Seventeen died yesterday at a Florida High School and fourteen more wounded. It took only two minutes for the legally purchased AR-15 to mow them down.
The NRA exalts the unrestricted right to buy military assault weapons designed not for hunting or self-defense but for attack. They say civilians regardless of mental status, history of abuse, lack of training, or planned use should be able to buy whatever gun manufacturers sell, including modifications to make them shoot faster. No training required. No restrictions. No limit on how many guns or how many clips of bullets. Navy Seals go into to battle less well-armed than mall and school shooters. And fewer of them are shot to death in battle than kids here in America.
The leaders of the NRA and their Republican enablers insist the answer to horrific incidents of gun murder is more guns. Would that have helped music fans at a rock concert sprayed with automatic weapons fire (fifty-eight killed) or worshipers in a church (twenty-six mowed down) or little kids in an elementary classroom, (twenty-six killed). Will having every citizen pack a gun in every school and mall help? Picture the increased safety of each teacher having an AR-15 on the desk teaching students each with a loaded pistol on their hip. Putting more guns on the street is no more the answer to curbing gun violence than putting more opioids on the street to reduce overdose deaths.
The NRA says guns aren’t the problem. It is guns in the hands of the mentally ill? Really? Have we forgotten so soon the Republican party at the behest of the NRA rushing to pass a law allowing the mentally ill on Social Security Disability, to buy these same weapons?
Candlelight vigils are not the answer. Cutting the funding for mental health treatment is not the answer. Doing nothing is not the answer. You can’t fix stupid.
You can only replace those complicit in this insanity by electing new members of Congress more concerned about protecting children then they are about collecting cash from the NRA and gun manufacturers.