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March 07, 2013

Comments

Brian,

Have you considered
Denmark for the remainder of your retirement years? They have one of the few social-democracies that is actually solvent unlike the majority of Europe where entitlements and deficit spending have decimated the economies.

Denmark has gun control, extensive government regulation of everything, lots of free stuff and high taxes. People there don't rise too high but they don't sink too low, as a rule, and the people are said to be happy there on average. English is widely spoken and I don't think the weather would be a big adjustment as you are used to Oregon which is often cold and dreary. Maybe it would be a little boring in Denmark after the initial novelty wears off but that should not be a problem after living in Salem. Since your wife likes dogs she could raise Great Danes and you can blog from anywhere.

The U.S. seems to be too wild and wooly for your tastes. It's a beast that will be hard to tame in your lifetime. There is no money to make it into a euro-style socialist utopia with a $17 trillion debt growing out of control, possibly to $20 trillion by the time Ob*ma is done with us. Where will the money come from for the freebies?

Ob*ma is just making things worse and failing miserably as a leader in this debt crisis.

So, go east aging man to Denmark!!

As for this aging man I may head south for a Latin American country. I like it warm and I'm familiar with Spanish. I'm becoming too wimpy for cold weather. Mexico bans guns of which I like to have one or two for defense, but guns are ubiquitous in Mexico anyway(gun control sure isn't going well there and could put a kink in your gun control stats). Some Latin countries are laid back and leave you alone without a lot of regulation, taxes and interferrence. Ecuador might be nice. But I'll base my finances in the Caymans, Singapore and Switzerland.

tucson, thanks for the relocation suggestion. My wife and I have thought about where we'd prefer to live, but keep coming back to... right where we are: Oregon.

The United States is doing just fine. Have you noted that the stock market is really happy with "socialist" Obama? New highs, soaring corporate profits, improving unemployment, lower deficit predictions. Looks like voters made a good economic decision last November.

I'm not sure why you seem to think my views on gun control are atypical and are part of the reason why I'm better suited for another country.

Australia has banned assault weapons (maybe all semi-automatic weapons, not sure). Yet no one things of Australia as being anything other than "wild and wooly." I heard the conservative prime minister who led gun control efforts in Australia as being mystified by why gun control is a right vs. left thing in the United States.

He (John Howard) simply sees it as a public safety issue, which he said is how most people in Australia view it. If anything, he said, conservatives should be in favor of better public safety.

The gun culture in this country doesn't have anything to do with "doing your own thing."

As noted before, it takes no guts, skill, or bravery to pull out your VISA card and buy a scary looking gun. Every time I go longboarding I exhibit much more courage and free-spiritedness than "gun nuts." And I don't endanger or scare anyone else.

Well, maybe just a little, because skateboarders have sort of a bad rap. But I've never come close to getting in an accident with anyone, whereas guns kill thousands every month.

Oh, forgot to make my point about being in the mainstream. Polls show that most Americans, even most Republicans, favor almost all (maybe all) of the gun control proposals put forward by the Obama administration. So if anyone is out of touch with the American viewpoint on this issue, it sure isn't me.

Brian,

I understand your concern about guns. There are a lot of them out there and a lot of crazy/bad people who can get their hands on them. That bothers me too.

But that's the problem. How do you control the estimated 300 million guns already circulating in the U.S.? How do you know when someone is going to flip out or go bad?
Sure, felons and documented loons should not be allowed to own guns. No brainer, but the felons will get them anyway.

The circulating 300 million guns is like the 10-20 million illegals. They're here. No way to get rid of them short of gestapo tactics, and besides, we want some guns for protection and many illegals are OK folks working hard that are good to have around.

I'm not sure banning semi-auto rifles will accomplish much. Most gun murders are committed with handguns. The Virginia Tech guy killed more people than the Newtown or Colorado guys and he used a pistol. In 2011 more people were murdered by blunt force trauma (hammers, pipes, clubs) than by rifles.

You wrote: "The United States is doing just fine. Have you noted that the stock market is really happy with "socialist" Obama? New highs, soaring corporate profits, improving unemployment, lower deficit predictions. Looks like voters made a good economic decision last November."

--As I said, the national debt is now $17 trillion and projected to be $20 trillion when O leaves. This is scary big. He is not running the place properly. Period. The stock market is a bubble inflated by monetetization of the debt by the FED. The country is running on fumes. The world economy is running on fumes. We're in for a rough ride when the chickens come home to roost. They can keep "kicking the can down the road" for awile longer but the road is a dead end and the can stops there. Can't you see that Ob*ma?


According to a University of Chicago Study the number of households owning guns has declined 15% since the 1970's when 50% of U.S households owned a gun. Now, that number is 35%.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/03/10/households_with_guns_declines_since_1970s.html

Citing a study doesn’t make one pro-science. It often reveals the opposite.

Especially when it's a gun violence study funded by the Joyce Foundation. “Since 2003, the Joyce Foundation has paid grants totaling over $12 million to gun control organizations. The largest single grantee has been the Violence Policy Center, which received $4,154,970 between 1996 and 2006, and calls for an outright ban on handguns, semi-automatic and other firearms, and substantial restrictions on gun owners.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Foundation#Gun_violence_prevention_and_gun_control

Only an anti-science liberal gun grabber would cite the lack of causation demonstrated by a study while arguing the study PROVES something. Only an anti-science liberal gun grabber would pile onto the reactionary post-Sandy Hook gun regulation bandwagon with a study that shows Connecticut already among the most legislatively gun regulated states in America. And only an anti-liberty liberal gun grabber would view American exceptionalism for strong gun rights as nothing more than the world’s most lax gun culture.

Nothing new here really. The battle between liberty and tyranny, between individual rights and the collective, between the values of our founders and those they fled has been going on for 236+ years. It’s on display all around us at all times and even more often cleverly hiding in plain sight on blogs like the one we have here.

Richard, thanks for supporting my position. I guess you must have been overwhelmed by the facts and logic in what I wrote and linked to, because you failed to present any evidence to refute what is clearly true:

More guns equals more gun deaths; more gun regulations equals less gun deaths.

Most Americans favor the gun control position of Obama, Democrats, and me. You're in a minority. See:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/some-gun-measures-broadly-backed-but-the-politics-show-an-even-split/

That's good news. It shows that most people understand that reality isn't whatever we believe it to be. Facts are real. Evidence is real.

And tens of thousands of needless deaths caused by our way out-of-control gun culture are also real. Remember the dead children. Remember Sandy Hook. I'm proud to say that I remember. Do you?

Lastly, do you know anything about the scientific method? The source of funding for a study doesn't have anything to do with how valid the study is. There's nothing wrong with an organization that favors gun control funding a study about the effectiveness of gun control regulations.

That's how we learn: by studying issues and gathering evidence. Are you familiar with how the NRA is funded? In large part by money from gun manufacturers. By your logic, this means that anything Wayne La Pierre says can't be trusted.

(In case you do believe this, I agree with you.)

Next time you leave a comment on my blog about a study, please respond with cogent factual observations. Name calling is OK up to a point, but that point is reached very quickly.


I guess we'll have to put controls on pressure cookers now that we know they were used to make the bombs in the recent Boston Massacre where 170 people were mutilated to varying degrees of severity and three dead.

I propose background checks on anyone purchasing a pressure cooker and a two week waiting period before taking delivery of it, pending FBI investigation of their premises for other bomb-making material.

Frankly, I prefer an all-out ban on pressure cookers, especially high capacity pressure cookers. I mean, if there were no pressure cookers no one could be blown up by them, right?


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