In a recent ABC News piece almost half of gun owners listed protection as the reason for having a firearm; "More gun owners want firearms for protection," was the headline. There are already about 300 million guns in U.S. households, 88 per 100 people, almost one per person. the FBI reports that in in Jan. 2013 there were 2,495,400 background checks done through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, known as NICS. The number was more than 1 million higher than any previous January.

This is madness. If you break the numbers down to guns per household with 32% owning a firearm, each gun bubba's home owns an average of 8 guns. And a lot of these firearms are assault rifles.

The U.S. is already pegged number 11 in firearm homicides worldwide with 2.97 per 100,000 population. In New Orleans gun related homicides are 62.1 per 100,000 pop., followed by Detroit 35.9, Baltimore 29.7, Oakland, 26.6 and Newark 25.4 for the top five.

What we need is protection against the gun fanatics that are turning this country into a shooting gallery. And by the way, the main recipients of this rush to buy guns is firearms manufacturers, backed by the NRA and its leader wacky Wayne LaPierre.

Read more here: link: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/201...rvey-says/ |

Over forty years ago I was involved in the early development of a credit score being conducted by the now defunct Montgomery Ward. Before this and even for a while after, companies did their own risk scoring which was not accurate as was the case with early credit reports. Then along came the Fair Credit Reporting Act enacted in 1971 and later the FDCPA in 1977. Eventually the FICO method of credit scoring was born.

This process is still fraught with problems like the fact that if the wrong and damaging information gets on your credit report, sometimes it is near impossible to remove. In my experience blogging on consumers' personal data, Experian is the worst in dealing with this problem. Trans Union is better, and Experian is actually pretty good.

And now the latest version of the credit report is the VantageScore created by all three credit bureaus. It has some advantages listed in the article below but does not address the primary problem with credit bureaus, that of how to easily contact them to get something done.

Read more here: link:http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/11/pf/credit-score/index.html|

For years the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) led by wacky Wayne LaPierre has used its money to defeat any candidate that is for gun control. With contributions of nearly $39 million from gun manufacturers since 2005, the NRA spent $25 million in 2012 to elect and re-elect, or to target and defeat congressional lawmakers considering gun control legislation. So it seems natural that the gun control folks would eventually adopt the same strategy but in the opposite direction. They did.

Michael Bloomberg spent over $2 million in an Illinois primary to elect gun-control candidate Robin Kelly. With Bloomberg's deep pockets and his super PAC Independence USA, fighting gun violence will be well financed in 2014.

Another group, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, founded by Shannon Watts had added 80,000 members in just three months with 80 chapters nationwide. There are over 85 million mothers in the U.S. which could become a formidable force in the 2014 elections. The question is just how much money will this group be able to raise to defeat the pro gun bubbas in Congress next year. 70% of women support banning assault weapons, 90% for universal background checks according to Pew Research.

As a congressional candidate, I wouldn't want to be going up against this fired up group, even in conservative states.

Read more here: link:http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/06/new-money-will-be-used-to-punish-pro-gun-lawmakers-in-2014|

Will the newly chosen Pope Francis stop the Church's shrinking? Paul Gorrell is a Ph.D., heads up an executive coaching and leadership development firm located in New York City, and spent five years in the Roman Catholic priesthood. He says the Catholic Church is shrinking and points to the former Pope Benedict as one of the problems in a recent essay for Religion Dispatches. Gorrell said:

The focus of Pope Benedict’s reign has been to draw sharp boundaries that strictly define what it means to be a Catholic, what it means to be a priest, and how the Church should reconfigure itself in order to exile members who are not true believers.

Pretty stringent for some modern day Catholics, many of which want the church to mellow out on issues like abortion, gay rights, sex before marriage, Priest celibacy, to name just a few. Many questioned his interpretations of Vatican II, in comparison with his traditionalist beliefs. Many Catholics did not accept Benedict's claim that:

"Protestant churches are not 'true' churches, judges priests on their identity (gay priests must leave) rather than their actions, stops dialogue on any topics that do not meet the Pope’s approval (such as the possibility of women priests), sheds gay people from its ranks and fights against their rights, ignores the diminishing number of priests and the effects of this shortage on Church communities, and calls on Catholics to form the 'perfect society' resembling the ecclesiology of Opus Dei.

Some have been basically excommunicated in that a number of American politicians were asked to remove themselves from communion lines and, recently, priests have even denied parishioners communion if they vote for a political candidate who favors abortion rights.

Pope Francis has his work cut out for him, a job that many of the Conclave Cardinals interviewed said they did not want.

