Chicago defies forgotten 2nd Amendment

I found an interesting article from the Chicago Tribune online entitled, Chicago defies forgotten 2nd Amendment. The second amendment, which gives citizens the right to bear arms, has caused some dispute lately over whether individual cities and towns should be able to outlaw handguns. Recently, Morton Grove, Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka have all repealed their laws banning handguns, but Mayor Daley refuses to do so for the city of Chicago. He is quoted in the article: "Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?" he asked after the ruling came down. "Then why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West, where you have a gun and I have a gun and we'll settle it in the streets?" Although he may be using hyperbole here for emphasis, he brings up a valid point: Is the second amendment posing a threat to our safety? Can people really be safe in a city where citizens on the streets are all carrying guns around? Even with the current law in place banning hand guns there were 443 homicides last year in the city of Chicago. The current policy was instated in 1983, and had not been challenged until last summer “when the Supreme Court ruled that Washington's ban on handguns violated the individual right to use arms for self-defense in the home.” Now there has been a lawsuit filed against the city of Chicago by the National Rifle Association. Mayor Daley has refused to make even the slightest change to the handgun ordinance, and therefore has decided to fight the lawsuit. Is this a matter of safety or of individuals’ rights? How should this lawsuit be ruled?

Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity!

I was going through our mail the other day, and I came across a magazine that my mom subscribes to entitled "Real Simple". The tagline for the magazine is "Life Made Easier. Magazine and TV show about simplifying your life. Includes home solutions, meals , special features". I found it funny that in today's world we need a magazine to tell us how to simply our lives. It seemed almost ironic to me that in order to start simplifying, you must add reading the magazine to your routine first to tell you haw to go about doing it. I thought of the quote I had just read in Thoreau: "Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand" (Thoreau 73). Our lifestyles have become so complex, and we are often lead to feel that every tiny detail is of utmost importance. Thoreau would be disappointed that we have to have magazines telling us how to simplify our lives because we cannot do it on our own. The whole point of simplifying your life is supposed to be thinking through your own thoughts, not conforming to what others say to do with your life. However, Thoreau would definitely agree with the morals behind the magazine, that peoples' lives today are far to complex and busy, that they need to real focus on what is important. I tried to take this ideal and apply it to my own busy life, but it is quite difficult. I do not want to cut out anything that I enjoy doing, instead I would rather make more time to do those things, but that involve giving up time that is spent to homework and chores, things that are necessary that I do. In what ways can we follow Thoreau's advice in our own lives?