Hilary Clinton's/ Fred Witzell's view on gun-control

While in search for another Texas Blog, I stumbled upon Fred Witzell's  "The Texas Fred Blog," a man who considers himself to be a highly opinionated and very CONSERVATIVE (and I do mean conservative to his very core) blogger. Although I cannot see me agreeing with most (if not all) of his post, and I normally find myself quite indulged with his writing for sheer entertainment! However, strangely enough his post about Hilary Clinton and her talk about possible "gun-confiscations" really caught my attention (probably due to the fact that I actually agree with most of what he is saying.)

Fred Witzell, on October 18th, 2015 writes about an article (written by FoxNews) that talks about how Hilary Clinton said that "mandatory buy-back programs like ones in Australia are "worth looking into."" And if she were to be elected for President in 2016, she would "impose gun-confiscation efforts." Despite Fred Witzell having some inaccurate information about Australia's rise in percentages having to do with crime rates, I agree that restriction and prohibition of private ownership of guns is the wrong way to go in the United States when there are more than 4.4 million people that support the 2nd amendment

It seems that America has a track-record of rebelling against policies that restrict the "finer things in life" (as people would say.) For example: The prohibition of the 1920's-30's was at first sought out to be a great idea for the United States, due to the concern of over excessive alcohol consumption and the many tickets that were given out for drunken behavior and unlawful sales of liquor. The U.S. ultimately decided to ban alcohol for moral and health reasons with the help of the 18th amendment of the Constitution. America did not seemingly consider the consequences that were later to come. The prohibition era saw the rise of organized crime, illegal smuggling of alcohol from Canada and Mexico, having a very negative effect on the economy. Eventually the ban on alcohol was appealed by the 21st amendment during the Great Depression when the economy was at it's worst.

The point I'm trying to make here is that even though the United States had good intentions for banning "frosty-cola's," the country suffered unnecessary consequences that could've been avoided if the leaders at that time made stronger regulations instead of dismissing the problem all together. If the future leader-to-be Hilary Clinton or any other Democrat that agrees with confiscation of weapons does not take their time to fiddle out the results or future threats, there is a strong possibility that "We the People of the United States" could have a 2nd Prohibition on our hands with even more dire ramifications.

The only way people improve and better themselves is by looking back at their own mistakes and learning from them. I guess in this situation the U.S. is ready to learn how if they don't allow the public to get their hands on something, the public will gladly cross borders to get what they need all over again! And if it takes the fact that they are loosing their tax money to other countries once again for them to realize what they are doing is ridiculous, then I say "have at it!"

An Editorial by "The Dallas Morning News," back in Late August of this year makes an argument that the city of Dallas should unite with the city of Austin in suing the state of Texas over "unfair taxation." The Texas capital (along with other cities such as Dallas and Fort-Worth) insist that there is a disproportional strain in taxes between residential and commercial property owners. It's believed that commercial property owners are benefitting from a state law that allows "equity appeals," ignoring actual market value and instead are based on whether similar properties pay lower taxes. Implying that commercial property owners can suggest to being taxed the value of similar properties instead of what it's actually worth.

After reading this editorial piece by "The Dallas Morning News," and carefully analyzing their words carefully, I have to say that I both agree and disagree with the dispute that they are trying to make. Unfortunately, because I have no prior knowledge in the difference between taxing commercial and residential properties, I can only manage to make a weak opinion for myself with the limited amount of information.

Reasons why I agree: When it comes to taxes, it seems that local, state, and even national government tend to favor businesses over homeowners. Because there are so many appraisal districts out in the world, any number of them are more then willing to fight to prevent from having to turn over sales prices of commercial transactions to the public, (for the right price of course) making it nearly impossible to receive accurate sales data. If the commercial property owners had nothing to hide, and were following the Texas constitution's "promise that taxation should be equal and uniform,"  they wouldn't feel it necessary to hide their data.

Reasons why I disagree: I don't believe that changing the state law that allows "equity appeals" will enable local governments the ability to lower tax rates and ease the minds of tax payers, for taxes are capped at an eight percent increase in revenue per year. Even though this occurs, tax payers already have the ability to demand elections that can rollback rates. Homeowners also have the right given by the Texas constitution to also use the equal and uniform rules to lower the value on their homes if they so choose to.

I guess it just all depends on which side you are coming from, and how high or low residents are being taxed, and whether or not they are willing to stand up and speak on behalf of themselves and their homes.