Guns and My Faith: Conclusion

I thought due to the conversation generated through my previous post I would comment on how faith enters into my thinking. I generally do not use my faith as a trump card or my primary way to present ideas to people, but it is the first place I start analyzing any position or issue. Most people are more responsive to reasoning and political points of view, but I feel it is important that I respond on where I get my stance of gun rights based on being a christian.

The question is “what is Jesus Christ worldview.”

The first thing I believe I have to do and explain is who I believe Jesus is. He is the son of God. He is also part of a trinity with God the father and the Holy Spirit.

I believe each part of the trinity represents different aspects and characteristics of God. God the father was the just, jealous, and at times even violent. He demanded perfection in the Old Testament to prove we could not live up to His expectations and needed a savior.

God the son was grace, mercy, forgiveness, and that savior we needed.

Even though I believe that all three have shown different characteristics they are the same God and have all the characteristics. I believe God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

I believe Jesus would want me to stop and help someone who has been beat up (the good Samaritan parable) or to help prevent someone from being beat up or killed. I believe I am suppose to lay down my life for my friends and for those I encounter. I put my comfort, safety, and possibly my freedom (could be put in jail) for stepping in to help a stranger.

That is the heart of which I carry a gun with. That is my mindset I believe the God I serve would want me to have.

Now I do not believe that if you do not carry a gun you are wrong. I don't believe that at all.

Now I completely agree with what Chad stated about making the world a safer place. That the world needs a relationship with Jesus Christ and us as Christians having relationships with people and caring for people with the heart of God is the best way to change our world for the better and to make our world a safer place.

I was more stating that as far as gun laws and “gun safety” that it would be safer for everyone to have a gun rather than just criminals having guns because they are the only ones willing to break the law to own them. If our government make it illegal to carry a handgun criminals will still have handguns and that is what my premise and conclusion is.

I loved the responses and hoped you enjoyed hearing what others had to say as much as I did. I believe we are to challenge each other in how we think and that is always what I am trying to do when I talk about issues or topics. I thought about where I stood this week a lot, prayed, and read the Bible just because of the responses and challenges. I am more confident now more than ever on my stances with gun rights and more confident than ever on how I believe I am suppose to help others in need of a miracle.

Feel free to keep the conversation going, but I'll try to have a different topic sent out in the next day or so in case you are sick of this one.

Thanks

The Bantam Voice

“Freed People Free People”

Guns: Menace or Hero?

This week I for the first time since open carrying (carrying a gun on my side, legal in some states including NC) I had a situation where it was almost brought into play.

I am a huge gun rights supporter and believe more law abiding citizens needs guns, but this even really shook me to my core and gave me first hand experience why a handgun can be a hero more than a menace.

My wife and I were driving past a 60 year old (or so) gentleman who seemed to be scared of another man who was around 20 or so. As we drove past we could tell that a fight may be about to break out and slowed down to see if we needed to get out of the car. As we watched looking back the younger man starting beating the older man with a baseball bat in the middle of the road.

By the time we could turn around and jumped out there were nearly 10 cars all watching and no one getting out of the car to help stop this. I was about 7 car lengths away and ran up while calling 911. An officer arrived right and I was getting close and the operator told me not to get any closer the officer would handle it.

Yet I had just seen a man laying flat on his back in the middle of the road being beat with a baseball bat. I could not tell how injured the older man was, but the situation leads me to believe it was serious.

If I was closer could I have stopped this with my gun. Convinced the younger man to stop? What is the other cars carried a handgun and they were able to stop this?

We are law abiding citizens and people of character are the ones who need to be carrying handguns. Our federal, state, and local governments somehow cannot figure out an elementary school economics problem.

If you make a law forbidding guns in a city (like Chicago), government building, school, or bank the only people who have the power and responsibility of handguns are people who are breaking the law. This doesn't fix the problem or guns being dangerous and being used to harm people. Laws only stop law abiding citizens from bringing a gun into a bank. By definition a law abiding citizen will not use a gun to rob a bank! So the next time you hear of a bank being robbed at gun point, or the slaughter of dozens of people at a school shooting, think how it may have gone if every teacher, bank teller, and law abiding citizen was carrying a handgun.

