1) Get a driver's license: Go to DMV. Stand on long line. Get directed to another long line. Fill out application. Get learner's permit. Drive on learner's permit for 90 days or more. Go back to DMV. Stand on line again. Take written test. Make appointment for driving test. Take driving test which includes the following: prove you can parallel park, prove you can drive backwards.
2) Get a passport: Step 1, find your birth certificate. That's okay, we'll wait. Fill out application. Get "authorized" passport photo taken (maximum ugliness guaranteed). Bring the application (if it's your first passport), along with your current ID, your birth certificate, and your $165 fee, to a U.S. State Department Passport office. Stand in a very long line. Hand over your documents. Wait 4-6 weeks for your passport to arrive. If, like me, you need to renew your passport in a hurry, you can pay an expediter to process your passport more quickly. Total to turn mine around in 2 weeks was close to $400 bucks. Luckily, expensible since I was renewing it for business purposes.
3) Apply for Social Security, which you have paid into for your entire working life, of which the government, through your employer, and the IRS, also through your employer, know exactly how much to take, and where you live, but when it comes time to give the money back to you, they make you wade through a bureaucratic morass to get the money back.
4) Apply for Medicare, which you have paid into for your entire working life. See #3, above.
5) Vote. Some states took it upon themselves to pre-emptively purge their voter rolls this year. People who had lived in the same home and voted in the same precinct for decades had to prove they were ALIVE.
6) Get on an airplane: Show government-approved ID to powerless blazer-wearing person at entrance to security line. Wait in security line. Show government-approved ID again to slightly-less-powerless uniform-wearing person wielding UV flashlight. Take off shoes, empty pockets, take ziploc baggie of 3-ounces-or-less creams and gels out of your suitcase, take laptop out of briefcase and put it into its own bin, walk shoeless through x-ray machine (or opt-out and get felt up -- well out of security camera range -- by another uniform-wearing person).
How to buy a gun:
1) Go to Craigslist, hey, no background check needed since it's a "private seller." Hand over the cash. Walk out with the weapon of your choice.
2) Go on the internet, buy (unrestricted) bulk ammo, even large-capacity 30-shot magazines or even better, the "drums" that hold up to 100 shots (James Holmes' discriminating choice for maximum damage in Aurora).
Welcome to America, where the living is getting more difficult, but buying a gun is easy. Because it's your RIGHT.
