MY NEW BLOG

I have traded in this blog for a blog of fiction. While finishing my first book I am writing my second on my blog. I will post one short chapter each day. It has already begun to check it out go to www.jhaywriting.blogspot.com

Gun Law Naivety

I understand the desire to avoid more tragedies. However by making us more vulnerable is only counter productive. I read in the news about the woman that shot the home invader in Georgia. It really does make the point for not banning assault rifles if people would just stop being stubborn and listen.

The woman was using a six shot revolver, striking the intruder five times, but what if she had missed? What if the intruder had an assault rifle to return fire with? The result would have been much different.

We live in a state of naivety. Do we really think that stricter gun laws on assault rifles will simply stop the violence? I hate be so blunt but how stupid are these people?

Assault rifles will be present in our country the same as they are around world with or without more gun laws, with or without the fact that it is legal or illegal for us to own them. The only thing that will come from making assault rifles illegal will be that people will only be able to buy them illegally, and yes they will buy them. So now it will be primarily in the hands of people participating in illegal activity. Wow great idea America now only the criminals will have them. While we sit back with our handguns the criminals are coming with their assault rifles.

Do we really believe that making them illegal will stop criminals from smuggling them into our country? We speak of protection yet we have thousands of unemployed veterans that actually know how to use them. The white house wants to help them find work yet they are overlooking the obvious. Allow schools, businesses, or whoever has the desire for an assault rifle for protection to hire them. Start a program through the government that will fund it. We can give money to banks but we can’t make a bill for the people that keep our country free.

I know a lot of people will still brush this opinion to the side. Hopefully someone with a different opinion might listen. Making these guns illegal is not the answer. Society is the problem not the guns. The guns aren’t killing people. People are killing people.

Politically Incorrect

The war in Syria has been an ongoing issue for nearly two years now. While I admire the international community for their vocal support. The people speaking of putting foreign troops on the ground should really rethink their opinions.

Who are we replacing Assad and the regimes forces with? Is it with democracy and freedom? Or is it more oppression under different leadership? There have been several reports of extremists groups linked to terrorism joining the rebellion. How can we hunt these men down around the world but let them run amuck in Syria?

What do we have to gain? What does the world have to gain? Allowing extremists to join the conflict is only going to hurt the rest of the world. We are basically watching another Afghanistan forming before our very eyes and we are cheering them on.

We cannot really believe that this is really just about freeing the people from a ruthless dictator. We have already neglected the situation in Mali and this is only going to add fuel to the fire. More extremists will start uprising under false pretenses, appearing to free a people but secretly creating another safe haven for terrorists.

Have we all forgotten the attack on the American embassy in Libya, can we really say that terrorists aren’t setting up shop in Libya? Just another unstable region for Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to blend into and plot more atrocities against the international community; for us to do nothing is hypocrisy at its best.

We cannot claim to have a war on terror when we are not fighting it head on. Allowing it in some regions but not in others. In one country we intervene but in another we do nothing. Who are we to determine who is worth saving and who is not?

We watch all of the terror in Africa and speak of how terrible it is; yet we allow it to continue. We cannot say that we went to war to save people because if that were true we would have done much more. We would not sit back and allow hundred of thousands of people to be viciously murdered. We speak of how awful the holocaust was while we watch it continue on television. 

The message we are sending is that genocide is ok as long as it's not in our own backyard or one of our ally’s backyards. We speak of what is wrong but not of how to fix it. Of course not because that wouldn’t be politically correct. Well I’m sorry but sometimes being politically correct is incorrect.  

The New Year

With all of the things going on in the world it seems that none of these problems are capable of transcending this topic of conversation. What is your new years resolution? What is my new years resolution? The same as it always is, to not have a new years resolution. I live each day the same as the before it, to try to find a way to make a better life for myself.

It’s not about what you’re going to do this year, this month, this week, or even this day. It’s about what you’re going to do with your life. Definitely a task that is much easier to say than it is to do. I think the hardest thing in life is, knowing what you want to do and taking the steps to get there, but in the end it isn’t enough. That is why the only resolution that is really worth having in your life is to never give up.

