Arrested development …

Every generation thinks every following generation is not as good – not as smart, not as tough, not as disciplined, not as self-reliant. In short, not up to their standards.   

I once thought that was nuts. Of course, that was when I was in the generation they were talking about. Sure, my parents’ generation lived through the Depression and fought and won a world war. Okay, they'd been through a lot.  

But my generation was going to change the world for the better. We were smarter than our parents. We were revolutionaries. We were going to create a brighter future. And we couldn’t wait to get out on our own, away from our parents’ rules, and build a life of our own. 

Then we grew up. We got jobs. Many of us married and had kids. Suddenly we were adults, with adult responsibilities, not just to ourselves but to families, jobs, and community. 

We finally understood what our parents had learned. At least most of us did.  

The lesson was simple: you can’t be a kid forever.  At some point, you have to take responsibility for your own actions. There’s nobody to bail you out when you do stupid stuff.

As you get older the stupid stuff has greater consequences.  Do something dumb at work and you could get fired; without that paycheck, you struggle to pay rent and buy food or even gas for your car, if you’re lucky enough to have one.  Do something dumb in your marriage and you could get divorced, lose half your personal property – assuming you have anything – and end up paying alimony for years.  Smart mouth a cop and you could end up in cuffs. 

When you’re over 18 the world changes.  Turn 21 and your world has changed even more dramatically in just three short years.  Next thing you know, you’re 30 and you’d better have your act together or you’re in serious trouble in terms of your career and long-term prospects.    

If you haven’t grown up by then, too bad. The challenges are only going to get harder, the competition more intense, and the work more demanding. 

Now in my mid-60s, born in the middle of the Baby Boomer generation, I find myself wondering how the latest generation will survive. I hope I’m wrong – and maybe just repeating the same misconceptions our parents thought about us – but I really don’t think so. 

I’m certain our grandparents thought our parents were spoiling us rotten. I suspect that’s what most of our grandparents felt, especially those who raised families during the Depression.  However, my fellow Boomers did a much worse job with their own children, in my opinion. 

My parents’ generation had lived through a lot. It’s not surprising that so many of them wanted to make up for lost time. They partied. They had fun. They drank. They smoked.  They lived as if there were no tomorrow. Who can blame them?

They cared for and loved their kids, but they had their own lives to live. They were interested in what we did, but only up to a certain point. As long as we made good grades, didn’t embarrass them, didn’t cause problems at school, didn’t get arrested, get pregnant or get someone pregnant, we were pretty much okay. They were content to leave us alone. 

When we turned 18, they were happy to see us leave home – either to go to college or to a job, or in some cases to join the military. Their work was done. 

So what happened to Boomer parents? I think too many of them decided to take way too much interest – and control – in their kids’ lives.

Where we were raised as somewhat “free-range” kids whose main parental directions were to go play outside, don’t get hurt, and be home when the streetlights came on, Boomers’ kids were smothered with attention. Boomer parents micromanaged every aspect of their kids’ lives, from scheduled “play dates” to a variety of music, dance, computer skills, sports and other lessons. 

Every child of a Boomer was a genius.  A prodigy.  a superstar. The next pro athlete. And Boomer parents were dedicated to pushing their child to his or her full potential. 

That included boosting their child’s self-esteem; something many Boomers perhaps felt their own parents neglected to do enough for them.  Self-esteem became more important than a child’s actual, objective performance.  Failure was hurtful to self-esteem, so Boomer parents fought hard to prevent their children from ever experiencing failure – at anything. 

If that meant intimidating and threatening teachers to give their kid a better grade, so be it. If that meant leaning on a coach to make sure their kid got on the team, regardless of his or her ability, so be it. If that meant demanding their kid be given special treatment, special classes, special exemptions in his or her school, so be it. If that meant getting lawyers involved, so be it

The parents of Boomers would never dream of doing any of that.  The only time they went to our schools was when they absolutely had to.  Those “had-to” moments were fairly limited: a call from the school nurse or principal would do it; you being disappointed wouldn’t.  

