New Public Policy: Guns in the hands of the civilian population banned in this country, effective immediately. 300 million privately held weapons and billions
of rounds of ammunition confiscated and destroyed or donated to Local and
National law enforcement agencies. Immediate
release of everyone in prison convicted on drug charges, so we have room in our
prisons for anyone arrested with a gun.
There was a time when many people
in this country ‘believed’ that segregation was Constitutional and worked with
great diligence to protect that notion; they bombed churches and innocent
children, they turned water cannons on innocent people in the streets, they
beat riders to freedom, and they lynched beloved fathers and
brothers. Today, my 17 year old son cannot
fathom that time of horrors bestowed by and upon our own citizens just because of the
color or their skin. He can see today,
with benefit of hindsight given to him by decades of pain, that segregation was
blatantly wrong and immoral. He cannot
imagine a world any different than the one he lives in now.
Today the ‘belief’ that citizens of
this country have a Constitutional right to obtain and use a hand gun with 30
round clips is equally preposterous.
Just because the NRA has plastered lies all over the media, pandered to its
members for over 130 years, and spends millions of dollars each year in national
and state legislatures to protect their lies does NOT mean their interpretation
of the Constitution is correct or moral.
Read the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution, don’t just listen to the rhetoric of the NRA. There is a
reason why the founders of this country started that amendment with the words ‘A
well regulated militia.’ They expected this country to have a citizen militia that was well trained and well regulated.
The social implications and
dynamics of such a ‘free-wheeling’ gun culture as we have today is immoral and
is killing us. The cycle of violence it has created is killing our children and
offering a false sense of security to the fearful. Suggestions
to escalate gun use, train MORE people to use and carry weapons, put more armed guards in our schools and permit concealed weapons in our most sacred spaces is
a dangerous and desperate act by an organization who knows it’s time is done and is
struggling to hold off the inevitable.
Just because the NRA says it’s so,
does not make it so. The NRA is a sham organization heavily supported and used
as a mouthpiece by an industry that makes hundreds of billions of dollars every
year in the manufacturing of weapons and ammunition and has NO other interest
except to protect its own existence. The
arrogant NRA missed the opportunity a long time ago to advocate for better regulation
and tracking of weapons and ammunition and now it is scrambling for its very existence. Now it’s time for us to stop
listening to its lies and fear-mongering rhetoric.
Now is the time to protect our children.
Now is the time to do the hard
work.
If we take action NOW then perhaps our
children’s children will one day look back, the way my son does today, and feel
a chill to their bone when they think how
we once lived in a society that was so dangerous to its own citizens.