I recently spent six months writing my first book. For the last six weeks I have been going through the process of trying to find a literary agent and a publisher to give me a chance. I know it often takes writers over a year to get someone to show interest in representing and publishing their book. I now know it is much harder to sell your book than it is write it.

I know that I might not succeed and I stress over it every day. I just try to draw peace from knowing that at least I’m trying. At least I am not just sitting idly and waiting for something great to come along. I understand that not everyone is going to have faith in me and not everyone is going to support me. Luckily I have never been the type to care too much about what other people think.

If you live your life trying to please everyone else you’re going to find yourself to be the only one that’s miserable. What is the point? Why would you go out of your way to make other people happy but not yourself? It must be the masochist inside that causes people to do that. I guess that sometimes the only thing that gives you joy, is knowing that at least you’re choosing to suffer.

So I encourage you to think outside the box. Don’t fret over what to do with your new year and try to focus on how you can change your life. It’s not all about failing or succeeding; it’s about trying, just keep trying.

Gun Control Fixes Nothing

I don’t know what the white house was thinking when they spoke of major changes for gun control. It was, at the very least, reckless and irresponsible. How could they not know what was going to happen next? Now our citizens are in a gun craze. Gun stores are sold out and are being told it could be months until they are restocked.

This means that now there are more deadly assault rifles in possession of our citizens than ever before. How could this possibly make anything better? I can’t believe that they are not intelligent enough to keep quiet about this. Now there are people with stockpiles of these guns in their homes.

I am not in anyway saying that the people that have bought these guns are not fit to possess them. It is just the risk that comes with it that worries me. Home invasions have become a normal thing for most troubled communities. Even nicer communities and people in rural areas have these problems. So what happens when a strung out drug addict breaks into a home and finds ten assault rifles? I can tell you exactly what is going to happen. They’re going to take these guns to there drug dealer buddies and now we’ve really got a mess on our hands.

I see an increase in violence because of this. It is hard for a person to unload an arsenal of weapons and ammunition without someone taking notice. This means that more and more people are going to become targets. Then word of mouth comes into play and makes things worse. A rumor starts about an elderly couple having five assault rifles in their basement. The wrong ears hear this and decide to break into the home. Killing the elderly couple only to discover that there aren’t any guns in the home. Another senseless tragedy and I am sure that this is not going to be an isolated incident.

Similar crimes will be popping up at record rates all over the country. How hard is it for people to think before they speak? These are the people that are supposed to be leading our country not harming it. Now instead of someone only wanting to buy one assault rifle, they’re going to buy five assault rifles because who knows how much longer we’ll be able to purchase them.

So what will happen when assault rifles become outlawed? Do we really expect our citizens to just voluntarily turn in the weapons that they spent their hard earn money on. Will we have another witch hunt on our hands? Will law enforcement begin storming the homes of the people that don’t give them up? Have they even thought this theory through? Who wants to break down the door of a residence that you know has assault rifles inside?

Whatever the outcome will be I would like to hope for the best but based on the past it seems very unlikely. Now instead of getting our citizens to rethink ownership of assault rifles by the average citizens, we have sent them into a craze to get them before they’re gone. Once again our government will attempt to enforce our rules through force instead of education.

First it was alcohol, then it was drugs, and soon it seems it will be guns. Although politicians wont admit it. The laws they create do little to regulate what we can and can’t have. During alcohols prohibition people still got drunk. Drugs are still outlawed today but people are still getting high. If guns are banned people will find a way to get them to. Would it not be safer for them to be sold through a business, then for people to be buying and selling them on the street? That will only lead us to one thing, more senseless killing. Once again our leaders will find a way to create more problems and fix nothing. 

Spengler Lures and Kills Firemen

By now I'm sure that most of you have heard about William H. Spengler Jr. and what he did. If you haven't then first and foremost I should probably share his background with you.

In 1980 he was arrested and by 1981 he was convicted of murder. This upstanding citizen beat his 91-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer. What could possess a man to make him do such a thing? In my opinion the only reasonable answer would be pure evil. Now if the crime he committed isn't horrific enough wait until you find out about his punishment.

