Why Am I Posting an Article on Gun Control on a Natural Health Blog?

What a news article about gun control doing on a natural health blog?

Let me explain: Gun control advocates want to ban guns on the premise that guns kill people. Ban guns, and save people, is the basic idea. After all, we already have cops, so the idea that people need guns for self-protection is pretty old school, right?

The problem is, that's the same tired old argument the medical bureaucrats use about natural healing. After all, we already have medical doctors, so the idea that people need herbs and supplements and chiropractors and naturopaths is, well, pretty old school, right?

You see, it comes down to educated choice. I know that if a killer breaks into my house in the middle of the night, it's going to take the cops anywhere from 12 to 20 minutes on average to get to me. I also know the killer can probably take me out in about 2 minutes. So I keep a gun, and I educate myself on its usage through accredited gun courses and practice at the local shooting range, knowing that on the whole, depending on the cops, however well-trained, well-intentioned and heavily armed they may be, is not always going to work to my greatest benefit.

Similarly, I make an educated choice about doctors. Like cops, they are generally wonderful, well-meaning, highly-trained people. And they are often very helpful, particularly if you break your arm, or have a heart attack, or something like that. But for the most part, they are little more than pill-pushers for the pharmaceutical industry. And their treatments are designed strictly to treat symptoms, rather than resolve underlying health problems. What's more, they have one of the most abysmal records in the world, in terms of accidentally harming people with their medical decisions. (See statisics below.)

So, when it comes to doctors, I take the same stand as I do with guns. I recognize that doctors aren't necessarily my first and best choice. And I continually educate myself on natural healing techniques, in order to become more self-reliant, health-wise. The more I can do for myself, the more I free up doctors to deal with more serious problems they are trained for.

For some reason, self-reliance is now a foreign concept to the vast majority of people on the face of the earth. They have become used to big brother government providing for their social needs, the medical bureaucrats providing for their medical needs, law enforcement providing for their protection, etc.

But for those of us who recognize the inherent short-comings in depending upon others for your needs, the value of self-reliance becomes abundantly apparent. With that in mind, here is some food for thought in regards to doctors versus guns:

Doctors vs. Guns

Doctors:

(A) The number of doctors in the U.S. is 700,000.

(B) Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are now a whopping 120,000.

(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 17.14%.

[Statistics: courtesy of the U. S. Dept of Health & Human Services]

Guns:

(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000.

(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.

(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.001875%.

[Statistics: courtesy of the FBI.]

So statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners!

Remember, guns don't kill people, doctors do.

FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!! Out of concern for the public at large, I have withheld statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention.

I am being faecitious, of course. Yet the statistics are true. The medical industry, held to the same standards as the gun industry, would have been banned decades ago. Same with the pharmaceutical industry: Prescription drugs kill or permanently injure tens of thousands of people a year. Herbs and nutritional supplements, on average, about three people per year, and then generally, only through mis-use or abuse.

Think about it. And if you believe in self-reliance, even just a little bit, be sure to continually educate yourself on natural healing, and practice it. As with guns, education and practice makes perfect. The more self-reliant you become in health matters, the less likely you'll end up on the wrong end of the above statistics.

-- Spencer

Ten Years After Columbine, It's Easier to Bear Arms

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090420/us_time/08599189141600

By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER Michael A. Lindenberger – Mon Apr 20, 11:15 am ET

Monday April 20 marks 10 years since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold permanently etched the words Columbine High School into this nation's collective memory. What happened that day in 1999 also seemed to wake America up to the reality that it had become a nation of gun owners - and too often a nation of shooters.

The carnage in Littleton, Colorado - 12 classmates and a teacher before the killers offed themselves - and the ease with which the teenagers acquired their weapons (two sawed-off shotguns, a 9-mm semiautomatic carbine and a TEC-9 handgun) seemed to usher in a new era of, well if not gun control, then at least gun awareness. (See pictures of crime in middle America.)
In the decade since, massacres perpetrated by deranged gunmen have continued - including the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre in which Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and wounded many others. But something odd has occurred. Whatever momentum the Columbine killings gave to gun control has long since petered out. (See pictures of America's gun culture.)

This spring, for example, Texas lawmakers are mulling a new law that would allow college students to carry firearms to campus (Utah already makes this legal). "I think people weren't concerned about it first," says University of Texas graduate student John Woods, who has emerged as a spokesman for campus efforts to defeat the bill. "They thought, 'It's a terrible idea. Why would the government consider something like this?'" But as the debate on campus has heated up, that complacency has vanished, Woods explains to TIME. Students opposed to the bill plan a big rally on Thursday at the Capitol, he says.

But efforts like Woods' are up against powerful headwinds - and not just because of the powerful gun lobby that often strangles gun-control laws. Americans in general have cooled significantly to the idea of restricting gun rights. A poll released last week by CNN showed that support for stricter gun laws was at an all-time low, with just 39% of respondents in favor. Eight years ago that number was 54%.

Woods concedes that getting help to the psychotic, would-be killers of the world would probably be an even better fix. But he has a personal reason to take the issues seriously. Two years ago, he was in his apartment in Blacksburg, Virginia, listening to sirens sounding across the campus outside his window. A half-dozen friends of his were in the classroom where Cho Seung-Hui opened fire, and the names of some of the dead belong to people he knew. "The idealist in me is shocked and angry," Woods says, that restrictions on guns have eased rather than tightened in the wake of tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech. "But the cynic in me is not surprised at all. I think if this was peanuts or pistachios causing all these deaths, then we'd be all over it. But there is no amendment about peanuts or pistachios in the Bill of Rights. People on both sides just simply won't compromise." (See pictures form the Virginia Tech massacre.)

Indeed, the debate seems to be almost one-sided nowadays, with an ongoing backlash against gun control. Another law up for debate in Texas, for example, would prohibit most companies from barring employees from keeping guns in their cars in company parking lots. In Montana, only last-minute dealmaking between the House and Senate stripped a new law of language that would have given residents the right to carry concealed weapons with or without a permit.