If everyone was carrying a gun I believe that the world would be a safer place, and criminals would think twice before threatening other peoples life because they know that other people are also armed.

Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

The Bantam Voice
"Freed People Free People"

Santorum vs Reagan on the Libertarian Influence in the Republican Party

THIS HAS COME UP ON THE RADIO AND TO THE FRONT OF DISCUSSION. THIS IS A RE-POST WITH UPDATED INFORMATION INCLUDING LINKS TO THE RICK SANTORUM VIDEO. SEE THE VIDEO AT http://www.jasonlewisshow.com/2012/02/santorum-vs-reagan/

Before showing the quote on Rick Santorum I wanted to give the definiton according to dictionary.com of what a libertarian is

lib·er·tar·i·an/ˌlibərˈte(ə)rēən/

Noun:

An adherent of libertarianism. A person who advocates civil liberty.

and again from thefreedictionary.com

1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.

2. One who believes in free will.

Now what Rick Santorum says regarding the libertarian influence within the Republican Party.

 “I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement.”
(SEE THE VIDEO AT http://www.jasonlewisshow.com/2012/02/santorum-vs-reagan/)

A famous Conservative named Ronald Reagan once said this regarding the same topic

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism …The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Case closed Rick Santorum is scared of civil liberty influencing the Republican Party.
Case closed I will not vote for him and won't even think about it again.
He has put a nail in his coffin of my potential vote. I will write in a candidate or vote 3rd party before I vote for Santorum.

The Bantam Voice
"Freed people free people"

Rick Santorum = Prohibition

Prohibition was something that many people thought was a good idea. It was the "christian" and godly thing to do.

Government intervention even for a good cause only results in more power to the government. Prohibition set the precedent for the government to be involved in what we were allowed to consume. They have since outlawed raw milk, selling neighbors certain foods, and allowed massive control to be given to the "food police."

This is the easiest explanation of why Rick Santorum makes me nervous. Everything he says he wants to do with good intentions and the "right and godly thing to do (little g on purpose)" will only give more power to the government and more reason to be invovled in our lives.

I believe that if we outlaw gay marriage then the government would now has the keys to the bedroom and then can start to control who can have sex with and when. How far away would we be away from the government deciding how many kids we could have? They could decide that sex was only for pro-creation or that only the "best looking" citizens could have children.

Don't throw your liberties away with a wrong sense of "godliness." When the government mandates something you are is no longer doing it because you believe it is wrong and no "godliness" is then created. Government doesn't create godliness it just creates tyranny and oppression.

All the good intentions in the world can still result in freedoms being ripped from our lives. Of course we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In another point the right and "godly" thing (prohibition) was eventually repealed, but the government still maintaned the power over our lives. Even if Rick Santorum does all the "right" things, but does it with government power it can just be undone and actually used again the people of the country.

The answer is always freedom. The answer would be to take away power from the government and give it back to the people. Take away the benefits of marriage and gays will no longer want to be recognized as being married. Being married is a religious union. Most people only want to be recognized as being married because of the tax benefits. Take away the tax benefits and treat all people as equal instead of the government "granting more benefits" to other people.

Rick Santorum is openely not for less government involvement in your life especially when it comes to social issues because of this I cannot vote for him and hope that you will at least think on my thoughts before deciding to vote for anyone.

I of course endorse Ron Paul

The Bantam Voice
"Freed People Free People"

The Bantam Life

The Bantam Life is my blog about my families pursuit of self sufficiency and from extracting ourselves from the mundane day to day life.

Check it out if you are at all sick and tired of the "American Dream"/ "rate race."

http://thebantamlife.blogspot.com/

The Bantam Voice
"Freed People, Free People"

Do You Trust Our Government With Anything? Much Less Foreign Policy?

