A week of the far right letting us know how much they love those who are different. They are more than willing to let churches and synagogues hire a security guard to protect themselves. How about this we place a tax on all guns and the taxes be used to train, hire, and arm security guards. This would enable the gun merchants to continue reckless and unaccountable ways of selling guns. At least the gun owners would not be inconvenience until if the body count grew too much. The tax on guns would not be that unusual of a tax. We take tax money from cigarettes and do public education of the dangers of smoking and we also use car tag money to build roads. To foist the cost of security unto people who are worshipping, a peaceful affair, is unfair. While we are at it we could use the money for public education to teach parents how to keep their guns away from their children. In 2015, 2,824 children (age 0 to 19 years) died by gunshot and an additional 13,723 were injured. Now some gun rights owners may want to protest that they might not be able to buy a gun if we implement a security and education tax. But I do not think it is fair that a church or synagogue may have to close if they have to afford a security guard. Plus some churches may have religious objections to supporting gun rights folks by hiring a security guard to prevent gun violence. Republicans were all up in arms about the latest pipe bomb attacks. They were so busy trying to create conspiracy theories of how the Democrats were behind the pipe bomb attacks they forgot to express sincere concern for Democrats. Hey if two ex-presidents were targeted that would be understandable if they were Democrats. Maybe it’s time to put a penalty on promoting false conspiracy theories. This might keep people from using false conspiracy theories to batter the opposition. Maybe we should let the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)charge fees if your programming is shown to be based on 50% or more on false conspiracy theories. This would not limit free speech it would make it more costly to do bad and wrong speech. False conspiracy theories that enrage the public is akin to yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater. Meanwhile, you are improving the quality of the free speech in America. I think no one would argue that our speech in this country needs improving. Now Republicans will complain that all you want to do is tax and fine people more. They are exactly right. If you promote a conspiracy that erodes citizens’ confidence in the government and our leaders you must pay to play. If you have a hobby that uses an object that is used to kill our citizens you should pay to clean up your unintended collateral damage. Hey if we do these taxes we can use the money to pay the tax breaks given to the rich and oh yeah using their latest tax-free money to sponsor North Korea’s nuclear missile program or to bolster Putin’s war in Ukraine. Oh shit I may have to pay a fine for those last two accusations. But maybe not, no one’s proven me wrong yet.
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