(In)Tolerance and the American Left

At an Obama rally, several of the Illinois Senators’ rabid supporters were seen wearing a shirt that insulted Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin by calling her the worst word that can be used against a woman.

Democrats are purportedly more tolerant than everyone else, yet the evidence over the years shows that they are just the opposite.

They accuse the Christian Religious Right, for example, of being intolerant, yet they are extremely savage in their attacks on that segment of our society, overreacting to the slightest things.

Unless, of course, Muslims are involved: in that case, the American Left either show their cowardice by failing to say anything negative about Islamists, or, worse yet, they show their hypocrisy by pandering to the followers of Allah by supporting them in whatever grievance they have (which is usually against Christians and Jews).

The absolute hatred displayed by those on the Left is akin to the hate of the Bolsheviks in 1917. Not surprising, I guess, since they, like Lenin’s followers did, harbor a deep hatred towards anyone who has been successful on their own, without government help, and want to redistribute the wealth others have made and place some of it in the hands of the non-productive; like Lenin’s Marxists, they despise and denigrate religion and God (except for Allah, since today’s Marxists are too cowardly to stand up and decry Islam as they do all other religions); like Lenin and his mob of thugs, they want to obliterate the Individual and replace him with Everyman (remember how Maoists loved to dress the same in those pajamas?); and like the old-time Bolsheviks, they wish harm to those who do not think as they do: the only difference is that whereas Lenin ordered the death of the Tsar’s family and most Russian aristocrats, and got away with it, today’s American would-be Bolsheviks, while they obviously would love to execute their foes, have to satisfy themselves with hurling the vilest insults and vitriol they can muster…must be frustrating for the poor dears…

If even one single McCain supporter were to wear some t-shirt attacking the Left’s messiah, the socialist Barack Hussein Obama, on his Race, the Mainstream Media would be all over it; but since the once-honorable Fourth Estate is now firmly in the hands of Leftists, there is hardly a murmur of disapproval being heard, and that is only coming from the Conservative and Libertarian Media, who have (Thank God!) been a thorn in the Left’s derriere for years, since they and they alone seem capable of pointing out the truth to the Public.

Here’s where I am supposed to say that the Left should be ashamed of itself for t-shirts that mercilessly and without merit attack a decent woman who has done them absolutely no harm, other than to have a different set of beliefs; but unfortunately, those intolerant scum have no shame.

