“Nothing that the President has proposed would have stopped the tragedy at Newtown.” That is a bold response that has no merit. We are looking forward not backward. And everything has to go forward. But technically the statement is correct. Even if a mental health check would’ve excluded Adam Levine from purchasing a gun legally he didn’t need to do so. His mother provided his weapons with no regard to their use by her son.
And none of that matters if you can go to a gun show and they have background checks. Too dicey for you? Then go to the parking lot of that gun same show and make a deal out of the trunk of another fine American. It couldn’t have stopped the horror from happening in Newtown but a smaller magazine could’ve impeded the shooter from dispatching so many roughly a second at a time. When the gunmen went to reload in Tucson is when they stopped him. So as sweeping as the proposals are and as logical as they are there is a great reason that none of today’s proposals will work. They will never see the light of reality.
All are nothing but empty words unless there is one change that happens first. Senators and Congressman can’t believe that they can speak with the certain impunity that the 2nd Amendment is sacrosanct. The 1st Amendment has conditions and yet we still have porn, Alex Jones can scream at Piers Morgan on CNN virtually and literally threatening his life and FOXNEWS can out and out lie to the camera again and again. Everyone has the right to be stupid. Otherwise how would we have an elected official calling for the President’s Impeachment? Rush Limbaugh laughs and scorns the tortuous deaths of children and the certain impotence of the Commander in Chief. Meanwhile this morning online the NRA asks the assinine question why should the Obama kids get special treatment at their school? Interestingly one of the proposals from the President is helping schools put in armed guards with the help of funding from Congress instead of siphoning off from the already precarious school budgets slashed beyond reason.
Non-sequitor.
Recently I was in a violent automobile wreck. Totaled the car and as it was about to happen I thought I was going to die. Obviously I didn’t. I won’t go into the crash but it involved three cars and I was the one who was getting bounced around between the two. It took just a couple of seconds but it was devastating and at the end of it I realized none of us were dead. Some of us were hurt but we were alive. That is because the cars we were in are manufactured with crashes in mind. Today’s cars are so much safer than the car I learned to drive in decades ago. That car was so much safer than the car in which my Dad had learned to drive. Cars have been made safer and safer as the decades have gone by and that wasn’t without the government interceding on issues like seat belts and air bags and inadvertently by reducing the speed limit on the Interstate Highway System, because of the price of oil, decreased traffic deaths and injuries. On the other hand, guns in the same time period, from the mid-seventies to now, have become more efficient. Guns shoot around corners and they have laser sights. They’re smaller yet more powerful and don’t have the kick they once had so you don't get a sore shoulder and a burned up cheek and on and on. Guns have, with horrible irony, been made more user friendly and proficient. Except for the short lived assault weapons ban that the great President George W. Bush let expire, we as a people have done virtually nothing to put some control on these smooth criminals.
By the way in the time it took for that above traffic accident to happen any of the shooters who have committed these crimes shot at least 2 and maybe three people. Just saying.
So the President is Hitler trying to take away all the guns from gun owners. He needs to be impeached. He needs to be reined in and have some controls put on him. The NRA is off its rails. They have been since they called the government a collection of "boot strapped thugs" coming to take your guns back in '95 after the Oklahoma City bombing. Former President George HW Bush resigned from the NRA after that. The leadership of that orgnization makes me weep for America. They are bullies who have guns and aren't afriad to use them.
I have not written since Sandy Hook. I cannot bring words to my feelings that I have swimming in me since I heard of this terror of our time. I know one thing for sure. Grief is a twisted sister. My brother died of cancer just before he turned 54. I was devastated and had severe depression for the next year. My parents were even worse. To outlive your children is not right. It didn’t sit right with my parents for the rest of their lives. I can only imagine the loss that these parents from Sandy Hook, Aroura, Tucson Columbine and too many others all over the country are feeling. I don’t want to feel it.
Please I hope we will be all over those in the GOP who won’t even consider these proposals. These are historic proposals like no President in the history of our Republic has laid out concerning guns. Much of what is there are often what the GOP has said they would do. But its this President. He has made them look like fools they think. I believe they are fools and he just makes it that more apparent. Regardless the GOP and the President (through the VP whatever) have to talk before it’s too late. Change is overdue and sadly way overdue for the most precious among us. Can't we stop laughing at the children's misery and their parent's misery and try to give their lives some meaning? As the President so eloquently asked, "If we can save just one child shouldn’t we?" Well shouldn’t we?
