Just a... 'nother brick in the wall...

I am lucky.  Lucky enough to be able to enjoy my fruits and veggies on the cheap.  Lucky enough to be the umpteenth grandchild to a family with roots planted here over one hundred fifty years ago.  Lucky enough to qualify me as native.  But how much time in-country does one have to spend to be considered a native?  Most of us were born here and that usually suffices.  Ask a real native American the same question and you might get an education. 

Suffice to say, we all hail from somewhere else.  Natural born is usually enough yet nowadays some say that’s not enough.  Think: birthers and the funny orange-haired rich guy behind that particular bowel movement who is now running for the highest office in the land.  Fun fun.  

How many of us really believe that in order to quell the touted tsunami of undesirables into our fair land that all we have to do is build a barrier between us and the more southerly regions of our shared continent?  Really? 

France tried that after World War I.  The wisdom of the French was to plant a line of big guns in the ground and point them at Germany.  Quite an imposing sight, I imagine.  If you enjoy grand examples of failure.  When the time came, a certain Bavarian corporal and company ignored the Maginot Line altogether leaving the lonely Frenchmen to buff their big guns while the Wehrmacht goose-stepped down the Champs-Élysées.  Perhaps monsieur would enjoy a little cheese with that whine?

It took me five minutes on Bing to illuminate our delusion.  The continental U.S. has over 82,835 miles of coastline guarded by satellite surveillance and the Coast Guard.  With only 41,000 active duty members, that means every uniform in the service would have to patrol two miles of coastline 24 hours per day 365 days per year with no potty breaks.  This fact alone makes the über fence along the 1,869 mile border with Mexico a colossal example of American stupidity.  

The self-righteous always flog the notion of legality but I'll wager no law ever filled an empty belly and no electrified razor wire atop a fence will ever keep a good parent from trying to feed their hungry children. The people that come here are not the bomb toting job stealing bad guys we have been lead to believe, but rather people who’ve heard of a place where they cannot only survive but thrive by the sweat of their brow if they will only risk the crossing. They don’t want state welfare, they want a chance. And who are we to deny them? 

Immigrants, that’s who.

Guns, guns, gunzzz...

http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2016/jun/12/7-things-know-about-guns-and-gun-violence-after-or/?utm_source=TBT_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Politifact%20Email%20June%2013%202016

The above weblink is to a Politifact article explaining some of the misinformation surrounding the latest carnage in Orlando and the anti-gun rhetoric currently bandied by all of the major news outlets. To that end, I give my take on what I would consider as an answer to gun violence in the U.S.  If you haven't surmised already, I am a gun-owner and supporter of the Constitution and its current interpolation/interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

First off, limiting the size, caliber and/or capacity for a firearm is a fool's errand. To imagine, or think, it will save lives is tantamount to buying into that email I received yesterday guaranteeing 79,000% return on a single investment. To wit, Chicago has no gun stores within its municipal limits. However, it owns the title of Murder Capitol of the U.S.  T'is a terrible irony that the former would foment the latter but such are the best flayed plans of pundits and politicians.

Instead, what I can imagine is a system that allows for an instantaneous vetting system. One whereby the magnetic strip on the reverse side of a driver's license could be run through a simple go/no-go device installed at every store that sells guns and ammunition. If an individual with a codified history of mental illness, prescribed psychotropic medications, and/or any other proscription deemed by law enforcement, the vendor could just return the individual's license and inform them of their purchase limitations in said store.  

Being tied into such a system, that individual's presence in a gun selling establishment could immediately be flagged for followup by law enforcement. The bugaboo comes with connecting all of the pertinent databases required for such a system to work. And honestly, the establishment of such a system would most likely become problematic as Edward Snowden has so aptly proved.

In full disclosure, I am an on-again-off-again member of the NRA, a persistent gun owner and former shooting competitor. This also ain't my first rodeo. I've learned that gun laws, as with any law, only affect the law-abiding citizen and never the law-breaker. That being reality, shouldn't we use technology to better protect the law-abiding from the deranged, addled, radicalized and sad sick souls among us so that we may know them. 

Just imagine...