Tag Archives: politics

How Debt Service Prevents Financial Prosperity

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Understanding what debt costs.

Last night, in the middle of the night, U.S. Senate Republicans voted in a tax bill that would add an estimated $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years (per the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report). The bill was long with many handwritten amendments and no one was given enough time to read and comprehend the entire thing. There was no debate in the Senate; Democrats were not even allowed to ask for enough time to read it all. Despite all this, almost every single Republican voted in favor of the bill.

Democrats did not. I like to think it’s because they want to fully understand something they vote in favor of, which I double many Republicans did. Or perhaps they actually believed the data in the CBO and Joint Tax Commission reports, which both indicated that the middle class would be harmed by the bill for the benefit of the wealthiest of Americans — many of whom just happen to be the biggest donors to Republican candidate campaigns.

All politics aside, however. This blog post isn’t about politics. It’s about the financial impact of living in debt.

My Qualifications

Before I dive into the numbers, let me take a moment to explain what makes me qualified to write about this.

First, my education and early work experience. I graduated from Hofstra University with a BBA with Highest Honors in Accounting. From school, I went right to work with the New York City Comptroller’s Office — and no, that’s not a spelling error — Bureau of Financial Audit. My job was to audit various organizations that had contractual agreements with the City of New York. I started as a Field Auditor and, within two years, became a Field Audit Supervisor responsible for overseeing up to 13 auditors. When it became apparent that the only way to move up in the Bureau was for someone to retire or die, I moved into private industry. I wound up in the corporate headquarters of Automatic Data Processing (ADP) where I was a Senior Auditor and then a Senior Financial Analyst. I audited various divisions of the company all over the country and later crunched numbers for executives who needed numbers to say certain things.

Second, my own experience with debt. It happened right out of college when I got my first credit cards. It was easy to buy things so I did. Trouble is, I had a lot of credit cards and I carried a balance on all of them. After a while, I could only afford the minimum payment on most of those cards. And if there’s one thing you must know about credit card debt is that it will take years to pay off a credit card if you only send in the minimum payment every month. I learned this lesson the hard way. I was able to avoid bankruptcy by simply cutting up the cards, reducing my spending, and putting more money toward my balances until they were all paid off. These days, I only have two credit cards — one for personal use and one for business use — and I pay the entire balance in full every single month before the due date. (More on the amount of money this saves in a moment.)

Third, my second career as a freelance technical writer. Writing 80+ books gave me plenty of experience explaining somewhat complex topics to readers. Among my books are about 10 editions of Quicken: The Official Guide for Osborne/McGraw-Hill. We wanted a book that went beyond simple software how-to and actually provided good financial advice for readers. I wrote sidebars and created downloadable worksheets for readers to use to help them improve their financial situation. A lot of them dealt with debt. (More on this in a moment.)

So yes, I know a little about finance and debt and I have the skills to write about them. If you need to learn, read on and be educated. If you think you already know what I have to say, read on and let’s compare notes in the comments section that follows. Fair enough?

Debt Service

The online Financial Dictionary, has several definitions for debt service. I like the second one because it applied to both businesses and individuals:

The amount of money required to make payments on the principal and interest on outstanding loans, the interest on bonds, or the principal of maturing bonds. An individual or company unable to make such payments is said to be “unable to service one’s debt.” An example of debt service is a monthly student loan payment.

So let’s take that student loan payment as an example — especially since student loans are in the news so much these days.

I was fortunate; I only had to borrow $5,000 and I had 10 years to pay it off. My payments were about $60 per month. (And no, I won’t tell you how long ago this was.)

Let’s do the math on a more realistic modern example. Suppose you graduated from college with $50,000 in student debt. While there are many types of repayment plans, let’s go with a simple one: 12 years at 5% interest. This spiffy loan calculator template in Excel does all the math for you on monthly payments, and interest paid:

Loan Example
Not only does this Excel template calculate the amounts for a loan, but it charts the percentage of interest in your debt service.

In this example, your debt service for this loan would be $462.45 per month for 144 months. Over that time, you’d pay off not only the $50,000 you borrowed, but an additional $16,592.11 in interest.