To our parents, if you got a bad grade it was your fault, not the teacher’s. If you got detention you probably deserved it.  If you didn’t make the team, it probably was because you didn’t work hard enough or should try some other sport or activity.  If you were on a team and lost a game, get over it and learn from it.

There were no T-Ball moments I could remember. Not everybody made the team. Not everybody got As. Not everybody got into accelerated courses.  Not everybody made the Honor Roll, much less the Honor Society. Not everybody got to be Prom King or Queen, either.

And nobody I knew got promoted to the next grade simply because their parents complained enough, or it would make them feel better about themselves. 

Boomers succeeded or failed largely on their own. This was a valuable lesson.

Our parents’ benign indifference meant they were always there to comfort us when necessary, patch us up when we got hurt, but they never promised we’d get everything we wanted. If anything, they taught us that there were no guarantees everything would always turn out the way we wished.

That’s just the way things are, they’d say.  Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose.  And sometimes things just don’t go the way you planned. Get used to it.     

Stunningly, many Boomer parents failed to pass this along to their own kids. 

They protected their kids from everything. They constantly intervened. They made sure their kids felt nothing was ever their own fault.  They took charge of every decision their child should make, and managed every outcome, so their child would never, ever feel the sting of failure. 

Or get the valuable lessons failure provides.   

So what we have now is a generation – the offspring of those Boomers – who don’t know how to fend for themselves. They don’t know how to manage their money or their financial obligations. They don’t know how to manage their careers. They don’t know how to manage personal relationships. They don’t know how to deal with adversity. They don’t know how to do any of these things because their parents always managed everything for them.   

They also don’t know how to recover from failure – personal or work-related – because they’ve never really experienced it thanks to their parents.  

Instead of solving their own problems and making their own decisions, many still rely on their parents – who are now in their 50s or 60s – for practically everything.

Some of them never left home or have moved back in after college, or supposedly to “save money for a house.” In the meantime, mom is cooking their meals, making their bed, doing their laundry, and in many cases mom and dad are still buying the groceries and paying their health and car insurance for them.   

To me that’s pretty weird when your children are in their mid-20s and even weirder still when they’re in their 30s or 40s, often with kids of their own and full-time jobs, and they’re still living in your house rent free. When they’re that old, they’re supposed to have their act together. They’re supposed to be able to take care of themselves and make their own decisions. 

Many Boomer parents apparently don’t see anything wrong with having their adult offspring back at home.  Continuing to be totally dependent on mom and dad.

Maybe that’s what those Boomer parents always wanted. I sure hope so. Because it’s too late to teach those kids how to be responsible adults who can survive on their own. 

I shudder to think how these Boomers’ kids will raise their own children. I could be wrong, and they could decide to raise their own kids more responsibly to prepare them for the real world. 

We can only hope. 

If this were your home …

Imagine for a moment that people you didn’t know, people who didn’t speak your language, just broke in and moved into your house. 

They then proceeded to eat your food, take your money, remove the locks on your doors and move more of their friends and family in. They didn’t ask your permission. They demanded you make space for them, provide them with an income, pay for their healthcare, and pay for their education. They also wanted a voice in how you ran your house and defied you to kick them out. 

Every day you find more and more of them in your house. The more there are, the more brazen they become.  Their demands continue to escalate. They tell you that you don’t have a choice – it’s your responsibility as the homeowner to make them comfortable.        

You contact the local police and they say there’s nothing they can do. So you contact the media, and they tell you you’re a heartless monster. You contact your representatives in Congress and they tell you their hands are tied; some even call you a bigot. The courts are no help, either.  

Welcome to America. And yes, this is your home.    

This is where we are today. 

Illegal immigrants from Central America and elsewhere are flooding across our southern border. There are an estimated 11-12 million of them here illegally already.

They’ve broken into our collective home and have absolutely no intention of ever leaving.  Instead, they are demanding that we give them citizenship, full benefits from our social welfare system – which they’ve paid nothing into, scholarships to public universities, and soon the right to vote.  If they succeed in getting the right to vote, you can be assured they will push to eliminate any immigration restrictions in the future. 

