As we all still recall the mass carnage that occurred in Paris France at the hands of multiple individuals intent upon instilling terror deep within the souls of the public at large we are presented with an object lesson on our inability to contain hate. In the wake of the horror in Paris various public figures railed on about making the United States a virtual fortress based upon xenophobic notions of religious screenings, national origin of immigrants and slamming the borders shut on those huddled masses yearning to be free. Although we expect our government to protect us from those elements outside our borders with verifiable intent to do us harm, once again, this time during our national period of giving thanks, the next nightmare unfolded at a Colorado Planned Parenthood Center.
A local man, Robert Lewis Deer carried out an assault on a Planned Parenthood Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado that left a police office and two other citizens dead. No amount of screening, database tracking or religious tests of any class of refugees from any foreign country would have prevented Deer from unleashing his rage. We need to clean up our own house because from Sandy Hook to the latest tragedy we have proven without a doubt that our homegrown hatred knows no bounds. Our domestic terrorists respect no venue from elementary schools to church bible studies. Stop pointing fingers at foreign boogie men and stop destruction from monsters living next door to us first.
The Second Amendment has become a marketing slogan for the gun industry and gun lobby to continue to rake in huge profits by using it as a shield to escape accepting any responsibility for their product’s role in escalating violence in America. This pimping of the Second Amendment to pump up gun sales is perverse and borderline immoral.
Any amount of reflection will reveal the response after almost every mass shooting from gun advocates and the gun lobby to any mention of improved gun controls is a sharp 2nd Amendment knee jerk reference to weakening the Second Amendment. Guns are a unique product in that they are designed to cause great damage to any object it is fired at. The reference often cited for automobile deaths is invalid because cars are designed for transportation and not penetration injury by a projectile. Outside of war, the primary legal uses of guns in civil society are for protection, sport and collection. Criminals have long used guns in commission of crimes such as robbery and unfortunately some conflicts often involve guns with deadly consequences. The one area that guns seem to be used in an increasing manner is mass shootings such as in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado when heavily armed assailants burst onto the scenes with semiautomatic weapons equipped with high capacity ammunition magazines and slaughtered innocent Americans. Any mention of lowering the kill capacity by even limiting ammunition magazine capacity are met with cries of weakening the 2nd Amendment and gun sales increase. This automatic response to avoid the gun industry taking responsibility amounts to a pimping of the 2nd Amendment for profit over pain.
Is asking some to “suffer” by only being able to only fire 10 rounds at their targets instead of 30 or 100 before reloading in the name of giving people that may come under attack a better chance of surviving such a huge hardship? Why hasn’t a firearm manufacturer come out after a mass shooting and announced that they are embarking on at least making their guns more secure from use by someone that takes an owner’s gun without authorization or incorporating technology that makes a gun easier to track if stolen. The gun lobby protects firearm manufacturers and they keep producing the equivalent of 1929 automobiles in the 21st century. Suppose automobile manufacturers operated that way, modern cars would not have airbags, antilock brakes or ignition keys so that anyone could drive you car away by pushing a button. We would not tolerate an automobile that anyone could drive away without needing a key or at least have to break into and hotwire the ignition, yet we have guns that anyone can take and fire at will by flipping a switch or pulling the trigger hard to fire the first round.
The pimping of the Second Amendment for profit is the cause of the laziness of gun manufacturers and all they have to do is put big fins on their old jalopy version products by making it look like the versions sold to the military. Maybe it’s time to face the reality that some in society have placed their love of this product with an attached false measure of freedom, defined as having unregulated access to a dangerous product, over any other public safety concerns. If that is the case they we are headed back to the Wild West where shootouts could break out at any moment as it did on a college campus near Houston, Texas on January 23, 2013 when an argument between two men erupted in gunfire and sent 3 people to the hospital.
Let’s get real and stop allowing an industry to continue to fatten its pockets without making any proactive efforts to improve even the basic safety of its offerings. If it were any other industry it would be shut down for gross negligence.
Twenty 6 and 7 year old children are killed by a madman wielding an assault style semiautomatic rifle and one of the results is an increase in gun sales, gun makers’ stock prices and membership in the NRA. It seems that longer funeral procession lines from mass shootings generate even longer lines to buy more guns. We may have a problem.