Now imagine you have a Visa card that you just used to pay for a much needed — in your opinion, anyway — vacation to the Caribbean. You’ve got decent credit and the issuing bank gave you a $10,000 line of credit. But when you called to ask if you could raise that limit, they graciously popped it up to $14,000 — which is a great thing because you managed to charge up $8,459 on top of the balance you were already carrying for that big screen television you bought for the Super Bowl and last year’s trip to Hawaii. Now you’re looking at a balance of about $12,500. But when the bill comes, you’re relieved to see that the monthly minimum payment is only $273.33 per month.

But let’s take a moment to take a closer look at the numbers. As this extremely helpful Minimum Payment Calculator explains, credit card companies calculate your minimum payment based on either a percentage of the balance or your interest plus 1%. (You can get the details for your credit card in the fine print in your bill or credit card agreement. You did read that, didn’t you?) For this example, I used the details for my Chase Amazon Visa card: currently 14.24% interest (tied to prime so it could change at any time) plus 1% of the balance plus any interest, late fees, or unpaid amounts due. If all that adds up to less than $25, then my minimum payment is $25.

Minimum Payment
The minimum payment calculator explains just why it’s so dumb to send in just the minimum payment on your credit cards every month.

Going a step farther with the math on this, you’ll learn that it will take 305 months to pay off the debt if you only pay the minimum payment. Why is that? Simple: each payment you make goes mostly to pay off interest so the debt is reduced at a very slow rate. If you stopped using that credit card and paid just the minimum payment every month for 305 months, you’d pay nearly $14,000 in interest on the original $12,500 debt.

Minimum Payment
The CFPB — yeah, that’s the government agency that Trump says is hurting banks — added what’s in the red box to every credit card bill in an effort to educate consumers about credit card debt.

A side note here. Because so many people don’t understand this, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created during the Obama administration in part to help protect consumers from deceptive lending practices, began requiring credit card companies to make it clear how long it will take to pay off your credit card with just the minimum payment each month. Here’s an actual image from one of my Amazon Visa statements.

If you put all this together, you can see why it’s easy to get bogged down in debt when you have a bunch of credit cards and only send in the minimum payment. The debt never goes away unless you pay more than the minimum and stop using the credit cards.

Remember this: The money you spend on debt service is money you can’t spend on anything else. It should be considered mandatory spending, not discretionary. This is an important concept to keep in mind, not only for this discussion but for the way you manage your personal or business finances. The more debt you have, the less choices you have on how to spend your money. And the less money you’ll be able to save to get ahead.

Paying Down Debt

One of the things I recommended in my Quicken books was to pay more than what’s due on a debt — especially a large debt like a mortgage or a high interest debt like a credit card or consumer loan. That spiffy Excel template I showed earlier makes it easy to do the math. Suppose you pay an additional $100 per month toward that loan. Here are the results:

Loan Example 2
By sending in an additional $100 per month in this example loan, you can knock nearly 3 years off the term and save about $4,000.

Of course, it isn’t always easy to send more to pay down a loan. Maybe you can’t do it every month. But sometimes you can. Maybe you’ve sold a motorcycle you never ride for $1000 or got a $1500 holiday bonus. Or maybe this month’s commissions were better than expected. Send the extra money to a debt you want to pay down. It will make a big difference.

True story: When I was married, I was in charge of household finances. Whenever there was extra money in our joint checking account, I put that cash towards our mortgage. The result? We paid off our 15 year mortgage in 11 years, savings thousands of dollars in interest. (Yes, at the age of 50, I actually owned my home. And here’s a secret: I own the home I’m in now, too. Life is very good without a mortgage payment.)

My final piece of advice about personal credit is this: there is no reason to have more than one or two credit cards. Cut up the department store and gas credit cards. Get yourself down to just one or two MasterCard/Visa accounts. These cards can be used anywhere and some of them will earn you nice points or rebates. My Amazon Visa accumulates dollars I can spend on Amazon and, since I buy a lot of stuff there, I use them as they are accumulated. My AOPA MasterCard earns rebate dollars I apply to my account. Neither card comes with an annual fee and I pay balances in full every month so I don’t pay interest. This is free money, folks. It takes a lot of willpower to spend only what you can afford to pay off every month, but it is possible — I’ve been doing it for about 15 years now. Keeping your debt under control is the best way to stay financially secure when weathering unexpected hardships.

