One day after the Isla Vista shooting, U.C. Santa Barbara’s chancellor told a crowd of mourners, “We are here to share our sorrow, shock and pain.” But one can hardly claim shock at this time in America. Since 2009, there have been more than 90 mass shootings in the U.S.: http://every.tw/shootings. As long as we allow the gun lobby to dictate our country’s policies - providing easy, unregulated access to guns - we can expect more of the same: http://nydn.us/1jmDeZe[.] It is up to us to elect legislators who have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and say #NotOneMore.
Another mass shooting. More innocent victims killed by a madman with a gun. And the likelihood that nothing will change becomes an ever more grim reality. With the National Rifle Association (NRA) serving the interests of the gun industry and with Congress firmly in the pocket of the NRA, it’s unlikely any mass are would result in changes in our gun laws. When guns nuts and ammosexuals like Samuel Wurzelbacher (“Joe the Plumber”) can with no sense of irony claim that “your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights,” the truth becomes crystal clear. An entire class of people cares far more about their gun “rights” than they do human life…as long as it’s someone else’s kid.
The question now is how long before good and decent people stand up to the NRA, the gun nuts, and the gun industry, none of whom give a damn about anything but their own self-interest. As long as any blood spilled belongs to someone else, someone they don’t know or love…hey, where’s the fire?? The truth is that most Americans support sensible gun laws, but gun nuts act as if their rights are the only ones that matters. Despite their intransigence, the 2nd Amendment is neither inviolable, immutable, nor sacrosanct.
Have we not suffered enough blood and tears?
It’s come to the point where episodes like Elliot Rodger’s murder of four men and two women near the Cal-Santa Barbara campus have become so frequent in America that the crime scene tapes have hardly been removed before people turn them into political symbols.
At which point any possibility of taking anything useful away from the tragedy ends. I certainly have no answer for the eloquent cry of Richard Martinez, whose 20 year-old son Christopher, a stranger to the killer, was shot dead in the street.
“Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA,” he cried. “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this?’ Too many have died. We should say to ourselves: not one more.”
Such is the downright Satanic power of the gun cult in this country, however, that Martinez may as well never have spoken. Every poll available shows that Democrats, Republicans and gun owners alike favor, at minimum, stronger background checks aimed at keeping semi-automatic killing machines away from disturbed individuals like Rodger.
Remember after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when hopes were high that the tragic massacre of school kids might finally result in the reform of our ridiculously inadequate gun laws? Remember the hope so many found in “the Connecticut effect?” And do you remember what became of that hope? Nothing. The gun nuts and the NRA made certain that Congress never lifted a finger. And so the 26 victims of Sandy Hook became just so much collateral damage.
Gun nuts have built an entire mythology around their “God-given” 2nd Amendment rights, but it’s like anything else they do: repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth.
And so the bloodshed continues…the only question being where the next mass shooting will occur- but as long as it’s someone else’s kid….
The truth is that compromise appears impossible, because one side equates compromise with unconstitutionally impinging on their God-given rights to own whatever firepower they deem appropriate.
As long as people like Samuel Wurzelbacher control the public debate over guns, there can be no hope for change, and gun nuts will continue whistling past the grave yard. More lives will be lost to senseless gun violence, and more innocent victims will be buried…ad infinitum, ad nauseum….