Many say that the spike in guns sale and National Rifle Membership was spurred by the prospect of a looming potential ban on certain guns and a weakening of the second amendment, but that is a smokescreen. The real driving forces behind the perverse relationship between the almost cause effect relationship between mass shooting events and gun sales increase are greed, selfishness and opportunism. The 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution has become nothing more than a marketing slogan for those wanting to continue buying their favorite hobby guns and the gun lobby working to keep the sales of guns at a bubble level. The truth is that the current gun sales environment is like the real estate bubble that took the economy down when it burst.
It seems that the gun lobby may have won as more school districts are deciding to arm some teachers and even janitors. A huge new market is opening for gun manufacturers based upon the utterances from the executive vice president of the NRA, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Those words and atmosphere of fear even have senior citizens that have never owned a gun before going to their local gun dealer to purchase a gun for the first time.
Think about the responses that the gun industry have when a mass shooting takes place anywhere in the country. Oh wait, what response have you heard from the manufacturers directly? What if products from other manufacturers were used to kill 20 children, would there not be a response directly from the manufacturers? Consider the NRA response to be the manufacturers’ response, buy more of our product to protect yourself from someone using our product. Isn’t that like someone arming both sides in a war that they are helping to prolong?
I have a gun that I have owned for over 30 years and it still works fine. Sanity is the real fear of the gun industry. We have well over 270 million guns in the United States and there are just fewer than 114 million households in the country. That means there are over 2.3 guns for every household in the country and not every household has a gun. If every household had one gun for protection and kept their gun as long as I have then there would be a far smaller firearms industry. Guns have undergone a transformation from useful tool to hobby item and now a campaign fueled by fear has created a new market of schools and senior citizens wanting to strap themselves with firearms because they fear a gun wielding madman may knock down their doors. The truth may be closer to what happened in New Mexico on January 20, 2013 when the teenage son in a family used two of the guns in the family home and killed the rest of his family. So are we protecting ourselves against the bad guy from without or arming the bad guy within our own midst.
Gun rights advocates have long distorted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution to justify their version of guns rights. The 2nd Amendment is clear, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” There is no mention of the type of gun that could be owned.
The 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted in 1791 when a skilled user could manage to shoot and reload a musket 2 to 3 times per minute. Now the 2nd Amendment is being used to justify the need for civilians to own semiautomatic guns that can hold 100 rounds of ammunition and fire 45 to 60 times per minute or as fast as the shooter can pull the trigger. The 2nd Amendment says nothing about the of gun anyone can own, it just says you have the right to own guns. As for the word “infringed” that some gun advocates become unhinged over anytime gun regulation is brought up, it simply means “act so as to limit or undermine.”
The second Amendment deals with the right to own guns and no one has acted to limit our undermine the right of law abiding citizens eligible to own guns from obtaining them or limit how many they can own. When the word infringed is extended to mean that it also includes no regulations on the types of guns available for people to own, that’s where the misuse of the 2nd Amendment occurs. Guns are commercial products produced by companies that design, manufacture and sell them to the public. Guns are designed to launch a projectile into an object and cause damage, if that object happens to be a living being like a deer or person it causes injury or death. If government authorities tasked with maintaining public safety determine that a certain type of gun or ammunition feeding device is involved in excessive human injury or death, they have the duty to address the issue with legislation to protect the public. None of the current gun legislation or proposed changes “infringes” upon anyone’s right to go to their local Walmart, Gander Mountain or Cabellas and buy the available gun of their choice. Please don’t bring up how many people die in automobile accidents compared to firearm deaths because it’s a false comparison, cars are designed for transportation and those deaths result from accidents and bad decision making, not from intention. These shooting spree killers did so with a gun, not a car.
