The shooter at the Navy Yards in D.C. was a concealed carry permittee, from a wildly gun-hugging lax gun control state, Texas.He should not have had guns, but the NRA and extremist pro-gun nuts have made it very easy for people who should not have guns to get guns. This includes people with mental illness, even AFTER they have been found to be dangerously mentally ill by courts of law. Thanks to the NRA, without any findings by mental health professionals as to sanity or safety, the lowest possible courts, with no guidance or expertise, can give back gun rights to the dangerously mentally ill. Many instances of felons and the mentally ill regaining their gun rights have resulted in people dying or being injured, and in people being threatened and intimidated.
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| Blind Iowa carry permittee handling a gun in a sporting goods store |
They don't care if blind people who cannot safely operate a gun according to the rules of gun safety which requires someone to see what they are shooting and around where they are shooting. They don't care if people on the terrorist watch list get easy access to guns. They don't care if convicted violent criminals get guns legally through their legislation. They are funding laws that make these things possible, everywhere, at the state level and the federal level. Blood is on their hands, literally and metaphorically.
Gun control in the form of a law which prevented the shooter form buying an assault style weapon worked to prevent this from being an even larger tragedy.
We do not need more people with guns, or more guns in the hands of people who have them now. We are better off as a society without people carrying guns everywhere. Starbucks has finally come to their senses, and requested their customers no longer carry guns in their stores.
No surprise, since they've had accidents in their stores with customers carrying guns; earlier this year, for example:
Another woman given a gun by her father dropped her purse and discharged her weapon at a Starbucks, this time in St. Petersburg, Florida. The woman said she'd forgotten the gun was in her purse and had never taken it out to clean or service it, reported the Tampa Bay Times.No one who does not have a professional reason to carry or a legally recognized threat to their lives that justifies carrying, should have a firearm in public, and then, ONLY after adequate training.
We need to do more to restrict firearms to appropriate people, and then only in appropriate circumstances, like hunting. More guns, more guns in public, more laxity in our gun laws have given us one and one thing only - more gun violence.
The Arizona mass shooting that severely injured Gabby Giffords should have been enough; the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, or the one shortly after it, should have been enough. Sandy Hook should have been enough.
The NRA premise of good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns is wrong. It is a failure. What stops bad guys with guns, whether they are crazy, criminals, or just disgruntled ordinary people, is not letting them get their hands on guns so easily in the first place. Let us require strict licensing; let us make it possible for our law enforcement - with checks and balances to prevent arbitrary decisions - prevent people they know to be a problem, a danger, a risk from getting guns.
Screw the paranoia of the right wing nuts; we need better background checks, and whatever registry or records are necessary for that to work. There is NO right to shoot up the government to oppose tyranny; that is why no effort to do so, beginning with Shay's rebellion and the Whiskey rebellion, or the Civil War attack on Fort Sumter for that matter, has been recognized as legitimate. It is past time that we stopped pandering and catering to the crazies among us, both those with legitimate mental health issues, and those who are just eccentric extremists with tin foil hat ideas.
DG, I think you have one misstatement. You said the NRA opposes anything which sells more guns. I think you may mean the opposite.
ReplyDeleteOn this post, thanks for writing it. I find it tragically ironic that in the same week as yet another mass shooting, we see either in that shooting or in another story that:
A. 2 conceal carry permit holders stop and kill each other in fit of road rage. I guess all those "lawful conceal carry firearms" owners are not quite all lawful. Many are angry and afraid.
B. That the security guard who confronted Aaron Alexis with his HANDGUN was terribly outclassed by Alexis with his long gun (in this case a shotgun). I guess "just having a person there with a gun" wasn't enough. I guess high power weapons in fact DO mean that a private citizen might well just be another victim.
C. I see that Mr. Alexis seems to have used the weapon he took off the security guard to shoot yet more people. I guess there IS a greater risk that this could be the outcome, especially if the assailant has the "bigger, badder" gun.
In fact, things are quite clear and obvious. More guns logically and empirically have lead to making it easier to kill people in fits of rage, mental depravity, and depression. Having hand guns "handy" isn't a cure all. Having no way to limit access to those weapons to those who are easily documented as unstable has proven to be fatal over and over again. It is time to stop worrying about Mr. Alexis' security clearance, and worry more about his clearance to buy more guns.