PC Pets

One day a few months ago, while washing my breakfast dishes, I was listening to a TV commercial for some product that files pets’ nails. What struck me was that at one point, where one would have expected to hear the term “Pet Owners”, the commercial mentioned “Pet Parents”.
Pet Parents???
Perhaps this should not come as a big surprise, not in a Politically Correct world in which Bums have disappeared, to be replaced by The Homeless; Janitors and Garbage Men have gone the way of the Dodo to be replaced by Maintenance Engineers and Sanitation Engineers, respectively.
Okay, I’ll admit that maybe some PC terminology is a little more sensitive than the terms previously used: Retarded people, once referred to as Retards, are now called Mentally Challenged; same goes for the Handicapped, who are now referred to as Physically Challenged.
But there’s nothing wrong with someone being a Garbage Man, or a Janitor; these are people who do important, if usually unappreciated, jobs, jobs most people would not want to do. Heck, I’m sure many of those people who do those jobs would rather be doing something else, but Life sometimes forces uncontrollable circumstances upon us, or maybe choices we make during the course of our lives lead us to have to take jobs we’d rather not have. Giving them fancy titles is a way of making them feel better about themselves. Which in itself is not a bad thing, but whatever happened to the concept of taking Pride in your work, no matter what that work might be?
This all brings to mind other PC demands on our language, such as people being upset at sports teams such as the Braves or the Redskins; but I have never felt these names were derogatory; on the contrary, they are the names of Teams, for crying out loud! Teams people root for, teams that many fans in fact (sadly) live for. Who in their right mind can find something wrong with that?
Only the humorless PC crowd that walks around with a stick up their collective rear end, and who try their best to avoid insulting everyone – except White Males, of course, who are the only Fair Game for the PCers. Oh, and Black Republicans, who are also seen as not worthy of any respect for their feelings and choices.
This thinking has led directly to the banning or at least attempted bans of certain mascots and fan favorite customs, like a man dressed as a Brave, or fans in Atlanta doing the Tomahawk chop. The PC crowd claims these things are demeaning to Indians – oops! I mean, of course, Native Americans…
I still think of Asians as Orientals – not because I am racist, but because they are from an area of the world known for may centuries as the Orient.
If truth be known, I admire many aspects of Oriental – or Asian – cultures, such as Zen and Tao Te Ching, Eastern Martial Arts, the fact that for thousands of years the Chinese have had Herbal Remedies that equal or surpass Western medicines, and so on; if I were racist, then I would have no admiration for anything originating from Asia.
I still think of Native Americans as Indians, again, not because I am racist or because I want to insult or put them down, but because a) that’s what they were referred to as for centuries; b) that’s how I was taught to call them when I was in school, and c) they are not the only Native Americans: I was born here, therefore I am also a Native American, as is EVERY person who was born in the Americas.
And if you want to get picky about it, let me digress for a moment and bring up Kennewick Man, whose remains were found on July 28, 1996. These remains seemed to be Caucasian rather than Asian or so-called Native American. Five tribes - the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, Wannapum, and Colville - tried to block any scientific investigation of the remains, claiming the remains should be buried according to their traditions (in a locale known only to themselves, and never to be disclosed to the White Man).
In 2004, the courts finally ruled that scientific study of the remains should be allowed. Subsequently, it was determined that the remains were indeed of Caucasoid origin, that they were the skeletal remains of a man who was about 50 years old when he died, and that these remains were about 9300 years old.
WOW! White man’s ancestors in the America’s long before Columbus, or even Leif Ericson and his Vikings, ever set foot here? THAT certainly blows a hole in the long-held theory that only Asiatic-descended Natives (a/k/a American Indians) are the only ones who can lay claim to being Native Americans, doesn’t it?
No wonder the Tribes wanted to keep the fellow under wraps, out of the lab, and bury him in some location where he’d never be found.
But back to the main point of this essay:
Unless you have had some kind of illegal sexual intercourse with an animal, and afterwards one of you gave birth, you CANNOT be a Pet Parent. You might have a pet, in which case you are considered to own that pet, thus making you a Pet Owner.
Especially in the case of dogs, which in most places must be registered with your city or town, so that a License may be issued (probably more for the city or town to make a little money rather than for any other reason). So by requiring that you get a license for your dog, government thus places you in the class of Pet Owner.
NOT Pet Parent.
Duh-uh. Whatever happened to Honesty?

Who is the Lesser of Two Evils?

I am sick and tired of supporters of Senator Barack Obama playing the Race card every chance they get; the latest incident is the stupid, unfounded allegations by Rep. Lewis, whose allegations uncover his own racist views of White people.

Already the Dems are stating that if Obama loses, it will be because of racism.

 Bull.

The American people should reject this man's bid for the Presidency not because of his color, but because of his political beliefs.

 Look at what he espouses, at what he has voted for (when he has actually voted, rather than go on record as being "Present", rather than actually make a decision): he is for Higher Taxes, Higher Government Spending, has expressed his desire to "Tax the Rich", wants to shrink the Military even as he expands the Federal Government and its influence over the lives of American citizens.

In other words, the man is a Socialist, a proponent of Class War and Redistribution of Wealth polices: take more and more from those who are successful to give to those who are not so successful. Punish Success, but reward incompetence, laziness, and fear of taking a risk to better your life.

That alone should be more than enough for Americans to vote for John McCain - who, I hasten to add, is NOT my candidate of choice, but who is, in this election,  the lesser of two evils.

Unfortunately, in most elections, that is the real choice we are faced with: picking the Lesser of Two Evils.

I have a lot of respect for Senator McCain, a man who truly sacrificed for his country; but I disagree with him on some policy points, mainly his stance on Illegal Immigration; unfortunately, both McCain and Obama are willing to allow illegals to continue to stream across our porous borders, just as President Bush has. 

