Do you ever feel that politics in America has digressed to the point where politicians are arguing over rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic just before it sank?

I sense that something is wrong with the direction in which America is heading. The call for gun control, abolishing the military and relying solely on so-called green energy tells me someone aimed the potato gun at us and we got struck right between the eyes with a bunch of gunk.

The political hot potato of late is, of course, gun control because our elected officials can use it to promote their own agendas while making the masses believe that is what must happen.

Statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that in the first nine months of 2012 approximately 25,580 people died in motor vehicle accidents, which is an increase of 7.1 percent over the same period in 2011. Has any elected official called for motor vehicles to be abolished? Has any elected official called for some kind of better testing of those who want to drive a motor vehicle? I don’t care where one drives nowadays, one constantly can witness people speeding, passing in a no-passing zone and doing something even dumber such as running red lights.

For me it’s come to the point of choosing when and where I drive because I see so many drivers that are distracted with their cell phones. What’s even worse, I have witnessed far too many government vehicles doing exactly the same. And that’s not only using cell phones, it’s running red lights as well.

I also want to know why someone isn’t fighting for more control of snowmobiles, which are involved in 200 deaths and 14,000 accidents on an annual basis in the United States. As I write this week’s column, there was a news story about four serious snowmobile accidents on just one day. Unfortunately there was also the recent story of the snowmobiles, which ended up sinking in open water on Rangeley Lake. These machines can easily hit speeds in excess of 70 or 80 mph and it is obvious the riders have no protection like the drivers of NASCAR cars do. Does anyone take a special test to operate a snowmobile or even a four-wheeler? Or is there a background check to see if they might have problems operating such vehicles?

Then there’s alcohol, which probably contributes to more deaths in the world than many diseases. Well, in fact, it does and no one has to take a test but instead has to be of legal age in order to purchase it. If our elected officials are so worried about gun control, why aren’t they forcing everyone in our country to get a flu shot or even better, preventing those who are already sick going to work and infecting their co-workers?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the average amount of deaths per year from the flu is 36,000 although it varies with the type of flu outbreak. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (the Spanish Flu) killed somewhere between 20 to 40 million people. I was in the military and a flu shot was mandatory unless one was allergic to it.

It’s easy to see that the liberal politicians will be pushing gun control, especially since it’s now constantly in the news media. In Maine, we face a severe budget shortfall which might place a higher burden on local taxes to increase as I am willing to bet state subsidies to schools and municipalities will decrease. At the national level we will hit the debt ceiling in February and still don’t have a federal budget. I am willing to bet that the President and Congress will attempt some type of restriction on Americans owning firearms and that they will do so without amending the Second Amendment. If they do, they should be impeached and removed from office.

Lane Hiltunen, of Windham, wonders if there should be two Americas. One for liberals and another one to pay for it.