Master Closets

Not at all uncommonly, I spent another national holiday working on my house.  Such is the trek of the home renovator.  While many are out enjoying time away from work, we're putting our tool belts on once again.  Not that I'm complaining or worse, bragging.  No, we actually like doing this sort of thing.  No pity party here.

As you can see from the panoramic photos combined into one (you should be able to click on them to make them larger), this master bedroom is in desperate need.  One of the major problems with 100+ year-old houses is lack of closets.  People had a lot less clothes back then.  It was back in the days before American consumerism had buried in our minds that we shouldn't wear the same outfit often enough for people to remember it.

Anyway, the goal is to put in two closets, a "his and "hers" if you will.  In between these will be a cozy little cushioned window seat with storage inside and a bookshelf up front.  We started the project last Monday (Memorial Day) and we have all the major building behind us at this point.  Jodi and I just got the first round of drywall mudding done last night, but I don't have any photos from it here.  I still need to put it some trim, the closet doors, and do all the painting and staining.  But, before all that I have to get the mudding and sanding done.  Hopefully I can contain all the dust during the process.  If you've ever sanded drywall in a house you live in, you know that it's quite the messy ordeal.

  (On a sidenote, I noticed this in Haiti.  Of the seven days we were there back in March, I noticed that many of the men only cycled through about 3 shirts.  They did their laundry every day by hand and their clothes were cleaner than mine.  I had packed so that I would have on a different outfit every day we were there as any American does, but I wondered near the end of the week if the apparent excess was noticeable to my Haitian friends.)

In the process of having the closets in place, we will be able to eliminate two of the three dressers, get our clothes off display by getting rid of our "open-air" makeshift temporary (6 years) closet, and finally get a bedroom that isn't an eyesore to an otherwise interesting home.  More photos to come as we continue to finish these out.

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Weight a Minute!

I weighed 8 lbs and 13 ounces when I was born.  That was the least I have ever weighed this side of the womb.  34 years later, I am weighing in at the most I have ever weighed: 204.6 lbs.  I weighed 204 lbs. once before back in 2007, as well.  Since then, I've usually teetered around 195 though have dipped to as low as 185 at times.

It's clear that a sedentary occupation contributes to my weight.  When I have been in a more physically-laborious job role, I have easily kept the weight around 190.  But, I mostly sit in a chair all day anymore.

When my weight gets brought up in conversation, many people are surprised at how much I weigh.  I carry it pretty evenly, so I don't appear to weigh as much as I do.  I'm not real tall, and many taller people find it hard to believe that I weigh more than they do.  But, the scale doesn't lie.  It's brutally honest.

The reason I bring all this up, is because I'm starting a challenge at work.  When there is a competition involved I am many times more likely to hit my goals, so I joined up.  For the next 12 weeks, I'll be getting weighed and measured every week.  There is money involved to be shared by all those hitting their goals and more money to people who are found to maintain even after the competition is over.  I'll be posting all of my measurements on this blog, as well.  The more accountability, the better.

My goal is to lose 20 lbs over the course of the next 12 weeks.  I also have another personal goal, as well.  I met my wife, Jodi, on December 6th, 2003.  I weighed 175 then.  This December will mark our 10th yeariversary.  Yes, that's right.  I said "yeariversary".  Our anniversary is celebrated from when we were married.  Our yeariversary is celebrated from when we met.  One way or another, for our tenth yeariversary, I will weigh 175 lbs again.  That's 29 lbs in 6 months.

So, how will I do this?  Self-control.  It starts with cutting out all the junk that I eat.  I'll also be incorporating several exercises into my life.  I will start riding my bike to work a minimum of twice a week.  I have just joined a weekly soccer pick-up game for charity that will help immensely.  I'm also going to flip the quantity of food that I have at meal times again.  I once had a lot of good results simply from eating a large breakfast.  It positively changed the way I ate the rest of the day and I didn't experience hunger ever.  I'm also keeping a food log on MyFitnessPal.com.  I was using that for a couple months and lost 9 pounds just from keeping my food consumption visual.

Of course, only time will tell whether or not I'm successful.  Everyone has heard people make all kinds of promises and it gets kind of tired hearing the same old jargon.  So, sorry if this sounds like just another one of those.  But, I fully expect to be able to show some pretty good results when I am done.

