lanzas in our country every year. Call it what you will, but “…evil is as evil does.”

To any woman, man, or pharaohs whom would choose to commit this act, support it, or participate in it, I would like to ask one simple question: “If you do not believe that this embryo or fetus is a life yet, then why are you trying so hard to kill it?”

MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON US  ALL.

Sadly, however, that the pharaoh(s) do not care about the “innocent unborn ones” either, should not surprise us. They do not represent to the pharaoh(s) neither votes, money, nor any tangible threat to their worldly power — be these pharaohs “Demo-publicans” OR “Republi-crats.”

Some will even argue that we are “doing the child a favor” by aborting “it” because the statistical likelihood is that the particular parents he or she is being born to will most likely give him/her a life of abuse, misery, and perhaps a drug and substance abuse related lifestyle, and therefore, a very poor quality chance at life indeed. To this I must ask: “Have we all as a society gone fully mad?” Why should we sentence any “innocent individual,” especially in these cases a truly innocent child, to what amounts to the “death penalty” for the assumed and predicted potential crimes (of in this case those of child abuse) that their parents might commit toward them in the FUTURE? If we and our Pharaohs are prone and committed to this kind of thinking and “logic,” then we should certainly pass laws also that would put the would-have-been criminally guilty parents in prison  before or after the abortion as well. For if we allow such rationality, we are essentially acknowledging the parents pre-crime “signed” confession of guilt regarding their expressed intent to commit numerous acts of child-abuse and neglect at some point in the future. At least we then would NOT just have the innocent party in the crime being punished.

If we think about it, we already do legally try, convict, and jail “terrorists” and others for the merely planned murders of “innocent” people even if their planned crimes have not even yet taken place if the “authorities” have found them out and apprehended these “future” criminals beforehand! We even put people in jail for pre-planned civil crimes and offenses, such as potential financial fraud, if they have been well-proven to have been found out ahead of time. There are also many other examples – all in the name of protecting the “innocent.” Thus, the legal precedents as absolutely there. I guess we should write to the Pharaohs about this obvious glaring oversight in the criminal code regarding the due process and punishment of those who would plot, ahead of time, to kill “innocent” children as well.

Enough on abortion. YOU KNOW WHERE I STAND.

Make no mistake, no matter how many platitudinous lies and loud fascist-like speeches we hear from the Pharaohs of each political party in Albany and Washington, they care not for the well-being of the innocent. What the Pharaohs care for is their own power and control over our lives. Unlike the other things mentioned above, to the Pharaohs, guns in the hands of a free people represent the very things they fear most – threats to their own worldly power, their property, and an ultimate means by which their subjects could one day, if pushed far enough, demand of them a true accountability!

So much so is that the case that for reasons of political opportunism, the Pharaohs are feigning dire concern for the “lives of the innocent” when at least 1.5 MILLION (or 1,500 times as many “innocent people” than are killed by guns each year in the U.S.) are tacitly deemed politically expendable.

Please know that I am, and will ALWAYS remain, adamantly against the violence and the satanic rash of horrendous and senseless crimes that have gripped our too often faithless, Godless, and overly secularistic culture. However, I am in concordance and in full agreement with those of my fellow Americans whom are NOT fooled by the duplicit, statist, fascist, and un-Godly motives of many of those little pharaohs in Albany and Washington whom speak so often with such forked-tongues and not so cleverly hidden agendas.

By the way, will the privately hired security companies (like good old Blackwater) that guard private estates and gated communities be forced to comply with these new gun restrictions? Why will off-duty and retired police also be exempted from the “N.Y.S. SAFE Act?” “Safe” for whom or what, Mr. Pharaoh? Incidentally, an average of about 253 deaths per year occur in the U.S. due to proven cases of police brutality (Source: “Injustice Everywhere: The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project”).

In conclusion, on a seemingly dissimilar but actually quite related final note, the state of Michigan has now implemented “right to work laws.” This to the bane and chagrin of many public sector (and ultimately private sector) unions in that state. All of this, of course, was done in the face of great resistance by the numerous organized labor factions in that iconic state of Labor Rights history. The point is the same here regardless of how any of us feel about unions.

The legislation was “packaged and sold” to the good people of the “Wolverine State” by its proponent pharaohs under the guise of “greater freedoms, greater economic liberties, more opportunities, less government, and the savings of a great deal of money for all.” Interestingly, enormous amounts of undisclosed out-of-state money came in to support the bill.

Still, curiously, TWO of that states public sector unions are being exempted from this “Right to Work” legislation and are thus being allowed to continue, right or wrong, unhindered in their respective existences with their collective bargaining rights in tact. They are the police and firemen’s unions. Hmmm?

How come not the teachers unions, or the public nurses and health workers unions in Michigan, or the D.P.W. unions, or the Dept. of Natural Resources workers in that state’s amazingly beautiful park system? This is just to name what might have been a few other potential or possible worthy “exemptions” to the legislation. Could it be, yet again, that because unlike those other “public servants,” the police and the firemen are far more needed by the Pharaohs to physically protect their own powers and properties and, therefore, the Pharaohs of the Upper and Lower Peninsulas do NOT wish to alienate them?  It strikes me in a metaphorical manner similar to the ways in which the ruling pigs in George Orwell’s, Animal Farm, chose to treat their powerful protectors, the “dogs,” with a certain not-so-subtle Machiavellian allegiance.

Whether we are in agreement or not on all of this, I’m sure we can all be in agreement in our gratitude for those of our God-Given natural rights enumerated in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Particularly, the rights to freely speak and write in this manner.

However, if we continue to allow in a willful, ignorant, and easily duped way, to allow the Pharaoh(s) to continue to attack our Second Amendment Rights under patently disingenuous pretenses…… the five freedoms of the First Amendment, those of freedom of speech, press, the right to assemble, the right to petition the government, and most importantly, freedom of religion, will almost certainly sooner or later fall also. All in the name of “protecting the lives of the innocent”… I am sure.

May God alone guide us and may He Righteously and Justly Bless each of us, this country, and this, His world, according to His Will. LORD HAVE MERCY, CHRIST HAVE MERCY, LORD HAVE MERCY ON US and PLEASE FORGIVE US OUR MANY SINS.  AMEN.

dds