Friday, December 14, 2012

When Will We Ever Learn?

Today 26 people, including 20 elementary schoolchildren are dead because someone had too much gun and one too many rights to own them.
 
In Newtown, Connecticut a 20 year old man armed with two semiautomatic pistols and an assault rifle fired something like 100 rounds inside the walls of an elementary school inflicting a carnage that has not been seen since Columbine.
When will we ever learn?
The NRA stumps for the arms industry so that they can reap the profits of a gun mania that seems to have no limit, and the depths of a paranoia that seems to have no bottom.
How many more Columbines, Auroras, Tucsons, and now Newtowns must Americans endure before the gun industry finally becomes accountable and some sanity is restored to a nonexistent gun policy?
When it becomes impossible for someone to purchase guns capable of firing bullets at a high rate, and to purchase magazines that contain enough rounds to kill a herd of elephants this madness will come to an end. The insanity is this: guns provide the means and the ease to kill our fellow man. Knives are messy and you have to get in close. Guns make killing people oh so convenient. Guns have become a convenience in our society as much as any other labor-saving device.
This is the argument that answers the old saw about “guns don’t kill people, people kill people:
True, but guns make it ever so easy. Guns make it clean. Guns allow you to be distant both in mind and body from your victim.
Have a 2nd Amendment argument? We repealed the Volstead Act you know.
Time to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

1 comment:

JJR said...

I'm about as much a flaming Lefty as you will find in Fort Bend County and even I will not agree with you with respect to a call to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

Improved mental health access? Of course. Improved sharing of mental health data with NICS to stop people who lie about their mental health at point of sale? Hell yes. Virtually no one disagrees that more could and should be done to keep guns out of the hands of crazy people.
Beefed up security at schools? I would support tax increases to fund that.

But latest reports show that the guns were legally purchased by the perp's mother.

I own 2 of the 3 models recovered from the scene (Sig Sauer are Swiss-made and too rich for me), and I have Asperger's and no criminal record and two Master's degrees and I consistently vote Democratic. Should I be disarmed in the interest of public safety? I think that goes too far. Yes, more could and should be done but repealing the 2nd Amendment? No.