The Alternative

By: 
Fritz Groszkruger

Beware of opportunistic meddlers
    The mass shooting in Orlando is tragic in ways beyond the immediate loss of loved ones and the terror experienced in the event.
    Well-intentioned advocates, pundits, and politicians jumped on the news as a way to further their own agendas. They all approached it from the aspect of top-down management of our world, as if they run a zoo.
    I actually heard Senator Joni Ernst say that if President Obama hadn't pulled our troops out of Iraq we wouldn't be experiencing so many terrorist attacks. No explanation came after that about how destroying and occupying a foreign land wins friends. She joined the chorus of voices calling for rebuilding a military that is 12 times larger than any other on earth, in response to one jihadist in a nightclub.
    I don't want to lessen the importance of Islamic jihadist. It is an important issue. But that issue has been so convoluted as to become the reason for expansion of government at any cost. The right's obeisance to the military industrial complex has blinded them to being reasonable regarding the military's mission to protect the United States.
    For instance, an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal titled, “U.S. Struggles to Replace Afghan Aircraft,” it contained this quote: “One helicopter exploded in midair, victim of a suspected grenade accident on board. Another was destroyed when another helicopter accidentally opened fire on the tarmac.” Military leaders are upset at Obama's sanctions that don't allow us to replace these $19 million Russian helicopters. What does this have to do with protecting Americans? Wasn't the Soviet Union going down the same path when it went belly-up?
    Everything has a cost. The risk of dying in a mass shooting in the last year is 3.6 million to one, compared to the risk of being struck by lightning at one in 1.2 million. Even spending unlimited funds to make every single person in the U.S. a bubble boy, would still have unforeseen risks.
    To lessen the risk of being struck by lightning, we can stop waving golf clubs at thunderstorms and go inside. To lessen the chance of being killed in a mass shooting, we can stay away from gun free zones. But in Florida that would mean never going to a place that serves alcohol. The State of Florida has eliminated private property rights by making it illegal to carry a firearm in such places. And in the process, issued a death sentence to a certain number of their innocent citizens.
    In Florida, if the same percentage of people who hold concealed carry permits were allowed to do so at the Pulse nightclub there would have been twenty capable of limiting the carnage.
    We already have laws to protect people from the aggression of other people. Advocates of pre-emptive action such as the war on terror or gun control are merely joining the other big government busybodies in making things worse. They don't see that the funds used and freedom taken for their grand plans make us more reliant and less able to get along and survive in a dangerous world.
    Those who say being in a government database or surrendering weapons to the state has no effect on them, might change their tune when living under the next regime or cowering under a table. Self-sufficient private individuals have always done more for our safety than government bureaucrats.
    In 1755, Ben Franklin, had a warning still poignant to this day, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
    Please comment through a letter to this paper or directly to me at: 4selfgovernment@gmail.com. Spring work has crimped the blog posts lately but there's a couple in the works at: www.alternativebyfritz.com.

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