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Religious Right

In recent news, a Kentucky high school graduation included a student-led prayer despite some objections by a handful of students.  The prayer itself, however, was very well received and was followed by a standing ovation.  One of the six known students to have objected to the school's principal, an atheist, has made his plans of contacting the ACLU known.  The article states that he feels that the public prayer violated the civil rights of students who are not Christian.

The ACLU's website makes it clear that they believe that graduation prayers are unconstitutional regardless of who leads them.  Their site states the following:

Think about it: graduation prayers would give non-believers or kids of other faiths the feeling that their participation in prayer is required. It doesn't matter who leads the prayer -- a minister, a priest, a rabbi, whoever, or whether the prayer is non-denominational -- some kids would feel left out.

The main problem that I see here is that judges keep entertaining these frivolous cases when they should immediately be thrown out.  The first amendment, among other things, strictly prohibits the government from prohibiting the individual's exercise of religion.  No one has the "right" NOT to hear someone else's right to free speech.  Likewise, no one has the "right" NOT to hear someone else's free exercise of religion.

Many people get hung up on the "establishment clause" part of the amendment and thus violate people's rights to freely exercise their religion.  The government is to "make no law respecting an establishment of religion." When a student decides to publicly thank God it's nothing short of a mile-wide stretch to say that this is the government making a law establishing religion.  What's not at all a stretch is to demonstrate that silencing that student is a violation of that student's right to free speech and the free exercise of his/her religion.

I realize that the ACLU has played a good role in years past advocating for the actual rights of people, but they have brought on themselves a bad reputation for advocating for rights that don't exist and, in doing so, violating the actual rights of many in the process.  For example, the ACLU, in it's self-described battle to keep religion out of science classrooms, has fought to keep Intelligent Design out of schools while being just fine with Evolution being taught.  The main difference between the two theories is that Evolution suggests that all things known to exist have come into existence by time and chance and under the influence of Natural Selection while Intelligent Design suggests that all things known to exist came into existence by the design of an intelligent source.  Evolution points to the evidence of similarities between species as well as what we currently know about adaptation.  Intelligent Design points to the evidence of the apparent design of all things and the irreducible complexity of most organisms.  If the ACLU contends that the teaching of Intelligent Design equates to the teaching of the existence of God thus violating the "civil right" of an Atheist, then they must also logically contend that the teaching of Evolution equates to the teaching of the nonexistence of God thus violating the "civil right" of a Theist.  But, they don't do this.  They fail to see their own hypocrisy on the issue.

It's time that the courts stop allowing these kinds of "violated civil rights" issues when the "violator" is someone peacefully exercising their civil right.  To allow these cases to continue to be heard only encourages others to make such claims and ultimately produces upside-down fascism where a small minority makes the rules that remove the freedoms of the majority.

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Unity in the Community?

I learned this week about a religion of which I wasn't previously aware.  It is called Bahá'í Faith.  Practicing members are called Bahá'ís.  The founder of the religion chose the name Baha’u’llah (Glory of God) though was born Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí Núrí.  If you have trouble reading all that, you're not alone.  The religion was born out of Persia (now Iran) in the mid-nineteenth century and as such all the names are Persian.

I'll be exploring here what they claim to believe and will follow it up with what I think about those beliefs.  However, I do want it known that this isn't an attempt to smear a religion.  It's an analysis of a set of beliefs.  We do analysis to make sure that what we believe is actually truth.  The inherent quality of any belief is that it is something one believes to be true.  So, it's not about belief, but rather about truth.

The beliefs held by Bahá'ís are:

