Week Twelve

This week people started to present their projects which included, military spending and gun control. Military spending was presented as a much needed expense to keep the United States status high and powerful. Our budget allows us to have more nuclear weapons then other nations and be ready for war at any area of the world. The money is needed for secretive special ops missions such as drug wars and rescue missions. The issue with the amount of spending was the fact that so much of it goes undocumented and with the United States struggling with so many other issues such as poverty, and hunger that money could do a lot of good. We also discussed gun control, and whether or not we need more of it. The United States leads the world in gun related deaths by population. We also have the least amount of regulation. Other countries require training, and safe keeping as well as a complete background check, while here all you need is the second amendment and you’re set. The rate of suicide by gun was also discussed. It is true

that the U.S.A leads the world in suicide by gun, some may argue that increasing gun control will not help this problem because someone that is suicidal will do it one way or another. The rebuttal to that comment is the fact that a gun is deadly, right away. If one did not have easy access to firearms, a different method is much easier to treat in a hospital to possibly save someone’s life. The majority of people that attempt suicide and are rescued do not ever try it again and are thankful they survived. 

            Another topic we talked about this week was religion. 90% of Americans claim a religion. 55.7% claim protestant, and 30% make up catholic, Jewish or other. Typically, Episcopalians are members of a high social class, Catholic members being middle class and Lutheran being the lower class. Secularization is the historical decline in importance of the supernatural and the sacred. The debate of the Westboro Baptist church protesting at the funeral of a fallen soldier brought up the first amendment right of freedom of speech, that even though technically they can protest, it is sickening that people would even think to do that. These people believe gays will go to hell and that god hates them but will never protest a divorce even though in the bible both are technically a sin. And in the bible, it is clearly stated to love ones neighbor no matter what, but for some reason people seem to overlook that part.