In 1998 the parole board decided that it would be safe to release Spengler from prison and allow him to return to society. 18 years is a very long time to be incarcerated but is it justice? Is it enough to allow a man that took a life, return to his? His grandmother Rose Spengler will never be able to return to her life so why should her killer be allowed to return to his? If you take a life you should lose yours, plain and simple.

I don't care if he found God and started a church while he was in prison. It is still not enough to allow him back into society. This man is the definition of a cold-blooded killer. He repeatedly beat his own grandmother, a 91-year-old defenseless woman, to death with a hammer. How could we ever believe that it would be safe to let him walk amongst us? It is completely unacceptable. I hope that the members of the parole board that released him feel as guilty and responsible as they should.

14 years after his release he committed another sick act. He started a fire at his home and dialed 911. He stayed and waited for firefighters to come to the scene. Then upon their arrival he shot at the men that were coming to help him. If this isn't premeditated murder, I don't know what is. Two of these firefighters were killed while two others were wounded.

My heart goes out to the families of these men that lost their lives while trying to help others. The very man they came to help is the same man that took their lives. I also feel for Spengler’s family because he also killed his sister who was found in his home after the shooting.

After exchanging gunfire with police he did what every other cowardly man does in these situations. He turned his gun on himself and took his own life. They're man enough to kill innocent people but they aren't man enough to handle the consequences.

Although I know that my words won't make any difference. I still have to share my plea with the media. Please stop talking about these stories. I can't help but feel like this is exactly why people are committing these heinous acts. They have an ever-longing need for attention. It is almost child like; it is the same thing as a child acting out for attention. They feel like even bad attention is better than no attention.

When we flood our headlines with these stories it only adds fuel to the fire. Publishing this mans note that he left behind is exactly what he wanted to happen. This sick and distorted man stated in his note that he wanted to go out doing what he does best, killing people. This is not the mind of a man that is safe enough to be released from prison. This is not the mind of a man that anyone would want living next door or down the street or even in the same state.

Spengler does not deserve our attention. He doesn’t deserve anything from anyone. He is not worthy of our eyes to read about or our ears to hear about. He isn't even worthy of the prison cell that he once called home. The only thing that he deserved was the needle in his arm that he never received. If he had, none of this would have happened.

The Fiscal Cliff

I feel like the fiscal cliff situation isn’t getting as much attention as it should be, at least not from my generation. I’m not saying that no one cares I’m just saying that not enough of us do.  I think that we all still have some form of blind faith in our political leaders; that they’ll take care of what needs to be done. I will be honest I really didn’t know much about the fiscal cliff situation until recently. Now that I see the consequences I feel like I have to say something about it. For those that still don’t know, don’t worry we all will soon enough if an agreement can’t be met.

Paychecks will be smaller for starters. For the wealthy this isn’t much of an issue but for the working class living paycheck to paycheck this could be life changing. Congress has had such a nonchalant attitude about this and it’s sickening. Obviously they have had a long time to get this figured out and here we are with less than a week to go until it’ll be too late.

Why should the politicians care? At the end of the day they’re still making a six-figure income. So why should the rest of us losing money be any of their concern? The law of the land seems to be that if it isn’t your problem then you probably don’t care about it.

I mean just think about all of the other problems going on in our country that nobody cares about, that is, unless it affects them directly. The overall lack of caring in this country is at times beyond belief. Kurt Cobain said it best when he said, “My generations apathy. I’m disgusted with it. I’m disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whining about for years.”

No one is innocent this statement is true for all of us. No one cares about crime until they get robbed. They don’t care about guns until someone they know gets shot and killed. No one cares about drugs until their child becomes an addict.

We will care about the fiscal cliff if an agreement isn’t met. Maybe not all of us but a lot of us, programs helping the poverty stricken have more of an effect on society then you think. That program that’s feeding the poor is keeping someone from breaking into your house so that they can eat. The intervention programs for youth in the inner cities is keeping that kid from joining a gang and either killing another kid or getting himself killed. The housing programs, they're keeping a homeless man from squatting in the vacant house next door.