Such a policy is leading to the downfall of the United States. All Empires must eventually fall, and ours - benevolent as it is, compared to most Empires of the past - must also one day wane.  But we will not be brought down by force, for we are still the most powerful nation in the world, militarily speaking (although in recent decades Congress has too often handcuffed our Armed Forces, causing unnecessary losses of precious lives, money, and prestige).

This nation is being brought down from within, by those who want us to open our borders to anyand all, whether or not those who sneak in will become assets or liabilities (and most of them contribute to the latter). And those responsible for the invasion we find ourselves suffering are on the Left. The Leftist Limousine Liberals of our country - who routinely claim to still be the Party of Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy, but are nothing like those men - whose policies more closely resemble those of the late President Reagan than anything the Dems of today espouse - have opened up a wound that will, if left open, lead to our bleeding ourselves to (financial) death as a world power, for we will be unable to continue to provide for all these illegals swarming into our land - who use our schools, our hospitals, and whatever Public Welfare systems they can, even though they contribute almost NOTHING to these systems, except to make them more costly to Citizens and Legal Immigrant residents and visitors; we will be unable to continue to pay for the dubious (and unasked-for) honor of being the World's Policeman, will be unable to continue to send billions and billions of our Tax Dollars overseas as Foreign Aid to countries whose populations or at least governments hate us...money that would be better spent here inside our own borders, to refund the Social Security System that Congress has raided for years (the recent Banking crisis we are currently suffering through is a foreshadowing of what will happen to the underfunded Social Security later this century).

Lest anyone think I am speaking solely about Mexicans or other Hispanics, let me express my extreme displeasure and outright anger at the Bush Administration's policy of still allowing Muslim immigrants to enter this country, even LEGALLY, after what happened on 9/11.

It's no secret that most Muslims around the world dislike us (to put it mildly); yet we continue to allow them to pass through our borders. The fact is, there are dozens and dozens of Muslim nations in the world; why don't Muslims emigrate to any of those countries, rather than come over here, to a country they hate, a country most of them will never feel or pledge any honest allegiance to, a country many of them refer to as The Great Satan? If our country is so bad, so evil, why do they continue to come here? There are more than enough countries they can go to where they will feel more comfortable, since we are decadent and those countries are holy...

All Empires eventually fail and fall because they can no longer foot the bill: Rome, Great Britain, the unlamented Soviet Union - those are just three examples of empires that took the same road we are careening down.

But at least McCain is opposed to an outright Redistribution of Wealth, a corner post of Obama'sfiscal policy; at least McCain will keep our Military strong, whereas I foresee Obama doing what Jimmy Carter did: gutting the Military and drastically lowering its morale, and thus its effectiveness, and making it a laughing stock.

And placing us in a position that may very well leave us unable to stand up to a newly-invigorated, oil-rich  Russia, and its own Imperial designs...not to mention Red China, whose corrupt leadership has its eyes on Taiwan...at the very least.

If all that is not enough to sway you from not voting for this new darling of the Democratic Party, just think on these other factors: his friendship with unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers; the fact that Louis Farrakhan has called Obama "The Messiah"; Obama's lying about his association with Acorn, which is being investigated in at least five states for Voter Fraud - an organization that uses intimidation as a lobbying tool, and whose key people were trained by Community Organizer Barack Hussein Obama;  Jeremiah Wright, who Obama, after a 20 year association, finally stepped away from (publicly, anyway), because he suddenly found out (surprise, surprise!!!) that his preacher and admitted Mentor hates America, and White people in particular. 

(Twenty years? What happened, Senator, were you always sleeping during the irreverentReverend Wright's fiery sermons?)

If nothing else, these associations show a lack of judgment...

Finally, there is the fact that Obama is a Chicago politician; Chicago politics are about as dirty as they come, and have been for many, many decades...I, for one, can't help but think of the possible ramifications of that fact.

Provided by website design directory.

Musings on English and Father’s Day

Often, in recent years, when we call a Phone company, Cable company, Bank, or other large corporation, we’re greeted with a recorded Menu. While I fully understand the need for these menus, which save time and money for the companies, and thus deal as patiently as possible with the inherent annoyance of these systems, there is one facet of them that I take great exception to.

