If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Prior to passage of McClure-Volkmer, interstate ammunition sales by common carrier to private individuals were banned and records were maintained of ammunition sales. McClure-Volkmer ended these limited controls -- and opened up a new financial funding stream for the NRA.
We have become so disassociated from reality that we are to the point where even though men, women and children are mowed down in schools, movie theaters and streets by nut jobs with assault weapons, we rush to defend the right to own these absolutely inessential weapons.
Situations like these bring to the surface what has been bubbling in the depths of our subconscious. We can use this time to see the true stuff we're made of -- and activate the grit of our souls.
The only use for semi-automatic rifles is to kill people, and as many of them as possible. In considering the argument from this viewpoint, most guns are wasteful. Guns are to be used for protection or hunting and that is all.
Right out of the box following the Colorado movie massacre, Mayor Bloomberg was criticizing President Obama and Mitt Romney for their failure to advocate banning assault weapons. What a contrast to Bloomberg's silence in New York City.
While the concern and unease are understandable, I ask why this moment compels national conversations about life and death, about guns, about safety, about mental health and about tragedy, when countless other horrific moments don't elicit similar sadness and outage.
I recognize that solutions to gun violence, to mental health care, and to our educational inequity require political compromise. But we can't treat compromise as a philosophy. Our American dream should be to form a more perfect union, with government as a tool and not as an enemy.
The murderers, terrorists and evildoers of this world will only find strength and encouragement when the global community refuses to honor the memory of those who lives were taken and stand for justice and peace.
The time has come for our nation to face the National Rifle Association and its bullying tactics. There is no way that our forefathers envisioned twelve innocent people lying dead on the floor of a movie theater when they wrote the Second Amendment.
I should practice Ahimsa, non-harming. But in the situation of a madman with four guns and gas canisters, it might not be so simple.
This is not an easy discussion. But after the hymns and songs, shrines and warmth, pain, suffering, and attempts for comfort, maybe we should finally ask the cold, hard, dispassionate, and oh-so-very-real questions about the place in which we want to live.
Turn off the TV. Put down the newspaper. There is only one appropriate response to this horrific gun tragedy and all of its predecessors. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, and, most importantly, tell your elected-Representatives in Washington, "Enough."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is absolutely right to call upon President Barack Obama and his opponent Mitt Romney to do more than sympathize with the families and friends of the 12 people who were shot and killed in Colorado last week.
Does anyone truly think Thomas Jefferson or James Madison envisioned a "right to bear arms" extending to the sale of high-tech combat gear to grad students?
Once again, events conspire to remind us how fragile is our existence and how vulnerable we really are.
Why is it so crazy to float the notion that the kind of assault weapon used in Aurora (not necessarily the gun itself, but the magazine) might not be the kind of thing that just anybody should be able to stroll into a gun shop and buy?
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