DO GUNS KILL PEOPLE OR DO PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE? — GO ASK THE NRA

The tragedy in Colorado is unimaginable.  What is even more unimaginable is that gun control remains “stuck in the mud”.

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The shooter responsible for the massacre in Denver had planned this atrocity for four months.  He literally stockpiled enough ammunition for a small army and also booby-trapped his residence to such an extent that it took the police an entire day to undo it all.

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There’s really only one way to look at this in the most stark and brutal terms. During the Vietnam War era, when sons and daughters of the rich and powerful suddenly fell into harm’s way, then and only then did you see some retrenchment in full-throated support for that war.  So too with gun control.  It will probably take another tragic event that involves family and kin of the rich and powerful and the well-connected.  Sadly enough I think there’s an awful lot of truth to that.

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The way that the NRA argues for the right to bear arms is nothing more than the right to arm bears!  Can we all finally reject this total insanity.

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And we have John McCain stating that there is no proof that gun control will lessen violence.  That is certainly right up there with the global warming deniers.  It’s a uniquely “American” problem, a cultural cul-de-sac that we had better get a handle on or the right to be safe in our persons and effects will become a national parody.

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It all boils down to one word – “freedom” – and how it is interpreted by the 40% of this nation that seriously “over-steps” any rational  sense of that concept.   The world be damned – we’re “special”, we’re Americans, we’re “anointed”, we’re just “ordained” to embark on the quest for freedom in all of its facets and there is simply no compromise even when the very social fabric of an entire nation is brought to a virtual breaking point.  And that means weapons of any kind, including assault weapons, are a public right.

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Well guess what, the party is over.  People may kill people but guns certainly accelerate that out of all proportion. Our national violence, for the most part, is self-inflicted.  

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We need a Congress to protect us from ourselves.  That is after all the true meaning of that venerable constitutional concept – the general welfare.  Thomas Jefferson had it spot-on.

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PETE/MARIN
(Remember, We Ride So You Don’t Have To!)
https://paulrevererides.wordpress.com