Apathy and Anti-Gun Laws

From what I've seen, the right to bear arms is the single most protected right in the American constitution. It's easy: If someone is of age and not completely insane and they want a gun, we give it to them (intelligence and responsibility don't factor in apparently). But why? At the moment this right hasn't really helped anyone. I'm sure that there are stories of people heroically protecting their families, but I have no doubt (and this is conjecture) that accidents and wilfully violent behaviour have eclipsed the benefits of gun ownership.

The reason that the second amendment exists is actually quite interesting. The "founding fathers" knew that no political system was safe from, well, politicians. For this reason they wanted all Americans to be able to rise up if the government stepped out of line. This is a perfect example of the way a democratic system is supposed to work: The government should be afraid of the people, not the other way around. In fact, the very existence of this amendment says alot about the differences between modern politics and the people who first arrived in America (which is not to say that they were angels, remember they had slaves too).

So what does this have to do with apathy? Well, how bad would the government have to get in order for the masses to take up arms? If the government was nimble enough to quickly change it's policies to something more Orwellian, than we might see something. unfortunately politics don't work that way and the change to any attitude is to slow to be really noticed by the public. Does anyone know how the world would have reacted to a 9/11 style disaster 100 years ago? how about our dependence on oil? We don't know and it's difficult to measure changes like that over generations. But I digress, my point is this: We have gun laws in the USA that have led to both accidental and intentional deaths. At one point these laws made sense, but that was 300 years ago and frankly I don't think anybody is going to be rising up anytime soon (I mean, if I were the entirety of the American populous I would have just booted out the government in the last election). I don't think there is a simple solution to this issue, though I DO believe that education solves most, if not all long-term problems. Unfortunately I don't think anybody in power has noticed or really cares about the problem. And to hell with revolution, I don't even get to vote for the president of the world.

Being Eaten

The fate of the universe is a fascinating question. For one thing, no one who believes anything reasonable thinks that we will actually get to find out what is going to happen to "the big it". There is, however a guarantee that the universe as we know it will end. You see, at some point everything is going to get eaten by black holes. Now whether or not the universe will survive long enough for that to happen is debatable. It IS a guarantee though. So even if every other possible way the universe could end is prevented, one day everything will just be giants piles of nothing. on the other hand, nobody knows what's on the other side of a black hole...It could be a whole other universe...Of course we would be crushed and wouldn't get to see it, but eventually all of that mass could form back into planets and life and such. And then that would get eaten by black holes. Fun huh?

And try wrapping your head around this one: If the universe didn't exist than what would reality be? I'm not talking about vacuous space here, I mean nothing. No universe. No space. No time. Scary eh? Actually, that isn't the case so honestly it doesn't matter.

"But if you could just see the beauty,
These things I could never describe"
-Joy Division (You try finding a good lyric about astronomy)