Despite liberal talking points, they haven’t come here to escape oppression or persecution, but for the money. That’s the real reason. Many send the lion’s share of whatever they earn off the books, or by using fraudulent Social Security numbers to claim benefits, back to their native country. And they figure there are so many of them we can’t do anything to kick them all out. 

Recently, we’ve learned that as many as a thousand more mostly from Honduras are planning to crash our southern border any day now to prove we are powerless to stop them. The leaders of this group have instructed those on the march to claim asylum when they hit our border, knowing this will cause a massive surge in our already backlogged immigration court system.

Their leaders have also promised “mass violence” if they are turned back at our border.   

The problem with the asylum pitch is that they’re crossing through Mexico to get here. Mexico is waving them through. If you really are pleading for asylum on humanitarian grounds, you have to request that in whatever country you get to first. Which, in this case, is Mexico.   

Which, of course, none of them have. Nor does Mexico want them. I suspect Mexico is all in favor of this attack on our border, if for no other reason than to thumb their nose at Trump.

This is a stupid decision on the part of Mexican leaders. It’s also a stupid decision on the part of the leaders of this onslaught. 

This just gives more credence to Trump’s claim that we need an impenetrable wall on our southern border, and more border agents and resources to prevent illegal crossings. His opponents are misreading how Americans generally feel about illegal immigration; the majority of Americans are in favor of immigration – that’s how most of us over the generations got here – but overwhelmingly opposed to illegal immigration. 

Stunts like this only serve to harden the position of illegal immigration opponents. If immigrant-rights advocates want to see public support swing toward building the wall, deporting illegals, and cracking down on immigration in general, this will do it.

Somehow, I don’t that’s what they expect. I think they’ll be unpleasantly surprised. 

As a nation, we’ve always welcomed immigrants seeking a better life.  We’ve opened our doors and our hearts, and often our purses as well. 

But if you break down our door to get in, that’s a different matter altogether. 

This will not end well.  For Mexico. For the thousand would-be invaders planning to breech our southern border.  Or for proponents of relaxing our immigration policy. 

They have no idea of the consequences.

The big deal about the citizen question ...

Trump has announced that he wants the next Census to include a question about whether or not the person surveyed is a citizen. 

This has caused an uproar. 

Critics say it will suppress responses from illegal immigrants.  They point out that the Census is supposed to be a true count of all people residing in the country. It shouldn’t matter if any of those people are here illegally – they’re here. 

California officials have already said they will sue. The mayors of a lot of big cities say they will, too.  Their premise is that it’s discriminatory, and irrelevant. They add that it’s a shameless ploy by Trump and Republicans to fire up the conservative base before the mid-terms. 

So let me clarify why they are so afraid of this question. 

It has absolutely nothing to do with discrimination. Or firing up the conservative base, although it will probably do that as well. 

It’s all about money. In particular, Federal money. And power.  

Ever wonder why big cities want to attract illegal immigrants? Or why California puts out the welcome mat for illegals through sanctuary city policies? 

Headcounts, not citizen counts, are used to determine how much Federal money is allocated. So it actually rewards places with large populations – legal or otherwise – with more money. If, as critics claim, illegals are less likely to respond if asked about their citizenship, then many areas will see their population numbers go down, and Federal funding will also decline.

Now, Trump is saying he wants the citizen question as part of his effort to ensure that only citizens are voting. That’s a valid goal, especially since many blue states – such as California, and soon Pennsylvania – are aggressively trying to avoid policing who is, in fact, voting.  Democrat mayors and governors are working furiously to prevent any attempt to crack down on voter fraud. 

In some cases, they are going to extreme lengths to enable voter fraud.

Chicago's Rahm Emmanuel has approved a “government-issued” (Chicago only) picture ID card anyone can get to bypass any requirement to prove citizenship to vote.  Anyone can simply show a utility bill to get one, and it can be used to register to vote. Geez, I wonder what he’s up to. 

Several states also have “motor-voter” laws that automatically register to vote anyone who gets a driver’s license. Do you think all those states are demanding a passport or birth certificate to get a driver’s license? Go ahead, take a minute to think about that. 