The Big Picture

What prompted this particular blog post is the news that the new tax plan will add an estimated $1.4 trillion (with a T) to the budget deficit. To understand what that means, let’s look at what a deficit is.

According to the Financial Dictionary, a deficit is:

A situation in which outflow of money exceeds inflow. That is, a deficit occurs when a government, company, or individual spends more than he/she/it receives in a given period of time, usually a year. One’s deficit adds to one’s debt, and, therefore, many analysts believe that deficits are unsustainable over the long-term.

(Again, I like that second definition because it applies to government, businesses, and individuals.)

Let’s look at an individual first. Supposed your take-home net pay is $3,000 per month. Every month, you pay $1200 for rent, $250 for utilities, $500 for groceries, $462 for your student loan, $100 for gas for your car, $80 for car insurance, $273 for your credit card-funded trip to the Caribbean and other stuff, and a total of $195 in payments toward your other credit cards. That’s a total of $3,060. Without even accounting for small miscellaneous expenses, pocket money, and the countless things I didn’t think to include here, you’re already running a $60 per month deficit. (Good thing your health insurance is a benefit that’s already taken from your paycheck; some of us aren’t so lucky and have to pay that out-of-pocket, too.)

So you increase your debt with cash advances or payday loans to see you through to the next month. Or maybe you’ve got some savings and you’re dipping into that to make up the difference. But eventually you’ll max out your debt and your savings will run out. What happens when it does? What happens when your monthly expenditures exceed income and you simply can’t pay what you owe anymore? Eviction, auto repossession, bankruptcy, homelessness. These are all possible.

This is the little picture — what happens when one person has a deficit. It’s easy to imagine it on a larger scale, like for a business. Think of a local retail business. The owner has to invest a bunch of money up front to set up the store with fixtures and get it properly decorated. He might have gotten a loan for that. Then more money to buy inventory. Rent, utilities, advertising, insurance. Then employees, with or without benefits but certainly with wages and employment taxes. He’s already at a deficit before he opens his doors. The business opens and he slowly builds a customer base. But what happens when/if revenues don’t cover monthly expenses? Or if a Walmart moves into town and half of his customers decide to shop there instead? More loans can help in the short term, but as the definition of deficit that I quoted above says, “many analysts believe that deficits are unsustainable over the long-term.” Of course they aren’t. When you spend more than you take in, you will eventually lose the ability to pay for what you’re spending.

CBO 2017 Budget Numbers
The CBO 2017 Budget numbers.

Now let’s look at the very big picture: the United States economy. The Congressional Budget Office has the numbers for 2017; the U.S. government spent $700 billion more than it took in for 2017. That means that the government added that $700 billion to its debt. And, according to the CBO, the country now has $14.7 trillion (yes, with a T) of debt.

(Suddenly, that $12,500 of credit card debt doesn’t seem so bad, eh?)

It’s hard to imagine $14.7 trillion in debt, but a few infographics show its impacts. First, here’s one from the CBO for 2016:

CBO Income and Expenditures for 2016
The CBO prepared this infographic for 2016. Can’t read it? Click here to download the big picture in PDF format.

I know it’s hard to read here — I had to reduce it to get it to fit in my blog page format. (You can download a PDF that’s easier to read.) What I want to draw your attention to is the number at the top of the chart on the left: Net Interest: $241 billion. So in 2016, the U.S. government spent $241 billion dollars on interest for its debt.

This next chart puts interest paid in perspective to various categories of spending. It’s from the National Priorities Project and is based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) numbers for 2015. You can find it on the site’s Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go page. I assume that this data is updated regularly, so if you’re reading this in the future, you may see different numbers. Here’s the spending chart that illustrates my point:

Total Federal Spending 2015
Here’s a breakdown of spending based on actual services provided. I think it’s tragic that the United States spends more money on interest for its absurd debt levels than it does for vital services that really can make America great again: education, energy, science, and food and agriculture, to name a few.

My point is this. Because we’re so deep in debt — and have been for a very long time now — we spend a huge amount of money just paying interest on our debt. That money could be going to education or health care or science. It could be doing so many things that actually benefit the American people — just like the interest on your credit card debt could be paying for a gym membership that might make you healthier or piano lessons that could develop your kid’s talent for music. Or any number of things that could make you or your family’s life better.

Why Are We Making this Worse?