Everything trickles down just like the rain. It might only hit the top of the glass but eventually it’s going to reach the bottom and touch everything along the way. Life’s not all about you and me. It’s about all of us coming together to make this country great again. It’s about using your voice to make a change.

Today it’s the fiscal cliff but tomorrow or the next day or maybe next week it will be something different. The politicians aren’t going to care until we make them care. Until they realize that we will not continue to be quiet as our lives are downgraded because of their indecision. Not being able to come to an agreement is not an acceptable statement. I don’t want to hear that because if they really were trying then this would have already been dealt with. 

We live in a country that thrives to be the best and yet we, the citizens, continue to settle for less. Have we all forgotten the American dream? Or have we simply given up on it?

Who's To Blame? - The System & Us

It is a scary reality that we live in. If only more people were educated in the truth of the system, the situations that the government has knowingly placed innocent civilians into on a daily basis. With all of the mass shootings that have been going on it seems like most people are trying to decide where to point the finger; from the mall shooting, to the school shooting, and who can forget the massacre at the movie theatre. 

What frustrates me the most is the politicians that claim to be just as confused as the rest of us. So what is the problem? Now obviously I can’t say that these are the reasons but I certainly believe that they are playing a factor.

I remember reading after the most recent school shooting that there has been questions about whether or not the man responsible was mentally ill but to do any them really know how the mentally ill are treated? The only way for a mentally ill person to be hospitalized in an institution is if the person is homicidal or suicidal. Now at first glance you might think that this is reasonable. That this should cover all of the bases but the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t.

Did you know that a person can be hearing voices and still be released from the care of a mental institution? Before you say that I’m crazy, please, do some research because if you do you will see that I’m telling you the truth, they can be not only hearing voices but talking back to these voices. They could be staring in the mirror and talking to themselves or another person that they believe is there but as long as they are not homicidal or suicidal they can and will be released from an institution.

There are people like this walking the streets in cities all over the country. Do you still feel safe?  However the mental health system is not the only system at fault. Lets look at the department of corrections. This is the system that, in theory, is supposed to help criminals change.

When criminals break the rules in prison they are sent to solitary confinement. For weeks or maybe even months, if they continue to get into trouble they could be sentenced to solitary confinement for years. Just imagine spending 12 years in solitary and then one day you are released from prison. How can we expect these people to be capable of dealing with life? After spending 23 hours a day for 12 years in a cell. You’re setting up these people to fail and that is why so many of them are.

 The system is broken and everybody knows it but no one will do anything.  Tragedies happen and instead of us demanding changes we continue our lives without a care until it happens to us.  No one ever cares until they become a victim. These politicians look at these situations and they say, “oh that’s awful” but they don’t care because it’s not their problem. How much longer can we wait? How many more people have to die before we all start to care? If we don’t speak up we will be held down forever.

Melissa Nelson - Fired For Being Too Pretty

To be honest the first time I heard about Melissa Nelson being fired because she was too irresistible I thought that it was a joke or that maybe there was more to the story. I read and read and read and no that was the whole story. I am not writing this as an advocate for women’s rights. I am writing this as an advocate for basic human rights.

I wish I could say that I am shocked but I can’t.  There have been times that people were killed for no reason other than the God that they chose to believe in and that was ok. There once was a time that people were separated because of their skin color and that wasn’t against the law either. So why should I be surprised that it is also legal to be fired because you are too attractive. What’s next, women being fired from bars because they are too unattractive, a man being fired from a gym because he is too overweight, the possibilities are endless. They take away discrimination of race, religion, and skin color. So they replace it with discrimination of physical attributes because as of now apparently that is legal.

Melissa Nelson was not fired because she was caught stealing. She wasn’t fired for forging prescriptions for pain medication. She was fired for being herself. She looked too irresistible in her scrubs. Newsflash, all women look attractive in scrubs. Any man that says he disagrees is lying and it’s probably because of the same reason that got Melissa fired, an angry wife. Attractive women look attractive no matter what they are wearing. So for all of you attractive women going to work in scrubs beware. Today could be your last day.