The 2nd amendment is a clear statement in what it means in regards to gun ownership, you have the right to keep and bear arms, period. The 2nd Amendment does not outline the type of guns you have the right to own. Guns are a product just like automobiles, food and drugs. Automobiles, food and drugs are all regulated to ensure that safe products are available on the market. Occasionally regulating agencies will require products that have proved to be a danger to the public to be removed from the marketplace by their manufacturers or move from off the shelf access to prescription required in the case of drugs. Guns are no different than any other product when it comes to public safety. There is nothing magical, mystical or sacred about any one gun type or ammunition magazine that makes it essential for a gun owner to possess.
Jared Lee Loughner was taken down during his shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona when he was trying to reload his semiautomic handgun after his 33 round magazine was empty, but he dropped the second magazine and others on the scene took him down. What if Loughner had a 10 round magazine instead of a 33 round unit, that’s 23 fewer shots before he had to reload, could someone that is gone still be alive? Colin Ferguson methodically shot passengers on a Long Island, New York commuter train with a semiautomatic pistol in December 1993, he emptied and reloaded two 15 round magazines, when Ferguson tried to load a third magazine other passengers took the opportunity to tackle him. If Ferguson was limited to 10 rounds per magazine, would someone that was killed be alive because of 10 fewer shots fired? The 10 round magazine limit proposed is just common sense. Why does any recreational gun owner need a 100 round drum magazine on a civilian semiautomatic rifle like what was used by the Aurora, Colorado theater shooter. If 10 shots can’t handle what is coming at you in a defensive mode then it is likely that more rounds won’t be of much help either.
All of the noise against gun legislation is a smoke screen for the makers and takers. The manufacturers and gun lobby make money and politicians take money. Some gun owners just want to keep getting their favorite grown up toys that resembles the guns used by our brave troops on the battlefield. The sad truth is that we kill over twice as many of each other in the United States than the number of brave troops we have lost to enemy combatants during 12 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Something has to change.
“Your child is dead.” Imagine that those words are said to you. Those are the most chilling words parents can hear and after going into shock they want to what happened. If the answer to that question is they were shot while they were at the mall, grocery store, restaurant, movie theater, church, college, high school or in their elementary school classroom by a disturbed individual with a lethal arsenal of guns, there is no understanding and it is unacceptable. How many parents have to hear those chilling words before we become fed up enough to do something about it?
Newtown, Connecticut marked a new low in what someone will do to inflict pain on others to draw attention to whatever demons or issues he was dealing with. First he took the life of the person that brought him into the world and then extinguished the futures of 20 children just venturing into the outside world and scarred others across the nation with his actions. Six educators gave their lives during his rampage. How could a man walk into a room full of small children and do what this person did? This so-called man with premeditation put on body armor, loaded multiple weapons with ammunition and decided that on December 14, 2012 he would enter history as America’s greatest modern child killer.
If this does not throw cold water into the faces of those in positions of power to take action to put some kind of parameters on our out of control culture of gun worship, then we will just slide into the abyss. These little children had no chance in this situation. Some that will always say that there should be no restrictions on personal gun ownership are already trotting out the tired old response that the teachers should have been armed and they could have ended this earlier are just lost causes. When these determined human killing machines come on the scene suited up with body armor and military levels of firepower it is not a contest, because they have the element of surprise in an unexpected venue.
If we can’t grow enough of a spine now to stand up to the gun lobby, National Rifle Association and the money it threatens politicians with then nothing will ever change. The answer is not for everyone to walk around armed to the teeth. I don’t want to feel I need a machine gun in my home and on my person to feel safe. Hunters don’t need battlefield level weapons to hunt game. There is no need for what is going on in the name of a constitutional amendment written over 200 years ago by men that could not even conceive of modern weapons that would allow one man to kill so many so quickly.
Please, don’t tell me how many people are killed in car accidents annually and ask if we should we outlaw cars because that is a false comparison because cars are not specifically designed to kill. Car accidents are due to a number of factors, but usually mass murder intentions are not one of them. Spare me the guns don’t kill people, people kill people statement. People with guns kill people and people with assault weapons kill a lot of people quickly.
Everyday someone is getting a call informing them that their child, husband, wife or other loved one is dead at the hands of someone in possession of some mass killing machine that should never be wielded in civilian society. This horror should be enough for action and if it isn’t then there never will be enough. Pray for the families that lost their children and other loved ones during this horrific event.