Pennsylvania’s governor – a Democrat of course – is asking his legislature to approve same-day registration to vote. He’s also pushed online registration to get more high-school students registered, and now wants to eliminate the requirement that PA voters give a reason why they need an absentee ballot. Yeah, asking for a reason has kept so many PA voters from getting an absentee ballot. 

Maryland allows municipalities to set their own standards for who is eligible to vote. In this, one of the bluest of blue states, being a citizen is not required in many municipalities. 

Does anyone not see what’s going on here? 

Having lived in Pennsylvania for many years, and worked in downtown Philly for most of those, voter fraud there is already rampant. It’s a running joke in Philly, where people are urged to vote early and vote often. In some areas in Philly, 100% of the votes in some precincts went to Democrats, which is statistically impossible because that presumes no errors at all. In other PA districts there were more votes cast than registered voters.   

PA is not alone in this.  Other, predominantly Democrat, states reported similar weirdness where more people voted than were registered to vote, or more people voted than lived in that district. 

Anyone who believes there is no voter fraud in national elections is a liar or an idiot. 

Or a Democrat. Perhaps all three.   

There’s a very simple answer: a free national identity card for adults, with their birthdate, their picture and thumbprint, and a bar code for scanning. Only one for each citizen. 

Whenever anyone becomes a new citizen by following the proper legal process, they get this card. Whenever someone is born here, they are automatically registered, and on their 18^th birthday they show up with a valid birth certificate and have their picture taken and thumbprint recorded to complete the card. Cards would be renewed every five years in a process similar to getting a new passport; you’d have to turn in the old one to get a new one.     

That would prevent non-citizens from voting, college students from voting multiple times, and seriously curtail voter fraud.  The same card would also verify that someone is eligible for government benefits – that alone would probably save us billions every year.   

I’ve heard all the arguments against a national identity card.  It’s “big brother.” There’s no need for it.  It’s too much of an inconvenience for the poor and minorities. It’s fascist.  Why should anyone have to prove who they are to exercise their right to vote or get benefits … 

All these arguments are bullshit. 

The only reason anyone is opposed to a national identity card is because it would separate who is here legally and who isn’t, and who deserves the rights of a citizen and who doesn’t. 

And of course, who is really who they say they are. 

It’s like the census question Trump wants. The only people opposed to it – and a national identity card – are those gaming the system for their own purposes.   

Diminishing astonishment and our political environment …

Years ago I posed my theory of the Point of Diminishing Astonishment. 

In short strokes, the PODA is about human nature and how we recognize meaningful change. When we see enough of something, we start subconsciously diminishing its importance; it becomes just more of the same -- the new normal -- and our tendency is to ignore it. To then move the needle and get our attention, that something has to increase at least a whole magnitude, but preferably exponentially.  A mere incremental increase doesn’t do it. 

The original basis for my theory had to do with technology – more specifically modem speed, first, and then CPU processing speed (an extension of Moore’s Law). Nobody got too excited when either of those stepped up incrementally; they had to double or triple or more to get attention.

Then that became the new floor for expectations. Anything less was inconsequential.

However, practical limits eventually come into play. There is a point when no matter what you do it simply won’t make much of a splash. You’ve hit the ultimate PODA for that. 

What does that have to do with today’s political environment?

Plenty, I believe. Especially when it has to do with Trump.  

The latest “bombshell” is that he’s a skirt-chasing weasel. No! Really??? 

For many years before he ran for office, Trump enjoyed his playboy persona. His dalliances with stars and celebrities were widely covered by local New York media. His affairs, his infidelity to wives and girlfriends, and his very public divorces over those infidelities were constant fodder for gossip columnists.  The front pages of NY media loved to show his latest trophy date.  

The fact that Trump likes women – a lot – and considers himself a modern-day Casanova who beds every woman he can is not news. To be surprised at that now is like being startled to learn Charlie Sheen has drug and alcohol issues, or that the Pope’s a Catholic. 

Yet it’s big news today that Trump never changed.

At least to media types. 

The rest of the public is more “meh.” Mainly because they’ve seen it so many times before.  Only the players change – now it’s a former Playboy playmate, a former porn star, and so what? Before it was dozens of others.  Is anybody surprised?

