“We the People” is not a meaningless phrase to me. I take it to heart. In one way, We the People means that everyone has a say in the rules that govern their lives –the humble coal miner, the hairdresser, the single mom, the father just trying to put on the table and a roof over their head has a voice. Corrupt politicians like to forget these “nobodies” and the real-life struggles they face. I wanted to make sure that people have a voice in our government. The government shut down in 2013, and that’s when I decided to jump headfirst into trying to make sense of the public policy.
“Solutions for a Nobody” was my book that was born out of frustration and the passion to preserve a government of, by, and for the people. It was my first try at making sense of the chaos. It was a good start and I just kept working on figuring it all out. It took me three long, hard years to write my first edition and I published it.
Here we are almost ten years later and the second edition of my book is on my editor’s desk. I’m happy to say it took me three days to edit my book. I can’t tell you how much easier it is on this side of ten years to see the clarity in the chaos that, at times, had seemed so hopeless. One of my passions is to reach the folks who were like me ten or twenty years ago and give them hope and clarity. Despite the chaos: we can make a difference.
You matter.
Your thoughts matter.
Your big dreams are from God and the proper role of government is to protect the individual (the smallest minority).
My hope for all of us out there is to never stop learning and sharing ideas because we all get better when we can freely share. Keep growing and lean into that light to find the good. Find the people that will speak life over you and do the same for those coming up. Wisdom is hard-earned at times and worth sharing all the time.
I’m sure I’ll be writing again soon so let me know if there is subject/issues/challenges you care about it. I love talking about public policy so when anyone is excited about that, good conversations can happen and we all can learn something. There is a little buzz surrounding the 2A in my first edition. Here are some of my points from my first edition.
“The problem with restricting law-abiding citizens’ gun ownership is you cannot promise a safer, more secure world. You cannot promise an armed, trained, lethal fighting machine at the side of every American citizen. What is indeed possible is to empower each and every American to protect themselves and our country. “
-Bobbie Daniel
Main Summary:
1) Gun control is about control, not saving lives.
2) Taking away the rights of citizens by taking guns in exchange for promises of safety and protection only leads to more deaths.
3) Gun-Free Zones hurt the very people they claim to save.
4) We should embrace our concealed weapons permit holders as partners in defense of our American lives. If you have a concealed weapon permit, you should be able to take your permit anywhere, any state, any airport, any school, and it should be valid and respected in America.
5) Another solution to reducing gun violence is to encourage the development and ownership of highly advanced guns.
6) Chicago-style gun control might shift directions when looking at states that don't have gun control. Gun control sadly results in high murder/gun violence rates because gun control policy leaves people defenseless, hurting the most vulnerable. If the courts won't stand up for the individual rights of each citizen, then hopefully, a free exchange of policy ideas from different states would move towards a policy that saves lives.
7) Let's invest in mental health and fix the problem instead of pushing the gun control agenda.
8) Society is not collectively responsible for one person's poor decisions.
Gun Violence Solutions from a Nobody
1st Edition/1st few solutions
Gun violence in America is a problem that needs to be addressed with solutions that not only show respect for the complexities we have as a country, but for the innocent lives, we want to protect. Gun violence in America spans from inner cities to suicides to mass murders at college campuses, military bases, and workplaces. Individuals have funneled their hatred for others and have targeted religious organizations and health care providers; they have even targeted our country’s most vulnerable population, our children at school.
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, 19,392 people committed suicide with guns in 2010. In 2015, according to the Chicago Tribune, there were 2,988 shootings in Chicago in 2015. The Congressional Research Service has identified 78 public mass shootings that have occurred in the United States since 1993, where more than four people have died. According to the CRS estimates, over the last three decades, public mass shootings have claimed 547 lives and led to an additional 476 in injured victims. Data compiled by the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland estimates 3,521 total Americans died due to terrorism between the years 1970 and 2014 and 18 people died in terror attacks alone in 2014.
When looking for solutions and allocating funding for solutions at state and federal levels, we need to gain some perspective of the loss of life in our country. The Washington Post wrote, “Gun violence is real and pervasive, of course, but you could make the same point about fatalities that result from car crashes or from heart disease.” For a greater perspective on death in our country, there were 32,675 car crashes that resulted in fatalities in 2014. The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates there were 589,430 lives lost to cancer in 2015. Gun violence takes too many of our American lives, but cancer takes way more. ACS says known causes of cancer include both lifestyle factors (such as tobacco use, diet, and physical activity) and environmental factors (chemicals, radiation, and carcinogens). Do you feel your federal and state governments are really promoting a policy to prevent loss of life when it comes to those preventable environmental factors? Do you feel your legislators are calling for the removal of harmful chemicals and carcinogens in our environment the same way they talk about gun violence in America? There are real solutions to prevent cancer that our federal and state governments could take to reduce the loss of American lives. They can prevent cancer-causing carcinogens from entering what we drink and the food we put into our bodies. They can make laws that protect our bodies from dangerous chemicals in our skincare and cleaning products. As we stand here in this era where our country is faced with gun violence, we seem to have leaders talking about the value of human life when their policies and solutions in actuality are not valuing human life.
