I wasn't in Reno at the time, but I did once shoot a man, just to watch him die. My bad?
Yes, very bad.
What part of the Universal edict against taking life are you failing to grasp?
It's a tired, old question: do guns kill people, or do people kill people? It's also the type of hot button topic that wise people avoid at parties. They realize that nobody will ever win the argument, and they recognize the ever-mounting danger that someone will pull a legally concealed firearm to make a point.
To answer the question: people, with or without guns, kill people. Guns without people pretty much just sit there.
No gun, left unloaded and untouched by human hands, has ever ended a life. Firearms, particularly handguns, simply make it easier for people to kill people.
OK, OK – maybe an especially weighty gun could fall from a high closet shelf and split the skull of an unsuspecting klutz who was blindly rummaging for his top hat.
Then, you have the numerous Dick Chaney-style shootings in which guns are fired accidentally or in an unintended direction, such as toward the face of a hunting companion.
Even these would not happen if guns did not exist.
People have always been the biggest killers of people – mostly people who differ from those with the twitchy trigger fingers. Yet, even the most avid supporter of the right to bear arms must admit that, lacking the convenience of firearms, the scenario changes. Killing someone with something like a sword, large rock or spatula becomes a lot more personal, not to mention messy and labor-intensive.
Ever wonder about those murder stories in which the victim suffered 527 stab wounds? Well, that's not, in most cases, because the killer was overly ambitious. For the untrained, a successful, manually executed murder may actually require that kind of exertion.
Considering that most people prefer to minimize the amount of effort they put into any task, you could expect a substantial drop in the human murder rate if guns were eliminated.
If you are unable to extrapolate the Universal position on guns to more massively lethal weapons, including but not limited to, automatic firearms, nuclear bombs and Fox News, let's make it clear.
No.
I was an active member of the Republican Party for my entire adult life, which should be a real advantage in the Afterlife. Am I right, or am I right?
No.
Being right, in your case, is oh, so very wrong.
Left versus right. Liberals versus Conservatives. Democrats versus Republicans. Blue states versus red states. Henson Muppets versus Murdoch puppets.
This ages-long, see-sawing struggle has never produced a clear and permanent winner, but it is managing to be wildly successful at accomplishing nothing. The Universe does not see this gridlock as exactly paving the road to survival of your species. However, one of these two sides has clearly done more to speed the extinction of the Human Race than the other.
On the conservative side of the battle, you have people who want to preserve and increase their wealth at the expense of everyone else. They have a fervent, inexplicable desire to return to rigid, traditional values which have little or no relevance to the current world. They prefer to create jobs and bank their cash in foreign countries, deplete the planet of all natural resources, and push their ideology on others at every conceivable opportunity. Saving the planet is not on the conservative agenda, unless that should somehow become more profitable than destroying it.
Contrary to the highly suspect U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, corporations are not people – nor do they have souls.
Somewhere in the development of the American economy, corporations shifted their focus from being employers to being profiteers. By concentrating on their bottom lines, they lost sight of the big picture. At a time in the not-so-distant American future, when most manufacturing jobs have been moved to cheaper labor markets or automated, how will their former employees buy the goods and services the corporations produce? In their relentless pursuit of profits, corporations will have disabled the very free-market juggernaut they so fiercely now champion.
On the liberal side, you have people who promote more equitable distribution of society's assets. They favor conserving natural resources, supporting social programs to help less fortunate citizens move from poverty, and regulating the greedy excesses of corporations, banks and other money-centric institutions.
Liberals recognize that the climate changes rendered by disregarding the environment, while no longer reversible in their lifetimes, may at least be slowed to give their children and grandchildren a fighting chance at survival. What will it profit a man if he should gain the entire riches of the world, yet have his Cayman Islands bank submerged by polar ice cap melts?
As has been made clear, The Universe has gone to a great deal of trouble to create and maintain life. The Universe's disapproval of conservative politics should come as no real surprise – for all who who regularly exercise their minds, that is. For those who steadfastly refuse to make that effort, The Universe hereby settles, once and for all, the endless arguments generated by this tedious issue.
This should also provide additional guidance for more clueless individuals who would like to do well in the Hereafter. Minds caught in perpetual, circular disagreement do not make progress toward enlightenment.
I did a lot of drugs in my early adulthood. Did I expand my mind?
No. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Let's review the body-mind-soul relationship. Your physical body served as the support structure for your mind while you were alive and kicking. Your brain was an especially significant part of that structure because it housed your mind. Your mind served as the basis for your soul, which is all you now have left.
If it helps, think of the arrangement as a multistage rocket. Your body was the launch stage; your mind, the booster stage; your soul, the payload.
Drugs, including alcohol, damage your body in general and your mind in particular. Ever listen to the list of possible side-effects attached to most television commercials for the latest prescription medications – like an antidepressant which could lead to increased thoughts of suicide among young adults? How ironic is that?
Now, how could drugs have expanded your mind while they were actually doing it harm? The mere fact that you asked the question should tell you something about how well your mental faculties weathered your tripping days.
IMAGE SOURCE: Pixabay