But how is Melania dealing with it? Probably the same way his first two wives did. Unhappy, for sure, yet shocked? – I doubt it. They knew who and what he was when they married him.

That’s the stunner for the media. Where’s the outrage?

Not just about his infidelity, but about everything Trump does.  From not being a traditional Republican, to fighting with his own party, to attacking his own Attorney General, to attacking Special Counsel Mueller, to forcing out his own appointees, to maybe starting a trade war, to saber-rattling with North Korea, to thumbing his nose at our alleged allies and neighbors, to overturning treaties, to moving our embassy to Jerusalem – they are aghast. 

He tweets. He taunts. He threatens. He insults.  And the media are shocked. 

I don’t know why they would be. He was doing all that from the moment he started his run for office. It may be a key reason why he won.

He’s just continuing the same stuff as President. What’s new?  

For most people, absolutely nothing. They’ve seen all this before, going on for almost two years now. By now, they’ve accepted it as the norm, even if they don’t always like it.

They’ve reached the Point of Diminishing Astonishment concerning Trump.       

I have to admit I’m getting there, too.   

By relentlessly pounding Trump over everything – and I mean everything – hour after hour, the media have inadvertently raised the bar so high now it’s almost impossible to find anything that will be perceived as earth-shaking anymore.

Trump should thank them.    

Politicizing school children …

I read about plans to have a nationwide walkout by school children to protest guns.

One preteen was quoted as saying they wanted people to show more kindness to each other and there should be no more guns so “people don’t suffer.”

Then a reported million kids walked out of school – along with thousands of their teachers – to attend rallies against guns.  In some cases, public schools provided buses to bring their students and teachers to these rallies.

The media predictably gushed over all this: here were students as young as first grade marching in unison to mark their opposition to the NRA, lax gun control, and guns in general. Some kids chanted “hey, hey NRA, how many kids did you slay today?” They held signs demanding that Congress ban assault weapons, legislate universal background checks, and more.

The media, liberals, and anti-gun groups were thrilled.  They described it as a “grassroots” movement by children for sensible action on guns. 

In some ways it was more of an Astroturf movement. Behind the scenes all this was organized in part by MoveOn.org, The Women’s March, a Bloomberg-funded group, Planned Parenthood, and of course sympathetic teachers and school administrators.

I don’t have anything against organized protests. I was part of some when I was in college.  However, it was usually against something very specific, with a very specific goal.  I don’t think that was the case with the recent student walk out. 

I seriously doubt many of the young participants knew much beyond what they’d been told in school or on social media. I suspect they didn’t know much about the 2^nd Amendment, our current gun laws, or that previous bans on assault weapons accomplished nothing. Or that the NRA has been in the forefront of promoting background check legislation for years.

Or that the 17 deaths at Parkland were more the result of a systemic failure by school administrators, local mental health and child services professionals, the FBI, and local law enforcement to do their jobs and get a clearly disturbed teen off the streets and into treatment.  There were ample warnings and evidence this nutjob was going to try to kill a lot of people long before he did. But for whatever reason, perhaps fear of getting involved, all those entities fell down on the job.    

That’s a lot tougher to grasp than political talking points to promote an agenda. Ignoring, or hiding, those realities behind bumper-sticker slogans is disingenuous. 

And using children as puppets to advance political goals of adults is a disgrace.  Spare me the crap about how great it is for children to be politically active. If school children started an anti-abortion protest, or marched against illegal immigration, or in opposition to assault weapons bans, the same forces now cheering on political activism by school children would be appalled.  

The children would be dismissed as uninformed and misguided, too young to know any better. Any adult who urging them on would be called a monster.

We all know this.  And all of which would also be true.

Promoting political activism by young school children – whatever the cause – in simply wrong, especially when it’s guided by adult authority figures. School children don’t always have the ability to see when they are being manipulated and used for someone else’s agenda.     

More to the point, whoever in our public schools is teaching young children to become politically active ought to be fired. Kids should be learning English, Math, Science, History, and yes, Civics – that long-abandoned subject that informed kids about the Constitution, how our representative form of government works, and their responsibilities as citizens when they became adults.  