Action speaks louder than words, and because of our leaders’ inability to create a policy that protects Americans, it seems to me and others that saving lives is really not the agenda. If saving lives is really the goal with gun violence, we need to create solutions that respect our founding principles, reevaluate what policies we currently have that are failing our team, and decide how to implement those more effectively. We need to address the underlying causes of gun violence and put our money where our mouth is. We can no longer as a team put our heads in the sand if we truly want to keep our choices and options our own.
Empowering the People
Almost fifteen years ago, four planes were taken over by terrorists who planned to fly the planes into the White House, the Pentagon, and two major financial buildings. If airports and airplanes were not gun-free zones, do you think 9/11 would have had a different outcome? Our government, with all its good intentions of making us safer, has passed ineffective laws that actually have done America more harm than good.
Now imagine a massive natural disaster, after which the government has promised to protect and keep us safe. Well, despite their good intentions, with the power of Mother Nature, our people could be left unprotected, vulnerable, wide open for rape and pillage. That is exactly what happened in Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina hit. Was the government there to help every American in New Orleans? Did the government protect and prevent all of those vulnerable Americans from rape and pillage? No, it did not.
Think next about an elected government that slowly takes away the rights of its citizens by taking guns in exchange for promises of safety and protection. Once the population is in the unarmed scenario, the government could start murdering its citizens and invading surrounding countries, thereby creating oppression and death of freedoms everywhere it conquers. Sound like an unimaginable nightmare? Not quite. This was Adolf Hitler’s rise to power: by giving false promises that the government will protect you, no need for you to do it for yourself. That lie is a real one already used and proven dangerously devastating to citizens who gave their power away.
Another real scenario is our fight against terrorism. Do you think a few armed government agencies can fight and defend our country? Or do you think we have a better chance of defending our country if all our law-abiding citizens were empowered and encouraged to exercise their second amendment rights? We are moving full steam ahead with regulation and voiding of citizens’ gun ownership in our largest cities. What happens to these cities if our police force goes down? What if our federal government’s hands are tied? What if a terrorist group infiltrates, attacks, and holds hostage any one or all of our cities? How will our citizens defend themselves?
I know most of us Americans live in this happy bubble where our biggest concern some days is our weekend plans. We do have it really good because past generations have fought for us to have it so good. But there is a massive struggle for power by means of weapons out there in the rest of the world and just because we do have it so good doesn’t mean we are not a part of the struggle.
Do you think a terrorist takeover is going to start in Washington D.C. or Dallas, Chicago, or Fort Worth? If I was leading a large terrorist army, the first place I would go to is a place where civilians were not armed. That way, I could corral them up and hold them hostage to manipulate world leaders into doing whatever I wanted. Sound possible? I’m clearly going off of a Hollywood script, but it could happen. I know it sounds far-fetched and maybe it’s not a reality that is familiar to you, but it is a reality for many in this world. Many countries have fallen to others with more power, many citizens of the world have died because they had no power. Many countries struggle with war, terrorists, hate, and death every day. Many people in this world are living that Hollywood script I just wrote for you. America, we are not too big to fail. We are a big target on the world stage and if we for one second think that our ship is too great to sink, we drown.
It is unrealistic that there could be an armed guard, policeman, or Secret Service agent with every single American at all times to protect them from bad actions, choices, or decisions of another person. Unlike the wealthy and the leaders of this country, everyday Americans don’t have bodyguards to protect them. We are too busy making a living, working hard to provide for our families, and working to pay for our taxes. If every American can’t afford a security team, at least let us have the opportunity to attempt to protect ourselves. I may not be a former Navy Seal, but let me go out swinging. I may not be a trained lethal machine, like the Secret Service or even our policemen, but let me try to fight for myself. I know our country's leaders are not worried about self-protection, but that’s because our taxes pay for their safety. Who has me covered? Where is my protection? Oh wait, it’s just me; I’m the only one protecting myself, the homemaker, the mother, the wife, the business owner, the everyday American.
We let our police officers carry firearms because it is an effective way to stop the bad guys. Instead of wishing you had a police officer right next to you when you’re in danger, we need to empower ourselves to be our own savior.
The problem with restricting law-abiding citizens’ gun ownership is you cannot promise a safer, more secure world. You cannot promise an armed, trained, lethal fighting machine at the side of every American citizen. What is indeed possible is to empower each and every American to protect themselves and our country.
The states need to come to the table with their own gun laws and be responsible for their own choices and options if we want solutions to work for the people of this country. States need to reevaluate ineffective laws that hurt Americans and benefit individuals attempting horrific acts of violence with guns. States must take a serious look at gun-free zones and the danger this classification is on the area and people it is trying to protect.