These are the numbers. I know I’ve presented data from three different years, but it really doesn’t matter. We’ve been in this deficit/debt situation for a very long time now. Despite efforts to reduce the debt with a budget surplus as President Clinton managed to do during his term, the situation gets worse every year.

And now the Senate has approved a tax plan that will cut taxes for big businesses and the country’s wealthiest individuals, banking on a disproven “trickle down effect” to bring up the economy as a whole so more taxes can be collected. The CBO has already said that this budget will increase the deficit by $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years. Can we really afford debt service on that? What will we be giving up in order to pay interest on that debt?

Personally, I’m sick of Fox News-brainwashed right wingers complaining about Democrats increasing the deficit and debt. The truth is here for anyone interested in knowing it: the Republicans are even worse about budgeting. Last night’s ill-informed vote on a hastily prepared tax plan proves it.

Americans already pay among the lowest tax rates for individuals in a developed nation. We pay taxes for a reason: to pay for the services we get. When my house catches fire, I want the fire department to show up. When I drive to Seattle or Portland or Arizona, I want to drive on smooth roads and cross bridges that won’t collapse. If I had kids or grandkids, I’d want them to go to a school where the teachers were well paid, happy, and effective. I want the FDA to make sure the food and medications I take are safe. I want the FAA to make sure the planes I fly in are safe and that pilots I share the sky with are properly trained and certificated. I want to be as proud of my country today as my parents were when we put the first man on the moon.

US Taxes Compared to World
Pew Research study of U.S. taxpayer burden in 2015 compared to other developed nations. Get the details here.

None of this is possible without the revenue to cover the expenses of these services. Revenue comes from taxes. I’m willing to pay my fair share and I know that many others are, too. Why is that so hard for Republicans to understand?

As a fiscally responsible individual, I want this deficit budgeting to stop. Don’t you?

How can we ever expect our country to become “great again” if we throw away so much money on debt service?

The Guns in My Life

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Not all gun owners are nuts.

I read something on Twitter this morning that really struck a nerve:

Monitoring? What did he mean by monitoring?

I read some of the comments and found this one:

I don’t think she meant “special” in a positive way. And that really got under my skin.

You see, I’m a gun owner. And although I like to think I’m special, I’m not special in the way Michelle seems to think all gun owners are.

And that’s why I decided to write this post. You see, I’m not the only person in my family who owns a gun and none of them are “special” in the sense that we need to be monitored.

My Father’s Guns

My father worked as a police officer in our small northern New Jersey town of Cresskill from around the time I was born in the early 1960s to his retirement. As you might expect, he owned a gun and I grew up with at least one gun in the house.

I say “at least” because I honestly don’t know how many guns he had. We were taught at a young age not to touch his gun and we didn’t. When he got home from work, he’d put it on the top shelf of a tall bookcase in the foyer or sometimes on top of the refrigerator when he came home for dinner. (He worked three different shifts: 8-4, 4-12, and “midnights” (12-8).) I knew the gun was dangerous and I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch it. I never did.

Well, that isn’t exactly true.

Every autumn, the town held what was called a “Turkey Shoot.” It was held at the local shooting range. They’d put up targets and participants would shoot. The targets were scored and the high score would win frozen turkeys. I think it was a fund raiser, but how would I know? I was a kid.

At least twice when we attended this event, my father let us shoot his gun at the target. He never handed us the gun. Instead, he held the gun with us to point and shoot. I remember it being heavy and the trigger being hard to pull. I don’t remember if I won a turkey. Again, I was a kid.

Girl Scouts

When I was in Girl Scouts, we learned to shoot rifles. This was at an indoor range in the nearby town of Tenafly (I think). The rifles were probably World War II surplus. They could hold one shot and had a bolt action. Again, I was a kid and don’t remember much about it.

I also don’t know why learning to shoot rifles was a Girl Scout activity in my area around 1970, but today I think it’s kind of cool.

I do remember that they taught us to shoot from multiple positions including prone and sitting cross-legged. I was a pretty decent shot.

My Uncle’s Guns

My uncle was a flag-waving veteran of the Korean War, although the closest he got to Korea was the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. He became quite a gun collector and kept most of them in a big gun safe down in his basement, right at the foot of the basement stairs. I vaguely remember him showing some of them to me. Most of them were collector’s items.

