News Nuggets by Ray Thomas "A NEW LOW FOR ANTI-SELF DEFENSE FREAKS"

Josey1

A NEW LOW FOR ANTI-SELF DEFENSE FREAKS: How low can you go? That seems to be the question with regard to the people whose fondest wish is to have all the guns in the hands of criminals (with or without badges). Every time we look around they're carrying the dispute to a lower level. Now they're trying to equate those who wish to retain their constitutional right to be armed with Taliban and Al Qaida terrorist killers. They want people to think that it is committing treason to be for reaffirming our Second Amendment rights. They are shamelessly trying to exploit the threat of terrorism and use it as a lever to attack our Second Amendment rights. Even the liberal New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have published articles criticizing the gun control movement for their tactics. The extremist gun-hater Violence Policy Center has falsely claimed that "the gun industry armed Osama bin Laden." The gun-ban lobby that recently changed its name from "Handgun Control, Inc." to "The Brady Center" has told the media that pro-gun people have seen to it that "weak federal firearms laws" are enabling terrorists to "stockpile deadly weapons." Then there is the misnamed "organization" (which has no members) called "Americans for Gun Safety" that has run ads claiming that our Second Amendment rights are somehow standing in the way of our national effort to fight terrorism. Forget the fact that terrorists don't boldly come up to legitimate gun dealers and present a purchase order and that for honest citizens to be able to have guns and defend themselves has nothing to do with fighting terrorism (except maybe to help do it). These bogus claims, if unchallenged, can fool a lot of people and cause the deaths of many innocent people by disarming them in the face of illegally armed criminals. (Source: Letter from the National Rifle Association) [020102-1] INCOMPETENCE NO BAR FOR TEACHERS: In Colorado, at least. Probably where you are, too. Nothing is fought more diligently than any attempt to force accountability and competence upon teachers. They apparently have no confidence in their own competence and wish not to be accountable, so they fight such attempts bitterly. In Colorado, they removed the provisions to remove unqualified teachers from a bill in the House because its sponsor, state Senator Ronald Teck, conceded that a bill containing those measures could not pass. So he removed them and now only people convicted of incest and other sex offenses can lose their teaching licenses. The amended bill easily passed the Senate Education Committee. What are they afraid of? The original bill required school boards to inform the state if a teacher couldn't meet basic skills. The state could then revoke their license if the teacher couldn't demonstrate those necessary skills. So I guess our children will be taught, in many cases, by teachers that do not have the basic skills required of teachers. Incompetence seems not to be a bar to employment as a teacher. (Source: Denver Post, 1/30/2002) [020102-2] INCREMENTALISM AT WORK: There has been a law in Colorado for several years now requiring the use of seat belts. But it was a "secondary" requirement. A cop couldn't pull you over for that alone. They had to have something else for which to stop you and could then write you for that. They knew they'd never get the seat-belt requirement made into law if cops could pull you over for that alone. So they got the law in and gave it a few years to "marinate," and only now are they quietly (I have only found a small, two-paragraph item about it buried on page 42A) pushing a bill to make seat belt use a primary offense the cop could pull you over for all by itself. I was living in California when they did the same thing. It's "d?j? vu all over again." Oh well, I can easily rig things so it appears I'm using it. I would be the first to say you should never drive without a seat belt, but I believe it is not the business of the state to force you to do so. In addition, I flatly refuse to use that badly-designed "cross-the-chest" belt that will probably break your neck if you ever hit anything. If they ever redesign that thing so it won't kill you, I would be the first to use it (I wonder how many people have had their necks broken by that abortion and they won't tell us about it). If I could afford it, I'd design my own three-point system similar to that I used to use in my racecars. But I'm not holding my breath until a bureaucrat decrees it. Of course, if it ever did get properly designed, they'd make a law requiring it and make it an unconstitutional ex-post-facto (retroactive) law. (Source: Rocky Mountain News, 1/30/2002) [020102-3] MIXED SIGNALS: First it's bad for you, then it's good for you. Then it's bad for you again. I wish these bureaucrats would make up their minds. They decided aspirin was bad for you and that's the way it was for years. Then they found out it could single handedly ("pilledly?") keep you from having a heart attack and are now routinely prescribing it for heart patients. I have to take a baby aspirin every morning along with my other pills. Same with eggs. For years they were demonized. Now they're "good for you." How about saccharin and other non-sugar substitutes? Or sugar itself! Now it's booze. All this time they've been telling us to stay away from the booze or it'll kill us (And that is true. I know several people it has killed.). But now they've found that people who drink from one to three drinks a day get Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia less often. It has also been known to prevent heart disease and strokes. It's the blood-thinning and cholesterol-lowering properties of ethanol in alcohol that may ward off dementia, which is often caused by a blood vessel problem. To me, three drinks a day is "heavy" drinking -- maybe because I don't drink any at all. But if it will help me stay alive, maybe I ought to start. It doesn't appear to matter what you drink, it still seems to work. If I do start drinking for this reason, I hope they don't discover a few years down the road that they were wrong, that even three drinks a day can kill you. That'd be just my luck. Cheers! (Source: Associated Press, 1/25/2002) [020102-4] http://www.sierratimes.com/02/02/01/nuggets.htm

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News Nuggets is c2002 by Ray Thomas.