Human Hunters

Reporter: Chief, are there emergency plans for different scenarios at this campus?
Chief: Yes, there are emergency plans for many situations.
Reporter: Well, what would that plan say for when a gunman comes in and start shooting up the building?...

And I live in this country? These, these are my people? People that would allow themselves to get to a point when a grown man has to ask another, and what, pray tell, do you do when someone comes in with an automatic or semi-automatic weapon and starts pumping bullets, possibly easily-bought very high tech bullets of some kind-or-other, through the innocent students sitting there? It's a sad testament to our priorities that the question could possibly be raised, yet again, so very easily as it is in today's days of Columbines and now Virgina Techs.

For the past two weeks I have heard people pontificating about the evils of sexism and racism in our society. Well honey, those are the least of our worries.

I love the Constitution, I do, and I think it is brilliant document. At times, the words are irreplaceable and irrefutable, sheer political poetic brilliance disguised as a document from which to govern. It is a moral, just thing. It is promise of freedoms yet fulfilled for all. And it is also, dated at times. And the founders, being the distrustors of governments that they were--even their own--said hey, don't forget, to get together every so often, sit down, and amend this, discuss this, let this document live and breathe. Because, as Thomas Jefferson said, "I am certainly not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

When it comes to gun laws in this country, we are living under the regimen of our BARBAROUS ancestors.

To the religious right: GUNS are a moral issue. And people have been misusing our Constitution to protect a right that has been abused more than any other right in this land, the right to bear arms.

Did Jefferson know what "arms" would mean in a few hundred years? Did Franklin know about automatic weapons that could kill a room full of people in under 15 seconds? Did Hancock envision hand guns that fit behind a coat or under a shirt and when removed can, in a matter of seconds, fire seven or more hollow point bullets, wiping out anything in their paths? Did any envision any one of the hundreds of neat little ways man has invented to kill other men? And let's be real, hand guns and automatic weapons are people hunters, period. They have one job, to kill, injure or stop a human being. Don't give me this guns don't kill people crap, just as much as cigarettes cause cancer, guns kill people. And look at the tobacco regulations. But mention real gun control, and oh, the red lights go up and off and the NRA comes after you faster than emails are disappearing at the White House.

Here's a fact America: We hold the record in these types of shootings and it's nothing of which to be proud. And until we realize that there is no need for these types of weapons, this will happen. You want a rifle to hunt food, fine, you get one. But don't give me this bull crap about needed to be able to raise a militia against our government. Unless you are going to buy F-16s, heat seeking missiles, small tactical nukes...well, you haven't got a prayer against our government in the first place. Ask anyone from Elian Gonzalez to those at Waco, the government wins when it comes to weaponry. That being said, unless you are arming yourself for a full scale, in-the-trenches civil war, there's no need for hand guns or automatic or semi-automatic weaponry. And I say this as a hand gun owner. Yup, got mine. And as soon as everybody else has to give up theirs I'll give up mine. The moment you legislate it, you get it. I'll happily bring it down. And buy a crossbow. A tazer. A double-barrel for the mantle. Someone breaks in, I'll shoot them with an arrow, taze them and then grab the shotgun. By then 911 should have arrived.

But that ship has sailed, right? We can never go back, there's too many out there, there's the internet, etc. Well, we've fought unwinnable wars before, like the futile war on drugs. Nobody complained then. How about we begin a multi-year campaign to wipe out hand guns and automatic or semi-automatic weapons. Isn't that a smarter thing to do when it comes to true Homeland Security? When it's so easy to kill 32 people, as happened at Virginia Tech, one fell swoop, kill all those kids in Columbine, kill each other on the streets of the country each and every night in a turf war or drug war or whatever war...WAR. Yes, there are wars going on and we are arming the fighters.

It may take years upon years to get it to where guns do not flow freely in and out of our nation, guns that are only meant to hunt people. It is time we hang the "No Human Hunting" sign above the U.S. Let's allocate money some place as an incentive for people to give up their guns. Give them a tax break for the full value of their gun collections when it's hand guns and semi-automatic or automatic weapons. Whatever, just take them, get them, get rid of them some how.

And let's look at mental health care in this country. It is one of the least funded of all community resources. In many places, their jail system takes care of the mentally ill. The Los Angeles County Jail system is a huge mental health care provider, the largest in the state. We are so disconnected, we don't know the person right across from us many times and those with problems are never spotted, and if they are, there's no resources for them. I know one thing, you can't be in your right damned frame of mind and walk around shooting humans like they were nothing but targets. And when you are that freaky, you shouldn't be able to go buy a weapon that will assist you, make it easy for you to do something like this.

That's not right wing or left wing, it's common sense. You cannot tolerate weapons of human hunting and then say you want to be a secure people. There are plenty of nonlethal ways to protect your home and personal property, they manage fine in many European countries.

We've created a high stress, multi-media, instant-everything society without adequate health or mental care, a society of strangers, and then arm them with lethal human hunters with ease.

I'll tell you right now, if terrorists were killing as many Americans with guns like these as Americans are killing each other with guns like these, they'd be illegal in a New York Minute. But talk about it when it's just Americans killing other Americans en masse, and that's fine, keep arming them, let them be able to open a bank account and get a free hand gun. Yes, that's a great idea.

Fear. It's all about fear. Fear the government, so get a stockpile of weapons of all kinds and live in Montana. Fear each other, and need a way to pump each other full of bullets. When are we going to stop being afraid of each other and more afraid of giving those with the will a horrible way to hunt us?

There is a compromise here someplace. And we must get to it. If we are a violent people, then remove our weapons of mass destruction from our ranks. Every day a person dies of a wound inflicted by a weapon that shouldn't even be within the boarders of a peaceful people.

The Founders were a suspicious people. They didn't want a people to live under an armed government without being able to defend itself. But they couldn't see the way everything has changed in society since then. And they knew that, and left us a way to evolve, to let the very document evolve with us.

It's time to evolve. Civilized societies do not need high tech ways to hunt each other. It's not the violence on TV. It's not video games. It's the fact that those that take any of those things seriously can walk out of their house and with some cash get any kind of human hunter they would want. And they know it.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again the same way and expecting different results. We've given the NRA their say for decades now, it's time we take off the blinders and see these for what they are, weapons of mass destruction. We own them. We use them, on each other. We are not good with them, they should go.

32 families have had to plan funerals when they were hoping for graduations. It's time that become a moral issue, not a gun-control one.