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The online version of The Onion, the satirical and sometimes farcical newspaper, yesterday commented on the shootings at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek Sunday by concluding: “the American people reportedly began stocking up on guns in the hopes of preventing future shootings from taking place.”
While that is indeed satire, the sad truth is that some people believe this is the solution. It actually is the root of the problem.
Something must be done.
Is a gun the kind of thing we want everybody and their brother to have? If your answer is yes, please refer to the following:
- Columbine High School, Colo., 1999 – twelve killed, scores injured at school.
- Atlanta in 1999 – nine people killed while at work.
- The Brookfield Sheraton, 2005 – seven killed and five injured at a church service.
- Red Lake High School, Minn., in 2006 – nine killed while in school.
- West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania, 2006 – five young female students killed in school.
- Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City Utah, 2007 – five killed and four wounded while shopping.
- Virginia Tech University, 2007 – 32 killed and dozens injured while in class.
- Van Maur store, Omaha, 2007 – eight killed and five wounded while shopping.
- Northern Illinois University, 2008 – five students killed, 18 injured while in class.
- Binghamton New York Immigrant Center, 2009 – thirteen killed attending a meeting.
- Tucson, Ariz., 2011 – six killed and a dozen injured, including congresswoman Gabby Giffords, at a public meeting.
- Aurora, Colo. – twelve people killed and 58 others injured at the movies less than two months ago.
- Oak Creek – six people killed and many more injured Sunday while worshipping at the Sikh Temple.
Everyday people, doing everyday things. Gunned down by theoretically everyday citizens, who were anything but, who had easy access to firearms.
Something must be done.
But, you say, “It’s legal to carry a weapon!”
In fact, regarding the Oak Creek shooting, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel observed in their Twitter feed yesterday: “ATF: The firearm was purchase(d) legally. The person who bought it was not barred from having a firearm.”
So that sure makes us feel better, right? It’s okay that it happened as long as the gun was purchased legally?
I’m sorry. That’s ridiculous. This universal accessibility of firearms is making it dangerous to go anywhere in public anymore.
Something must be done.
The National Rifle Association of course does not agree with this perspective. It might be the most powerful lobby in the country, and it buys off enough politicians to ensure all the gun laws are enacted in its favor. They even authored the now infamous ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and the ‘Castle Doctrine’ that allow armed self-defense for ANY reason if you feel threatened or are on your own property (read Travon Martin and Bo Morrison). Bottom line? Sell more guns.
And I firmly believe that it’s poppycock to claim that if we put a ban on owning firearms, only those with bad intentions will be the ones to possess them. We can do better than that.
Actually, as someone said yesterday, we need more gun laws to protect us most from the gun nuts who are screaming loudest that we need less laws.
Wade Page walked into a gun supply store in West Allis just last week and bought the weapon with which he killed six people Sunday. He had a permit. He was also a whackjob white supremacist who was being scrutinized by a number of people because of highly questionable activity. He was at the very least a racist and now at worst is a mass murderer. But because he had been in the Army, and received a ‘general’ discharge (a cut below honorable but not the dishonorable one which would have made him ineligible for a permit), he was allowed to get a gun permit. Begging the question, of course, what in heaven’s name would a neo-nazi racist white supremacist want a gun for? Really?
Something must be done.
Gun advocates point to the Second Amendment that gives all citizens the right to bear arms. Folks, this was written in 1791. While that was a laudatory initiative in the wild, wild fledgling United States of America, it really doesn’t make any sense today. Are we really all equipped to handle a firearm on an everyday basis?
This country is due for stricter gun restrictions. It’s time to rewrite the laws. To protect us from ourselves.
Something must be done.
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Follow me on Twitter: @jpalmer7890
