My whole family was looking forward to this Christmas 2012 because we were preparing to spend the week out of town at a family wedding.  Our plans were simple.  Have Christmas at home and the day after, instead of heading to all the post-Christmas sales, we would be travelling to spend the rest of the season with friends and family.  This wedding was going to be a cherished time of new beginnings.

Personally, I had to work extremely hard to compartmentalize everything that was going on in this country in order to enjoy myself and thus allow my family to also have a great time.  Husbands and dads can easily quench joy for everyone around them.  If the Connecticut shooting wasn't bad enough our POTUS and Congress all had to come up with sweeping gun legislation that would threaten the very foundations of our Constitution and our Nation. 

So, while the nation grieved over the loss of 27 lives this past Christmas, our leaders heaped upon the nation the fear of losing foundational freedoms.  Our leaders were attacking and planning to attack law abiding citizens without even addressing the heart of the matter.  And that being bad people do bad things.

I have to say that I was really grumpy at the family wedding.  Although I worked hard at staying happy, I knew that the Progressive Movement in this nation was plotting and conceiving of new ways to throw out our Constitution, strip away any way of self defence, while allowing evil people to run amuck destroying what ever they wished and whom ever got in there way.

I asked myself many times, "Would gun control stop the criminals in Chicago, L.A., SanFransisco, Seattle, N.Y., KC, St. Louis, New Orleans, and other big cities?"

I lived in Chicago during the '90's.  I knew that Cook county banned guns and yet the park, located just a few blocks from our house, had regular gang battles.  Gun shots could be heard as usual night-life-city-noises.  All I had to protect my self and my little family was a baseball bat and a phone while the bad guys, just down the street, had all the fire-power they needed to do me and my family great harm.  So I laid low and didn't bring attention to myself...with the exception of voting day...and the time I had a gang-banger arrested for pulling a knife at my work-place...and having a pan-handler kicked out of the Chicago Avenue Pizza Hut...and driving a few co-workers home to the black neighborhood so they would have to wait for the bus late at night...and that time when I was the only white republican voting in our precinct at 500 p.m on that day when Clinton was elected President...

That brings me to another thought.  Although I went about my own business in Chicago, my world eventually clashed with the underworld.  I wanted to move West, like many of my ancestors did.  I wanted to move West to get away from the evil of the Big Cities.  I wanted to live in an area that respected the individuals rights to free exercise of religion, to keep and bear arms, and among other things, the right of free speech.

Several years later, I realize that in order to maintain our rights recognized in the Constitution, we have to go about our business and speak up.  If we cower down, the Progressives will win the day and our Great American Freedoms won't even be a memory for already, as I right this, a lot of our History is being rewritten.  But that is for another day.