I have had a hard time explaining to people why I am so excited and believing in a foreign policy that Ron Paul and the constitution advocate we use. We have all been scared and put into fear of all the other countries in the world especially if they are radical muslim.

I was formerly a, near neo-conservative Sean Hannity lets go kick everyones butt in the entire world before they get us, kind of guy. So I am very understanding of this point of view, but it still doesn't keep me from going mad trying to communicate freedom in all walks of life including foreign policy.

I have recently started summing up why I'm for a "Non-interventionism" style of foreign policy by asking a simple question,

"We don't trust our government to run anything including social security, education, airport security, etc and we want them less involved in every part of our life because we can't trust them with anything. So why do we trust that they are doing the best things in foreign policy?"

Less is more with government in all stages. Government is obviously drunk with power and that extends into foreign policy and war. We haven't declared war since World War II. I'm all for war if needed, but lets declare it, win it, and come home. Congress should declare war not the president send out drone strikes and troops to "keep the peace" or "support the rebels."

I don't think we should be so cavalier with trusting the government to give them ultimate power to trample the freedom of other nations and us. Every day the government continues with the Patriot Act and the Nation Defense Authorization Act we have not liberty or freedom.

At first they came for the jews, or the muslim supporting American (not sure how that saying goes...... which one was it) the point is if we give the government supreme power over us to "keep us safe" they will abuse it. Don't believe me? Think about the Wikileaks guy Julian Assange. Him and those associated with Wikileaks gave us important information of how the government was lying to us and he is now one of the most demonized men of the last few years. We could argue the morality of it all and whether it "endangered" the troops, but the point is the government lies and lies and lies.

Why give them more power than they need? Why trust them and not question their foreign policy? It makes no sense. Scale the government back, less power, less involvement including in foreign policy and in our private lives.

The Bantam Voice
"Freed people, Free People"
"

Minimum Wage

Due to Mitt Romney's recent confirmation of support for raising the minimum wage with inflation I thought it important to point out what I think about the minimum wage.

The minimum wage is a job killer and an economic killer. It hurts the poor possibly more than anyone else. Any politician that would argue otherwise isn't being honest, hasn't thought about it, or just isn't very bright.

Let me give some examples of why I believe it is a job killer.

The first obvious reason is that if Wal-Mart is forced to pay $9.00 an employee and they have only $9.00 a hour to hire on in their work force they will be forced to pick only 1 employee. If the market could choose the wages it may be $4.50 for a cart attendant and $4.50 for a store greeter.

This would mean that 2 jobs were created not 1. Not only do two seperate people have jobs, but 2 seperate people are now able to boost their resume with a job. There would seem to be no harder way to get a job than having been out of work for almost 2 years on unemployment.

Apart from the simple division of the $9.00 I woud argue that if Wal-Mart has the option to take the risk on only one employee than they will be far pickier with their candidates and may even exclude all unskilled workers for someone with a college degree who is down on their luck. Maybe Wal-Mart is so worried they won't get their money's worth out of their new employee that they choose not to hire, but instead put it into marketing.

If their was no minimum wage teenagers would also get more jobs. They would start to learn skills that you can only learn through a real job in the real world such as, how to deal with bosses, being on time without a school bus, customer service, the prices of products, floorpans, cleaning, stocking, cashier duties, etc.

With a minimum wage I believe Wal-Mart or other employers will choose to take less risk therefore hurting the poor and unskilled the most.

With our current system of cradle to grave welfare I guess it wouldn't make sense for the poor to get a job at $5.00 a hour, but that in it of itself is a whole book.

Also the minimum wage encourages those who are looking for cheap labor incentive to hire illegal immigrants or to pay for jobs under the table. This in turn decreases tax revenue. These laws are one of a million that help encourage people to become criminals versus protecting people.

So when you hear Mitt Romney say that he is for raising the minimum wage think twice about it, do we really believe that is the answer to getting more jobs for more Americans?


The Bantam Voice
"Freed people, Free people"