In his younger days, he was also a hunter. For years, he had a bearskin rug on the floor in his living room. He’d got the bear on the same trip my dad had shot a deer. (That’s when I first ate venison.)

He was a little crazy with the guns sometimes, but I don’t think he was unsafe. One day when I was just out of college, I visited his family with my boyfriend, who had a very “plain vanilla” family life. My uncle’s family was anything but “plain vanilla.” My uncle staged a fight with his son, my cousin, with my cousin yelling at him from down in the basement stairs. My uncle pulled out a gun and shot it down the stairs from the kitchen. Yes, in his house. The gunshot was loud! But the bullet was a blank. He’d apparently set the whole thing up to give my boyfriend something to talk about when he got home.

I don’t know how many guns he had, but I suspect it was more than 20. I don’t know what happened to them when he passed away.

My First Gun

I got my first gun in the early 2000s, not long after moving from the New Jersey suburbs to Arizona. My future wasband telecommuted to work back in New Jersey, which required him to be away from home 7 to 10 days every month. While he was gone, I was alone with a deaf dog in a house that creaked a lot more than I was used to. I used to lay awake at night, convinced that the creaking I was hearing was someone creeping up the stairs. Keep in mind that the house was at the end of a gravel road, pretty far from the neighbors so it wasn’t as if help could arrive quickly if there was an intruder.

At my request, my future wasband bought us a gun to keep in the bedroom. It was a 38 special revolver.

Of course, being responsible (not “special”) gun owners, we immediately sought training to make sure we could use it safely. The only training we found in the area was a Concealed Weapons Permit class. It was a weekend long and included lots of information about guns, including safety and legality. The guy who taught it with his wife — both of whom wore camouflage outfits to class — was very pro-carry. Remember, Arizona is an open carry state, meaning you can wear or carry a visible gun in most places. The concealed weapons permit enabled holders to carry a gun concealed by clothing or in a purse or backpack. Some people think this is important. I was the only woman in the class and they kept trying to convince me that I’d be safer if I carried a gun with me at all times. I said I wasn’t interested. They said, “Well, what about if you’re in a mall parking lot late at night, parked way out on the edge, and a gang of guys comes toward you.” I replied, “I’d never put myself in a situation like that. I’m not an idiot.”

The class was informative, opening my eyes to a different gun mentality than mine. It also included range time where we had to qualify before passing. Since I was the only woman in the class, I got a bit of attention. I was told that with a little practice, I could be a good shooter. Great.

A side benefit of having a concealed weapons permit was that I could worry a lot less about rules when I took my gun to the range or elsewhere. For example, suppose I’ve got the gun out of sight in my car’s glove box when I get pulled over for speeding. The gun would be considered “concealed” and without a permit to carry it that way, I could get in deep trouble. The course explained how to handle such a situation and the permit made it legal to have the gun in the glove box to begin with.

Beretta 21A Bobcat
My Beretta isn’t very practical, but it holds a place in my heart as my first gun. And yes, that’s my hand holding it.

Of course the 38 Special wasn’t really my gun. It was my future wasband’s. I wound up buying something quite a bit smaller, easier to handle, and less practical: a Beretta 21A Bobcat. It’s a semi-automatic handgun with a magazine that holds 7 22 caliber rounds. I bought it brand new in a gun shop and, yes, I did go through a background check process before it was sold to me. It’s less practical for three main reasons:

  • If I ever did have to use it to stop a serious attacker, I’d basically have to empty it into his body to stop him/her. 22 rounds aren’t very big.
  • It’s extremely picky about ammunition and will jam if I don’t buy the right stuff. A recent trip to the range for some additional training confirmed what I remembered about it: there’s a popular (and not cheap) brand of ammo it simply chokes on. No one wants a gun that will jam when it’s needed.
  • I’m not nearly as accurate firing it as I am with a bigger gun. I think that could be resolved with more practice, though.

But since I really don’t need a gun, I never saw a reason to replace it.

And it does have a nice feature that I thought was handy for horseback riding out in the desert: it’s rather unique flip up barrel makes it easy to load a single 22 long “snake shot” round. That turns the little gun into a small shotgun suitable for killing rattlesnakes or deterring coyotes out on the trail.

My wasband eventually replaced the 38 special with a Glock. I don’t know which one, but I do know that I was more accurate with the Glock than the Beretta.

