From My Cold Dead Hands

Joseph thinks that I should/could start a blog that would just be me ranting about CNN. See, I'm pretty much obsessed with CNN - I can watch it all day and well into the night...not on a continual basis, but it's my go-to channel when I'm flicking during adverts [no Tivo in this house]. And when I'm not ranting @ CNN there is a good chance that I'm then ranting @ CBC Radio [those aging liberal hippie douches really angry up the blood]. That's more my morning rant object, CNN riles me up but good for the afternoon and fuels my evenings. Since I'm not sure that I could have an entire blog dedicated to this, but I've decided that this subject matter is something that should really be incorporated into this blog.

However, today's rant is not specifically about CNN, although it *is* something that I saw on CNN [and on Lou Dobbs no less - and I'm seriously considering giving up Lou Dobbs as the Obama administration is very quickly morphing him into some horrific combination of Bill O'Reilly and Hannity and that type of rather obvious liberal-baiting is not my style - too easy]. Anyway, without getting into the specifics [because my blog is not about specifics - I have more of a Stephen Colbert approach] Lou and one of his pals were discussing their distaste for the proposed Attorney General, Eric Holder. Apparently Mr. Holder's big crime is that he is in favour of gun control and apparently this will totally kill freedom for all Americans. Except perhaps Americans that might be shot by guns. But who cares about them, right?

Okay, I acknowledge that Michael Moore totally addressed this and thus solved it in Bowling for Columbine - but Canada just does not have the same gun fetish as our neighbours to the south. Though he stated that Canada actually has more guns than the USA...it's just we don't like to shoot each other with the same vivacity [although still with a bit vivacity - I mean, I do live in Toronto and we can get a bit shooty]. I feel like there isn't this huge philosophical difference between Americans and Canadians [really, I don't - people just say there is, but our countries are so similar - just admit it, proud Canadians] - but this whole gun issue does seem to suggest something different. Not only do I not like guns [and obviously some Americans feel this way too, just as some Canadians must love them], but I don't like the idea of anyone owning them, maybe aside from the police. I think hunting is barbaric and I think the notion that you think you can protect yourself/family by having a gun is a bit misguided.

It seems as though Holder's agenda *is* about restricting guns, not having guns belong only to private militias [this is what was said on Lou Dobbs]. He would like to make them more expensive to register and code and to restrict the number of guns to one per month and to ban gun show sales [again, this is all from the program - I haven't done by own research yet]. This all seems reasonable, even if one views guns as a hobby [which is kinda gross, to be honest]. Some hobbies are more expensive than others - is it really a great thing to have cheap access to multiple guns whenever and wherever you want? Is the King of England really coming into your home and pushing you around that much America? Please let me know if this is the case and Canada will officially have your back. Until then...while it's often mocked, gun control can be an effective way of reducing the number of gun crimes and criminals having guns [even if they obtain their guns illegally anyway]. Over the weekend I was shocked to see how the rates of shootings by AK type guns fell [in Miami] when assault rifles were banned and then rose up again when Bush repealed this law [the rates more than doubled when the ban was lifted].