It’s bad enough that I have to listen to the recordings and press digits until I am finally connected to a human being (although with some companies or governmental agencies, you never get that far). What infuriates me is when those menus start off with the words, “To continue in English, press…”

Why in the world should I have to press any buttons to continue in the main (even if “unofficial”) language of this country, my country? Continuing in English should be the default, without any further action on the part of the caller; let anyone who needs to hear and communicate in another language be required to make some extra input.

Does anyone seriously think that if they were to move to another country where English is not the native language, that the country in question would bend over backwards for them the way this country does these days?

This bilingualism bulls**t is going too far. I’ve been on some New York subway trains in which ALL the advertising signs were in Spanish, and sometimes a mix of Spanish and some other language or languages other than English.

One such subway line is the 7, which was made famous – or perhaps infamous –a few years ago by Atlanta Braves’ pitcher John Rocker, who said some not-so-flattering, yet not completely untrue, things about that train line’s regular patrons.

I rode that train daily for about four years, and believe me, there were many times when I felt I was in a Third World country, not because I was the only White guy in the car in which I was riding (which I was, many times), but because, far too many times, I seemed to be the only one whose native language was English!

What was funny about it was that, at (barely) 5’10”, while I am not particularly tall, there were many times when I stood about a head taller than everyone else in the car. At those times, I knew how my father, who is 6’4”, felt all his life, generally being the tallest person in a room or on the street, especially when he still lived in Portugal, where the average height in his day was probably about 5’6”.

I also understood how European Colonizers of centuries past felt when they visited Asian and South American nations, understood why they felt superior to the natives.

Now, hold up here, don’t start thinking, “Oh, he’s a racist”, or “White Supremacist pig!” I am neither, and I consider people who are to be Asses of the first order.

Let me clarify: I do not agree with how the colonizers felt, but I believe that, along with their feeling more highly educated and than many of those non-Caucasian races they encountered, their usually superior height gave these Europeans a feeling of overall superiority over those indigenous peoples, and fortified their beliefs that they were “entitled” to take over and rule these people whom they saw as being inferior.

But back to the 7 train: that feeling that I was no longer in the United States, but, rather, somewhere in the Third World, was reinforced not just by my traveling companions, but more so because of the signs in foreign languages. It was a bit eerie.

My parents came to this country knowing a little bit of The King’s English, as they had learned it in school in Portugal; yet upon their arrival, they quickly found that what they had learned did not help them in the slightest in this country, as our pronunciation is far different than that of Great Britain.

And in 1950, there were no “bilingual” agencies, signs, or literature to help them. They had to do what every immigrant who came to these shores before them had done in order to prosper in the Land of Plenty: learn to communicate in the language of the Land, English.

My mother really worked at it and managed to learn well enough over the years that there was barely the slightest trace of an accent, noticeable by very few. It helped that my brothers and I, while growing up, would make fun of our mom when she mispronounced some word; she would have us repeat the proper pronunciation, and never make that mistake again. Being basically shy, Mom hated being laughed at.

My father did the best he could, and he knows how to read, write, and speak English better than many people born here (thanks to lousy Public School Systems which have been failing our children for decades now). Even so, he speaks with a noticeable accent, and my brothers and I sometimes still have to correct his pronunciation of (to him) unfamiliar words. Yet this man, who came to this country unable to communicate, eventually became a self-made millionaire, owning several corporations and some prime real estate. He was involved in local, State, and National politics, his opinions were sought and respected by many politicians (even if they did not readily agree with him on some points), and he served his local community for years, with no monetary profit. One day, he sold his real estate holdings and businesses, and retired.

During his retirement, a series of bad (and extremely costly) investments, along my mother’s sudden long-term debilitating illness requiring her to have 24 hour care (not paid for by Insurance or Medicare), drained my father’s fortune, and he found himself, after my mother’s death 5 years ago, living off a Social Security check and a not-so-large rental income from a warehouse he still owned in Newark.

And all those politicians who used to hover when he had his businesses (and was a sought-after contributor) have crawled into the woodwork since he was no longer of any use to them…

In 2000, my father was 75 years old, widowed, fighting heart problems - his future looked depressingly bleak.