A solution is a common-sense approach to gun-free zones. What law-abiding citizen would ever shoot another person just because? The criminal who doesn’t follow the law will bring their gun into a gun-free zone because they don’t follow the law. Now, this gun-free zone just become a zone where only criminals have guns. The message this ineffective policy says is there is no one to stop the gunman, here are sitting ducks. Thanks to the government and their illogical attempts to keep people safe with their “Easy Target” signs posted everywhere in our schools, our airports, our theaters, and our workplaces, we are endangering our most vulnerable populations. “Did you hear about that police station shooting?” said no one ever! You have never heard of it because no one would ever try and make their stupid point by shooting up a police station — the shooter would not get very far. The same principle applies to the disarmament of individuals in America: if individuals carried protection, if they were trained and educated, no one would get very far when attempting a mass shooting.
In April of 2015, an Uber driver with a concealed carry permit thwarted an attempted mass shooting by pulling his own weapon and shooting a gunman who had opened fire in Chicago’s Logan Square. No one was hurt except the gunman himself. In March of 2015, “a man who opened fire on children and adults in a Philadelphia barbershop was shot and killed by a citizen with a concealed carry permit. The armed citizen had been walking by the barbershop when he heard gunshots. He ran inside and shot the gunman… No one else was injured thanks to the armed citizen’s intervention.”
You cannot have gun-free zones. It’s an ineffective law that doesn’t decrease crime in those areas; rather, it increases it. If you want to guarantee a shooting, make an area a gun-free zone, it’s proven to work. We have to demolish the best intention of laws that in reality do not work. They do not keep our children or our communities safer.
Amanda Collins, in October of 2007 during her senior year of college at the University of Nevada Reno, was walking back to her vehicle in a parking garage after a night class when she was raped. Less than 100 feet from a police officer, yet on the night in question she was too far away to be helped. She was permitted to carry a concealed weapon, but the law prevented her from carrying it in the place she needed most: her college campus. As she said afterward, “I was legislated into being a victim.” One in five female college students is sexually assaulted or raped. This staggering statistic could be lowered if women were allowed by our legislation to protect and defend themselves as they see fit.
John F. Kennedy said, “If freedom is to survive and prosper, it will require the sacrifice, the effort, and the thoughtful attention of every citizen. In my own native state of Massachusetts, the battle for American freedom was begun by the thousands of farmers and tradesmen who made up the minutemen — citizens who were ready to defend their liberty at a moment’s notice. Today we need a nation of minutemen; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of America, cannot succeed with any lesser effort.”
If we want solutions that include effective public safety results, we must embrace our concealed weapons permit holders as partners in the defense of our American lives. If you have a concealed weapon permit, then you should be able to take your permit anywhere, any state, any airport, any school, any army base, anywhere and it should be valid and respected in America. For a concealed weapon permit, you should have similar training of firearms that policemen go through to handle a firearm safely and effectively. Background checks are required to earn your concealed weapon permit. But concealed weapon permit holders should be looked at by policemen, our military, and government agencies as assets as well. We are all here to protect our nation, our freedom, our families, and ourselves.
We need to embrace our lawful citizens and realize not everybody makes horrific decisions to hurt others with weapons. The majority of our citizens want to help protect others. We do not all have to live a fear-based life only reliant on the protections of a few when we can protect many with empowered American citizens.
We are not guaranteed our country, our home, our dreams, and our family. We have to fight for each. We have to protect ourselves. That is the American way — someone else won’t do it for you! We earned our freedom with blood, sweat, and tears. And just because it was earned does not mean our fight is over. We have to always be prepared to defend ourselves, our home, our children, and our country. We are stronger with civilian gun ownership.
Another solution to reducing gun violence is to encourage the development and ownership of highly advanced guns. Again, that is one reason why we defeated the British because we had the better gun. If states want their lawful citizens to be empowered and effective in protecting themselves and each other, we cannot outlaw magazine clips, high-powered rifles, or machine guns. To have a country that is truly a nation of the people and by the people, we need to encourage our law-abiding citizens to be prepared to defend themselves from an attack on American soil. The federal government should encourage its civilians to protect themselves, not make laws against it. Pearl Harbor seemed impossible until it happened, 9/11 seemed impossible until it happened, Hurricane Katrina seemed impossible until it happened, the Columbine shooting seemed impossible until it happened. Extreme terrorist groups such as the Islamic State could invade, infiltrate, and take over a town, a city, or a state. It seems impossible — just like all the other deadly events in our past. Who do you think is going to be more effective at winning a battle on our homeland: ISIS or law-abiding Americans? Do you think we are going to be able to defend ourselves with our hunting shot rifles or do you think the individual is going to be more effective with a stockpile of technically advanced weapons? The need to have a stockpile of useful advanced weaponry is never needed until you desperately need it. Americans, we can no longer play ignorant and turn away from the realities of survival. We must individually be strong if we want peace and balance.