Of all the contentious issues confronting America, the easiest to solve is the prevalence of gun ownership.
It’s not written in the Bible. Its not transcribed in the Koran, it’s not addressed in the Torah and its not promulgated in the Constitution. “The right to bear arms” is about a well- regulated state militia, not a hackneyed phrase taken out of context in the second Amendment.
In 1967 the first gun control laws were passed in California by then Governor Ronald Reagan in response to gun purchases by the Black Panthers in Oakland.
In 1968 national gun control laws were introduced in the wake of assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Presidential candidate and Senator Robert Kennedy and earlier, the taking of the life of President John Kennedy.
It was then that the gun manufacturers, horrified with visions of reduced sales and profit reacted by enlisting a 20-year-old association that was known for teaching gun safety (how ironic) and sponsoring target competition out of Queens, NY; to become a congressional lobby arm to counter gun regulation laws with political campaign contributions.
The NRA exceeded their wildest dreams in messaging, targeting (a different kind), raising money, and riding a new wave of persuading through cash and punishing through withholding on Capitol Hill.
They succeeded more than any other organization in installing their congressional supporters and the result of their unmatched success, a nation awash in guns.
This fostering of a gun environment has pushed congresses, state and national, to pass laws that do away with any restrictions even to the point where the convoluted interpretation of the Second Amendment was to prevail over the straight interpretation of the First Amendment. Laws advocating any kind of regulation were not to be brought up on the respective floors, doctors were not to mention the ills of gun violence to patients and penalties for this speech was expulsion from congress and revocation of licenses to practice medicine.
We now have an estimated 450 million guns privately owned in our homes. That’s more than is owned by every single man, woman, child and baby.
Besides various guns for hunting different game you only need one gun for protection, if you are so inclined and pass a background check, not an AK-47 unless you’re Barry Berkman and the whole world wants to kill you.
Other nations don’t have this problem and very seldom suffer from mass shootings, last week Serbia suffered it’s first mass shooting …. Serbia!
In fact the NRA was going to make a deal giving their blessing on some gun regulation in light of the mass shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut which applied too much pressure on the gun organization. But alas the deal fell through when an even more fringe gun group promised to demagogue the NRA’s dollar contributors and steal their fundraising lists potentially rendering the lobby behemoth to irrelevance.
So, because of campaign fundraising more gun sales and more gun deaths would continue unabated.
There is only one reason why your congressperson or Senator votes pro-gun. He/She does not care about you, your life, your spouse’s life, your children’s lives, your baby’s life (prolife-indeed!) your parents’ lives or your siblings, friends or neighbors. They only care about their own re-election to a representative position in a democracy.
These scoundrels need to be tossed out on their heads and the senseless slaughter must stop.