Yet, at an age where most people would have given up and resigned themselves to their fate, over the next three years my father turned his financial situation around, and, for the second time in his life, did what many people never do even once in their lives: he (once again) became a self-made millionaire.

Today, at the age of 80, instead of resting upon his new laurels, he’s still planning for the future, planning on how to expand his new financial empire, how to provide some financial security for his ten grandchildren.

You have to respect a man with the courage and tenacity to do what my father has done.

Right now, my whole point about English when I began this, seems a tad irrelevant – except for the fact that had my father not learned the language of his adopted country, he probably never could have become a millionaire once, let alone twice.

This little tirade of mine on bilingualism seems to have evolved into am honorific for my father. With Father’s Day is just around the corner, I suppose that’s only appropriate.

I am proud to be my father’s son; he’s accomplished a lot in his lifetime, and continues to fight the Good Fight; he (and our mother) gave four sons a college education, taught us Honesty and instilled us with Moral Integrity (although I admit that we’ve wandered from the moral road at times for a bit – women seem to be the bane of Pitta males).

He made and lost a fortune, but instead of giving up, he made another fortune to replace the one he’d lost. He is not always the easiest person to get along with, especially as he’s gotten older and battled the encroaching ravages of Age, yet he has always had a heart of gold, spent many years in (oten thankless) service for his community, and even today, continues to help some less fortunate people who've happened to come his way.

I’ve told my sons that, what with his qualities and accomplishments, their grandfather a Great Man.

No father-son relationship is perfect, and my brothers and I have all had loud disagreements with our dad; but as with most good fathers, our dad did the best he could, the best way he knew how. My brothers and I have a lot to thank him for) perhaps some of us more than others), and I guess this is my way of wishing him a Happy Father’s Day, and to let him know that I love, appreciate and respect him (despite those occasional shouting matches over the years!)

I pray he has many more Happy and Healthy Father’s Days to come.

Copyright 2005, Ruy Pitta

Toy guns and the real thing

• Over the past three decades, there has been a hysterical opposition to allowing children to play with toy guns.
  
  I’m not just talking about realistic-looking toy guns, which have on occasion resulted in a police officer shooting some kid; that, sad to say, does pose a real and proven danger.
  
  But many parents – at least in urban areas, and also in what are known as Blue States, - are more than just reluctant to let their children play the types of games my friends and I played on a daily basis when we were growing up: war, Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, etc., all games that required either toy guns, or reasonable facsimiles thereof (a branch, a two by four, even just a piece of wood, or a bent pipe): they are aggressively and fanatically dead set against their children even making believe they are playing with an imaginary gun.
  
  A few years back, my youngest brother’s son, when he was four, was in pre-school; one day the teacher handed out Lego sets, and instructed the children to construct something to play with.
  
  My nephew and another boy, after some consideration, were inspired to build a handgun.
  
  Well, the brown stuff hit the revolving blades that day! Paul, my brother, got a call from the school reporting his son’s evil construction. The caller was extremely serious and seemed extremely out of sorts about the entire matter; you would have thought my nephew had been caught putting together a zip gun (for those of you unfamiliar with that device, it is a homemade gun, usually shoddily made and fairly unreliable except at close range, that was very popular in the 1950’s and 60’s with juvenile gangs; quite illegal, of course, and potentially as dangerous to the shooter as to the victim).
  
  My brother couldn’t believe the fuss the school was raising. He of course went to the school, and reiterated, flat out, what he’d said to the caller over the phone: that he saw nothing wrong with his son having made a gun from the Lego pieces he’d been given. He pointed out the obvious, that there was no way in the world that this Lego gun could be made to work like a real gun. He also stated that he was rather proud that his son has used some ingenuity and make something other than a Lego house or a Lego car. Besides, his son was a boy, and boys have traditionally been drawn to toy guns.
  
