Everybody knows that America is badly in debt. The Federal government has a deficit of over 16 trillion dollars (that they admit to, the unfunded liabilities are MUCH higher!) and it runs an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars. Those are pretty intimidating numbers, but does anyone really understand how much this is? Does anyone’s mind wrap around these numbers or are they just words that we hear and say “that’s a lot”? Honestly, I have trouble imagining a million dollars.
A billion is a thousand millions and a trillion is a thousand billions (or a million millions). Wait a minute! That doesn’t help me at all. It’s just too big to really comprehend. I have to find a different way to conceive of this…..
If I earned $50,000 a year, it would take me 20 years to earn a million dollars. Okay, I can wrap my head around that. How about a billion? It would take me 20,000 years to earn that much money. (Guess I won’t ever earn a billion dollars!)
Maybe it will help if I change how I look at a billion… A billion seconds ago it was 1981. A billion minutes ago would have been the century after Christ was born. Impressive! A billion hours ago was the stone age. (Wow! How neat is that? I love archeology.) A billion days ago, no human beings walked on the face of the earth. Our Federal government spends over 400 million dollars an hour. At that rate, a billion dollars ago was two and a half hours ago! OMG!
What happens when I try to understand “trillion”, a million millions? If you spent 1 million dollars a day since Jesus Christ was born, you would not have spent ¾ of a trillion dollars yet. The government of the United States has had a deficit of between 1.3 and 1.4 trillion dollars every year for the past 4 years. That is unbelievable but true. It boggles the mind to realize that those running the government are so irresponsible that they overspend by that much. Yet our president has the audacity to say that America does not have a spending problem.
His audacity doesn’t stop there. Oh no. I have frequently wondered at his ability to tell bold-faced lies with a straight face and sincere tone in his voice. After the fiscal cliff fiasco he had the nerve to say he had prevented tax increases for 98% of Americans and had been responsible for reducing Federal spending. Both lies that are easily seen through, but the media and many people just go along as if they were the truth. It’s enough to make me nauseous! I need to change the topic.
Okay. So let’s try changing perspective on another issue I really care about – gun control. What happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a horrendous tragedy created by a mentally ill person performing an unspeakably evil act. This young man, who had been home schooled by his mother because he “couldn’t handle” the school classes, was on some unnamed medication for his problem. He is guilty, he is responsible, no one else. The weapon he used is just an inanimate object. He broke multiple laws including already existing gun control laws.
Obviously, breaking a law did not deter him any more than it deters any common criminal. Laws only affect the behavior of law-abiding people and law-abiding people are not going around shooting anyone without just cause (i.e. self-defense). To punish law abiding individuals because of the occasional act of an insane or evil person is not the right thing to do. Taking away the individual’s ability to protect himself is, in itself, an evil act.
The poor families of these murdered children didn’t even get time to grieve before anti-gun advocates started using the deaths as a political weapon to push for more gun control. Nobody, not the liberal media or the anti-gunners, paid any attention to an event that happened 2 days later. A man entered a restaurant and shot his girlfriend. The other patrons ran out of the restaurant and into the theater next door. The shooter followed them and started to shoot but was shot himself by an armed citizen who pulled out her gun in order to protect everyone. There were a total of 2 deaths in this event – guess that’s why it didn’t make the news. It didn’t fit the storyline anti-gunners want to push.
Let’s look a little more at the mental illness factor… David Kupelian has done some interesting research on mass murders. He researched and wrote the book How Evil Works, an excellent and very informative book. In this book, he documents the fact that most perpetrators of mass murders were either on, or just recently coming off of, taking psychiatric medications. In a recent article by Mr. Kupelian titled “The giant, gaping hole in Sandy Hook reporting”, he wrote “Whether we like to admit it or not, it is undeniable that when certain people living on the edge of sanity take psychiatric medications, those drugs can – and occasionally do – push them over the edge into violent madness. Remember, every single SSRI antidepressant sold in the United States of America today, no matter what brand or manufacturer, bears a “black box” warning – the government’s most serious drug warning – of “increased risks of suicidal thinking and behavior, known as suicidality, in young adults ages 18 to 24.” Common sense tells us that where there are suicidal thoughts – especially in a very, very angry person – homicidal thoughts may not be far behind. Indeed, the mass shooters we are describing often take their own lives when the police show up, having planned their suicide ahead of time.”… “In the end, it may well turn out that knowing what kinds of guns the young man used isn’t nearly as important as what kind of drugs he used.” I couldn’t agree more.
You can contact Marie at marielozito4nh@gmail.com