Guns in America

HOW MANY AMERICANS ARE KILLED EACH YEAR BY GUNS?  According to the NY Times, and the Center for Disease Prevention, 100,000 Americans are shot by guns every YEAR, 30,000 of them die each YEAR, and over 10,000 Americans are shot and killed by other people each year and more than a million Americans have been shot and killed by guns since Martin Luther King was killed. 

SOLVE OTHER PROBLEMS FIRST?  Don't try to say that we must make everything else perfect – eliminate deaths by motor vehicles, alcohol, cigarettes and so on – and THEN we will talk about guns - American Terrorists kill 34 Americans every DAY with guns. Don't blame alcohol, don't blame gangs, don't blame suicide, don’t blame cigarettes or alcohol – Guns empower sick people to change their rants and raves into firepower that blows innocent lives away. Now is the time for gun control. Control. Control – nobody is going to come by and take your guns, but we need CONTROL. Control like we have for a drivers' license, like we have to buy some Sudafed, like we have to do many other things in America. We DO need to ban assault weapons, extended clips and certain bullets and weapons. And more.  You can keep your security gun at home, and take your hunting guns hunting, but get the killer-weapons out of the schoolrooms, movie theaters, shopping malls, churches, college campuses, and off the streets of America.

WHAT IS AN ASSAULT WEAPON?  My definition of an assault weapon is ANY weapon that is capable of, or has been modified to provide what the military refers to as “Suppression Fire”, also sometimes called “Covering Fire”.  Suppression Fire is a procedure in which rounds are fired in rapid succession into a target area to force  people there to hide and take cover.  It denies the people in that area the opportunity to return fire or even to observe what the delivering force is doing.  Somewhat the same effect can be accomplished with extended-bullet clips that permit the firing of one round every two, three or four seconds, then after say 30 rounds have been fired, the clip is replaced in about 5 seconds and another 30 – or maybe 100 – rounds are available.

TREAT MENTAL ILLNESS, DON'T RESTRICT GUNS?:  According to a research project by Ronald Kessler,  Harvard professor of Health Care Policy who led a survey of Americas mental health, called the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, "one-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a "serious" disorder that often interfered with their ability to function.  Meanwhile, our mental health programs have been reduced again and again and, as a number of people have pointed out recently, "It is easier to get a gun than to get mental health help in America"

GOOD GUYS WITH ARMS?:  We don’t want armed guards in every classroom, not even in every school.  We don’t want them prowling our movie theaters, campuses, malls, churches, restaurants, bars and so on.   Actions such as this would TURN AMERICA INTO A POLICE STATE.

ARM TEACHERS?:  We don’t want to arm our teachers, preachers, waiters, firefighters, bartenders, They have other work to do.  And ANY one who is carrying a loaded gun NEEDS to be totally aware of that weapon every minute he or she has it on their body.

HITLER CONFISCATED REGISTERED GUNS?  No.  He didn’t.  Hitler ENCOURAGED private gun ownership.  The German private arms were confiscated by Eisenhower and the American armies when they moved across the German farmlands and cities after the German armies had been destroyed. 

CONCEALED CARRIERS?: We don’t want “everybody” carrying a concealed gun.  That could cause, for example in a restaurant  that a loud noise – a dropped plate or something like that – to cause “carriers” to reach for their weapons.  Some other confusion and someone could shoot.  Instantly, other “carriers” would pull their weapon out and shoot at the shooter, thus drawing fire themselves from others across the room.   And if anyone has a “Bushmaster” then catastrophe would turn into carnage. 

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN?  None of us can predict the future.  But to live any life REQUIRES that you make intelligent observations about the conditions under which you live.  We can all draw inferences from actions out of the path.  And one thing the past now “predicts” will happen in America is more Mass Murders, more killing of children, of shoppers, or church people and so on.  Most of these seem to take place far away from where WE are, but the bad ones do seem random as to location.  And when an American Terrorist’s shooting kills YOUR wife or YOUR child or YOUR grandchild, then it all changes, and you change too.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT.   “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. “ EVERYone agrees that it is clumsily worded and people have argued about what it really means ever since it was written.  According to the Holy Bible, you can evaluate a tree by the fruit it bears "You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"  – and the Second Amendment has NOT provided a “well regulated militia” – it has done the opposite, and we have gathered thorns and thistles from it.  It is time to wake up and demand a change.

NO right is ever absolute.

RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS:  When our Founding Fathers wrote this amendment, there were no real pistols, only dueling pistols that would fire one bullet.   The "rifles" were musket-type weapons that would fire one bullet and required power to be added before each shot.  Revolvers were invented around 1835 to 1845, as were rifles.  In 2010, of course, “arms” could include repeating rifles and pistols, weapons that fire armor-piercing and incendiary bullets.  Most people today appear not to include weapons in such “arms” category as nuclear or atomic weapons, bombs, flame throwers and such other military “arms”.  But – that’s today.  What about twenty years from now?  Is an act of defining what “arms” means an act of infringement?

WHO ARE AMERICAN TERRORISTS?  Any one who conducts a mass shooting creates terror.  Thus that person is one who creates terror, hence a “terrorist”.  Do American Terrorists have a common agenda?  Other than a certain fascination with guns, probably no.  But BECAUSE they are American Terrorists, we have no other nation to declare war against, no other nation to bomb and invade and kill their innocent women and children.  THINK ABOUT IT – if some foreign power started killing Americans at the rate of 30 a day, 1,000 a month, and so on, even the Tea Party people would demand war, be willing to pay higher taxes, enlist thousands of Americans in the military and want to bomb and invade.

WAR IS WORSE?  The TOTAL combat deaths in ALL American wars, in some 235 years, has been “only” 651,000  which is still 350,000 LESS than that 1,000,000 shot dead in American theaters, malls, campuses, restaurants, classrooms, private homes and public streets by American guns in the last 44 years alone!