Nothing clears your head like calling out hypocrisy and shameful
pandering to a powerful interest group. These are the times when you know who
is really running the government and it’s not regular citizens. One glaring
example is the reactions to the real issues of actual gun deaths versus almost nonexistent
real voter fraud.
Multiple states are engaged in passing more restrictive
voter identification laws for the 2012 election although an article
by Hamed Aleaziz, Dave Gilson, and Jaeah Lee in Mother July/August 2012 issues
found 13 credible cases of voter impersonation from the years 2000 to 2010
out of 649 million votes cast. What was the reaction to this almost
immeasurable .000000000002% voter impersonation problem, stricter voter
identification laws? Excuse me, but this does not sound like an election
swaying problem that deserves the type of restrictive voter legislation that is
coming from multiple states, unless there are other motives.
Gun violence is once again on everyone’s minds as a deranged
man killed 12 people in a crowed movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado
and wounded 58 others. In the year 2010 there were 10,000 deaths by guns in the
United States
according to an article
by Jonathan Mann posted on the CNN website. What has been the reaction to the
number of annual gun deaths and this latest mass killing tragedy, fear of doing
anything at all. In fact laws have been relaxed in some instances to make gun
ownership even easier over the years. No one is trying to end gun ownership,
but why does any recreational gun owner or hunter need an assault rifle with a
100-round drum magazine.
Now if these two issues of voter fraud versus gun deaths
were judged by the types of restrictions being implemented at the state level
one would think that the impact of voter fraud was much higher than gun deaths,
but it is just the opposite. So will it take 10,000 coffins lined up end to end
through Washington D.C. Will it take a caravan of 10,000
hearses driving across the country to spur some action on extreme guns in the
hands of civilians? This is not about the 2nd amendment because
James Madison wrote it in 1789 when it took longer to load a gun with black
powder and prepare it for firing one shot as it takes for an AR-15 assault
rifle to empty a 100-round drum magazine clip. Compared to what was available
in 1789, a regular citizen can purchase a gun at their local sporting goods store
that would have been considered a weapon of mass destruction in 1789.
Why don’t they apply the voter impersonation standard of 13
over 10 years to gun deaths? Money, fear and politics keep politicians from opposing groups like the National Rifle Association. We may vote our
government representatives into office and pay their salaries, but they are wholly owned subsidiaries of special interest groups.
Republican Herman Cain was a man on a glorified book tour pretending to be a Presidential candidate when something unexpected happened, voters liked him. Without any preparation, Cain found himself in first place in the national polls and that’s when trouble showed up. Cain’s latest troubles came in the form of Sharon Bialek.
Sharon Bialek stepped up in front of a bank of microphones and a hoard of television cameras. Bialek told a sordid tale of a long ago encounter with Herman Cain that she said went in a very sexually inappropriate direction. This was not the first charge of sexual harassment against Herman Cain as there were two other cases that involved actual financial settlements with women that were employees of the National Restaurant Association when Cain headed the group. The women involved in the settlements decided not to go public and that left a cloud over the actual details of the incidents involved in the cases with these individuals.
Herman Cain is the case that illustrates what can happen when the dog that chases the car accidentally grabs onto the bumper and discovers that he is in for the ride of his life. This is a lesson for those toying with the idea of doing something like running for President of the United States as a mere exercise. Even though the person running may be doing it for exposure there is always the outside chance that the public might like what you are saying, take you seriously and put you out front. Skeletons love to pop out of closets when popularity suddenly lands on your doorstep.
The simplicity of Cain’s 999 tax plan combined with the implosion of Texas Governor Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann’s campaign left Mr. Cain as the hope for conservative Republican voters. Will conservative Republican’s abandon Herman Cain or rally around him since an actual person has stepped forward with details of an alleged encounter.
This accusation against Herman Cain is the purest of he said, she said. Bialek said she told her boyfriend and mentor years ago, but shared no details. The Cain campaign has denied the accusations and so it goes. These are the things that nightmares are made of with the prospect that a man seeking to be the leader of the free world is embroiled in such a sordid scandal, but wait; we have been down this road before.