  The school officials were flabbergasted. Aghast. Incredulous. In their eyes, my nephew – who, remember, was only four years old at the time – had committed some great transgression against Society. My brother, who is imbued with a great deal of Common Sense, naturally saw them as being quite idiotic about the entire affair. When he called me to tell me about this incident, I heartily agreed with him. In fact, I was even more incensed than he was, what with my being a strong proponent of the Second Amendment, and having played with (toy) guns throughout my grammar school years, and thus seeing absolutely nothing wrong with such play.
  
  Hell, my oldest friend, Little Joe, once talked his parents into buying him a tripod-mounted 50 caliber machine gun that the Great Western, a local supermarket, had on display atop one of their food cases. It was the Mother of all Toy Guns, and my friends and I, whenever we were sent to the market by our parents, would gaze longingly at that magnificent replica of the weapon that Sgt. Rock’s strongman machine-gunner, Bulldozer, used to carry around and use in battle in DC’s Our Army At War.
  
  It cost Joe’s dad all of $25.00 (it was a happier time, when M&M®s and Life Savers® and Tootsie Roll®s cost a mere nickel, the 64-count Crayola® box cost a whopping 65 cents, and no Sales Tax existed). This machine gun came with an honest-to-goodness ammo belt, loaded with about 50, I think, white plastic .50 cal. Bullets! The downside was that once the ammo belt was emptied, we had to call Time Out and the entire crew would run around the driveway at Bobby Savornik’s house picking up the bullets so they could be loaded onto the belt again…Joe only used it in Bobby’s driveway because we feared losing some of the bullets if we used them on the sidewalk…
  
  My own sons and their friends used to play in our neighborhood with toy guns; whereas my friends and I were busy fighting Nazis and Japs (on rare occasions, we also played Civil War scenarios), my boys and their friends apparently battled more modern, or I should say, futuristic, wars, thanks to the Star Wars® mindset that had taken root by the early 80’s.. But they also sometimes played G.I. Joe® against some unnamed generic enemies of America (the smaller, jointed G.I. Joe Action Figures® were also pretty popular in those days).
  
  But I’m afraid I digress from my point, which is that playing with guns (not real ones, of course) is NOT a Bad Thing. I reiterate: boys playing with toy guns is NOT a Bad Thing.
  
  It’s a healthy outlet, as far as I’m concerned. Proof of that lies in the fact that while my generation grew up with toy guns being sold everywhere, and being a common Christmas or Birthday gift for a young boy, even BB and pellet guns (for non-urban kids, anyway), it is not MY generation that developed Drive-By shootings as a replacement for Rumbles. Drive-By shootings were an innovation of the generation that was, for the most part, NOT allowed to play with guns, NOT allowed to play Soldier, NOT allowed to watch “violent” cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, and especially the Popeye cartoons of the 1930’s and 40’s.
  
  (Speaking of which, I have to take a slight detour here: did you ever see those disgustingly lifeless, sterile Popeye cartoons produced in the late 60’s and early 70’s? Popeye and Bluto hardly ever even raised their voices at each other, let alone have those heroic, absurd and deliciously hilarious fight scenes that made us laugh ourselves silly in the days when Popeye cartoons actually had a plot. No wonder the series is no longer around.)
  
  So, the generation that was raised on dull, lifeless, non-violent cartons, and that were forbidden, for the most part, to play with toy guns, grew up to be much more violent than the previous generation (mine), that consistently watched violent (and extremely funny) cartoons and played with toy guns on a daily basis.
  
  John Derbyshire, the British doctor, prison psychiatrist, author, columnist and regular contributor to National Review, once wrote a column about two friends of his when he was growing up in England, brothers whose parents absolutely forbid them to play with guns or anything to do with guns. Derbyshire had a GI Joe, one of the first ones, made in the 60’s, that stood 11 inches tall; his friends’ parents allowed him to bring his GI Joe to their house so he and the brothers could play, but he could not bring over the toy soldier’s guns. Furthermore, his GI Joe could not be a soldier: he had to be a fireman or something.
  
  So, what did that well-intentioned parental Ban result in?
  
  Both brothers eventually grew up to become professional soldiers. Take that, gun-grabbers!
  