• About God
• There is only one omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful) God.
• Despite the different major religions (Judiasm, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc) differing concepts and names of God, they are actually all one in the same God.
• God is ultimately unknowable.
• About Religion's Founders
• Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad were all "Manifestations of God" sent to reveal the attributes and will of God appropriate for their time.
• Baha’u’llah is the most recent "Manifestation of God".
• The previous prophets are no less valid or respected, but Bahá'u'lláh's revelation supercedes them in that it is the most recent and most relevant for our time.
• About Human Nature and the Soul
• Humans have eternal souls that animate our bodies.  This distinguishes us from animals.
• The soul is where our character and conscience is found.
• About Sin and Evil
• Any concept of "original sin" or doctrine that teaches humans have an intrinsically evil nature is rejected.
• There is no Satan or devil or evil force of any kind.
• About the Purpose of Life
• For each individual to develop the spiritual and moral qualities that lie at the core of his or her nature.
•  About the Afterlife
• At physical death the soul is separated from the body it begins a spiritual journey towards God through many planes of existence.
• A soul is either moving towards or away from God.
• There is no final "place" or destination to which the soul will reside.
• The details of the afterlife remain a mystery.
• About other Religions
• One of the fundamental doctrines of the Bahá'í Faith is the unity of the world's great religions. This does not mean that all religions are the same, but that there is only one true religion and all of the Messengers of God have progressively revealed its nature.
• Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Báb, and Baha’u’llah are the progressive Messengers, in this order.  Religious revelation will continue in the future in this manner.
• Unity, harmony and respect between the world's existing religions is emphasized.
• About Creation
• The universe is eternal.  It has no beginning and no end.  It has been with God since the "Great First Cause".
• All things that experience composition will eventually experience decomposition.
• 'Man' has always existed with God, but not in its current form.  "Gradually it passed through various conditions and different shapes, until it attained this form and beauty, this perfection, grace and loveliness."

The reason I post all of this is to educate you in case you need to know what these people believe if you encounter one.  Jodi and I recently read in our Grant Beach Neighborhood Association newsletter that the Baha'i Community of Springfield will be hosting an observance of "Race Unity Day" at our neighborhood park next month.  This prompted my dig into their beliefs and their origins.

As a practicing Christian, I found it necessary to learn about their faith so that I can be more prepared to address their beliefs in any upcoming discussions that I may be involved in.  One of the things that the Christian church, in general, has failed at miserably in recent years is training its adherents about other religions and how best to address them to share the truth of the Gospel.  It's evident that Jesus and the Apostles knew quite well about other religions of their day.  We see in the Gospels how Jesus addressed different crowds differently.  This style is also clearly seen in the letters to the different churches emphasizing different aspects of the same truth.  They knew how to address their audience not from a memorized unchanging one-size-fits-all speech, but from an understanding of their audience, a genuine love for their audience, and a willingness to be used of God to speak to their audience.  God provided the words.  So shall we be equipped if we are willing to make the effort.

A Biblical response to Baha'i beliefs:

• About God
• There is one God represented in three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• The belief that all religions worship the same God only reveals the believer's ignorance of other religions.  The world's religions are contradictory and cannot be one in the same.  Logically, they can all be wrong, but they can't all be right.
• "¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."  Romans 1:19-20  God has made Himself known to the extent that He can be known by a finite creation.
• About Religion's Founders
• Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad all gave depictions of God.  Only Abraham's, Moses', and Jesus' are reconcilable.  The others' are contradictory to each other and to the Biblical depiction.
• "⁴ Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵ For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many."  Matthew 24:4-5  Here's a link to a list of people claiming to be the returned Christ.  This shows that Bahá'u'lláh is one of many making such claims.  Jesus warned of men making such claims, so the test is whether or not these men fit the biblical profile of the returning Messiah, of which Bahá'u'lláh doesn't even come remotely close.
• I'm amused at the self-refuting statement here.  One can't say that a previous messenger is no less valid and immediately follow that with the statement that the contradictory message of the most recent messenger supersedes that of its predecessor due to relevance.  For example: Bob tells you 10 years ago that oranges are good for you.  Then yesterday, Steve tells you that they are, in fact, bad for you yet also says that Bob was right.  Unless, of course, oranges have changed over the course of the last ten years and both Bob and Steve were right in their time.  However, the "Messengers of God" are not talking about oranges, they're talking about the record of the story of creation, the fall of man, the redemption of man, and the nature of God.  It's self-defeating to claim that two contradictory accounts of these subjects can both be valid.
• About Human Nature and the Soul
• I didn't find in my brief search anything that I disagreed with on this subject.
• About Sin and Evil
• Any honest parent can attest to the tendency towards evil found in humans.  Our children are prime examples of this, though they are not held on the same level of accountability for their actions.  It's ridiculously apparent that doing good is not in our nature, but rather selfish ambition and self-preservation is.
• A denial to believe in a reality doesn't change reality.  It just denies it.  The Bible clearly speaks of an evil force and gives it a name and a personality.  Jesus dealt with him as a reality.  For all the respect that Baha'i's claim to give Jesus, they sure do make Him out to be a liar a lot.
• About the Purpose of Life
• To develop moral qualities?  For what?  Their stated "purpose" is just a moving target.
•  About the Afterlife
• "through many planes of existence" is contradictory to the Bible.
• "A soul is either moving towards or away from God."  I would agree with this while we are on this earth, though not after our physical deaths.  The Bible talks about a judgement of our lives on earth with a just decision being made not a continued existence of learning.
• The Bible speaks a LOT about two places of final destination, heaven and hell.  One is in the presence of God and the other where His presence is not.  Again, the denial of this is contradictory to the biblical account and Baha'i's thus believe that God has given us two somehow valid yet contradictory accounts of the afterlife.  That's one strange god that they believe in.
• "The details of the afterlife remain a mystery."  Translation: If I get backed into an illogical corner I can just cling to the "mysteriousness" of it all.
• About other Religions
• "This does not mean that all religions are the same, but that there is only one true religion and all of the Messengers of God have progressively revealed its nature."  I agree with this statement right up until "and all the Messengers...".  They're right that there is only one truth.  In looking at a simplified version of their claim in the latter third of the statement above, we can see that they believe Jesus and Muhammad both to have revealed the nature of truth.  Jesus stated that He is the Way and no one will come to the Father but by Him.  Muhammad states that Jesus was merely a man and that we need no mediator to God.  So, Baha'i's believe that God would tell us one thing and then contradict Himself later, and not once but multiple times throughout all of recorded history.
• "Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Báb, and Baha’u’llah are the progressive Messengers..."  Bahai's believe in the God of Contradiction.
• "Unity, harmony and respect between the world's existing religions is emphasized."  They claim to accomplish this by requiring converts to first acknowledge that all the religions are the same.  So, how long can unity, harmony and respect last when based on a lie?
• About Creation
• The creation story isn't poetic.  It's not an exaggeration. It's not allegorical.  God is not an author of fiction.  Contradicting it, and worse, elevating man to God's infinite status, is not recommended.
• "All things that experience composition will eventually experience decomposition."  Yes, from dust to dust.  The result of sin is death and all of creation groans from it while it waits to be fully restored and reconciled to God.  Thus, everything will deteriorate in the meantime.  Though, Baha'i's assume the uniformatarian viewpoint and think that creation never fell from perfect in the first place thus denying it will ever be reconciled and thus assuming that God created imperfection that will remain imperfect for eternity.
• 'Man' has always existed with God, but not in its current form.  "Gradually it passed through various conditions and different shapes, until it attained this form and beauty, this perfection, grace and loveliness."  While this seems to provide a way of unification to the evolutionary viewpoint, it fails miserably to be reconciled to the biblical one.

In summary, Baha'is strive to be reconciled to man with a mission to bring unity, peace, and equality to the world.  In their attempt, they refuse to focus their efforts on reconciliation with the God of the Bible.  They deny the Gospel and thus Jesus.  They choose to worship a man instead.  And, just as Jesus warned us (in Matthew 24:4-5) many will be deceived.  Make sure you are not one counted among them.  And, more than that, if you are not, see to it that you can effectively share the Gospel with those who are.

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Age of the Earth

When entering "age of the earth" into a Google search, the near-instant result is 4.54 billion years.  That's a pretty long time.  I suppose anything could be possible for that given time period, right?  Planets could form.  Elements could be created out of pretty much nothing.  Life could spring up out of virtually nowhere.  That life could evolve over time and somehow turn into say, you, for instance.  Right?

This view is accepted by many people, including many, if not most, Christians.  I, too, once believed such a way.  My belief wasn't based off having been convinced by the evidence but rather I simply believed the information that was given to me through my public education, television, children's books, and my peers.  All I had ever heard of evolution and a billions-year-old earth had been presented to me as fact.  I simply didn't question it.

When I did question it, I found that the model presented to me my whole life failed to make sense to me anymore.  I couldn't pretend any longer that my acceptance of a proposed old earth could coincide with my theology.


