Fire and Brimstone
Isn’t it time we stopped
pussyfooting around the subject of gun control? Hiding behind the 2nd
amendment ratified in 1791—a time when there were no assault weapons or 100
round magazines, but you could tie your horse up anywhere?
When are our lawmakers going to do the math? Yes, the NRA has 4 million
members who want to keep their assault weapons for hunting, but take away 4
million from 313 million and that leaves 309 million people whose health and
safety are being sacrificed so that 1.3 percent of the population can have the
freedom to shoot the other 98.7 percent of their fellow citizens, with the
weapon of their choice. .
Even reducing the argument to political terms if approximately 125
million people vote in a presidential election, and every NRA member voted,
they would represent only 1% of the ballots cast. Yet enough members of
Congress are so intimidated by this group they continue to ignore the
disturbing statistics:
29,000 men, women and children a year-- 80 each and every day--die of
gunshot wounds ( How many have we lost in Iraq and Afghanstan?) The United
States has more deaths as a result of gunshot wounds than Australia, Belgium,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland or the
UK combined; and has hosted more shooting massacres than any other developed
country. We also have the weakest laws
among all these nations. The NRA would have us believe there is no correlation
between the two. This is an insult to our collective intelligence.
We’re all proud to have the United States first in the world for any area
of endeavor, but first in the Western World for the possession of guns? For the
possession of assault weapons? For the number of mass murders? These are distinctions we can live without.
The time has come for a serious
National Debate, town hall discussions throughout the country and a committee
empowered to study, collate and report, in clear, understandable form, all the
data and statistics available from government agencies and private institutes relating
to death by gunfire: how many weapons are produced and sold to individuals;
what kind of weapons; where are guns sold; what state laws exist; how many
incidents are there, state by state; what kind of gun is involved in each case.
Most of this information exists today—it only needs to be pulled together and
published in one credible document, but a national debate has been thwarted over
and over again: neither President Obama or Mitt Romney are willing to talk
about what is, arguably, the most deadly problem facing the United States of
America.
It would be hard to find anyone living in this world of war and terror,
naïve enough to believe that any laws can be strict enough to totally prevent
the kind of violence we have seen in this country. Vaccines don’t prevent 100%
of the recipients from getting the disease, but we protect as many people as we
can. If, by enforcing our existing laws and enacting new laws governing the
sale and purchase of assault weapons we could save one person a day that would
be 365 fewer families mourning a lost
child or mother or father caught in the riptide of a random shooting.
We can either go on, year after year, watching friends and neighbors weep
as they build homemade memorials to victims of gunfire, or we can face up to
the fact we have a national emergency. Whether it’s 3 months before an election
or 3 months after—we cannot wait any longer. Now is the only time we have.