Who do you believe is responsible for the bloodshed in Orlando?

(Before I begin a new Blog Post, I want to say how grateful I am to the Comal County (TX) Republican Women's Club and Joyce Yanuzzi.  I was afforded the opportunity to speak with this group on Monday night and made many new friends.  I also was fortunate to run into a few old friends, including Comal County Commissioner Jen Crownover.  I had such a wonderful evening with this intelligent, engaging group of Comal County citizens, and was reminded that folks are paying very close attention to politics in 2016,  Personally, I feel much better with that little bit of knowledge.)



Late Monday evening I took the time to read an editorial on FoxNews written by FoxNews contributor Greg Gutfield.  I usually appreciate Gutfield's perspective, and his clear, concise and flowing style is welcome.  I'm sure I'm not alone when I express an annoyance with self-important commentary that prides itself on how many times the reader has to retreat to a dictionary.  Notice to all online contributors: most people don't bother with the dictionary; they just move on to the next article.  Gutfield decided to pen this particular commentary after observing the collective response of the media to the events in Orlando, Florida on June 12/13th.  So what did happen?  How would you answer that simple question?  From my optic, on July 12/13, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando Florida, a fanatical Islamic Terrorist opened fire with various weapons and killed forty-nine innocent people.  As Gutfield so deftly points out, the American people seem to be split regarding the cause of the violence in Orlando.  According to Gutfield, The New York Times blamed Republicans for the attack, and the Huffington Post blamed Christians (I had trouble excepting this as fact, so I did my homework, and Gutfield is spot-on).  In the South and in the Red State heartland, people blamed fanatical Islamic terrorism.  I wish I had the tools to take a poll of my readers because I would be fascinated to know where you assign blame.

If we cut through the politically correct crap for a few minutes, this one is truly a no-brainer.  The Left/media continues to try and create this evil boogeyman "The Christian Bigot" in America, because the are so desperate for him to exist (and yes, I made it a "he"!).  The fact that we have no examples of reprisal attacks following the Boston episode, the California murders, and now this event in Orlando, is certainly a credit to the faith we have in Law Enforcement to do the job.  Since the Left is unable to screech about Christians rioting in Moslem neighborhoods and burning down mosques, they have decided to blame Christians for the actual genesis of the event.  And since the shooter was obviously a Muslim, it then becomes necessary to show how his actions were caused by both Donald Trump and Christian bigots, who gave the killer no other outlet for his anger (caused by bigotry and racism, no doubt).  Try and hang with my, folks; I know it can get a bit confusing.  Although the New York Times, which hasn't printed a political news piece worth a bucket of shit since Gettysburg, and The Huffington Post gave the appearance of focusing on two separate culprits (Republicans and Christians), make no mistake; Republican and Christian are the same in their entertaining political lexicon.  Blaming conservative white America (yes, I went there) for the actions of an ISIS-inspired Muslim Extremist lunatic creates a discussion which fills the room.  We were talking about President Obama's determination to never use the word Muslim in the same sentence as terrorist/terrorism, but now the subject has changed.  We are now discussing the possibility that the American people might somehow hold some responsibility for the Pulse nightclub murders.  The narrative for the Left doesn't change.  We are always the guilty party, and must apologize.  And as we consider the absurdity of that thought, we aren't really paying attention to the fact that Obama has ordered the enter federal bureaucracy to follow his strict example and not include "Muslim" in any conversation regarding the terrible events of that night.

As a former government servant, I am surprised at how quickly the federal workforce accepts these precedence-setting orders from the Executive Branch.  How bad is it?  Just follow the breadcrumbs, folks.  Over the past eight years, we have suffered through one scandal after another, including the more famous examples at the Justice Department and IRS.  When the Obama Administration arrived in DC in 2009, it issued an important set of marching orders: when an opportunity arises to replace a retiring manager from any of the various departments or agencies in the federal government, the replacement will not be the most qualified individual, it will be a political appointee.  These political appointees started popping up everywhere, especially on our television screens, testifying before one Congressional Committee after another.  To give credit where it is due, these folks did their job (especially that little guy from IRS who looks so much like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, that I start mumbling, "my precious, my precious", whenever I see his smirk).  They stone-walled, obfuscated, cleared-their-throat, feigned ignorance, and flat-out lied to protect the Obama Administration.  So when the order came down to redact all mentions of "Islamic" from details on terrorism, people understood their job quite clearly.  Sadly, I had half-expected, hoped that maybe someone at the FBI or somewhere else at Justice, would stand up and say, "this is ridiculous; we are at war with Muslim extremists."  But I don't blame anyone for not putting their job on the line.  We all have bills to pay and families to care for.