It should not be the role of teachers to propagandize their political beliefs on school children. That should never, ever, be tolerated. 

Yet that’s what’s happening every day. 

Whether it’s teaching that climate change is exclusively man-made is proven science, that gender is a matter of choice not biology, that self-esteem is more important than learning to read and do math, how the traditional concept of a nuclear family and its social benefits is fundamentally bigoted, or how awful we are as a nation compared to others, that’s what’s being taught.

Opinions – which all those are – should never be taught as facts.        

We’re talking about school kids, after all. They may not be able to see the difference. 

The critical reasoning skills of today’s children aren’t that refined. Kids aren’t always aware when they’re being fed propaganda and opinions and not absolute facts. It’s bad enough many rely on misinformation and half-truths on social media.  Yet they also tend to accept whatever teachers tell them without question, and that’s not always the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Or that there are often multiple sides to a story.  On climate change. On the flexibility of gender.  On the value of self-esteem over everything else.  On the relative merits of the traditional nuclear family.  And how we as a nation compare to others.     

I would never accept teaching Creationism and Divine Intervention as the one and only way to explain the various species on the planet. Or that there are only four elements – Earth, Wind, Fire and Water – in place of Science. 

At the same time, it’s equally wrong to teach children to blindly believe a political and environmental agenda that appears to be intentionally one-sided.

Somewhere along the line teachers and school administrators became the high priests of what school children should believe and how they should act.  Perhaps this was because so many parents abrogated their own responsibility to shape the beliefs of their children.  So it was left to teachers and school administrators to fill the void. 

This has been a terrible mistake.  It’s allowed some in our public-school system – not all of course – to seize the opportunity to promote their own agenda and create a new generation of like-minded students to think and believe as they do. 

That’s the unstated, albeit real, goal of many of those pushing school children to become politically active; however, only to support causes they want them to support. They do this by presenting only one political perspective. One set of “facts.” And then their pupils are encouraged to reject anything that conflicts with their teacher’s worldview, which is mostly a progressive liberal perspective. 

So when you see young children holding signs opposing deportation of illegal immigrants, in favor of the rights of transgendered people to use the bathrooms of their choice, or, in this case opposing guns, look carefully beyond their earnest faces and apparent enthusiasm.   

Behind every one is typically someone using them to advance their own agenda.

Usually a teacher.  Or an organized special interest group. 

To them school children are photogenic pawns.  Bait for the media. 

It’s wrong to use children this way.   

Watching the Winter Olympics …

Or not.

Whoever buys the rights to broadcast the Olympics pays a hefty tab. They need to recoup that by selling ads – I understand that.  Just business. 

At some point, however, you start to lose your audience when you lard up your programming with too many spots.  And when you invent short fluff segments for no other reason than to be a buffer between ads, you start to piss off your audience.

Then they do what I do – just DVR the whole night’s programming and fast-forward through all the BS the next day. That’s the only way I can watch the Olympics anymore.

I can skip past the events I don’t care for – and can’t understand why these are in the Olympics anyway – such as short-track speedskating, biathlon, curling, and cross-country skiing, among others. I also can’t understand why anyone, except maybe parents of competitors, wants to see lengthy coverage of training and qualifying runs, either; just show the final event, okay? 

The same goes for the “human interest” crap. I don’t care how competitors got started as kids, how they are best friends with their mom, how often their families moved to get them the best trainers, or, as they did the other night, how much Koreans love Jindos – a certain type of dog. 

They even showed a famous Korean statue of a Jindo. 

Notice they didn’t bring up how Koreans eat dogs, too. Maybe that statue is really in front of a Korean fast-food chain restaurant. Could it be Ronald McJindo? Or Jindo King?

Who knows? Better still, who cares?        

I don’t need to see competitors who have no business being there, with zero chance of anything other than showing how inept they are, just because their country gets to send someone. I don’t need to watch people born, raised, and trained in one country competing under the flag of another country, so they could get in the Olympics. How is someone from Chicago representing France? How is someone from Connecticut representing Nigeria? 