  Back in the 80’s, I owned three handguns. I showed them to my sons, let them touch them (unloaded, of course), and taught them the basic tenets of gun safety:
  
  * Never under any circumstances point a gun at anything you’re not willing to shoot;
  * All gun accidents happen with “unloaded” guns;
  A gun is not a toy;
  * Never pick up a gun you might come upon.
  
  My sons were 9 and 6, respectively, when I began to teach them these rules. I told them that they were never to try to find my guns; that if they wanted to see and touch them, all they had to do was ask, and I would bring one out for them to see and touch. I kept my word; after about four or five times, they stopped asking. Their fascination and natural curiosity was satisfied.
  
  Had I forbidden them to ever touch the guns, and never allowed them to see them, they might very well have gone looking for them on their own. That is how many tragedies occur. Not forbidding them from ever handling the unloaded guns whenever they wanted to, so long as they asked and did so under my close supervision, made the fact that there were guns somewhere in the house No Big Deal.
  
  I once told a group of people at a company meeting this little story, and a stuck-up bleached blonde from some moneybags town tried to make me feel like an ass. Being a typical New Jersey liberal, she was totally anti-gun, and was horrified that I had guns and let my sons see them upon demand.
  
  What this silly, overweight, pretentious bitch failed to realize was that I had educated my sons about the dangers of guns, and, by not making the handguns a Forbidden Apple, had actually drastically decreased any danger they may have posed. They were still well hidden, but were never looked for by my sons, who are naturally curious. Satisfying their curiosity and knowing they could see and handle them whenever they asked kept them from searching for them.
  
  Of course, it helped that my sons are both very intelligent, and have more than a modicum of common sense, not only today, but even at those young ages.
  
  (Another quick aside here: too many parents treat their children like mini-morons; they think the children are unable to comprehend too many things. While that may be true for some children, who are perhaps a little on the slow side, I’ve found that most kids, when you take the time to explain the Why of something, and are given an opportunity to think of and digest the information being given them, will understand much more than many grown-ups think they can. Sure, there are some kids who, no matter that they understand the reason not to do something, will do so anyway out of some sense of adventure or daring, or outright juvenile rebellion; but giving a child a legitimate reason not to do something by explaining the dangers or other downside, rather than the perennial “because I said so” line, is a much better way to get them to develop some common sense and understanding of dangers and Faux Pas’ they are not naturally aware of.)
  
  That Education came in handy only a year after I began it: my older son one afternoon burst into the house to tell me that he and his friends had found a gun.
  
  He and some of his friends in the neighborhood had been playing “army” in the wooded lot behind our house, on the grounds of a former school; in the dirt on the bank of a tiny stream that ran through the property, they found a pistol. One of the boys, Michael, who was maybe 6 or 7 at the time, wanted to pick it up. My son, who was 10 at the time, and ingrained with what I’d taught him about the dangers of guns, would not let Mike or the others touch it, and told them they had to report their find to the Police. He herded them all back to our street and ran home to tell me what they’d found.
  
  I immediately called the Clark Police, and they sent a car out; my son went back to the lot with the responding officer to show him the weapon’s location.
  
  Tragedy was surely averted, because little Mike, innocently enough, might have pointed the gun at one of the other kids, or maybe shot himself, had my son not stopped him from picking it up. Now, had I never taught my son what I had, would he have reacted the same way? I don’t know. I wonder if even he knows, to this day.
  
  Probably not, because the boys would have had a chance to grasp a Forbidden Object, a Holy Grail that all or most of them, being boys, would have doubtless wanted to hold, aim – and, quite possibly, fire...
  
  My having educated my son about guns, even at that young age, rather than never broaching the subject out of ignorance and unreasonable fear, probably saved at least one of those boys’ lives that afternoon. Over the past couple of centuries, in a climate less hostile to firearms, generations of children in this country, especially in rural areas, were taught both the dangers of guns, and how to safely handle them. That’s why, in days gone by, grammar school-aged children used to regularly go out hunting or target shooting. It was a routine part of their childhood, and a rifle or handgun was no more than a tool. The child’s knowledge of the dangers and proper use of those tools kept them from harming themselves or others in play, so that a BB gun or .22 cal. rifle were common Christmas or Birthday presents.
  
  
  
  Copyright 2005, Roy Pitta