The Big Sandy Shoot

As I’ve blogged about here and here, there’s a twice-yearly event called the Big Sandy Shoot, which his held on some private property in the middle of the Arizona desert. It’s a gathering of gun enthusiasts who get to fire a wide range of weapons at reactive targets. There are strict safety rules with range officers to enforce them. No one gets hurt, although the tracer rounds they use at night have been known to start fires.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, a “reactive target” is one that literally explodes when hit.

These are hobbyists, mostly, although I suspect more than a few of them are “special.” (Ever see a cannon made out of a fire extinguisher that fires bowling balls? I have.) They’re really into their guns and showing off. It’s interesting, but a bit too hard core for my taste. Since I’ve already blogged about it, I’ll let you read those blog posts to learn how crazy it is.

My Brother’s Guns

My brother shoots for a hobby. He owns fifteen guns — as he just informed me in answer to my texted question — and he’s quite proficient using them. He regularly competes using an STI Edge handgun. According to him:

It’s specifically for competition. I have different barrels for it so I can shoot 9mm, .40 Cal and .22 with it.

My shotgun is a Benelli M2 and my rifle was built by a company called JP

Back in 2013, when I was visiting my brother and his wife, I went with them to one of their competitions. (They both shoot.) It was professionally managed and extremely safety oriented. Rules were followed with no exception — range officers made sure of it. I could see why he enjoyed it. It was challenging stuff, with a variety of target types and scenarios. It got him outdoors year-round, with other people who enjoyed the same hobby. Beats parking his ass on a sofa watching TV, no?

Keep in mind that my brother lives in New Jersey where gun laws are pretty strict. (My uncle lived in New Jersey, too.) I don’t know the details on how he’s required to register, store, transport, or shoot them. But I do know that he competes all along the eastern seaboard.

He and his wife divorced a few years ago. They still see each other occasionally at the range and at competitions.

I tried to find a YouTube video of him shooting but came up empty. He sent me a 30-second video of himself at a competition shooting a rifle but I don’t think it’s up to me to share it online. If he sends me a YouTube link, I’ll add it to this post.

My Shotgun

Concealed Carry Permit
I got a concealed carry permit good for Washington State when I moved here.

When I moved to Washington state, which I believe is also an open carry state, I brought my little Beretta with me. Then I did the paperwork to get a concealed carry permit here. It’s actually easier here than in Arizona; no class is required. (I think that’s wrong.) I carry it in my wallet, even though I don’t carry the gun.

Reminton 870
My Remington 870 Tactical shotgun. I had it sitting by the front deck door with a box of ammo for weeks after the second dog attack.

But when I started having serious worries about coyotes coming into my property to steal chickens or possibly my dog, I started thinking that maybe I needed a more practical weapon. And when my neighbor’s dog got into my chicken yard and slaughtered a total of 18 laying hens and two roosters (over two visits), I made my decision. I bought a shotgun.

The shotgun I bought was a Remington 870 Tactical. It’s a pump action 12-gauge shotgun that can hold 7 rounds. (I don’t keep it loaded.) And no kidding here: I bought it at a local store called Hooked on Toys and yes, they did do a background check on me before completing the sale.

Once again, I took it (and my Beretta) to the range to work with an instructor. A friend and I actually took a course together. The course was created by the NRA and had NRA materials, but the instructor was not an NRA employee and he assured us that the educational and political arms of the NRA are completely separate. (Although I thought that was okay at the time, I now want absolutely nothing to do with the NRA and will never pay for anything if there’s any possibility that part of my money might go to the NRA.) The course was informative and I got a chance to learn how to shoot the shotgun. I discovered that the kickback with the butt against my shoulder hurts like hell and I can be pretty accurate shooting from the hip. Hell, if you can’t hit a target with a shotgun, you probably shouldn’t be shooting a gun at all.

Fortunately, the neighbor’s dog has not returned. Could I shoot it? I don’t know. But the Animal Control folks say it’s legal for me to do so, as long as I kill it.

Not All Gun Owners are Dangerous Nuts

You might be able to see why I was bugged by Michelle’s tweet above. As you might imagine, I didn’t let it go uncommented:

But she’s not the only one making uninformed comments about gun owners. There’s a lot of it going around right now. It happens after every mass shooting.