Read more here: link:http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/1059/the_incredible_shrinking_catholic_church|

Steve Smith is just another Arizona legislature Republican dimwit--a profile which seems to proliferate in this state--and he is up to his regular idiocy once again. Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times is one of my favorite journalists in town and not afraid to take on the big guns. All the way from Jan Brewer down he has exposed the shenanigans of these fruitcakes. And now he takes on this "wingnutty idiot," as he refers to Smith in attempting to pass again a law that would, in effect, could prevent the recall of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

He tried it with the ousted and disgraced Sen. Russell Pearce but failed. Smith wants to pass a law that would create a recall primary for any recall election. It is unconstitutional in Arizona but what the hell difference does that make to a Republican in this state. Gov. Jan Brewer still thinks she can run for reelection. And now Smith resurrects this stupid idea to help protect Joe Arpaio from the momentum gaining recall that has already gathered a third of the signatures it needs. Lemons thinks if the measure gets to the ballot, it is sure to retire the country's biggest publicity hound.

Read more here: ][link:http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2013/03/steve_smiths_save_joe_arpaios.php?page=2|

Let’s consider this scenario. If you limit the magazine size of a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle to 10 rounds (perhaps even 7 like the latest New York law requires) have you basically reduced the firearm to what many typical rifles are capable of shooting? In checking an Outdoor Life recommendation of the best 2012 hunting rifles, I found the Ruger American Rifle with a 5-round capacity including a magazine. I don’t know how typical or popular this rifle is with hunters but it seems to have received the recommendation of a major hunting magazine.

But assault rifles aren’t the biggest problem in gun violence, handguns are. According to the FBI, in 2011, 6,220 people were killed by handguns, 323 by rifles. However, it was the sheer horror of the brutal killing of 20 children ages 6 and 7 by a shooter using his mother’s assault rifle with a 30-round magazine that has brought the gun control issue to the forefront. The question is, would that Bushmaster AR-15 revert to the same capability as the Ruger if reduced to a 10-round or less capacity?

President Obama has asked for the banning of assault weapons and high capacity magazines in his gun control legislation. Odds are that he would settle for the banning of the magazines.

it is Honduras with 68.43 homicides by firearms per 100,000 population with 6.2 average firearms per 100 people. Much of this is due to loose gun laws, corruption in government and liberal thinking when it comes to owning firearms. There are regulations but a combination of the corruption and liberal views has allowed violence to soar in the country.

But the U.S. with some 300 million guns in the country has 88.8 guns per 100 people and 2.97 firearm homicides per 100,000 population. Way under Honduras but way over countries like: Canada with 0.51 firearm homicides per 100,000 pop; Japan with 0.01; Germany with 0.19; France with 0.06; Australia with 0.14; Ireland with 0.48; Israel with 0.09; Italy with 0.71; and Sweden with 0.41. The list goes on.

It is known that in the United States that when a person kills someone, he or she generally uses a gun (60%). That makes us 26th highest in the world.

These are statistics that beg for more gun control in America.

Read more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/schoo-shooting-how-do-u-s-gun-homicides-compare-with-the-rest-of-the-world/

and here: [link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list|

A few years ago the doomsayers were sure we would peak in oil supplies in the near future and eventually run out in years to come. It was made explicit in the book, "American Theocracy" by Kevin Phillips, which makes good reading. But, in fact, world oil production continues to rise, and the USA is one of the leaders in production.

Eventually consumers could decide they can do without some of the oil products, especially at the prices gasoline has risen to, and the oil futures investors, which have considerable control over pricing, will no longer be interested. The oil will just remain underground, unused, probably forgotten.

However, David Frum of CNN says "Our oil problem is not that 'we're running out.' Our oil problem is that we're producing so much of the stuff that we are changing the planet's climate." Whoa, now we bring in the environmentalists. But then there is fracking which produces cheap natural gas, which is a plus for the environment.

So what do we do next?

Read more here: [link:http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/04/opinion/frum-peak-oil|

Even to Republicans. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is on board for Medicaid expansion in his state as well as Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and even Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona is fighting her Republican legislature for the Medicaid benefits. All three are Republicans. This part of the Affordable Care Act should be a no-brainer since it is the feds that pay the bill. Only ideological idiots would turn it down.

Ruled constitutional by SCOTUS in June of 2012, Obamacare follows other major government programs like Social Security and The Civil Rights Act of 1964, both of which had to go through the courts to sustain their constitutional rights.

CNN's Julian Zelizer exclaims that President Obama's Affordable Care Act will be one of his legacies.

Read more here: [link:http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/04/opinion/zelizer-health-care/index.html|

I did a post recently under Gun Control re. increased extremism, "Gun nut extremist groups on the rise," and received the following comment:

"I have friends who while conservative where at least somewhat sane-you could debate with them...then Obama was elected and they have gone off the deep end..I have no doubt rw talk radio, Fox news, rw internet-sites like freeppublic is changing these people for the worse...brainwashing.

I have male friends who now gleefully talk of civil war II and revolution..they where never like this 8-10 years ago...as I said they were conservative but not nuts..now they are raving nut jobs with spittle coming out of their mouths (literally) when the topic of Obama comes up"

Since I live in Arizona and have also experienced, almost exactly, this same behavior with conservative friends first-hand, I am wondering just how wide-spread it is?