A Reasonable Proposal

People who oppose changing gun laws like to point out simple but irrelevant truths.

If you took away all of the guns, you would still have some killings. We know that and it is beside the point.

Airplanes and cars and loads of fertilizer all can be dangerous in the wrong hands. We know this, also. But we also know that all of these things have purposes that do not involve killing a large number of people very quickly. We have restrictions on who can fly a plane, who can drive a car, and, I imagine there are usually some restrictions on purchasing large amounts of certain fertilizers.

The terrible events of 9/11 caused some real changes in airport security for everyone.

Yet, there are those among us who think they should be allowed to buy and own assault-style weapons whose only purpose is killing large numbers of humans very quickly. To take away their right to own such slaughter-weapons is somehow against their constitutional rights.

So much for a load of fertilizer.

All rights have limits. My favorite is the First Amendment, the one from which all other freedoms flow. But, I know that even that is not absolute. The First Amendment does not give you the right to incite violence, to spread certain kinds of false information, to slander the innocent, and so on. We accept those limitations and realize they do little or nothing to make the First Amendment less meaningful and effective.

The Second Amendment is vague and poorly written and was created in a time when there was no standing army, when rifles fired one shot before reloading, and when one of the things that a militia might need to be called up to mitigate would be a slave uprising.

It should likewise have limits. I am sure there are those who think they should be allowed to have nuclear weapons or stockpile nerve gas in their basements if they so choose because: Second Amendment. Most of us see that as crazy. So we know the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

If we are going to draw a line, how about drawing it here: Let properly background- checked civilians own the pistols and rifles they need for hunting and home protection, and even for target shooting. But draw the line between them and the properly qualified and trained military, who would be the only people with automatic rifles, grenade launchers, and missiles.

I don't think that what I am proposing would infringe on anyone’s Constitutional right to protect themselves. I don't think this is hard to figure out. Let's treat the couplet of mass-shootings that took place last weekend the way we did 9/11.

Let's make some real changes to the gun laws of this land, and let’s do it soon.

It’s Been Fifty Years…

There are not a lot of times that I can tell you, without some pondering or research, what I was doing fifty years ago that day. But today is one of them.

I was thirteen, living in my family's home, and we were all in the living room, crowded around the TV, waiting, and then watching, as Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. We then watched NASA simulations that showed us how the spacecraft would travel to lunar orbit, and how the LEM, or Lunar Excursion Module, would separate from the Command Module, and how it would land, and how Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would climb down its thin ladder to walk on the surface of the moon.

There was not much else to watch on television. All three commercial networks covered it non-stop.  I am glad that my family chose to watch the coverage of Walter Cronkite and the team at CBS News. Occasionally we flipped to NBC or ABC to see how they were telling the story, but CBS was our homebase. We trusted Walter and his people. He seemed to really care about the astronauts and the mission and how important the whole endeavor was to us. And I cannot over-emphasize what a big deal this was for the workers at NASA, the people of the United States of America, and, corny as it may sound to some, for the whole human race.  

During the hours and days after the successful launch, Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke were interviewed in the studio. I had just discovered who these authors were and had barely begun to read them at the time. CBS also chose to cut away to affiliates is every state – or, at least it seemed so at the time. Ordinary people in every corner of the country were shown and interviewed, to get a kind of group photo of the US at a special moment in time. We all knew that not everyone was in favor of the billions spent on the space program, but it seemed that the nation was united in wishing the astronauts well. We would not breath normally until Armstrong and Aldrin had left footprints on the glowing orb we looked up to at night, and they and Michael Collins had returned safely to earth.

The spacecraft took off on Wednesday, July 16, 1969, and the Eagle landed on Sunday, July 20. I must have slept for some of that time, but I don’t remember doing that. My most salient memories are of actions that occurred far away from me, sometimes hundreds of thousands of miles away. I know the Apollo capsule splashed down on July 24, in the North Pacific Ocean, and I imagine CBS and the other networks ceased the wall-to-wall coverage they had been doing and broadcast some other programming in the days between the liftoff from the moon and the return to earth, but I can’t tell you anything about it.

There were, of course, other moon missions – most of them successful – and the US and other nations have accomplished great things with manned and unmanned spacecraft in the decades since, I don’t think these great accomplishments brought us together and made our hearts beat in quite the synchrony that the Apollo 11 mission did.  

I do hope we will go back someday. I hope we will establish permanent colonies on the moon, maybe other planets as well. I hope I live to see some of that. But, I feel very fortunate to have witnessed all of that, even if only on television, and in the world of my imagination.

23 and we!

We Americans have an embarrassment of riches right now.

 23 (or is it 24?) men and women from various backgrounds are competing for the Democratic nomination -- and any of them would make a better president than the one we currently have. (Actually, you could just pick any American, 35 or older, off the street, and, chances are at least fair that person would be a better president than the current hairball in chief. That is how low the bar has been set.

We have some really good candidates vying for your attention, and 20 of them will debate Wednesday and Thursday nights. This is exciting. Let's all watch and pick our favorites, and be prepared to vote in the primaries and to support for whomever comes out on top, come November, 2020.