I have become thoroughly convinced of a young earth, one that was supernaturally formed and intelligently designed for purpose by God.  I believe that the evidence is clear and that the logic clearly points for this to be true.  No other theory, no matter how much it gets treated like fact, makes near as much sense of the data.  And, this is not nearly as complicated a subject as we have made it out to be in our minds.

But, that's why I think that an idea of an old earth has become so widely accepted.  I think that educated people, professionals in their fields over the course of the last 200 years have decided that this is true and have propagated it.  Meanwhile, the church, not being professionally trained in the sciences were not prepared to refute these claims.  Neither was the church aware of exactly how incompatible the idea of an old earth was to the Bible's clearly given historical account.

An easy, entertaining, and thought provoking read on this subject can be read online at  http://answersingenesis.com/articles/nab.  If in reading this blog, you have come to think that I must be gullible, uneducated, unreasonable, religious or any other accusations that are so commonly hurled at young earth creationists, then I challenge you to read the book that I have linked to above.  I challenge you to find its illogical arguments, its incorrect findings, its lies, if you will.  Regardless of why you read it, you should read it.

The truth of the matter is that it was almost universally understood that the earth was thousands of years old until the late 18th century when a handful of scientists started positing that it was much older.  One of these, James Hutton (1726–1797) is known as the father of geology.  He was the first to propose that the earth is being created today at the same speed in which it always had.  He based this off of his proposed Theory of Uniformitarianism.  This is the platform that began a myriad of incorrect science.  Uniformitarianism is simply stated as the belief that things are how they have always been and that current rates of spread, growth, erosion, etc. can be used as a basis as a set rate throughout all of history.  It's totally stacking the deck no matter how you look at it.  And, conveniently for proponents of an old earth, it sets the stage to introduce the gods of time and chance.

Perhaps the most asinine belief is that life was created from nothing.  I have seen and heard many proposed models of how this could have happened and they are all ridiculously flawed.  It has been aptly demonstrated that these models could not have produced even the most simple building blocks of a living organism much less the organism itself.  But, one point that came to mind today while contemplating this was that even if the impossible odds were somehow beaten and the building blocks of a living organism were created AND those somehow perfectly fell into place and just the perfect places AND they somehow fused to become this living organism, how did this living organism replicate itself?  Think about it.  Even IF everything lined up to create life, what are the chances that this life would somehow also contain the ability and will to reproduce itself.  If you can believe that despite no credible evidence pointing to it then you certainly have more faith in nothing than I have in God.

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Have you ignored this bible verse?

This coming Sunday is Mother's Day.  I had a good talk with mine about a month ago.  We were talking about how I had recently had a conversation with an agnostic who was tossing "commands" in the Bible at me to which some churches don't adhere in an effort to discredit what Christians say about the Bible by first establishing that they themselves don't follow it.  Some of the verses he tossed at me, I needed to do some quick Internet research in order to answer better.  But, they were all answered and I noticed a softening in the speech going back and forth.  He appreciated the answers and was obviously reevaluating his position.

One of the examples I gave my mother sparked her intrigue.  The argument presented goes something like this:  "1 Corinthians 14:34-35 clearly states that women should remain silent in church, yet they don't and I don't see any of you Christians up in arms about it.  You say the Bible is inerrant but you ignore the passages that you don't like and that don't fit your beliefs.  You shouldn't be such hypocrites."

I know people use this phrase too often and quite often when it doesn't truly apply, but I'll say it anyway: it's important to not take things out of context.  The immediate context of verses 34-35 is 36 and it changes the entire meaning of the verses that precede it.  The KJV of verse 36 reads like this "What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?"

All ancient texts are difficult to understand at times and shouldn't always be taken at face value. Understanding what Paul is saying here would be better understood with some quotation marks in the passage. Paul is quoting a law in the Corinthian church. It was not God's law and cannot be found in any of the OT texts concerning as such. Paul quoted their law and followed it with his own words and his reaction to that quote in verse 36.

Verse 36 makes it very clear that Paul was not in agreement with this so-called law. He was reprimanding them for suppressing women and in doing so suppressing half of the image of God.

It's interesting to note that verse 36 is completely skipped over in most biblical commentaries.  These commentaries will actually affirm the very practice in the Corinthian church that Paul was trying to correct.  And, then they'll just go right on to verse 37 without so much as blinking an eye.  Many churches teach this way, as well.  Just last week I was listening to Bott Radio Network and heard John MacArthur teaching that women have their place in teaching other women and children but not to be speakers in the church and not to have any leadership roles in the church.