So why is President Obama so darned set against associating the word "Muslim" with terrorism?  The easy answer is to assume that somehow he is actually Muslim himself, and has been hiding the fact for years.  President Obama is not a Muslim.  Personally, I don't believe he's a Christian, either (just my opinion, folks).  I believe that Barack Obama's religion is the kind of Socialism that his father espoused in the late 1960s, Kenya.  Obama believes, as his father did, that Europe and the United States in particular, engaged in an undeclared war for many years against anyone who opposed our interests.  Much of what Obama believes is in fact, true.  For years, in particular the time periods following World War II and the Vietnam Conflict, our Intelligence Agencies and on occasion our Armed Forces, took action that we believed at the time was necessary for our long-term security.  We did support and arm the Taliban against Russia in the 1980s, and we did support Saddam Hussein in his late-1980s war with Iran.  We have also supported Israel each and every time that nation has been ambushed by multiple enemies all at once.  Obama has made it clear that he believes the United States owes apologies all over the Arab world, and also in Africa (Congo, South Africa) and South America (Chile, Paraguay).  Whether or not you agree with that view of our overall impact in various regions of the world, will say a lot about how you view this blog post as well.

Hopefully my perspective will help to explain why President Obama is so reticent to connect "terrorism" with Islam.  He does not believe that it is helpful nor fair to make the connection, and after decades and decades of unfair treatment from the United States, Islam deserves the benefit of the doubt.  I understand the argument, but I certainly do not agree.     

The events surrounding the terrorist attack in Orlando make it obvious that we need to review gun-purchase laws.

I'm sure many of my readers will be surprised with the direction I am taking on this issue, but it's a simple case of common sense.  The murderer who killed 49 people last Saturday/Sunday night, purchased two of the murder weapons a couple days before he committed his act of terrorism.  There was no need for a legitimate background check because most states do not insist upon that requirement.  If an FBI background check had been in place, he never would have been allowed to purchase those weapons.  The National Rifle Association (NRA) and Gun Rights Organizations are going to argue that he would have been able to access the same weapons illegally on the Black Market.  I would much rather that the asshole had been forced to dig up contacts in Orlando's seedy gun-selling underground, than to know he was able to purchase the weapons legally just hours after entering the gun store.  Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but then he might have gotten caught up in a law enforcement sting operation, or he may have bought a misfiring weapon.  As for those who argue that if he was truly determined to kill people, he would have just used a different weapon.  I would be a heck of a lot more comfortable if he had entered the club with a butterknife, wouldn't you?

No, I have not changed by opinion vis-à-vis the Second Amendment.  I will defend with my life the right of United States citizens to legally own a firearm.  But the establishment of a two-day waiting period, to include fulsome background checks, will only help us keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of the sleeper cells we on the right love to talk about so much.  The NRA argues that additional background checks are a slippery slope, that will eventually lead to more onerous prohibitions.  Isn't that what the NRA is for?  I assume the dues of the hundreds of thousands of NRA members will provide more than enough resources to prevent a full legal assault on the Second Amendment.  What I am calling for is reasonable and timely.  We can't continue to call for the left to compromise if we aren't willing to do so ourselves.  From my perspective, only persons with troubling backgrounds should be opposed to a two-day waiting period.

Now to really piss off my conservative buddies.  Assault and automatic weapons are not covered by the Second Amendment.  When the Amendment was written and voted into law, assault and automatic weapons DID NOT EXIST.  So how can they be covered under the Second Amendment?  I do not hunt, but the people I know who do, use either a single-shot rifle or a bow-and-arrow.  Just how dead does the Buck have to be, that it requires an AR-15 to take down?  Assault weapons and automatic guns exist for one reason, and that is for killing groups of people.  I will make a deal with those who disapgree with me.  If it appears that our government is moving towards a dictatorship, I will gladly fight to remove the prohibition on assault and automatic weapons. 

I do support the Second Amendment and I am enough of a student of our Constitution to believe that it was added to allow private citizens the opportunity to own a weapon as part of a state militia, in the event that our government did become oppressive.  I make every effort to follow the Constitution to the letter, and when an issue is nebulous, then I study the background with the hope of determining the intent of our Founding Fathers.  We do have threats to our freedoms, but for the most part they come from abroad.  Law Enforcement and the U.S. Armed Forces are more than capable of protecting us.  And if the time comes that the Army needs to be supplanted by militias, then the legally-purchased handguns and rifles will have to suffice until other arrangments are made.