And I certainly don’t need to waste my time on novelty teams. Like the women’s bobsled team from Nigeria.  Or the “unified” North/South Korea women’s hockey team, that, for the record only scored a single goal – total – in all their games.

I don’t need Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski opining on the outfits worn by the figure skaters and the music they’ll skate to.  Or their snappy repartee on which ridiculous outfit and hair style Johnny has deigned to grace us all with that night.  Or Katie Couric saying stupid things like the Dutch excel in skating because during the winter they commute to work on skates. Or the manufactured drama over whether this is Lindsey Vonn’s – or fill-in-the-blank’s – last Olympics. 

Does anyone else really give a damn?     

The only reason to watch the Olympics is supposedly to see the best athletes in the world. That’s simply not happening. The Olympics have devolved into a mind-boggling slog through hour upon hour of make-believe competitors representing their make-believe countries in make-believe sports, with tiny bits of action sandwiched between overwhelming layers of ads and useless filler.

I can’t imagine anyone willingly sitting through it all in real time. I can’t. I won’t.

Apparently, a lot of folks feel the same.  There was a news item today that for the first time in 25 years a network nightly newscast beat NBC’s Olympics coverage in the same time slot.

That’s going to wake up advertisers blowing billions on what’s little more than a sideshow. When people aren’t watching, they’re not getting their money’s worth. 

The eyeballs aren’t there. Mine included. 

I own an AR-15 …

I’m not a survivalist. I’m not a gun nut. I’m not a hunter. I’m certainly not a terrorist.

I’m not ashamed, either.

And I didn’t buy it for self-defense. Nor do I plan on carrying it anywhere but back and forth to the target range. If I was worried about defending myself against an armed intruder, I’d follow the sage advice of a friend who is a former Marine and scoot out the back door first if possible. 

Otherwise, like him, I’d have to ask the intruder to wait awhile until I could retrieve my gun from its case and go to another place in my house for my ammunition.

Going out the back door makes a lot more sense.   

I also don’t believe just anyone who wants this gun – or any other firearm for that matter – should be allowed to get one.  There need to be rules about who can purchase a firearm. Everybody I know who owns firearms is in complete agreement with that.

Every single one. No exceptions.

It’s not about the 2^nd Amendment; it’s about common sense. Only a complete idiot thinks anybody should be able to get a functioning firearm, regardless of their criminal past or mental state.  The NRA agrees there need to be reasonable restrictions. 

Currently there are background checks. But they rely on information on file.  If no one takes seriously and reports that someone has a mental illness, tortures small animals for kicks, has been expelled from school for threatening people, talks about killing classmates, and posts about desires to be a “professional school shooter,” well, that won’t show up.  

Just as it didn’t on the recent Florida school shooter’s background check. 

That’s the glaring flaw in background checks. The checks are only as good as the source data provided to authorities. If you are a wife beater and your spouse never reports it, it won’t show up. If a school administration declines to alert authorities to a scary kid threatening his or her classmates, it won’t show up.  If parents refuse to let police know their teen is stockpiling weapons and body armor and searching for bomb-making instructions online, it won’t show up.

This is how people who should never get a firearm pass background checks.  Make no mistake, there are checks and rules in place, but apathy and political correctness can defeat them.     

When I bought the parts to assemble my AR-15, before I could pick up a critical component – which had to be shipped to a Federally licensed dealer by law – I had to fill out a form and submit to a background check. That form required me to attest that I was at least 18 years of age, had not committed a felony, had no history of mental illness, no record of domestic abuse, and no history of abusing drugs or alcohol, among other things. If there were any discrepancies between what I submitted and the government database I would be denied that critical part.  

Had I tried to buy a completed off-the-shelf AR-15, or any other long gun, from a licensed dealer in Florida I would have had to go through exactly the same process.     

I did everything by the book. 

I assembled all the parts with the help of a friend to produce the finished gun.  It wasn’t difficult at all and took less than an hour. 

And frankly that’s why the AR-15 is the most popular long gun in America.

Not because it’s got a military heritage for Rambo wannabes.  Not because it’s considered an “assault weapon” by some. Not because it is deadly – which of course it can be. 