And although I am a gun owner and have insight why other people own guns, I agree that we need to have some common-sense gun control laws. At a minimum, we need:

  • A ban on all guns and accessories that make it possible to fire more than 10 rounds without reloading. These devices should be absolutely illegal to own, let alone sell or use. There is absolutely no reason anyone needs this kind of equipment.
  • Registration for all guns, including those sold in secondary markets such as gun shows or private sales. If you own a gun, it should be registered. Period.
  • Background checks for all gun owners. The check should be done before each gun is purchased and should include criminal activity, domestic violence complaints, and mental health checks.
  • Training requirement for all gun owners. Before you purchase a gun, you should be required to take a qualified class in its use and operation and have a certificate to prove that you’ve taken the class. Additional refresher course training should be required periodically, perhaps every five years.

I don’t believe guns are bad. I believe people are bad. I also believe that we should not make it easy for bad people to do bad things with guns.

The situation we have in this country is absurd, with different laws in every state, many of which make it all too easy for people who are crazy to obtain weapons of mass killing capabilities — like the bump stock the Las Vegas shooter used to fire over 500 rounds without reloading. How can anyone think that’s okay?

The Second Amendment was written in a time when a high-tech gun fired one shot at a time. The Founding Fathers likely never imagined the kind of carnage that could be done with today’s weapons, so it’s pretty silly to keep referring to our “right” to have these kinds of weapons.

And no, a good guy with a gun isn’t the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun. It’s a good way for others to be injured in a crossfire or for the “good guy” to get mistaken for a bad guy and gunned down by police.

And yes, I’m a gun owner. But if the only solution to the gun violence epidemic in this country was to take away everyone’s gun — as they have done in other civilized countries — I’d hand mine over in a heartbeat.

Comments?

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When Lifelong Republicans become Democrats

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Look into your heart, Republicans. You may see what this man saw.

I saw an interesting tweet this morning and clicked the link to see what it was all about. Just as the title suggests, it’s an essay by political blogger and activist, Bob Schneider, author of the Politics Now column on the Chicago Now website, who has recently given up on the Republican party.

There’s a lot that makes me — someone who leans left — really happy about what this conservative had to say:

  • He talks about why he was a Republican for so many years. This helps me understand where Republicans are coming from. I’ve heard versions of his story before.
  • He clearly understands why, in today’s U.S. political system, there are only two parties that matter. If you don’t understand why, read his explanation. (Please don’t use the comments for this post to whine to me about it.)
  • He explains what drove him to make the jump from Republican to Democrat. It’s the same stuff we’re all seeing: dishonesty, betrayal, corruption.
  • He explains, in his section headed “Why I left the GOP,” exactly what Republican viewpoints turn him off. This list is the best part of the essay and, if you only have time to read part of it, read this part. He’s nailed it all, from the GOP’s view on the poor to their xenophobia and outright racism to their hatred of education and science.
  • He lists the reasons why he joined the Democratic party. For the most part, it’s the same reason I finally signed up as a Democrat last year. (I’d always been independent but I wanted to vote in primaries.)

This essay isn’t new. It dates back to July. I’m not quite sure why he tweeted about it today. Maybe it’s because there are additional essays available that refer to it.

It doesn’t really matter that it’s two months old. What matters is that he wrote it and he published it under his own name and he’s someone with a good political following. What matters is that it might help other Republicans do some soul searching and admit to themselves that the GOP isn’t exactly in line with their own personal convictions, especially about how other people should be treated.

Personally, I don’t care if someone is a Republican or a Democrat as long as they are capable of thinking for themselves based on factual information and doing the right thing. Blindly voting for party candidates, even when you know they’re “dumb as a rock,” as so many people seem to do these days, is about, well, as dumb as a rock.

I honestly believe that if far right nut jobs and their media outlets — yes, I’m talking about Bannon/Breitbart, Hannity/Fox News, Jones/Infowars, Limbaugh, etc., etc. — would just STFU or start presenting unadulterated facts for listener/viewer consideration, anyone with a brain would realize how bad things have become in the GOP and politics in general.

It shouldn’t be us vs. them. It should be us.

Got something to add? Great! Use the comments link for this post. But please don’t comment unless you’ve read Mr. Schneider’s essay first. I think you’ll find it as enlightening as I did, no matter how you vote.