So can somebody please explain sexual harassment to me? Melissa Nelsons boss told her that if she saw his pants bulging then she would know that her clothing was inappropriate, now maybe I’m wrong but doesn’t that sound like sexual harassment? Doesn’t that sound like something that is supposed to illegal in the workplace?  This man even asked her how often she experiences an orgasm. Now normally wouldn’t the person that made that comment be the one getting fired?

This is sad at the very least. To know that now any man or woman deemed too attractive can be legally fired. Next people will be fired for being too unattractive. Any bosses spouse can say that you had better fire this person because they are too attractive and I am so insecure that I am going to leave you if you don’t. Now please take notice that I have not named any names I am simply throwing out scenarios. However you decide to put the pieces together is on you.  Just think about my next statement. If Melissa Nelson was ugly she would still have her job. The sad thing is that you can’t be mad at me for saying that because it is the truth. It was accepted in the court of law that Melissa Nelson was fired for being too irresistible.

I don’t know what else to say about this. It is wrong in so many ways and it blows my mind that nothing has been done to fix this. No one has stepped up and said that this is not ok. Just think if it was your daughter. If your little girl called you crying and told you that she was fired from her job because she was too pretty. This is America, this is the land of the free, and we’re better than this.

Terror - South of the Border

We are living in a society that thrives on fear. We thrive on what we must do to prevent something terrible happening. We are shown how terrorism is this country’s biggest threat to national security. Yet we allow the drug wars in Mexico to go on without any interference from our military. The Middle East is thousands of miles away. There is an even greater threat just south of the border.

I am no expert and I don’t have all of the statistics. What I do have is common sense. The death toll in this country from drugs on a daily basis easily trumps the number of people killed in our country from terrorism. Every day that we stand by and do nothing about the drug problem in this country we impose our own form of terrorism. It’s not just the low-income neighborhoods that have this drug problem. The drug epidemic is everywhere; no portion of our country is spared.

Drug overdoses occur every day in this country. A user can do the same drugs every day for years and over time will convince themselves that they will be fine. We fail to realize that every day we do survive we are still causing damage to our bodies. There’s no warning when enough is enough. One day you are getting high and before you know it your life is over. I have read that 100 people die from drug overdoses in the United States every day. Now lets look at this in a monthly perspective, that’s 3,000 people every month dying because of drugs. There’s 365 days in a year, so in a yearly perspective we will find that 36,500 people will die from drug overdoses. Now in ten years that number becomes 365,000 people dying and that turns into borderline genocide. This becomes a self-imposed genocide on our country that we continue to turn a blind eye to. I understand our mission in the Middle East but it should not be our only priority. We have an enemy south of our border that for whatever reason doesn’t really seem to matter to anyone.

I have read that in 2005 there were over two million home invasions in the United States. I would be willing to bet that at least 75% of these home invasions were committed by someone that was addicted to drugs. So 1.5 million burglaries by committed by addicts. More lives ruined because of narcotics. Then if we start to look at robbery, kidnapping, and auto theft we will see what drugs are doing to our nation. Not only the people victimized by these crimes are the victims. The people that are committing them are also victims of the drugs that are poisoning their minds. How many inmates grew up in broken homes? Grew up in family’s torn apart because of drug abuse; parents turning to drug trafficking to support their own habits leading to imprisonment and their children going into the system.

If we look at the numbers and we look at the affect on the American people. It almost begins to look like terror. Home grown terrorism that is destroying lives on a daily basis. While acts of foreign terrorism are just as deadly and shouldn’t be ignored, the terror in our own backyards can’t be ignored either. We need to stop calling drugs a problem and start calling them terror because that is exactly what it is. Minds poisoned, family’s ruined, and life’s wasted; by a war south of our border that we continue to do nothing about.

Clearly the Mexican government can’t contain this problem. If they could we wouldn’t have cocaine and heroin flooding our streets. This is not a time to sit back and do nothing. Obviously our faith in their efforts was generous to say the least. We must realize our mistakes and re-evaluate our priorities. Our troops are out of Iraq and according to Obama they shouldn’t be in Afghanistan for much longer. Our efforts must be re-directed to the nation that is destroying ours from the inside out. If we don’t, things will never change and we already know what will continue to happen. There will be no one else to blame, just ourselves.