The real reason is because it’s so easy to build and maintain. It’s like a Lego gun – all the parts snap together, and easily snap apart for cleaning. Another reason is there are so many AR-15-type rifles out there manufacturers of such things as scopes, magazines, and other accessories offer a lot of easily installed options at competitive price points.  

It’s also an accurate gun with very little recoil.  Since I bought and built mine exclusively for target practice at a range nearby, that was important.

However, it has a nasty reputation, mostly because AR-15-type rifles have been used in a number of mass killings, including the Las Vegas massacre and most recently at the school in Florida where a nutjob former student killed 17 people. The AR-15 has been described by some on the left and promoted by the media as a weapon of war, designed exclusively to kill people.   

Because of that, when you tell some people you own an AR-15 they tend to shrink back a bit – as if there’s a side of you they never saw before; perhaps something they should be afraid of. 

Much has been made about how the AR-15 is a “semi-automatic.” To some, that implies it’s a virtual automatic weapon, like a machine gun.  Semi-automatic really only means that after you fire off a round by pulling the trigger, it just chambers another round – so every time you shoot you still have to pull the trigger again.  You could pull the trigger rapidly, of course, but I don’t and nobody I know does that, especially shooting paper targets at 25, 50, 100 or more yards away.     

Which is all I do with it. Well, okay, I shoot primarily at 25 and sometimes 50 yards.  I’m a long way from trying to hit a bullseye at 100 yards or more. I’ve only been at this for about a year now; I’m getting better but not nearly good enough.

The reason I enjoy target shooting is not because I am very good at it, which I’m not, but because – paradoxically, perhaps – it is more relaxing than you might imagine. To be accurate you have to learn to concentrate, monitor your breathing, loosen up, and focus intently.

There’s almost a Zen-like, meditative quality to it. That’s what I like.  Plus, my friend and I always stop at Waffle House for breakfast on our way to the range. 

A pecan waffle and meditation. Is that a perfect day or what?   

I also enjoy the camaraderie at the range. The people you meet there are among the nicest you’ll encounter. Mostly middle-aged and older guys; some former cops, many former military, and some, like me, just getting started.

Everybody I’ve met there is incredibly helpful, courteous, and focused on safety – far from how gun owners are often portrayed. I suspect most if not all of them also support background checks and reasonable restrictions on who can own a firearm. No one in their right mind wants dangerous, mentally unbalanced people to have access to firearms. 

But to prevent that, people need to step up and report bad actors to the authorities, so background checks have the data they need. Schools need to flag and report students with violent tendencies. Parents need to swallow their pride and let someone know their child is a hazard to others. Mental-health professionals need to monitor their patients to see they stay on their meds.  And of course neighbors and others need to have the guts to tell police when they see something that disturbs them. 

Until everyone does that, the wrong people will pass background checks.   

There are now more guns in America than people. There are also more Americans than ever before. That also means there are more mentally unbalanced people among us – more psychopaths, more sociopaths, and more people with violent and homicidal tendencies, as our population grows; it’s the law of big numbers at work.   

Following the shootings in Las Vegas and Florida, it’s easy, at a time like this, to blame the AR-15-type rifles and their wide availability. It’s easy to blame the availability of 20-30-round magazines for their role in these mass shootings. 

There have been calls to ban both after almost every mass shooting.  Last night, some talking head even suggested that one solution might be to put a heavy tax on ammunition. 

Everyone seems to be searching for an easy answer. I can’t blame them. 

It’s far harder to accept that the cause of mass shootings has less to do with the weapon used, and more to do with society’s reluctance to deal with the role of apathetic parents, timid school administrators and mental-health professionals, and the fear of getting involved.   

It’s also hard to accept that media coverage, and our society’s obsession with fame, also contribute to mass shootings.  The Columbine, Sandy Hook, Florida school, and Las Vegas massacre as well, turned the perpetrators into celebrities in a perverse way.  That’s what many of them wanted – fame. Notoriety. Slaughtering people was their path to stardom. 

My AR-15 had no role in that.

The millions of other AR-15s out there in the hands of responsible owners didn’t either. 

But parents, schools, mental-health professionals, and neighbors did.