Tag: fear of the NRA

Fire Arms Control

Rick Perry said in an interview Sunday, July 26, 2015, on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, earlier this week shows why gun-free zones are “a bad idea” and said he believes people should be able to take their firearms to the movies.

“I think that it makes a lot of sense to send a message across this country,” Perry said when asked by host Jake Tapper if the former governor believed a way to prevent such violence would be to allow moviegoers to take guns inside. “If we believe in the Second Amendment, and we believe in people’s right to protect themselves and defend themselves, and their families.”

In other words after you enter the theater and take your seat you should pull out a pistol and keep it on your lap just in case there is a gunman in the room.

On the same program Donald Trump said there was “a very fine line. You’ve got to do it very judiciously. If a person is mentally ill and it’s proven and it’s documented, you have to be extremely careful not to let them kill people,” he said.

“Frankly, he should be committed. Because he has the kind of a record where he should be in a institution. He was a very sick puppy.”

Mr. Trump has essentially taken my view. We test everyone before they receive a driver’s license. That should conducted for everyone who want to buy a gun. The test should confirm you know how to handle a weapon and should include a written test and a mental evaluation. Will this be expensive? More than the cost now but perhaps will save lives.

The NRA will throw a fit over this idea. Can our congress stand up to the NRA? I doubt it. But perhaps there is a chance. I continue to hope.

The Right to Bear Arms

It doesn’t make any difference whether mass killings are called “a form or terrorism” or “a “hate crime.” The victims are dead or seriously injured. Americans live in a country that permits the use of guns to kill people. The argument that “it’s people who kill people, it’s the not guns who do the killing” is simply another way of defending gun ownership.

There really is only one reason to own a gun and that is to protect yourself from violence. Relying on the police won’t work since they can’t arrive at any destination in seconds. I know you may argue that shooting at a target is fun and collecting weapons is a hobby and you would be correct if there was little chance that those weapons would ever be used to kill or maim.  The problem is that hundreds of people are killed annually because of hate rather than for protection.  No other industrial country in the world has a gun related death rate near the rate of the United States.

Cross the border into Canada and you are stopped by their border patrol and asked if you have any weapons in your car. They search your car trunk and your suitcases to confirm your words. The record is clear. Canadian deaths from weapons is about 2.22 per 100,000 people. In the United States the rate is 10.64 (2013).

The killing of nine Black people in a church is no different from the killing of audience members of a movie theater in Colorado or Sikh’s in their temple near Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“If only those people had been armed” is the argument offered by the NRA (National Rifleman’s Association). They would have had the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School carrying a sidearm to protect themselves and the children.

In other words we should behave like an old west movie with everyone prepared to draw a weapon.

What is more astonishing is that our congress lacks the will to stop the killing. The right to bear arms grew out of a concern that the government might become tyrannical to the point where the public feared for their freedom.

The argument is not supportable in the 21st century. The weapons the government has in its possession are unavailable to the public. An armed insurrection is not possible today unless part of the army itself decided to start a rebellion.

I keep hearing our politicians tell us that the United States is the greatest country in the world. On what basis do they make that statement?  There is no more freedom here than in other western nations.  Guns have never helped to preserve our freedom except in war.

Is the U.S. Constitution equivalent to the Bible?

It remains inexplicable that the most advanced country in the world honors a document written in 1789 as if it was handed down from God like the Ten Commandments.

Those wise men that wrote the United States Constitution recognized that the basic law they created might need to be amended as the world evolved. They provided for that situation in Article V. Despite that ability the conservatives on the Supreme Court and elsewhere in our nation defend the idea “that the meaning of the constitution does not change or evolve over time, but rather that the meaning of the text is both fixed and knowable.  An originalist believes that the fixed meaning of the text should be the sole guide for a judge when applying or interpreting a constitutional provision.” Source of quotation

Thus we are all bound to the idea that our right to bear arms has no limits. Anyone can buy and own a gun. The NRA strongly advocates this belief in spite of the continuing loss of life caused by the deranged. They oppose all forms of weapons registration and the names of people who own them.

Thus on this fall day a high school student in Washington State killed one classmate and seriously injured three others before taking his own life. Meanwhile two Northern California deputies are dead another officer and a civilian were injured by another mad man.

I am quite sure there were other shootings today.

We all just change the television channel or block it out of our mind. Most people just say that is the way it is in America.

If it happens to someone in our family we cry, pray, and try to forget.

MOST OF US DO NOT HAVE THE COURAGE TO SAY “ENOUGH.” CERTAINLY NOT OUR ELECTED OFFICALS. THEY TOO ARE AFRAID OF THE NRA.