This teaching lines up quite well with what the Corinthians were being reprimanded for, yet we have entire denominations of churches that reaffirm this incorrect practice.  To the male leaders of these churches, I would like to reiterate the words of Paul and say to them "What?!  Your word is now the word of God?!  And only through you may God use for His word?!"

Let's not forget that when God created man, he did so in His own image, but that for the first time in all creation God said "it is not good".  The solution to this was to create woman.  God's image is only complete in mankind with the marriage of a man and a woman.  These same churches will use this as a picture of marriage but then ignore it when it comes to the teaching of the gospel.

So, for this Mother's Day, recognize not just your own mother or the mother to your children, but give proper biblical respect to the faithful spiritual mothers that surround us in our churches.

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Frowny Town

I saw this last week and laughed out loud.  I loved that someone properly captured the absurdity of this address to the press.  In case you don't know where this image originated, it was from the moments after Congress failed to pass a bill that would have required background checks for all gun transfers specifically at gun shows and online sales (of course, neither the cat nor the elderly puppet were actually there)(and by elderly puppet, I'm not referring to Biden).

The President was introduced by a father of one of the murdered students from the Newtown, CT incident.  I take no issue with any facial expression that he might have produced in reaction to any disappointment of the preceding legislative actions.  But, the forced expressions on the faces of the President and Vice President were nothing short of ridiculous.

They were melodramatically frustrated with the Senate for not passing the bill and they evidently wanted to make that well understood even to the hearing impaired.  This sort of behavior doesn't lend much credibility to them politically, in my opinion.  I'm picturing what the rest of the world must think of the U.S. when they see images like these (the original, sans the comical additions).

They were upset because they viewed the bill to be a perfectly non-invasive and helpful addition to gun control.  Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V. who co-authored the bill even went as far to say, "If you're a law-abiding gun owner, you'll love this bill."  Though, as a law-abiding gun-owner, I neither love the bill nor do I see it as either non-invasive or helpful.

First of all, it requires a background check to be performed which is a service that costs money.  Who is going to pay for all these background checks, you ask?  Why the people, of course.  Call it what you will, but it's in essence another tax on a product that we have explicit rights to own, buy, and sell without the government's intervention or restriciton.

Meanwhile, the background check inherently requires a registration of all transfers.  We've already seen this be abused by our own federal and Missouri State governments at this link and at this link in direct violation of State law.  Yet, over and over again, we hear that the information will not be compiled into lists ever used for any purpose or made available to any other agencies.  Why is this bad?  Because the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect the country from any tyrannical government, including its own.  By requiring this information, compiling it into lists, and making this information available to other government agencies, they are collecting data to potentially use against us by a future tyrannical entity.  This right of the government to be able to collect this information was never granted to it and when brought before the Senate last month they affirmed that the government should not be granted this ability.

Let's now deal with the fact that the President wants to make this about protecting our children.  It's undisputed that he's using the Newtown massacre as a catalyst for these new gun control measures.  But, the logic being used is all fallacious.  A required background check would not have prevented Newtown.  For that matter, it would not have prevented any of these recent mass-murders.  No supporter of this bill has yet to come forward demonstrating that any of the weapons used in any of these events would have been restricted by the implementation of this required background check.  The reason for this lack of demonstration: because it cannot be demonstrated.  So, why is the President so emotionally involved in trying to pass this added restriction?

What the bill would have done is this:  Law-abiding gun owners would have been burdened with the cost of more government regulation on all new gun transfers.  Law-breaking criminals would still have their weapons of choice to do their destruction.  The number of lives saved due to this legislation would not have been affected.  It would have created a compiled list of all gun owners and the guns they own, giving the government an even larger advantage over their one check and balance: the people.  It would have undermined our Constitutional right to bear arms.  It would have been used to argue the need of even more regulation and restriction.

In conclusion, last month our U.S. Senate did their job.  They recognized an unconstitutional, ineffective, and costly infringement on the rights of all U.S. citizens being proposed and they kept it from passing despite a large number of supporters interested in a power grab by exploiting an unavoidable tragedy.

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